interrex. Standing for the consulship in this year were Milo (supported by Cato and others), Publius Plautius Hypsaeus (one of Pompey's former lieutenants), and Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio. Clodius, still warring with Milo's street gangs, supported Milo's competitors. Some ancient historians – including Plutarch, Livy, and Valerius Maximus – believed that this violence was all part of a plot to have Pompey appointed dictator. That Pompey desired a dictatorship is unnecessary to explain his opposition to elections; Pompey may have opposed the elections merely because they would have been elections that Milo would have won. On 18 January, at a chance counter between Clodius and Milo on a road near a suburb outside of Rome, Milo's henchmen killed Clodius after a short brawl between their two entourages. The next day, his body was brought back to Rome, where a mob then stormed the senate house and burnt it down – along with the Basilica Porcia – as part of Clodius' funeral pyre. At the resulting senate meeting on the Palatine, the senate elected an interrex. This was in part because two of the men obstructing senatorial action – Pompey and one of the tribunes, Titus Munatius Plancus, – were not present. Shortly thereafter, the senate passed a senatus consultum ultimum which called for the interrex and Pompey, as proconsul, to raise troops and take them into the city to restore order. The following eleven interreges were unable to hold elections. However, some fifty-eight days after Clodius' death, with a sufficient force in the city, the twelfth interrex was able to hold elections. At the direction of the senate on motion of Bibulus and supported by Cato, only Pompey's candidacy was accepted, and upon his election, he became consul without colleague. The purpose of the decree was possibly to forestall a Pompeian dictatorship or as part of a compromise to restore normal government while also precluding Milo's likely election (allowing Milo to be brought to trial for Clodius' murder). Also around this time, Pompey had married the daughter of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio, who also was the widow of Crassus' son; this was part of an attempt to win over more allies. Metellus Pius' family was not part of Cato's coterie (they were personal enemies and Cato's allies had attempted to prosecute him in 60 BC) and marrying Crassus' son's widow could win over some of the now-dead Crassus'