Publius Clodius Pulcher (born 93 BC, slain a. d. XIII Kal. Feb. 52R = Julian December 6, 53 BC).
A Roman hereditary high noble of the patrician gens Claudia, and Senator, of bold and extreme character, who attempted to become a major force in Roman politics in the period of the "Gang of Three" Pompeius, Crassus and Caesar (59-53 BC). He passed numerous laws in the radical tradition of the populares, (the Leges Clodiae), but was hampered by tendencies to petulance and extreme violence, and by the bitter negativity of his personal feuding, which undermined his ability to muster a really large and authentic popular following.
Sibylline priest (Quindecemvir for performing sacrifices) Quaestor in Sicily 61
Tribune of plebs 58
Aedilis curulis 56
praetorian candidate for 53, and again for 52
Clodius was excessively motivated by personal hatred for Pompey and Cicero, springing from an exaggerated sense of their betrayal of him in relation to his capital trial in 61 BC. His initial success against Cicero by violent means in winter 59-8 BC encouraged his wild temperament. But Pompey was the wealthiest and most powerful prince of his day, both willing and able to meet Clodian force with even greater violence. To this end he increasingly employed Titus Annius Milo to organize and lead armed gangs in the streets of Rome, and Milo regularly got the better of Clodius' smaller bands. Both gradually degenerated into little better than hit-men writ large, while Pompeius held himself aloof, giving the orders and controlling the political process.
At the end of 53 BC a chance meeting between the personal retinues of Clodius and Milo near the village of Bovillae on the Appian Way quickly turned bloody, and Clodius was slain at the age of forty. In his feud with Pompey he had bitten off more than he could chew.
Although Clodius' personal career and ambitions were ultimately a failure, he was immensely important historically owing to the damage he helped to inflict on the whole fabric and psychology of the Roman free state. He played into the hands of Pompey and the latter's personal and shared domination by severely disrupting the essential peaceful conduct of public life, and simultaneously afforded his enemy a perpetual excuse to take extreme measures under the plausible name of personal safety and retaliation. Pompey thus managed a public relations victory while actively subverting and suppressing the proper working of fundamental institutions of the free state, and was usually able to maintain good relations with independently important and powerful Republican-minded princes by posing as the City's protector.
This process also gradually corrupted Pompey's judgment. He complacently came to consider himself the natural ruler of Rome and more or less invincible, failing to grasp the nature and extent of the power base being accumulated by his nominal partner in the Gallic provinces, who was every bit as bold as Publius Clodius but considerably more intelligent and patient.
Born Publius Claudius Pulcher, in 93 BC, his full filiation Ap. f. Ap. n. (son of Appius cos.79, grandson of Appius cos.143) is known from the triple filiation of his homonymous son, P. Claudius Pulcher, on an alabaster vase from Egypt (CIL VI 1282 = ILS 882: P.CLAVDIVS P.F.AP.N.AP.PRON.PVLCHER Q. QVAESITOR PR. AVGVR).[1]
He was the youngest of three brothers, and probably five sisters. His mother's identity and family continues to be one of the most complex and controversial issues of 1st century BC Roman social history, but she was certainly not the Caecilia, daughter of Metellus Balearicus, deduced by Fr.Münzer. Most likely she was a Servilia of the patrician Caepiones, daughter of Q. Servilius Caepio cos.106 and pontifex maximus, or a Caecilia Metella sister of Q. Metellus Celer pater (tr.pl.90).[2]
He took part in the Third Mithridatic War under his brother-in-law, Lucullus. However, considering himself treated with insufficient respect, he stirred up a revolt. Another brother-in-law, Q. Marcius Rex, governor of Cilicia, gave him the command of his fleet, but he was captured by pirates. On his release he repaired to Syria, where he nearly lost his life during a mutiny he was accused of instigating.
A curious incident took place during his time in pirate hands which was to have later consequences. The pirates sought a good ransom price from Ptolemy of Cyprus, a nominal ally of Rome who was presently involved in negotiations for a potential marriage to a daughter of Mithradates VI of Pontus. Ptolemy sent a fairly trivial sum which so amused the pirates that they released Clodius without taking any money. He had evidently being big-noting his worth, and this transaction filled him with hatred for the Cyprian ruler.
