also characteristic of him that he was fascinated by Athenian antiquities, but not what attracted many prominent Romans to Athens at the time: its fame as the greatest university city in the Greek-inhabited world (the oikoumene) where all the chief philosophical schools were based. He was busy in Greece in 62-61 BC when his wild youngest brother Publius Clodius Pulcher got himself into trouble for violating the rites of the Bona Dea and was prosecuted for incestus, but it is not known in what capacity. Cicero wrote to Marcus Brutus as follows in his treatise on the history of Roman rhetoric and orators (Brutus 267): Also of those who fell in that same war there are M. Bibulus, who wrote with accuracy as well, particularly since he was no orator, and resolutely conducted many suits; Appius Claudius your father-in-law, my colleague and friend. By then he was studious enough and both very learned and experienced as orator, as well as a true expert in augural and all public law, and in our antiquities. Lineage Eldest son and chief heir of Appius Claudius Pulcher (cos.79), whom he succeeded as head of the main line of Claudii Pulchri when Appius pater died campaigning in the Rhodope Mountains as Macedonian commander in 76 BC. Recent family stemma Early career, 76-67 BC His father's death left him head of his powerful family aged 20 or 21, but encumbered with two younger brothers, two unmarried sisters and little funds. This was only relative poverty, but it proves the integrity of his father, who obviously did not profit much, if at all, from the proscription period when less scrupulous characters, most notoriously Marcus Licinius Crassus and Gaius Curio pater, made enormous fortunes from the confiscated properties of Sulla's Marian victims. Appius found generous help from Lucius Licinius Lucullus, who upon returning from his African propraetorship in 75 BC agreed to marry the youngest sister without a dowry. He also handed over a significant legacy to Appius, who in later life marked his household's return to opulent circumstances from this gift. Appius quickly returned the favour in political life. A promising young orator, the same year he agreed to prosecute A. Terentius Varro (praetor 77), recently returned from his Asian command. Varro was a close friend and relative of Lucullus and of the chief advocate of his defence Quintus Hortensius, Rome's leading orator at the time. But