Lucius Calpurnius Piso (Consul 27)

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Lucius Calpurnius Piso (until the forced change of name in AD 20, Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso ) was a Roman politician and senator of the 1st century AD from the Calpurnians . 27 AD together with Marcus Licinius Crassus Frugi was an ordinary consul .

Origin and name change

Piso's father was Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso ("the elder"), consul of the year 7 BC. BC, his mother was Munatia Plancina . Lucius Calpurnius Piso was born with the first name Gnaeus ("the younger") as the elder son of the couple; his younger brother was Marcus Calpurnius Piso . The year of birth of Gnaeus the Younger must have been before 16 BC. Because he held an office with the consulate in 27 AD, for which a minimum age of 43 years was valid.

The father was governor of the province of Syria in 18/19 AD , where he had violent arguments with Germanicus , a member of the imperial family. When the latter died an unexplained death, Gnaeus the Elder came under suspicion of murder and was charged with high treason in AD 20. Before being sentenced, he committed suicide, but wrote a letter to Emperor Tiberius asking him to spare his two sons, stating, among other things, that Gnaeus had stayed in Rome for the entire time in question. The following posthumous process was to the detriment of the Calpurnii; the consul Marcus Aurelius Cotta Maximus Messalinus suggested that half of the inheritance be drawn into the state treasury, the other half paid to the son Gnaeus and Marcus banished. This proposal was tempered on various points by the emperor. The now adopted Senate Resolution , the Senatus consultum de Gnaeo Pisone patre According needed the elder son Gnaeus, however, because he was just like the condemned father, changing his name to "Lucius". Officially, this was only a recommendation from the Senate to differentiate himself from his father, but Gnaeus was urged to accept it because he was consistently referred to as "Lucius" in the Senate resolution.

Political career

The condemnation of his father did not detract from Piso's career: he had been quaestor of the emperor as early as 18 AD , which probably explains why he did not accompany his father to Syria and thus not directly to the confusion surrounding the death of the Germanicus was involved. In the year 27 he held the ordinary consulate with Marcus Licinius Crassus Frugi . From about 36 to 38/39 he was finally city ​​prefect of Rome . As such, he received a letter from Caligula in which he announced the death of Emperor Tiberius.

Most likely 39/40 (possibly also 38/39) he was proconsul of Africa . The assumption of this office caused Emperor Caligula to fear that Piso might take too powerful a position and revolt against him. Therefore, he undertook an administrative reform that amounted to a de facto division of the province: The supreme command of the Legio III Augusta was withdrawn from the proconsul and transferred to an imperial legate , who, however, also took over civil administrative tasks in the area occupied by his troops and by Piso and his successors was independent. However, Tacitus describes the same incident for Pisus' predecessor, Marcus Junius Silanus , so that it is not entirely clear under which governor the circumcision of power was ordered. Edmund Groag suspected in 1897 that under Silanus the supreme command was transferred to the legate and his successor Piso was then the first official without a military command. The historian Cassius Dio misunderstood this fact and related the entire episode outlined above to Lucius Calpurnius Piso. However, it is now believed possible that Gaius Rubellius Blandus and Servius Cornelius Cethegus were governors between Silanus and Piso .

Following his tenure in Africa, Piso became governor of the province of Dalmatia .

family

Piso was married to Licinia, the sister of his counterpart as consul from 27, Marcus Licinius Crassus Frugi , and daughter of the consul from 14 BC. Chr. Of the same name . The son of Piso and Licinia was Lucius Calpurnius Piso , consul in 57. A Calpurnia Cn is also from the Senate decision that followed the trial against his father Piso the Elder . Pisonis filia (Calpurnia, daughter of Gnaeus Piso) known, of which it is not certain whether she is the daughter of the older or the younger bearer of the name, i.e. whether she is to be seen as the sister or daughter of the consul from 27 AD. While Eck, Caballos and Fernández advocated the second variant, Platschek refuted it in an essay in 2009.

