He was irritated, jealous, and no doubt desirous of making his power felt; but he thought of no diadem.
Caesar saw it all; and he thought of that conspiracy which we have since called the First Triumvirate.
[Sidenote: B.C.62, 61, aetat.

45, 46.] The two years to which this chapter has been given were uneventful in Cicero's life, and produced but little of that stock of literature by which he has been made one of mankind's prime favorites.

Two discourses were written and published, and probably spoken, which are now lost--that, namely, to the people against Metellus, in which, no doubt, he put forth all that he had intended to say when Metellus stopped him from speaking at the expiration of his Consulship; the second, against Clodius and Curio, in the Senate, in reference to the discreditable Clodian affair.

The fragments which we have of this contain those asperities which he retailed afterward in his letter to Atticus, and are not either instructive or amusing.

But we learn from these fragments that Clodius was already preparing that scheme for entering the Tribunate by an illegal repudiation of his own family rank, which he afterward carried out, to the great detriment of Cicero's happiness.