Character and Early Life
Piso was extremely well liked throughout Rome. He inherited from his father (never identified) connection with many distinguished families, and from his mother great wealth. Piso came from the ancient and noble house of Calpurnii and he distributed his great wealth among many beneficiaries of all Roman social classes. Among a wide range of interests, Piso sang on the tragic stage, wrote poetry, played an expert game of draughts, and owned a villa at Baiae.
Piso was tall, good-looking, affable, and an excellent orator and advocate in the courts. Despite these facts Piso's overall integrity was questionable. According to Tacitus, Piso used his eloquence to defend his fellow citizens and was generous and gracious in speech, but lacked earnestness and was overly ostentatious, while craving the sensual. In 40 AD, the emperor Caligula banished Piso from Rome after he took a fancy to Piso’s wife. Caligula forced Piso's wife to leave him, and then accused Piso of adultery with her in order to establish cause for banishment. Piso would return to Rome one year later after Caligula’s assassination.
Read more about this topic: Gaius Calpurnius Piso
Famous quotes containing the words early life, character and, character, early and/or life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Nature never rhymes her children, nor makes two men alike. When we see a great man, we fancy a resemblance to some historical person, and predict the sequel of his character and fortune, a result which he is sure to disappoint. None will ever solve the problem of his character according to our prejudice, but only in his high unprecedented way.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men.”
—Clarence Darrow (1857–1938)
“In early days, I tried not to give librarians any trouble, which was where I made my primary mistake. Librarians like to be given trouble; they exist for it, they are geared to it. For the location of a mislaid volume, an uncatalogued item, your good librarian has a ferret’s nose. Give her a scent and she jumps the leash, her eye bright with battle.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“Today brings the sad, glad tidings that Mrs. Abraham Lincoln has passed from that darkness which had fallen upon her path through this life, out into the light and joy of that life toward which her vision has so long been strained.
Modern education is lethal to children.... We stuff them with mathematics, we pummel them with science, and we use them up before their time.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)