[-48-] Such being the state of things in the city, with no one in charge of affairs, murders occurred practically every day and they did not finish the elections, though they were eager for office and employed bribery and assassination on account of it. Milo, for instance, who was seeking the consulship, met Clodius on the Appian Way and at first simply wounded him: then, fearing he would attack him for what had been done, he slew him. He at once freed all the servants concerned in the business, and his hope was that he might be more easily acquitted of the murder, now that the man was dead, than he would be for the wound in case he had survived. The people in the city heard of this about evening and were thrown into a terrible uproar: for to factional disturbances there was being added a starting-point for war and evils, and the middle class, even though they hated Clodius, yet on account of humanity and because on this excuse they hoped to get rid of Milo, showed displeasure.[-49-] While they were in this frame of mind Rufus and Titus Munatius Plancus took hold of them and excited them to greater wrath. As tribunes they conveyed the body into the Forum just before dawn, placed it on the rostra, exhibited it to all, and spoke appropriate words with lamentations. So the populace, as a result of what it both saw and heard, was deeply stirred and paid no further heed to considerations of sanctity or things divine, but overthrew all the customs of burial and nearly burned down the whole city. The body of Clodius they picked up and carried into the senate-house, arranged it in due fashion, and then after heaping a pyre of benches burned both the corpse and the convention hall. They did this, therefore, not under the stress of such an impulse as often takes sudden hold of crowds, but of set purpose, so that on the ninth day they held the funeral feast in the Forum itself, with the senate-house still smouldering, and furthermore undertook to apply the torch to Milo's house. This last was not burned because many were defending it. Milo for a time, in great terror over the murder, was hidden not only by ordinary citizens but under the guard of knights and some senators. When this other act, however, occurred, he hoped that the wrath of the senate would pass over to the outrage of the opposing party. They had assembled late in the afternoon on the Palatine for this very purpose, and had voted that an interrex be chosen by show of hands and that he and the tribunes and Pompey, moreover, care for the guarding of the city, that it suffer no detriment. Milo, accordingly, made his appearance in public, and pressed his claims to the office as strongly as before, if not more strongly.