I'm John Batch with Professor Josiah Osgood's new book Lawless Republic, and we're telling a wail of a story about one man's life, Cicero, born 106 BC, and died at the hands of really a decision by Mark Anthony.

We're going to get to him, but we're right now with one of the

most powerful and rich families on the Palatine Hill, the Claudiae. And the upright son

becomes corrupted by his romances and has now been condemned by sacrilege trial and cannot hold a political office in the Senate.

He can't rise to be a consul, which is what he wants to be.

So he goes another route.

He becomes one of the ten tribunes.

What does that mean, Professor?

Yeah, so Clodius escaped. He was damaged, but he wasn't actually convicted, probably because of bribes that he had handed out to the right people. So Cicero is in trouble now because Clodius wants revenge. What Clodius decides to do is even though he came from a patrician family, he wants to run for what is the Blabian office.

This is an old office that the people of Rome had established, and it was integrated into the political

system where you sort of defend popular interests.

Patricians weren't supposed to hold it.

So Clodias has to go through kind of a game where he ends up winning legal permission to transfer out of his patrician family.

And he gets adopted and Cicester is very snarky about it.

Clodius ends up being adopted technically anyway by a man who is younger than Clodius himself.

So this gives him the power.

He's then elected to the post of Tribune,

and this gives him the power to pass legislation.

And essentially what was done to him,

he now does to Cicero,

and he's going to pass a law that essentially convicts anybody who put Roman citizens to death without a trial.

Meaning Cicero.

...