[Sidenote: Riots at Rome.] V. In spite of these demonstrations, there continued to exist among a certain class a secret hatred against the conqueror of Gaul: in the month of December, 697, Rutilius Lupus, named tribune for the following year, proposed to revoke Cæsar’s laws, and to suspend the distribution of the lands in Campania;[598] he expatiated in accusations against that general and Pompey. The senators were silent; Cn. Marcellinus, the consul nominate, declared that in the absence of Pompey nothing could be decided. On another hand, Racilius, tribune of the people, rose to renew the old accusations against Clodius.[599] In order to baffle the designs of the latter, who aspired to the office of ædile, and who, once named, would have been inviolable, the consuls nominate proposed that the election of the judges should take place before that of the ædiles. Cato and Cassius opposed this. Cicero eagerly seized the opportunity of fulminating against Clodius; but the latter, who was prepared, defended himself at length, and during this time his adherents excited, by attacking Milo’s men, such an uproar on the steps of the Temple of Castor, where the Senate held its sitting, that the Forum became a new field of battle. The senators fled, and all projects of laws were abandoned.[600] In the presence of these sanguinary collisions, the elections of ædiles and quæstors could not take place; moreover, Milo and Sextius, from feelings of personal vengeance, prevented the Consul Q. Metellus from convoking the comitia. As soon as the consul named a day of assembly, the two tribunes declared immediately that _they were observing the sky_; and, for fear that this cause of adjournment might not be sufficient, Milo established himself in the Campus Martius with his followers in arms. Metellus tried to hold the comitia by surprise,[601] and proceeded by night to the Campus Martius through bye streets; but he was well watched. Before he arrived at the place, he was met and recognised by Milo, who signified to him, in virtue of his tribunitial power, the _obnunciation_, that is, the declaration of a religious obstacle to the holding of the popular assemblies.[602] Thus ended the year 697. During these inglorious struggles, in which both parties dishonoured themselves by acts of violence, Cæsar had, in two campaigns, saved Italy from the invasion of the barbarians, and vanquished the most warlike peoples of Gaul. Thus, at Rome, venality and anarchy prevailed; with the army, devotedness and glory. Then, as at certain epochs of our own revolution, we may say that the national honour had taken refuge under the flag. CHAPTER III. EVENTS IN ROME DURING THE YEAR 698. [Sidenote: Presence in Rome of Ptolemy Auletes.]