Publius Clodius Pulcher ( – 18 January 52 BC) was a Roman politician and demagogue. A noted opponent of Cicero, he was responsible during his plebeian tribunate in 58 BC for a massive expansion of the Roman grain dole as well as Cicero's exile from the city. Leader of one of the political mobs in the 50s, his political tactics – combining connections throughout the oligarchy with mass support from the poor plebs – made him a central player in the politics of the era.
Born to the influential patrician gens Claudia, he was embroiled early in his political career in a religious scandal which saw him develop a rivalry with the orator Cicero and become a plebeian in order to be eligible for the plebeian tribunate. He successfully stood as tribune of the plebs for 58 BC and passed six laws to restore Rome's collegia (private guilds and fraternities), expand the grain dole (making it free rather than subsidised while also using those collegia as means for distribution), annex Cyprus to pay for the dole, clarify augural law on religious obstruction, make it more difficult for the censors to expel senators from the senate, and exile Cicero for the unlawful execution of conspirators during the Catilinarian conspiracy.
When curule aedile in 56 BC, he feuded with and attempted to prosecute his political enemy, Titus Annius Milo, who controlled a rival set of urban mobs. Starting the year an opponent of Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, he and his family reconciled with them to form a political alliance. A few years later in 52 BC, amid renewed political violence and a campaign for the praetorship, Milo and Clodius encountered each other on the via Appia outside Rome, where Clodius was killed. His body, brought back to Rome, was brought to the forum and then cremated in the senate house, causing its destruction by fire.
His politics were advanced largely by his cultivation of urban mobs in Rome which, by exercising violent control of the places where the republic operated, furthered his political objectives. These violent tactics, however, were not his only sources of influence: his family connections and nobilitas made him a valuable ally to many parties – including, at various times, Caesar, Cato, and Pompey – in the ad hoc factionalism of the late republic. The older view that Clodius acted as an agent of magnates, such as Caesar or Pompey, is now rejected by scholars; he is now seen as an opportunistic and independent politician.. "The old view that in politics Clodius operated as the instrument of others was exploded over thirty years ago... the modern consensus [is] that Clodius was always his own man". See ; ; , "It should no longer be necessary to refute the older notion that Clodius acted as agent or tool of the triumvirate"; .
Name Later historians speculated that Clodius changed the spelling of his nomen from "Claudius" to "Clodius" to distance himself from his patrician family and curry favor with the plebeians; however, there are no ancient sources that substantiate the idea that he changed his name, or that the two spellings signified patrician vs. plebeian status. Ancient contemporaries like Cicero referred to him as "Clodius" before his plebeian adoption, and Clodius's patrician sisters spelled the names with an O in correspondence throughout their lives. The O-spelling may have also been used by Clodius's uncle in the 90s BC, as well as by his elder brother Gaius, as documented by Cicero.
W. Jeffrey Tatum, in the 1999 book The Patrician Tribune, also notes that Roman politicians did not benefit from reducing social distance between themselves and the plebs: rather, the plebs valued champions who were more noble because it made their causes seem more respectable.
Early life
Clodius was born to the patrician gens Claudia. His branch traced its ancestry to shortly after the founding of the republic, with its ancestral patriarch Attus Clausus holding a consulship in 495 BC. The Claudii Pulchri, the branch of the family from which Clodius hailed, descended from Appius Claudius Caecus (censor in 312 BC).
Clodius' father, Appius Claudius Pulcher, was consul in 79 BC and a supporter of Sulla. Shortly after he became proconsul of Macedonia in 77 BC, he died, leaving three sons. The youngest of these sons was Publius Clodius; his two elder brothers were Appius and Gaius. He also had three sisters all named Clodia: the eldest was the wife of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Celer; the second daughter wed Lucius Licinius Lucullus; the third wed Quintus Marcius Rex. The identity of Clodius' mother is disputed, as is the precise relationship between the sons of father Appius and the two Metelli (Celer and Nepos).
