[69]
And as the facts of the case were now notorious, and as the consuls, by their
bargain respecting the provinces, had parted with all their freedom of
action, and when they were asked in the senate to deliver
their opinions respecting me as private men,1 said that they were afraid of
that law of Clodius: as those men could not stand this state of things any
longer, they formed a plan to murder Cnaeus Pompeius and when that was
detected and when the assassins had been taken with the arms in their hands,
he remained shut up in his own house as long as my enemy continued tribune.
Eight tribunes supported a motion for my return, from which it was
understood that my friends had increased in my absence and that, too, while
I was in a situation in which some whom I had thought to be my friends were
not able to show2 it; but the fact was that they had always the same
inclination but not always the same freedom of action; for of the nine
tribunes who were at that time in my interest one, while I was absent,
dropped off from me, who took his surname from the images of the Aelii,
though he looks more as if he be longed to their nation than to their
family.3
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