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though ostensibly supporting the claims of Lentulus to effect the restoration, was anxious to secure for himself a commission which would not only be highly lucrative, but would give him a fleet, an army, and a base in Egypt. Cicero felt bound to support his benefactor Lentulus, and the majority of the Senate were afraid or jealous of Pompey, when, very opportunely for them, the tribune C. Cato discovered a Sibylline oracle, forbidding the restoration of Ptolemy by anyone cum multitudine hominum ("with a host of men"). This is the religio referred to in Bk. i. 2 and 3. The wranglings in the Senate ended in no settlement, but Ptolemy was ultimately restored by A. Gabinius in 55.

§ 2. Clodius, who still lorded it in the streets of Rome, escaped being prosecuted by Milo by being elected curule aedile, and turned the tables on Milo by accusing him in February of vis (breach of the peace). Pompey, when defending Milo, was shouted down by Clodius's ruffians, who declared that Crassus, and not Pompey, should restore Ptolemy. This led Pompey to suspect that Crassus was aiding and abetting the rioters. The result of the trial was the closer alliance of Pompey and Milo, and the more definite support of Clodius by the extreme aristocrats—Curio, Bibulus, Favonius, and others.

§ 3. Later in February, Cicero, in defending P. Sestius, who had strongly favoured his recall, and was now accused of vis, made his speech (as Watson describes it) "a regular political manifesto," and converted his interrogatio (cross-examination) of P. Vatinius, now a witness for the prosecution, into a bitter attack upon him as the author of the Lex Vatinia in 59 (see 59 B.C., § 2). The acquittal