I'm John Bachelor with Emma Southern, a witty and extremely helpful new book, A Rome of One's

Own, The Forgotten Women of the Roman Empire. Just when you thought Rome was 2,000 years ago,

here comes Claudia and Cicero. Cicero is a talker. He is a giffed man from outside of Rome he's a climber he is not one of the

hundred families or however the many there are now claiming to be patricians

the founders of Rome. And yet he has a golden tongue. He also has enemies and one of

them is Claudia's brother.

Emma, this is the best version of Cicero

I've ever encountered because I've always

seen him as a victim of the ambitions of men

such as Caesar and

Catalan and all of the pretenders who wanted to be the boss, the

king, the leader.

But his dispute with Claudia's brother, what is it based on? Why does he fall out with that

family? They are friends to begin with but they fall out because Clodius commits a crime where he breaks into Julius Caesar's house while his wife is holding a religious festival just as a woman.

His defense when he is caught doing this is that he can't possibly have done it because he was out of the country at the time, he was not in Rome,

and Cicero comes forward and says, yes you were in Rome because I saw you on that day,

and this starts a feud between the two of them.

Eventually in order to get revenge Clodius has himself he changes his name to Clodius, has himself adopted by a plebeian family so he can take a position that he's not really allowed to have within the government and passes a law which is specifically aimed at Cicero, which

makes it illegal to execute people without a trial for a consul do that which is something that Cicero had done during

his consulship to Catalan and then has Cicero exiled under this law retroactively and then burns his house down.

And so Claudia's sister is Claudia.

These names can run together.

...