From the camp they proceeded to the senate, and Galba's speech to 19 its members was no fuller or finer than to the soldiers. Piso spoke 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. Licinius Crassus Frugi, and adopted son of L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi. His mother, Scribonia, was a descendant of Pompey. [39] Adoption from one family into another needed in old days the sanction of the Comitia Curiata. When that assembly became obsolete, the priests summoned a formal meeting of thirty lictors, and their sanction of an act of adoption was still called _lex curiata_. Galba was now _Pontifex maximus_. [40] Galba belonged to the _Gens Sulpicia_, and was connected through his mother, Mummia, with Q. Lutatius Catulus, who had led the senatorial party in the first half of the last century. [41] i.e. Galba's great-grandfather had fought for Caesar against Piso's ancestor, Pompey. [42] The children of Julia and Agrippa. [43] Crassus Scribonianus, cp. chap. 47, and iv. 39. [44] i.e. co-optation, employed in former days to raise a special contingent for emergencies. GALBA'S MEASURES OF PRECAUTION