graciously, and there was no lack of support in the senate. Many
wished him well. Those who did not were the more effusive. The
majority were indifferent, but displayed a ready affability, intent on
their private speculations without thought of the country's good. No
other public action is reported of Piso during the four days which
intervened between his adoption and assassination.

FOOTNOTES:

[32] i.e. the emperor's finance agent in the province of
Belgica.

[33] Cp. chap. 6.

[34] A gold signet-ring was the sign of a free-born Roman
knight. Its grant to freedmen was an innovation of which
Tacitus disapproved.

[35] Tacitus here follows the story told by Suetonius in his
life of Otho. In the _Annals_, xiii. 45, 46, Tacitus gives in
detail a more probable version. It is more likely that Poppaea
used Otho as a stepping-stone to Nero's favour than that Otho,
as Suetonius quotes, 'committed adultery with his own wife.'

[36] See chap. 5, note 10.

[37] One of the three Commissioners of Public Revenue
appointed by Nero in A.D. 62 (_Ann._, xv. 18).

[38] Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi Licinianus was the son of M.