ants, are a kind of insects very common in Africa; of which there is so great a variety, and such innumerable swarms, that they destroy not only the fruits of the ground but sometimes even men and beasts in so little time as one single night; and would, without all doubt, prove more fatally destructive to the inhabitants, were they not so happily destroyed by a proportionate number of monkeys and other animals, who greedily devour them. The far greater part of the vast continent of Africa is afflicted with these and some other grievous plagues, and particularly with the horrid visitation of locusts, which seldom fail a year of laying waste some of the provinces.

Piso, Lucius Calpurnius, surnamed Frugi on account of his frugality, was descended of the illustrious family of the Pisos, which gave so many great men to the Roman republic. He was tribune of the people in the year 149 before Christ, and afterwards consul. During his tribuneship, he published a law against the crime of conciliation or extortion, intitled Lex Calpurnia de pecuniis repetundis. He happily ended the war in Sicily. To reward the services of one of his sons, who had distinguished himself in that expedition, he left him by his will a golden crown, weighing 20 pounds. Piso joined to the qualities of a good citizen the talents of a lawyer, an orator, and historian.

Piso, Caius Calpurnius, a Roman consul in the year 67 before Christ, was author of the law which forbade canvassing for public offices, intitled Lex Calpurnia de ambitu. He displayed all the firmness worthy of a consul in one of the most stormy periods of the republic. The Roman people, deceived by the flattery of Marcus Palicanus, a turbulent and seditious fellow, were on the eve of loading themselves with the greatest disgrace, by putting the supreme authority into the hands of this man, who deserved punishment rather than honours. The tribunes of the people, by their harangues, inflamed the blind fury of the multitude, already sufficiently mutinous of themselves. In this situation, Piso mounted the rostrum, and being asked if he would declare Palicanus consul, in case the suffrages of the people should concur in the nomination, he instantly replied, that "he did not think the republic was yet involved in such darkness and despair as to be capable of committing so infamous an action." Being afterwards strongly and repeatedly called upon to say, "what he would do, if the thing should happen?" his answer was, "No, I would not name him." By this firm and laconic answer he deprived Palicanus of the dignity to which he aspired. Piso, according to Cicero, was not possessed of a quick conception, but he thought maturely, and with judgment, and, by a proper firmness, he appeared to be an abler man than he really was. Piso, Cneius Calpurnius, was consul in the reign of Augustus, and governor of Syria under Tiberius, whose confidant he was. It is said, that by the order of this emperor he caused Germanicus to be poisoned. Being accused of that crime, and feeling himself abandoned by everybody, he laid violent hands on himself in the 20th year of our Lord. He was a man of insupportable pride and excessive violence. Some instances of his wicked cruelty have been handed down to us. Having given orders in the heat of his passion to conduct to punishment a solder, as guilty of the death of one of his companions, because he had gone out of the camp with him and returned without him, no prayers or intreay could prevail with Piso to suspend the execution of this sentence until the affair should be properly investigated. The solder was led without the entrenchments, and had already presented his head to receive the fatal stroke, when his companion whom he was accused of having killed made his appearance again. Whereupon the centurion, whose office it was to see the sentence executed, ordered the executioner to put up his sword into the scabbard. Those two companions, after embracing each other, are conducted to Piso, amidst the acclamations of the whole army, and a prodigious crowd of people. Piso, foaming with rage, ascends his tribunal, and pronounces the same sentence of death against the whole three, without excepting the centurion who had brought back the condemned solder, in these terms: "You I order to be put to death because you have been already condemned; you, because you have been the cause of the condemnation of your comrade; and you, because having got orders to put that solder to death, you have not obeyed your prince."