The conspiracy between Caesar and his subordinates had not been made for nothing.
The reader will require to know why Clodius should have desired degradation, and how it came to pass that this degradation should have been fatal to Cicero.

The story has been partly told in the passage from Middleton.

A Patrician, in accordance with the constitution, could not be a Tribune of the people.

From the commencement of the Tribunate, that office had been reserved for the Plebeians.

But a Tribune had a power of introducing laws which exceeded that of any Senator or any other official.