But when the agitation of the people, the execution of the centurion, and other news, true or false, exaggerated as usual by report, came to the ears of Festus, he sent some cavalry to put Piso to death. They rode over at full speed, and broke into the dwelling of the proconsul in the dim light of early dawn, with their swords drawn in their hands. Many of them were unacquainted with the person of Piso, for the legate had selected some Moorish and Carthaginian auxiliaries to perpetrate the deed. Near the proconsul's chamber they chanced to meet a slave, and asked him who he was, and where Piso was to be found? The slave with a noble untruth replied, "I am he," and was immediately cut down. Soon after Piso was killed, for there was on the spot one who recognized him, Bæbius Massa, one of the procurators of Africa, a name even then fatal to the good, and destined often to reappear among the causes of the sufferings which he had ere long to endure. From Adrumetum, where he had stayed to watch the result, Festus went to the legion, and gave orders that Cetronius Pisanus, prefect of the camp, should be put in irons. He did this out of private pique, but he called the man an accomplice of Piso. Some few centurions and soldiers he punished, others he rewarded, neither the one nor the other deservedly, but he wished men to believe that he had extinguished a war. He then put an end to a quarrel between the Œenses and the Leptitani, which, originating in robberies of corn and cattle by two rustic populations, had grown from this insignificant beginning till it was carried on in pitched battles. The people of Œea, who were inferior in numbers, had summoned to their aid the Garamantes, a wild race incessantly occupied in robbing their neighbours. This had brought the Leptitani to extremities; their territories had been ravaged far and wide, and they were trembling within their walls, when the Garamantes were put to flight by the arrival of the auxiliary infantry and cavalry, and the whole of the booty was recaptured, with the exception of some which the plunderers, in their wanderings through inaccessible hamlets, had sold to more distant tribes.
Complete Works of Tacitus. Tacitus. Alfred John Church. William Jackson Brodribb. Sara Bryant. edited for Perseus. New York. : Random House, Inc. Random House, Inc. 1873. reprinted 1942.
