Page:Cicero And The Fall Of The Roman Republic.djvu/114

90 (Ptolemy Alexander II.) had died sixteen years before, in 81 B.C.; but with characteristic hesitation the Senate had never declared whether they considered the bequest valid or whether they meant to accept it. Meantime an illegitimate member of the family, nicknamed Auletes, or "the Piper," had usurped the throne, where he had been tolerated, though never acknowledged, by Rome. The plans of Crassus with regard to Egypt were frustrated by his brother censor Catulus and by Cicero, who as a matter of course opposed all measures directed against Pompey. The most that Crassus could do was to induce the Senate to despatch a young partisan of his, named Cnæus Piso, with an extraordinary command to Spain, where he hoped that he might raise an army to serve as some sort of counterpoise to that of Pompey. This scheme too fell through, for Piso was assassinated, some said by partisans of Pompey, not long after his arrival in his province.

The mission of Piso to Spain is connected with a strange story in which we hear for the first time the name of that Lucius Sergius Catilina, who was destined two years later to cross Cicero's path with momentous consequences to them both. This "first conspiracy of Catiline," as it is called, is assigned to the end of the year 66 and the beginning of the year 65 B.C. Crassus and Cæsar are said to have been implicated in it. A plot which never came to overt acts