At any rate, as a loophole the answer was a clever one; and the prosecutors could not press the question. So Julia, Cæsar’s sister, and Aurelia, his mother, came forward. Both deposed that, on the night on which the mysteries of the _Bona Dea_ were celebrated, a man had been surprised in Cæsar’s house; but that they could not say with certainty that the defendant was the man. We should be doing an injustice to the memory of the two noble dames if we suspected that this evidence was not candid, but prompted by concern for the political interests and friendships of their brother and son. Is it not probable that, in the confusion and disorder of the just-discovered scandal, neither may have scrutinised the man in female disguise with so much attention and particularity as to be able to recognise him subsequently in court, where Clodius denied the identity with so much assurance? Therefore this evidence also was in Clodius’s favour; for there was nobody who could affirm positively that the man surprised in the middle of the rites of the _Bona Dea_ was the accused. Next came the evidence adduced by Clodius, to prove his alibi. It took the form of a certain C. Causinius Schola, who deposed frankly and resolutely that the gentlemen of the jury might take it from him that at a certain hour on the day of the mysteries of the _Bona Dea_, he had conversed with Clodius at Iteramna, which was ninety thousand _passi_ distant from Rome. This evidence, after that of Cæsar, Julia, and Aurelia, made the acquittal of Clodius inevitable. Certain proofs of his guilt there were none. The improbable alibi, which at the beginning nobody had taken seriously, threatened to triumph owing to the doubts and scruples of a few witnesses, the adroit reticence of others, and thanks to the subterranean workings of Clodius’s friends, backed by Crassus’s gold.