Returning to Rome in 66 BC, Clodius was in serious need of protection from his brother-in-law because of the treason he had committed in Lucullus' army, and his incestuous relations with Lucullus' wife which the latter discovered upon his return the same year, and promptly divorced her. In a clever piece of social politics in 66 or 65 Clodius wed Fulvia the daughter of Sempronia of the Tuditani at about the same time as Lucullus' very close relative (probably nephew) L. Licinius Murena (pr.65, cos.62) became Sempronia's third husband. He also collusively prosecuted Catiline in 65 on a charge of extortion from his African command, and so helped secure his acquittal.[3]
In 64 BC Clodius went to Gallia on the command staff of L. Murena[4] and returned with him to Rome in 63 in time for the elections at which Murena secured his family's first consulate, mainly with the help of Lucullus' army veterans and the consul Cicero. Clodius will certainly have assisted too. Catilina's defeat at the same elections was the signal to begin his attempt at a violent coup d'état, with the aim of slaughtering most of the nobility, especially the plebeian nobles and senators, and setting up a small patrician-dominated oligarchy. Although Clodius was still a patricius and it later suited Cicero to portray him as a participant in the Catilinarian conspiracy, Clodius not only was not involved but maintained his policy of cuddling up close to Murena and mollifying Lucullus to such an extent that, as reported by Plutarch (Cicero, 29), he rendered Cicero every assistance and acted as one of his bodyguards. In the same year one of Clodius' sisters (presumably Lucullus' former wife since the other two were still married to Marcius Rex and Metellus Celer) attempted to persuade Cicero to dump his wife Terentia and marry her instead. This made Terentia extremely angry with the Claudia in question, and by association with the wider family (PlutarchCicero, 29).
Before long, however, Clodius became bored with his newly respectable lot and family life and began a liaison with Pompeia.
The Bona Dea was a deity from whose cult men were so completely excluded that they were not permitted even to know or speak her name, and hence used the euphemism "Good Goddess". The rites took place in calendar December each year in the home of one of the senior magistrates. Terentia had presided in 63 at the home of the consul Cicero. In 62 both the consuls were so seriously ill by the end of the year (and dying soon afterwards) that the rites were held in the residence of the praetor Julius Caesar, which was the Regia in his capacity as pontifex maximus, presided over by his wife Pompeia and his mother Aurelia.
Clodius went in dressed as a woman, and sought out Pompeia, but was discovered by a servant girl when forced to speak. The ensuing scandal dragged on for months, during which Pompey returned from the east, Caesar divorced his wife, and most public business was suspended. Lucullus had determined to use the opportunity to destroy Clodius' political career, and eventually he was tried on the capital charge of incestus.
C. Scribonius Curio (cos.76) was the very vigorous chief advocate, but the evidence was conclusive. Lucullus provided numerous slaves from his household to testify to Clodius' incest with his sister when she was his wife, the same Claudia who had attempted to supplant Terentia. Caesar's mother Aurelia and sister Iulia testified to Clodius' violation of the rites in the Regia. Caesar did his best to help Clodius by insisting that his wife was not guilty but he had been obliged to divorce her because Caesar's wife had to be beyond suspicion. Clodius fabricated an alibi that he was not in Rome on the day of the rites, which Cicero was in a position to refute, but uncertain whether he should do so. Eventually national and domestic politics forced his hand. He was desperately keen to forge a detente between Lucullus and Pompeius, who were at loggerheads over the settlement of the eastern provinces, and wished to do Lucullus a favour in this matter, while at home Terentia demanded that he give his testimony and ensure the destruction of her subversive rival's brother and lover. Cicero did so, but Marcus Crassus decided the outcome of the trial by en masse, and extremely inventive, bribery of the jurors to secure Clodius' acquittal.
When it was all over Clodius' politics had become transformed and more deeply personal than ever before. He clung to Crassus as his chief saviour, and was grateful to Caesar for his attempt to help him. He even had no serious beef with the leading princes who had engineered his prosecution, owing to the wrongs he had done them. But he had risked tampering with Lucullus' army in the east directly in the interests of Pompeius, who now had not lifted a finger to help him, despite being locked in serious political dispute with the Luculli brothers. And he had energetically assisted Cicero against Catalina. So his hatred for the pair began to burn white hot and he focused all his energies on how he might destroy them, beginning with the much easier target, the novus homo from Arpinum.
