ABSTRACT
When Caesar left the outskirts of Rome in March of 58 to take up command of his provinces, he left Rome apparently firmly under the control of his two great allies Pompeius and Crassus, and of the loyal consuls A. Gabinius and L. Piso. As it turned out, however, the dominant figure in Rome with Caesar gone was none of those men, but the mercurial tribune Publius Clodius. The consuls Piso and Gabinius proved to be inactive or ineffective, or both, in the face of Clodius’s outrageous and violent tactics. Pompeius had frankly no idea how to deal with any situation in which he was not able to issue orders and have them obeyed. The fact that he had never served an apprenticeship in Roman politics but gone straight to the top as an army commander, left him at a loss to understand and deal with the dirty political infighting that characterized Rome in this era. And with Caesar no longer present, Crassus seems to have reverted to giving rein to his jealousy of Pompeius. He sat back and enjoyed Pompeius’s discomfiture, if he was not (as some suspected) actively encouraging Clodius behind the scenes. In terms of the day-to-day conduct of political life in Rome itself, Clodius was the dominant figure not just during his tribunate in 58, but down to the beginning of the year 52, and it is of some interest to see how he went about attaining and maintaining that dominance. It is certainly very revealing of how low Roman political life had sunk.
