The correspondence only opens again in April of B.C. 58, when the worst has happened. Clodius entered upon his tribuneship on the 10th of December, B.C. 59, and lost little time in proposing a law to the _comitia_ for the trial of any magistrate guilty of putting citizens to death without trial (_qui cives indemnatos necavisset_). The wording of the law thus left it open to plead that it applied only to such act as occurred after its enactment, for the pluperfect _necavisset_ in the dependent clause answers to the future perfect in a direct one. And this was the interpretation that Cæsar, while approving the law itself, desired to put upon it.[8] He again offered Cicero a legation in Gaul, but would do nothing for him if he stayed in Rome; while Pompey, who had been profuse in promises of protection, either avoided seeing Cicero, or treated his abject entreaties with cold disdain.[9] Every citizen, by a humane custom at Rome, had the right of avoiding a prosecution by quitting the city and residing in some town which had the _ius exilii_. It is this course that we find Cicero already entered upon when the correspondence of the year begins. In the letters of this year of exile he continually reproaches himself with not having stayed and even supported the law, in full confidence that it could not be applied to himself. He attributes his having taken the less courageous course to the advice of his friends, who were actuated by jealousy and a desire to get rid of him. Even Atticus he thinks was timid, at the best, in advising his retirement. It is the only occasion in all the correspondence in which the least cloud seems to have rested on the perfect friendship of the two men. Atticus does not appear to have shewn any annoyance at the querulous remarks of his friend. He steadily continued to write, giving information and advice, and made no difficulty in supplying his friend with money. During Cicero's absence Atticus became still more wealthy than before by inheriting the estates of his cross-grained uncle Cæcilius. But he was always careful as to the investment of his money and he would not, perhaps, have been so ready to trust Cicero, had he not felt confidence in the ultimate recovery of his civil status. Still his confidence was peculiarly welcome at a time which would have been otherwise one of great pressure. For Clodius had followed up Cicero's retirement with the usual _lex_ in regard to persons leaving Rome to avoid a trial--a prohibition "of fire and water" within a fixed distance from Italy, which involved the confiscation of all his property in Italy. His villas were dismantled, his town house pulled down, and a vote of the people obtained by Clodius for the consecration of its site as a _templum_ dedicated to Liberty, and a scheme was formed and the work actually commenced for occupying part of it by an extension of an existing porticus or colonnade (the _porticus Catuli_) to contain a statue of Liberty. That this consecration was