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59 B.C.]

banishment, as he had effected the measures of his consulship, by the exercise of sheer force.

To the latter part of this year belongs a strange story, for which a brief allusion must suffice. A creature named Vettius, who had acted as a spy on the Catilinarians for Cicero during his consulship, proposed to young Curio a plot to kill Pompey. Curio reported the matter to his father; the two gave information to Pompey, and Vettius was promptly arrested. He now disclosed a tale about a great conspiracy of the Nobles in which Bibulus and Cicero were implicated. The triumvirs at first tried to make political capital out of the story, to damage the character of their opponents and rouse some popular feeling in favour of themselves. But Vettius proved to be a clumsy liar, and the contradictions and absurdities of his evidence were too glaring for him to be of any service. He was found strangled in prison, and the matter was hushed up. Whether the whole business was contrived by the triumvirs and their adherents (as Cicero himself undoubtedly believed), or whether some mad partisans of the oligarchy really had formed a plan of assassination, which served Vettius as the foundation of his lies about the senatorial leaders, it is impossible at this distance of time to determine.

For us the chief interest of the transaction lies in the face that the alarm brought Atticus back in hot haste from Epirus to his friend's side. Cicero had just before pressed him to return—"As you love me, if you are asleep, wake up; if you are on your