47.] "Clodius, who had been contriving all this while how to revenge himself on Cicero, began now to give an opening to the scheme which he had formed for that purpose.

His project was to get himself chosen Tribune, and in that office to drive him out of the city, by the publication of a law which, by some stratagem or other, he hoped to obtrude on the people.

But as all Patricians were incapable of the Tribunate, by its original institution so his first step was to make himself a Plebeian by the pretence of an adoption into a Plebeian house, which could not yet be done without the suffrage of the people.

This case was wholly new, and contrary to all the forms--wanting every condition, and serving none of the ends which were required in regular adoptions--so that, on the first proposal, it seemed too extravagant to be treated seriously, and would soon have been hissed off with scorn, had it not been concerted and privately supported by persons of much more weight than Clodius.
Caesar was at the bottom of it, and Pompey secretly favored it--not that they intended to ruin Cicero, but to keep him only under the lash--and if they could not draw him into their measures, to make him at least sit quiet, and let Clodius loose upon him."[240] This, no doubt, was the intention of the political leaders in Rome at this conjunction of affairs.

It had been found impossible to draw Cicero gently into the net, so that he should become one of them.