Adoption into plebeian family of the Fonteii
On his return from Sicily (where he had been quaestor in 61 BC), Clodius chose to renounce his patrician rank in order to hold a tribunate of plebs, which was not permitted to patricians. In 59 BC when the Gang of Three took control of Roman politics by force (sometimes called the First Triumvirate, although it had no legal or official basis), Clodius was able to enact a transfer to plebeian status by getting himself adopted by a certain P. Fonteius, probably a distant relative. Although the process violated almost every proper form of adoption, which was a serious business involving clan and family rituals and inheritance rights, anything was now possible for partisans of the chief Gangsters Pompeius, Crassus and Caesar, and on December 10 in Caesar's consulate (Julian 16 November 59 BC), Clodius took office as Tribune of the Plebs and began preparations for his destruction of Cicero and an extensive populist legislative programme in order to bind as much of the community as possible to his policies as beneficiaries.
Nonetheless the legality of Clodius' transfer, and therefore all his acta and laws, remained a contentious issue for many years. Most seriously in order to be permitted to adopt a fellow citizen from another clan and its rites into his own, a Roman citizen was required to be at least middle aged (beyond adulescentia, i. e. 37 or older) and able to prove that he had tried but failed to produce children. In this case Clodius himself turned 34 in 59 BC and Fonteius his adoptor was even younger, something entirely illegal and unprecedented. Furthermore once an adoption was made the adoptee took his place within the adopting family with full rights and duties as the adoptor's eldest son. This included changing his name to that of the adoptor, to which an additional cognomen was normally appended, in order to indicate either the clan or the family of his birth. Thus P. Claudius Pulcher should have become P. Fonteius Claudianus or P. Fonteius Pulcher. Instead he also violated this essential convention and simply changed the spelling of his clan name from Claudius to Clodius, emphasizing that his sole interest in the enactment of this public socio-religious farce was to obtain a semblance of technical permission to hold the key plebeian magistracy, with its extensive legislative powers and protective sacrosanctity.
Patrician Tribune
As tribune Clodius introduced a law threatening exile to anyone who executed a Roman citizen without a trial. Cicero, having executed members of the Catiline conspiracy four years before without formal trial, and having had a public falling-out with Clodius, was clearly the intended target of the law. Cicero argued that the senatus consultum ultimum indemnified him from punishment, and he attempted to gain the support of the senators and consuls, especially of Pompey. When help was not forthcoming, he went into exile. He arrived at Thessalonica, Greece on May 29, 58BC.[5] The day Cicero left Italy, Clodius proposed another law which forbade Cicero approaching within of Italy and confiscated his property. The bill was passed forthwith, and Cicero's villa on the Palatine was destroyed by Clodius' supporters, as were his villas in Tusculum and Formiae.[6][7]Cicero's property was confiscated by order of Clodius, his mall on the Palatine burned down, and its site put up for auction. It was purchased by Clodius himself, who, not wishing his name to appear in the matter, had someone else place the bid for him.
He became exhilerated with his power and importance and wasted no time enacting a substantial legislative programme.
The Leges Clodiae included setting up a regular dole of free grain, which used to be distributed monthly at variously and heavily discounted prices, but was now to be given away gratis, with the resultant gratiae expected to flow back into Clodius' political accounts.
He abolished the right of taking the omens on a fixed day and (if they were declared unfavourable) of preventing the assembly of the comitia, possessed by every magistrate by the terms of the Lex Aelia Fufia.
He re-established the old social and political clubs or guilds of workmen, and the censors were forbidden to exclude any citizen from the senate or inflict any punishment upon him unless he had been publically tried and convicted.
Out of personal hatred for the Lagid king Ptolemy of Cyprus, younger brother of Ptolemy XII Auletes, he passed a bill terminating his kingship and annexing Cyprus to the Empire. He cleverly selected Cato the Younger to be sent to Cyprus with a special grant of praetorian command rights to take possession of the island and the royal treasures, and preside over the administrative incorporation of Cyprus into Cilicia province. This measure was planned both to remove Cato, potentially a serious and difficult opponent, from the City for some time (in the event he was away for more than two years), and to turn him into an advocate for the legitimacy of his adoption and tribunate, which it also effected, later causing a great deal of friction between Cato and Clodius' bitterest enemies, especially Cicero.
In 57 BC, one of the tribunes proposed the recall of Cicero, and Clodius resorted to force to prevent the passing of the decree. His effort was foiled by Milo, who led an armed gang sufficiently strong to hold him in check. Clodius subsequently attacked the workmen who were rebuilding Cicero's house at public cost, assaulted Cicero himself in the street, and set fire to the house of Cicero's brother Quintus Tullius Cicero.
