Lentulus brought forward the question of the recall of the exile.[580] L. Aurelius Cotta, a man of esteem and of consular dignity, declared that the banishment of Cicero, pronounced in the sequel of extreme acts of violence, carried in itself the cause of its nullity; and that, therefore, there was no need of a law to revoke an act that was contrary to the laws.[581] Pompey combated the opinion of Cotta, and sustained that it was necessary that Cicero should owe his recall, not only to the authority of the Senate, but also to a vote of the people. Nothing further was proposed but to present a _plebiscitum_ to the comitia. Nobody opposed it, when Sextus Atilius, tribune of the people, demanded the adjournment,[582] and, by those dilatory manœuvres so familiar to the Romans, obliged the Senate to defer the presentation of the law to the 22nd of the same month. When the day arrived, the two parties prepared to support their opinion by force. Q. Fabricius, tribune of the people, favourable to Cicero, sought in the morning to gain possession of the rostra. Clodius was no longer tribune, but he continued to guide the populace. To the professional agitators in his pay he had joined a troop of gladiators, brought to Rome, by his brother Appius, for the funeral of one of his kinsmen.[583] The troop of Fabricius was easily put to the rout; a tribune, M. Cistius, had hardly presented himself, when he was driven away. Pompey had his toga covered with blood, and Quintus Cicero, whom he had brought with him to the Forum to speak to the people in favour of his brother, was obliged to hide himself; the gladiators rushed upon another tribune, P. Sextius, and left him for dead. “The struggle was so violent,” Cicero says, “that the corpses obstructed the Tiber and filled the sewers, and the Forum was inundated with blood to such a degree that it was found necessary to wash it with sponges. A tribune was killed, and the house of another was threatened with fire.”[584] The amazement was so great, that the question of the recall of the exile was again adjourned. It was thus by the sword that everything was decided in Rome in its disorder and abasement. In fact, to obtain the recall of Cicero, the Senate saw itself obliged to oppose riot to riot, and to make use of P. Sextius, who had recovered from his wounds, as well as of Milo, who had organised, with military discipline, an armed band in condition to make head against the rioters.[585] At the same time, it hoped to intimidate the urban mob by bringing into Rome, from all parts of Italy,[586] the citizens upon whom it relied. In fine, the very men who had, two years before, engaged Bibulus to embarrass all Cæsar’s measures by observing the sky,[587] now prohibited, under pain of being considered as an enemy of the Republic,[588] those religious artifices which suspended all deliberations. The result was that the law of recall was passed.