Early career
Clodius first concretelyClodius may have prosecuted a Vestal Virgin named Fabia for sexual relations with Catiline in 73 BC. It is not clear, however, whether the passage in Plutarch (Cat. Min., 19.3) occurred in 73 BC or in 61 BC. Catiline was likely not himself prosecuted. . The scandal may have been fabricated. . enters the historical record serving under Lucullus, his brother-in-law, during the Third Mithridatic War. T R S Broughton, in Magistrates of the Roman republic places him possibly as a legate under Lucullus in 68 BC. During that year, he encouraged soldiers to mutiny when wintering at Nisbis in Armenia. Per Plutarch, he likely acted on personal motives, rather than as part of a Pompeian plot. The next year, he transferred to serve under the proconsul of Cilicia, Quintus Marcius Rex, who was also Clodius' brother-in-law. In command of the fleet as a prefect, he was defeated and captured. Appealing to Ptolemy, the king of Cyprus, he was ransomed from the pirates or otherwise released as a gesture of good will shortly before Pompey's pan-Mediterranean anti-pirate campaign; Clodius, after his release, reassumed command under Pompey though formally attached to Marcius.But see , noting that Dio fails to report Clodius' alleged capture by pirates. He also served in a mission to support the Roman client king of Syria, Philip II Philoromaeus, but was unsuccessful. Exploiting his familial connections to put himself in military positions, his military career was broadly unsuccessful. However, this proved of little consequence politically as Romans usually believed that aristocrats were inherently competent at military affairs., citing
On Clodius' return to Rome, in 65 BC, he started an unsuccessful prosecution of Lucius Sergius Catilina. While Clodius' bête noire Cicero later claimed that Clodius cooperated with Catiline to make an incompetent prosecution (a crime called praevaricatio), there is little contemporary evidence thereof. The more unbiased source Asconius, in commentaries on Cicero, dismissed the accusation; more recent historians have largely concurred. Catiline's acquittal is sufficiently explained by bribery and deference by the jury to his many consular allies. Around the same time, Clodius also threatened Lucullus with prosecution. Lucullus responded by divorcing his wife Clodia with humiliating public allegations that she engaged in incest with Clodius. The prosecution was shortly thereafter dropped.
Clodius was possibly elected as military tribune for 64 BC. Whether military tribune or not, he served that year on the staff of then-praetor Lucius Licinius Murena who was proconsul of Transalpine Gaul in 64 BC. Nothing concrete is known of Clodius' activities there. When the two returned to Rome in 63 BC, Clodius was involved in Murena's campaign for the consulship and likely helped distribute bribes to voters in the comitia centuriata. At the ensuing trial of Murena that year, Cicero in Pro Murena may have defended Clodius' role in Murena's campaign and there is no evidence at all that Clodius was involved in the Catilinarian conspiracy that year. Clodius' support for Murena and his connection with Quintus Marcius Rex – who was assigned a command in Italy to suppress Catiline's revolt – indicates that he was likely an opponent of the conspirators.
Bona Dea affair
The next year, in 62 BC, Clodius stood successfully for the quaestorship. Up to this point, Clodius' career was largely conventional. Prior, however, to his taking office, he was involved in a scandal where some time in December 62 BC he infiltrated the female-only secret rites of the Bona Dea in the house of the pontifex maximus, Julius Caesar. His motives for this are unclear and muddled by invective. The sacrilege was initially ignored. Around six months passed before a meeting of the senate in May forced the matter to be brought to the pontifices who declared it sacrilegious; the senate, following religious law, then dutifully set up a tribunal.But see , arguing that the senate was not required to act and attributing the tribunal to a clique, possibly led by Lucullus and Hortensius, determined to ruin Clodius. To that end, the senate advised the consuls to pass a law to establish a special tribunal to prosecute Clodius for the crime of ; the crime, which normally covered only incest and sexual relations with Vestal Virgins, was here extended to include Clodius' sacrilege in a loose analogy with an assault on the Vestal's chastity. To signal its importance, the senate also shut down public business until the people ratified the tribunal.
Clodius had two allies: one of the consuls, Marcus Pupius Piso Frugi Calpurnianus, and one of the plebeian tribunes, Quintus Fufius Calenus. They argued that the law, by appointing jurors via the urban praetor rather than by lot, violated due process and constituted an illegal senatorial usurpation of the jurors' roles. Piso, as the formal proposer, opposed his own law in speeches and by shenanigans: with a mob led by Clodius' ally Gaius Scribonius Curio, Piso and his supporters seized the voting stalls and then handed out only negative ballots. After a motion in the senate to repeal the decree to establish the tribunal, brought by Curio's homonymous father (who had been consul in 76 BC), failed 400–15, Clodius and his allies took to the streets. Amid orations connecting the senate's tribunal to Cicero's illegal execution of citizens just a few months earlier during the Catilinarian conspiracy, those supporting the bill eventually accepted selection by lot. Two motions dividing the matters in the senate – first whether a tribunal should be established and second whether it should have its jury appointed by the praetor – were brought. The first motion passed; the second was defeated; and a new bill, brought by tribune Fufius with the jury selected by lot, then passed in the assembly., citing
The prosecution at the trial was led by Lucius Cornelius Lentulus Crus – joined by other Cornelii Lentuli arrayed in an alliance against Clodius – and the main advocate for the defence was Curio's father who had been consul in 76 BC. While the trial is not well documented, Clodius is alleged to have obstructed interrogation of his slaves by selling them to his brother or moving them to Gaul. Character witnesses, including Lucullus, attacked Clodius' character. Julius Caesar's mother and sister (Aurelia and Julia) testified to Clodius' presence. Curio produced a resident of the town of Interamna, who swore that Clodius was not present in Rome during the rites. Cicero contradicted this alibi, which according to Valerius Maximus was Clodius' only defence; this testimony under oath became the root of the enmity between Clodius and Cicero. Worried about violence against the jurors, the senate decreed their protection. However, after the jurors voted 31 to 25 to acquit, the decision was immediately condemned as a product of bribery.