In 56, while curule aedile, he impeached Milo for public violence (de vi) while defending his house against the attacks of Clodius' gang, and also charged him with keeping armed bands in his service. Judicial proceedings were hindered by violent outbreaks, and the matter was finally dropped.
Death
In 53 BC, when Milo was a candidate for the consulship, and Clodius for the praetorship, the rivals collected armed bands and clashed in the streets of Rome. On December 6 53 BC, by chance Clodius and Milo passed each other on the Appian Way near Bovillae. A fight erupted between members of the two groups and Clodius died in the ensuing melee. Suetonius, however, contradicts this story, saying simply that Clodius was assassinated. His enraged clients used the senate house as his funeral pyre. The Senate then voted Julius Caesar (still in Gaul) to be removed from power in favor of Pompey, but the Tribunes were able to block this.
Family
Clodius was born into the poorpatrician family of (praetor 86 BC)|Appius Claudius Pulcher]] and Caecilia Metella Balearica. He changed his name from the ancient patrician spelling of Claudius to the plebeian spelling of Clodius upon his adoption by P. Fonteius. Clodius was married to Fulvia, and had a daughter, Clodia Pulchra, who was briefly married to Octavian, and a son, also named P. Clodius.
His sister, Clodia, was immortalized in the poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus and the writings of Marcus Tullius Cicero; Cicero insinuated, in Pro Caelio, that Clodia had had an incestuous relationship with her brother. She lived her life surrounded in perpetual scandal.
Clodius in popular culture
Clodius makes several appearances in Roma Sub Rosa, a series of novels by the American author Steven Saylor.
Clodius is a key player in Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series books Caesar's Women and Caesar. His entire exploits from his time in the east to his death in 52 BC is chronicled as a subplot to the greater story.
Clodius plays a minor role in the Ides of March, an epistolatory novel by Thornton Wilder dealing with characters and events leading to, and culminating in the assassination of Julius Caesar. Clodius' possible involvement with Caesar's second wife Pompeia and his attempt to attend the secret rites of the Bona Dea are mentioned (though these events are transplanted in time).
Notes
References
Stangl, Thomas: Ciceronis Orationum Scholiastae: Asconius. Scholia Bobiensia. Scholia Pseudoasconii Sangallensia. Scholia Cluniacensia et recentiora Ambrosiana ac Vaticana. Scholia Lugdunensia sive Gronoviana et eorum excerpta Lugdunensia (Vienna, 1912; reprinted Georg Olms, Hildesheim, 1964)
Asconius. Caesar Giarratano (ed.) Q. Asconii Pediani Commentarii, (Rome, 1920; reprinted Adolf M. Hakkert, Amsterdam, 1967)
Cicero, Letters (ed. Tyrrell and Purser), Pro Caelio, pro Sestio, pro Milone, pro Domo sua, de Haruspicum Responsis, in Pisonem;
Cicero, Letters (ed. Evelyn Shuckburgh), DCCXIII (A XIV, 13 a).
ES Beesley, "Cicero and Clodius," in Fortnightly Review, v.; G Lacour-Gayet, De P. Clodio Pulchro (Paris, 1888), and in Revue historique (Sept. 1889);
Philippe Moreau: Clodiana religio. Un procès politique en 61 av. J.-C. Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1982, ISBN 2-251-33103-4
Tatum, W. Jeffrey. The Patrician Tribune: P. Clodius Pulcher. Studies in the History of Greece and Rome. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999 (hardcover, ISBN 0807824801).
H White, Cicero, Clodius and Milo (New York, 1900);
G Boissier, Cicero and his Friends (Eng. trans., 1897).
Lintott, Andrew W. "P. Clodius Pulcher ? Felix Catilina??, Greece & Rome, n.s.14 (1967), 157-69
Lintott, Andrew W. Violence in Republican Rome (Oxford University Press, 1968)
Wilfried Nippel: Publius Clodius Pulcher ? ?der Achill der Straße?. In: Karl-Joachim Hölkeskamp, Elke Stein-Hölkeskamp (Hrsg.): Von Romulus zu Augustus. Große Gestalten der römischen Republik. Beck, München 2000. S. 279?291. ISBN 3-406-46697-4
Fezzi, L. Il tribuno Clodio, Roma-Bari: Laterza, 2008 (ISBN 8-8420-8715-7).
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