which would have united him closely with Cato. Cato rejected his overtures, and soon afterwards saw cause to exult in his short-sighted way over his own prudence. Pompey spent money too freely at the elections in 61 B.C. in order to secure the return of his partisan Afranius as consul. "I should have shared in the ill-fame of this," said Cato, "if I had allied myself to Pompey by marriage." Plutarch, who is our authority for the story, very sensibly adds[1]: "However, if we are to judge by the event, Cato made a fatal error in rejecting the alliance, and leaving Pompey to turn to Cæsar and contract a marriage which, by uniting the forces of the two, nearly ruined Rome and actually destroyed the constitution. None of these things would have happened, if Cato had not taken fright at the small faults of Pompey, and so allowed him to commit the greatest of all in building up the power of another."
Meanwhile the business of Clodius had entered on a fresh phase. Hortensius, who was one of the prominent supporters of the bill, fearing that it would be vetoed at last by Fufius, suggested that it might be well to paralyse his opposition by accepting Furlus' own bill as a substitute. The guilt of Clodius, he thought, was so manifest that no jury, however constituted, could fail to find a true verdict on the question of fact. He would "cut Clodius' throat," he protested "even with a leaden sword." Accordingly, the experiment was tried; the consuls withdrew their bill, and that of Fufius was carried unopposed. When the jury came to be empanelled, it was manifest
- ↑ Plutarch, Cato Minor, 30, 5.
