down the whole city.  The body of Clodius they picked up and carried into the senate-house, arranged it in due fashion, and then after heaping a pyre of benches burned both the corpse and the convention hall.  They did this, therefore, not under the stress of such an impulse as often takes sudden hold of crowds, but of set purpose, so that on the ninth day they held the funeral feast in the Forum itself, with the senate-house still smouldering, and furthermore undertook to apply the torch to Milo’s house.  This last was not burned because many were defending it.  Milo for a time, in great terror over the murder, was hidden not only by ordinary citizens but under the guard of knights and some senators.  When this other act, however, occurred, he hoped that the wrath of the senate would pass over to the outrage of the opposing party.  They had assembled late in the afternoon on the Palatine for this very purpose, and had voted that an interrex be chosen by show of hands and that he and the tribunes and Pompey, moreover, care for the guarding of the city, that it suffer no detriment.  Milo, accordingly, made his appearance in public, and pressed his claims to the office as strongly as before, if not more strongly.

[-50-] As a consequence of this, conflicts and killings in plenty began again, so that the senate ratified the aforementioned measures, summoned Pompey, allowed him to make fresh levies, and changed their garments.  Not long after his arrival they assembled under guard near his theatre outside the pomerium and resolved that the bones of Clodius should be taken up, and assigned the rebuilding of the senate-house to Faustus, son of Sulla.  It was the Curia Hostilia which had been remodeled by Sulla.  Wherefore they came to this decision about it and ordered that when repaired it should receive again the former’s name.  The city was in a fever of excitement about the magistrates who should rule it, some talking to the effect that Pompey ought to be chosen dictator and others that Caesar should be elected consul.  They were so determined to honor the latter for his achievements that they voted to offer sacrifices over them sixty[66] days.  Fearing both of the men the rest of the senate and Bibulus, who was first to be asked and to declare his opinion, anticipated the onset of the masses by giving the consulship to Pompey to prevent his being named dictator, and to him alone in order that he might not have Caesar as his colleague.  This action of theirs was strange; it had been taken in no other case, and yet they seemed to have done well.  For since he favored the masses less than Caesar, they hoped to detach him from them altogether and to make him their own.  This expectation was fulfilled.  Elated by the novelty and unexpectedness of the honor, he no longer formed any plan to gratify the populace but was careful to do everything that pleased the senate.