Mass Oratory and Political Action

At around sundown on January 18, 52 bc, the battered corpse of the popular hero P. Clodius Pulcher, murdered earlier that day on the Appian Way on the orders of T. Annius Milo, was carried through the Porta Capena into Rome, borne on the litter of a senator who had passed by the scene of the crime and, after giving instructions for the conveyance of the body, prudently retraced his steps. A huge crowd of the poorest inhabitants of the metropolis and slaves flocked in mourning and indignation to the impromptu cortège as it made its way to Clodius' house on the upper Sacred Way, on the lower slope of the northern Palatine (see maps 1 and 2, pp. 43–44); there his widow set the body on display in the great atrium of the house, poured forth bitter lamentations, pointed out his wounds to the angry multitude. The crowd kept vigil through the night in the Forum, and next morning reassembled at Clodius' house in vengeful mood, joined now by two tribunes of the plebs, T. Munatius Plancus and Q. Pompeius Rufus. The tribunes called upon the gathering multitude to carry the corpse on its bier down to the Forum and onto the Rostra, the speakers' platform, where the wounds inflicted by Milo's cutthroats and gladiators could be seen by all.