Dating death

Pliny the Younger writes the following in one of his letters:

“Quid enim tam circumcisum tam breve quam hominis vita longissima? An non videtur tibi Nero modo modo fuisse? cum interim ex iis, qui sub illo gesserant consulatum, nemo iam superest. Quamquam quid hoc miror? Nuper L. Piso, pater Pisonis illius, qui Valerio Festo per summum facinus in Africa occisus est, dicere solebat neminem se videre in senatu, quem consul ipse sententiam rogavisset. "

“How limited, how short is the longest human life! Or don't you feel as if Nero had just lived? And yet none of those who were consuls under him are now alive! But why do I wonder about it? Recently L. Piso, the father of that Piso who was murdered in the most hideous way by Valerius Festus in Africa, used to say that he no longer sees anyone in the Senate whom he himself had asked to express his opinion as consul. "

- Pliny the Younger : Letters III, 7.11 f.

The “recently” in the last sentence cannot refer directly to the time the letter was written, around 100 AD, since Piso would have been 120 years old at that time. Rather, it refers to the previous section on Nero . The statement by Piso reproduced here can therefore be dated to a point in time shortly after the death of this emperor in 68 AD, who, according to Pliny’s sense of time, also died “recently”. Lucius Calpurnius Piso apparently was still alive around 70 AD, when all the senators from the time of his consulate had already died - and this fact seemed to have been fondly remembered by the author of the letter Pliny 30 years later.

swell

A description of the events of the year 20 AD can be found in the annals of the historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus . Piso also appears in some inscriptions.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Robin Seager: Tiberius ( Blackwell Ancient Lives ). 2nd edition, Blackwell Publishing 2005, pp. 98 f.
  2. ^ Johannes Platschek : Roman law in bronze. The Senate resolution de Cn. Pisone patre as the source of Roman family and inheritance law. In: forum historiae iuris . 2009, ISSN  1860-5605 , para. 9 f. ( PDF ).
  3. ^ Flavius ​​Josephus , Jüdische Altertümer IX, 6.5 (= IX, 169) ( English translation ).
  4. ↑ Flavius ​​Josephus , Jüdische Altertümer IX, 6,10 (= IX, 235) ( English translation ).
  5. ^ Werner Eck : Calpurnius II 20. In: Der Neue Pauly (DNP). Volume 2, Metzler, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-476-01472-X , Sp. 947.
  6. ^ Cassius Dio , Roman History LIX, 20.7.
  7. ↑ Hans-Georg Kolbe: The governors of Numidia from Gaul <sic!> To Constantine (= Vestigia , vol. 4). CH Beck, Munich 1962, p. 1.
  8. ^ Tacitus , Historien IV , 48.
  9. ^ Edmund Groag : Calpurnius 76). In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume III, 1, Stuttgart 1897, Sp. 1383 f.
  10. ^ Werner Eck , Antonio Caballos, Fernando Fernández: The Senatus consultum de Cn. Pisone patre (= Vestigia , vol. 48). Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN = 3-406-41400-1.
  11. ^ Johannes Platschek : Roman law in bronze. The Senate resolution de Cn. Pisone patre as the source of Roman family and inheritance law. In: forum historiae iuris . 2009, ISSN  1860-5605 , paras. 4–8 ( PDF ).
  12. ↑ Pliny the Younger: Letters. Translated by Helmut Kasten. Tusculum Collection, 5th edition, Artemis Verlag, Munich / Zurich 1984, p. 146 f.
  13. ↑ Eckard Lefèvre : From Romanism to Aestheticism. Studies on the letters of the younger Pliny. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2009, p. 144 ( online ).
  14. ↑ Tacitus , Annalen 3,16 f. Piso is also mentioned in ibid. 4.62, where his consulate is only used to date an event.
  15. ↑ CIL 2, 2633 ; CIL 5,4919 ; CIL 6, 251 ; CIL 5, 4920
personal data
SURNAME Calpurnius Piso, Lucius
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Piso, Lucius Calpurnius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Roman consul 27
DATE OF BIRTH before 20
DATE OF DEATH after 39