THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

V. The Establishment of the Military Monarchy

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

Chapter VIII - The Joint Rule of Pompeius and Caesar

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Page 7

Clodius

The principal performer in this theatre of political rascality was that Publius Clodius, of whose services, as already mentioned,(2) the regents availed themselves against Cato and Cicero.

2. Cf. V. VI. Clodius

Left to himself, this influential, talented, energetic and-- in his trade--really exemplary partisan pursued during his tribunate, of the people (696) an ultra-democratic policy, gave the citizens corn gratis, restricted the right of the censors to stigmatize immoral burgesses, prohibited the magistrates from obstructing the course of the comitial machinery by religious formalities, set asidethe limitswhich had shortly before (690), for the purpose of checking the system of bands, been imposed on the right of association of the lower classes, and reestablished the "street-clubs" (-collegia compitalicia-) at that time abolished, which were nothing else than a formal organization--subdivided according to the streets, and with an almost military arrangement--of the whole free or slave proletariate of the capital.

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