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If the principle of cui bono is applied, it is evident that the gainers were the party of the trumvirs, whose popularity would be increased by a belief being created that their opponents the Optimates were prepared to adopt extreme measures to get rid of them. In the letter, however, his insinuations seem directed against Cæsar: in the speech Vatinius is the scape-goat.

A second, far from honourable, attempt to threaten the heads of the aristocracy with criminal impeachments on account of an alleged plot for the murder of Pompeius, and so to drive them into exile, was frustrated by the incapacity of the instruments; the informer, one Vettius, exaggerated and contradicted himself so grossly, and the tribune Vatinius, who directed the foul scheme, showed his complicity with that Vettius so clearly, that it was found advisable to strangle the latter in prison and to let the whole matter drop.

Me he did not name, but he said that "an eloquent consular, who lived near the consul, had said to him that there was need of some Servilius Ahala or Brutus being found." He added at the very end, on being recalled by Vatinius after the assembly had been dismissed, that he had been told by Curio that my son-in-law Piso was privy to these proceedings, as M. Laterensis also.

It was a matter of course that, as an advocate, he must praise the man whom, a year before, he had spattered with ignominy; but he had the pleasure of feeling that he was revenging himself on his conservative allies, who led the prosecution. "Why I praised Vatinius," he wrote to Lentulus, "I must beg you not to ask either in the case of this or of any other criminal. Vatinius was acquitted.

Tigellinus went in a chariot drawn by ponies ornamented with white and purple feathers, They saw him as he rose in the chariot repeatedly, and stretched his neck to see if Cæsar was preparing to give him the sign to go his chariot. Among others the crowd greeted Licinianus with applause, Vitelius with laughter, Vatinius with hissing.

Four legions, under the orders of Mark Antony, Caius Trebonius, Publius Vatinius, and Q. Tullius, were quartered in Belgium, two among the Aedui and two among the Turones on the frontier of the Carnutes, to hold in check all the countries bordering on the ocean.

None of their antagonists were prosecuted by the opposition with such hatred so furious that it almost passed into a proverb as Vatinius, by far the most audacious and unscrupulous of the closer adherents of Caesar; but his master gave the command, and he was acquitted in all the processes raised against him.

It must have been a great strain upon his loyalty to this new political friendship when, in B.C. 54, Pompey called upon him to undertake the defence of P. Vatinius, whom he had not long before attacked so fiercely while defending Sestius.

Before the next time, they had distributed larger bribes, and driving also the best men out of the Field, by these foul means they procured Vatinius to be chosen praetor, instead of Cato. It is said, that those who had thus corruptly and dishonestly given their voices, at once, when it was done, hurried, as if it were in flight, out of the Field.

Nor was this the worst. There were still some dregs in the cup, which he was forced to drain. Publius Vatinius was a prominent leader of the military democratic party, and had often come in collision with Cicero. He had been tribune when Caesar was consul, and had stood by him against the Senate and Bibulus.