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Updated: June 8, 2025
Keep it as you would your own life, nay, your life will be well given for its safety. Forgive me, if in this I seem to charge you as an elder. Remember that you I do not know, Fausta I do. Of you I scarcely know more than that you are a Piso, and that the very soul of honor ought to dwell within you.
Germanicus being something flighty of disposition, the emperor sent with him on his new mission a rough old fellow by the name of Calpurnius Piso to keep a weather eye open on him, and neutralize, as far as might be, extravagant actions. The choice, it must be said, was a bad one; for the two fought like cat and dog the better part of the time.
The Roman admiral Mancinus, charged by Piso with the nominal continuance of the siege of the capital, had occupied a steep cliff, far remote from the inhabited district and scarcely defended, on the almost inaccessible seaward side of the suburb of Magalia, and had united nearly his whole not very numerous force there, in the hope of being able to penetrate thence into the outer town.
We meet already literati of note in such positions; the Epicurean Philodemus, for instance, was installed as domestic philosopher with Lucius Piso consul in 696, and occasionally edified the initiated with his clever epigrams on the coarse-grained Epicureanism of his patron.
This generous kindness however assuaged not the animosity of Piso; and scarce could he brook a day's delay with Germanicus, but left him in haste to arrive in Syria before him: nor was he sooner there, and found himself amongst the legions, than he began to court the common men by bounties and caresses, to assist them with his countenance and credit, to form factions, to remove all the ancient centurions and every tribune of remarkable discipline and severity, and, in their places, to put dependents of his own, or men recommended only by their crimes; he permitted sloth in the camp, licentiousness in the towns, a rambling and disorderly soldiery, and carried the corruption so high, that in the discourses of the herd, he was styled Father of the Legions.
In 687 two projects of law were introduced, one of which, besides decreeing the discharge long since demanded by the democracy of the soldiers of the Asiatic army who had served their term, decreed the recall of its commander-in-chief Lucius Lucullus and the supplying of his place by one of the consuls of the current year, Gaius Piso or Manius Glabrio; while the second revived and extended the plan proposed seven years before by the senate itself for clearing the seas from the pirates.
Then there is a seventh, regarding the disposition of the provinces among the Proprætors and Proconsuls, the object of which was to enforce the recall of Piso from Macedonia and Gabinius from Syria, and to win Cæsar's favor by showing that Cæsar should be allowed to keep the two Gauls and Illyricum. To these must be added two others, made within the same period, for Cælius and Balbus.
That Piso who was once the rival, and in power not indeed in virtue the equal of the great Germanicus, and looked, not without show of reason, to the seat of Tiberius; and he who so many years and with such honor reigned over the city its unequalled governor; and thou the descendant and companion of princes an alliance with such might well be an object of ambition with even crowned heads.
Pompeius' own instruments such as the consuls elected by his influence and partly by his money, Marcus Pupius Piso for 693 and Lucius Afranius for 694 showed themselves unskilful and useless.
Meanwhile the friends of Piso were urging to take some bold and sudden step, which, if it did not succeed in retrieving his fortunes, would at least shed lustre on his death. But his somewhat slothful nature, weakened still further by a luxurious life, was not to be aroused, and he calmly awaited the end.
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