1But we are fools to dare to compare Drusus, Africanus, Pompey and ourselves with Publius Clodius. 1Those things were bearable: no one can bear the death of Publius Clodius with composure. 1The senate mourns, the equestrian order grieves, the whole state is worn out with sorrow, the towns are in squalor, the colonies are stricken, the very fields, in short, long for so beneficent, so salutary, so gentle a citizen. 21That was not the reason, judges, surely it was not, why Pompey thought he should propose an inquiry; but as a wise man, endowed with a lofty and almost divine mind, he saw many things: that Clodius had been his enemy, Milo his friend; 21if he too rejoiced in the common joy of all, he feared that the sincerity of their reconciliation might seem rather weak.
21He saw many other things too, but this above all: that, however harshly he himself had taken the deed, you would nevertheless judge bravely. 21So he chose from the most distinguished orders their very luminaries, nor indeed, as some keep saying, did he exclude my friends in selecting the judges. 21For that most just man had no such thought, nor could he have achieved it in selecting good men, even if he had wished to. 21For my influence is not confined to personal friendships, which cannot extend widely, because intimacy in daily life cannot be had with many; 21but if I have any power, I have it from this, that public life has joined me with the good.
21When he was choosing the best men from among these, and thought that this concerned his own good faith above all, he could not choose men who were not well disposed to me. 22And in wishing above all that you, Lucius Domitius, should preside over this inquiry, he sought nothing else but justice, dignity, humanity and good faith. 22He laid down that it must be a man of consular rank: because, I believe, he held it to be the duty of leading men to resist both the fickleness of the mob and the recklessness of the abandoned. 22From among the consulars he chose you in particular: for you had given, from your very youth, the strongest proofs of how much you despised the frenzies of the populace.