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, early and/or life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live.”
—Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)
“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)
“In ‘70 he married again, and I having, voluntarily, assumed the legal guilt of breaking my marriage contract, do cheerfully accept the legal penalty—a life of celibacy—bringing no charge against him who was my husband, save that he was not much better than the average man.”
—Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)