had been banished, without a decree of the senate: and requested of them
permission for the prefect of the military tribunes and pretorian guards
to attend him in the senate-house [484]; and (304) also that they would
be pleased to bestow upon his procurators judicial authority in the
provinces [485]. He asked of the consuls likewise the privilege of
holding fairs upon his private estate. He frequently assisted the
magistrates in the trial of causes, as one of their assessors. And when
they gave public spectacles, he would rise up with the rest of the
spectators, and salute them both by words and gestures. When the
tribunes of the people came to him while he was on the tribunal, he
excused himself, because, on account of the crowd, he could not hear them
unless they stood. In a short time, by this conduct, he wrought himself
so much into the favour and affection of the public, that when, upon his
going to Ostia, a report was spread in the city that he had been way-laid
and slain, the people never ceased cursing the soldiers for traitors, and
the senate as parricides, until one or two persons, and presently after
several others, were brought by the magistrates upon the rostra, who
assured them that he was alive, and not far from the city, on his way
home.

XIII. Conspiracies, however, were formed against him, not only by
individuals separately, but by a faction; and at last his government was
disturbed with a civil war. A low fellow was found with a poniard about
him, near his chamber, at midnight. Two men of the equestrian order were
discovered waiting for him in the streets, armed with a tuck and a
huntsman's dagger; one of them intending to attack him as he came out of
the theatre, and the other as he was sacrificing in the temple of Mars.
Gallus Asinius and Statilius Corvinus, grandsons of the two orators,
Pollio and Messala [486], formed a conspiracy against him, in which they
engaged many of his freedmen and slaves. Furius Camillus Scribonianus,