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Lucius Calpurnius Piso (consul 27)

Lucius Calpurnius Piso was a Roman senator and magistrate, ordinary consul in AD 27. Son of Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, consul in 7 BC, and Munatia Plancina, after his father's suicide, Piso was supported by Tiberius, who appointed him consul and, in AD 36, praefectus urbi, but became then suspicious in Caligula's eyes, who released the African legio III Augusta from proconsular command precisely during his African proconsulship, and finally was returned to favour by Claudius, who possibly appointed him as legatus Augusti pro praetore in Dalmatia from AD 43 to 46. Pushing through the Year of the Four Emperors, a tragic time for his own family, Piso survived into the reign of Vespasian, dying in its later years.

Family

Scion of the illustrious Calpurnia gens, and specifically of its important branch of the Calpurnii Pisones, Piso was the son of Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, himself son of the homonymous consul of 23 BC, close friend of Tiberius, ordinary consul with the future princeps in 7 BC and known in particular for his term as legatus Augusti pro praetore of the Roman province of Syria, when he run foul of Germanicus Caesar at the time of the latter's task in the East between AD 17 and 19. Piso's mother was Munatia Plancina, in all likelihood granddaughter of the consul of 42 BC, Lucius Munatius Plancus, daughter of Munatius, Tiberius' comes in Asia in 20 BC, and sister of the consul of AD 13, Lucius Munatius Plancus Paullinus. Piso was born Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso, and these names identify him as eldest son of the couple and elder brother of Marcus Calpurnius Piso, who accompanied their father to Syria. Uncertainties remain as to whether the Calpurnia mentioned in the senatus consultum de Cn. Pisone patre was Piso's sister or his daughter.

Biography

Much of Piso' early career is now known thanks to mentions of him in the texts concerning the trial that his father faced in the early year AD 20 under the charge of having tried to instigate a civil war in the East after Germanicus' death in October AD 19 and after his own end of term as legatus of Syria. The senatus consultum de Cn. Pisone patre has revealed that Piso (then still called Gnaeus) was liberalitate sua honoratus by Germanicus, and so must have served under him somehow: it has been considered likely that he had been tribunus laticlavius during Germanicus' Germanic expedition in the years AD 13-16, and was in any case he must have been on the best terms with Germanicus. Then, Tacitus states that the former legatus of Syria wrote a letter in his own hand addressed to Tiberius pleading with him to spare his son Gnaeus from the charges because, for the whole time he was in Syria, Gnaeus remained in Rome and so had no part in his father's crimes; the senatus consultum de Cn. Pisone patre makes clear that Gnaeus stayed in Rome because he was Tiberius' personal quaestor, probably for the year AD 17/18. Lastly, Tacitus tells that the consul of AD 20, Marcus Aurelius Cotta Maximus Messallinus proposed, among his harsh suggestions against the former legatus' family - and the senatus consultum de Cn. Pisone patre reveals that the Senate accepted - that young Gnaeus, uninvolved in his father's crimes, should receive part of his father's possession under condition that he changed his name, so that every trace of the nomenclature of his condemned father (who had meanwhile committed suicide when confronted by Tiberius' renunciation of amicitia) could be erased and in order to urge the hitherto impeccable Gnaeus to forever renounce his father's deplorable conduct. It was then that Gnaeus changed his name in Lucius Calpurnius Piso.

Thereafter, Piso must have retained Tiberius' favour, as the princeps probably intended not to forget his old friend by promoting the only son of his who had emerged as guiltless from the trial. Thus, Piso managed to be appointed, in 27 AD, ordinary consul alongside the nobilis Marcus Licinius Crassus Frugi: their term of office lasted until July, when they were replaced by Publius Cornelius Lentulus and Gaius Sallustius Crispus Passienus. Piso and Crassus' consulship stood out because of several disasters: the collapse of the amphitheater of Fidenae, a fire on the Caelius, the accusation brought by Gnaeus Domitius Afer and Publius Cornelius Dolabella against Publius Quinctilius Varus, and Tiberius' final withdrawal to Capri, which led to Sejanus being now left alone in Rome and putting under closer supervision Agrippina the Elder and Nero Caesar.

Tiberius' amicitia towards Piso is also manifest in the latter's second documented office, for Piso, probably when Cossus Cornelius Lentulus died in AD 36, replaced him as praefectus urbi until probably AD 38/39, when he was superseded by Quintus Sanquinius Maximus. It was to Piso as praefectus urbi that Caligula announced Tiberius' decease and his own accession to the principate in March AD 37.

Under Caligula, who was the son of Piso's father's enemy, Germanicus, Piso faced unfortunate difficulties. Chosen by lot to be proconsul of the province of Africa for the year 38/39 or 39/40, possibly replacing Servius Cornelius Cethegus, Piso was the object of Caligula's suspicions, which were increasingly worsening because of the princeps' ever more tense relationship with the Senate just before his Germanic expedition and because of the knowledge that the proconsul of Africa was the only member of the Senate who could command a legion - the legio III Augusta then stationed in Ammaedara - under his own auspices and not under those of the princeps, and so was not directly subordinate to the latter. Caligula then decided to take away the proconsul's military command of the legion and to bestow it on a legatus legionis of praetorian rank who was a direct subordinate of the princeps, thus leaving to the proconsul only the civil amministration of the province's coast (an innovation kept by Claudius which, however, does not seem to have led to a formal division of the province of Africa in Africa Proconsularis and Numidia, as would later be the case under Septimius Severus in AD 193).

The last office probably held by Piso, as attested by an inscription from Dalmatia (although it still is not clear whether the Piso mentioned in it is the consul of AD 27, the future conspirator against Nero, Gaius Calpurnius Piso, or another Piso of consular rank), is that of legatus Augusti pro praetore of the province of Dalmatia under Claudius, who restored Piso to favour probably in his attempt to involve the whole senatorial aristocracy in his government: the term of office is presumably to be dated from AD 43, when Piso most likely superseded Lucius Salvius Otho, and 46.

The last mention of Piso emerges almost half a century later: in a letter dated to ca. AD 101, Pliny the Younger, while pondering on the rapidity of the flow of time right after the decease of the elderly Silius Italicus, reports that, not long before, Piso (still alive, then, in the time of Vespasian) used to say that he could not find in the Senate anyone to whom he had asked a sententia when consul in far-away AD 27. Given Piso's advanced age at the time, he most likely died not long thereafter, at the end of Vespasian's principate.

Offspring and posterity

From an unknown wife Piso had assuredly a homonymous son, Lucius Calpurnius Piso, who was born around AD 24 and became ordinary consul in AD 57 alongside the princeps Nero. The younger Piso married Licinia Magna, daughter of his father's co-consul Marcus Licinus Crassu Frugi and Scribonia, and so a descendant of the triumvirs Marcus Licinius Crassus and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus: from her, the younger Piso had a daughter who then married her father's consobrinus (cousin), Calpurnius Piso Galerianus, whom Gaius Licinius Mucianus, the staunchest of the Flavian allies, had killed in AD 69. The younger Piso was in his turn chosen by lot as proconsul of Africa for the year 69/70, and during his tenure was killed for his Vitellian allegiance by the legate of the - now released from proconsular control - legio III Augusta in that year, the Flavian ally Gaius Calpetanus Rantius Quirinalis Valerius Festus.