Although the guilt of Clodius was fully established, his influence over the corrupt Roman _judices_ was powerful enough to procure an acquittal. Henceforward he never could forgive Cicero, and determined to work his ruin. He caused himself to be adopted in a plebeian family; and thus becoming qualified for the tribunate was elected to that magistracy, B. C. 59. No sooner was he appointed, than he proposed a bill for the outlawry of any one who had caused the execution of a citizen without trial. Cicero at once saw that this blow was aimed against himself. He had disgusted Cæsar by his political coquetry; the false and selfish Pompey refused to aid him in his trouble; and spirit-broken, he fled to Brundisium,[797] and thence to Thessalonica. He had an interview with Pompey before his flight, but it led to no results.[798] He had sworn to help him as long as he felt that there was danger, lest he should join Cæsar’s party; but when he saw that his foes were successful, he deserted him. In his absence his exile was decreed, and his town and country houses were given up to plunder. It cannot be denied that during his banishment he exhibited weakness and pusillanimity: his reverses had such an effect upon his mind that he was even supposed to be mad.[799] His great fault was vanity, of which defect he was himself conscious, and confessed it;[800] and disappointed vanity was the cause of his affliction. He could bear anything better than loss of popular applause; and on this occasion, more than any other, he gave grounds for the assertion, that “he bore none of his calamities like a man, except his death.” Rome, however, could not forget her preserver; and in the following year he was recalled, and entered Rome in triumph, in the midst of the loud plaudits of the assembled people.[801] Still, however, he was obliged to secure the prosperity which he had recovered by political tergiversation. The measures of the triumvirate, which he had formerly attacked with the utmost virulence, he did not hesitate now to approve and defend. After his return[802] he was appointed to a seat in the College of Augurs; a dignity which he had anxiously coveted before his exile, and to obtain which, he had offered almost any terms to Cæsar and Pompey.[803] The following year, much against his will, the province of Cilicia was assigned to him. Strictly did the accuser of Verres act up to the high and honourable principles which he professed. His was a model administration: a stop was put to corruption, wrongs were redressed, justice impartially administered. Those great occasions on which he was compelled to act on his own responsibility, and to listen to the dictates of his beautiful soul, “_seine schöne seele_,”[804] his pure, honest, and incorruptible heart, are the bright points in Cicero’s career. The emergency of the occasion overcame his constitutional timidity.