Thus betrayed by Pompeius and left without support, Cicero put himself in the hands of the consuls. Gabinius was harsh and unrelenting, but Piso spoke more gently to him, bidding him withdraw and let Clodius have his day, endure the changed times, and become once more the saviour of his country, which his enemy had filled with strife and suffering. After this answer Cicero consulted his friends, and Lucullus urged him to remain in the assurance that he would prevail, but others advised him to go into exile; for the people would feel his loss when it had enough of the mad recklessness of Clodius. He accepted this council, and taking to the Capitol the image of Minerva, a prized possession which had long stood in his house, he dedicated it with the inscription, ‘To Minerva, guardian of Rome,’ Then, having got an escort from his friends, he left the city secretly at night, and journeyed by land through Lucania, wishing to reach Sicily. 31. §§ 2-5. As a matter of fact the immediate danger from Catiline had been exaggerated. People came to see this in a very few months. Catiline raised a few hundred men and was killed fighting. The real danger lay not in him but in the economic and political condition of Rome and Italy. Its causes were the mismanagement, corruption, and feebleness of the Government; the flaunting vulgarity and profiteering of the rich; the misery of the poor. Cicero had done nothing to meet these evils: he had no plan for doing so; he hardly realized that they were there. Men had called him ‘Father of his country’. That great day was ever in his mind. As he thought of it his vanity swelled and swelled until the year of his consulship seemed to him the greatest in the annals of Rome. He bored every one by talking incessantly of it on all occasions. He dreamed of this and saw nothing of the dark tides rising round. He watched helplessly the growing power of Pompeius, Crassus, and Caesar, and did not understand what Rome was coming to. Caesar was always friendly and gracious to him, for he had a mind which could appreciate Cicero’s genius as a writer: but Cicero distrusted Caesar. He had meantime made a deadly enemy of Clodius who, by playing on disorder, was making himself more and more dangerous in Rome. Clodius was charged with sacrilege. He defended himself by saying that on the day on which he was said to have been present, in female clothes, at the Women’s Festival being celebrated in the house of Caesar’s wife, he was in fact not in the city. Cicero swore that he had seen him. Thanks to bribery Clodius was acquitted. He never forgave Cicero. Soon after this, in the first year of the Triumvirate (59), he secured his banishment from the city for a year.