Gaius Calpurnius Piso - Character and Early Life

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 character, early and/or life:

    Man was born to live with his fellow human beings. Separate him, isolate him, his character will go bad, a thousand ridiculous affects will invade his heart, extravagant thoughts will germinate in his brain, like thorns in an uncultivated land.
    Denis Diderot (1713–1784)

    We do not preach great things but we live them.
    Marcus Minucius Felix (late 2nd or early 3rd ce, Roman Christian apologist. Octavius, 38. 6, trans. by G.H. Rendell.

    If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working of a scheme. Silent nameless men with unadorned hearts. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It’s the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act.
    Don Delillo (b. 1926)