[55]
Come now, compare the journey of this unencumbered bandit with all the
hindrances which beset Milo. Before this time be always used to travel with
his wife; now he was without her. He invariably went in a carriage; now he
was on horseback. His train were a lot of Greeklings wherever he was going;
even when he was hastening to the camp in Etruria1 but this time
there were no triflers in his retinue. Milo, who was never in the habit of
doing so, did by chance have with him some musical slaves belonging to his
wife, and troops of maid-servants. The other man, who was always carrying
with him prostitutes, worn-out debauchees, both men and women, this time had
no one with him except such a band that you might have thought every one of
them picked men. Why, then, was he defeated? Because the traveler is not
always murdered by the robber; sometimes the robber is killed by the
traveler; because, although Clodius in a state of perfect preparation was
attacking men wholly unprepared, still it was the case of a woman falling
upon men.
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1 That is, to Manlius's camp in Etruria at the time of Catiline's conspiracy in which, in all probability, Clodius was implicated.
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