following year. Consul, 54 BC He was elected second to the consulate for 54 along with Cato's energetic brother-in-law Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus. Proconsul of Cilicia, 53-51 BC He was proconsul of Cilicia for a biennium after his consulate, a disaster for the region, not least because his younger brother Caius (praetor 56 BC) held the Asia province propraetorship for the three years 55–52, or possibly the quadriennium 55–51, so that Appius and his brother controlled most of Anatolia together for at least one year of overlap and perhaps two. His predecessor Publius Cornelius Lentulus Spinther was a good and honest administrator, and his successor Cicero one of the best in Roman history. But the intervening Claudian command was disorderly, harsh and corrupt. His correspondence with Cicero as the latter approached to succeed him exhibits many signs of the severe disruption, perhaps approaching horror at times, through which the country had passed under Appius' command. Cicero was certainly shocked by what he found, and by the bizarre manner in which Appius avoided him and eventually left the province for home without meeting his successor. The impression is that Cicero had caught a predator in the act of devouring a carcass raw. In 52 BC, during Appius’ proconsulship in Asia, his younger brother Publius (Clodius) was murdered by a political rival (Milo). In a cruel twist of irony the murder took place on the Appian Way (build by their ancestor Appius Claudius Caecus). On his way home Appius stopped at Athens once more, renewing his interest in the Eleusinian Mysteries and began preparations for restoring the gate of the Lesser Propylaea in Eleusis, a project later completed, according to the instructions in his testament, by his chief heirs Pulcher Claudius and Rex Marcius. Censor, 50 BC Elected censor in 50 with Caesar's father-in-law Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus (cos.58), Appius was promptly prosecuted for electoral bribery by Cicero's new son-in-law Publius Cornelius Dolabella, but with the advocacy of his own son-in-law Brutus and Quintus Hortensius he was acquitted. This was the final speech of Rome's greatest orator after Cicero, and Hortensius died a few days later. After his selection by the Senate (lectio senatus) as censor, Appius removed a senator of tribunician rank named C. Sallustius Crispus, the later famous historian Sallust. The Hollows of Euboea He went east with Pompey early in 49, conspicuously without the excuse of command rights or even