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The meeting was tolerably numerous, but the more notable of the very senators that remained in Italy were absent, including even the former leader of the servile majority Marcus Cicero and Caesar's own father-in-law Lucius Piso; and, what was worse, those who did appear were not inclined to enter into Caesar's proposals.

We meet already literati of note in such positions; the Epicurean Philodemus, for instance, was installed as domestic philosopher with Lucius Piso consul in 696, and occasionally edified the initiated with his clever epigrams on the coarse-grained Epicureanism of his patron.

When in July Brutus and Cassius were out-manoeuvered by Antony, and Cicero fled helplessly from Rome, it was Piso who stepped into the breach, not to support Brutus and Cassius, but to check the usurpation of Antony. This gave Cicero a program.

Horrible crimes were perpetrated in the bosom of families of the highest rank; for instance, the consul Gaius Calpurnius Piso was poisoned by his wife and his stepson, in order to occasion a supplementary election to the consulship and so to procure the supreme magistracy for the latter a plot which was successful . Moreover the emancipation of women began.

Plancius seems to have had but little dread of the law, though he was a Roman officer employed in the very province to the government of which the present Consul Piso had already been appointed. Thessalonica was within four hundred miles, and yet Cicero lived there with Plancius for some months.

But, as the consul Piso was indulging his malignity at home, in wasting his stores and discharging his seamen, he sent his fleet round to Brundusium, and went himself by land through Tuscany to Rome. As soon as the people were informed of his approach, they went in crowds to receive him, in the same manner as they had done a few days before, to conduct him on his way.

They had already dragged his statues to the place from whence malefactors were precipitated, and there had broken them; but by the orders of Tiberius they were rescued and replaced. Piso was put into a litter and carried back by a tribune of a Praetorian cohort; an attendance variously understood, whether as a guard for his safety, or a minister of death.

The most resolute men of the insurgents threw themselves into the latter town, in order to hold their ground in that impregnable position with the determination of men who despair of deliverance or of pnrdon; the consuls Lucius Calpurnius Piso and Publius Rupilius lay before it for two years, and reduced it at last more by famine than by arms.

'Noble Piso, said the Queen, after I had approached and saluted her in the appointed manner, 'it gives me pleasure to greet one of your ancient name in Palmyra, I seem already acquainted with you through my fast friends Gracchus and his bright daughter. You have lost nothing, I am sure, in coming to us first through their lips; and if any lips are honest and true, it is theirs.

It was here, O Piso, just as we reached the foot of this little hill, riding more slowly by reason of the winding road, that my quick ear caught at a distance the sounds of other hoofs upon the ground beside our own. My heart sank within me a sudden faintness spread over my limbs.