Talk:Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus (consul 15 BC)

Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus

The person that succeeded Lucius Calpurnius Piso (consul 15 BC) can not be Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus nor his son Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus (consul 97 BC), but perhaps his grandson of the same name. Has to be someone AFTER 15 BC. Can someone with expert knowledge correct this please?--64.138.237.101 (talk) 13:56, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Caesoninus?

What is the basis for this cognomen? The name of the article was changed in this edit without any explanation. The Oxford Classical Dictionary & Ronald Syme both omit it. The German Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft ("Calpurnius (99)") calls him "Lucius Calpurnius Piso Frugi". Tacitus names him "Lucius Piso". I suspect there is no basis for this name element, & may be due to unsupported personal opinion. -- llywrch (talk) 13:58, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

It seems to come from Drumann, in volume II, who was followed by the DGRBM, at volume III, p. 371. A later edition of Drumann appends "Frugi" parenthetically to his name, and states that Drumann was mistaken about his surname being Caesoninus, but does not explain why. Looking at either version of the stemma, it's easy to see why Drumann would conclude that he was a Caesoninus; Gaius Calpurnius Piso, the praetor of 211 BC, had two sons, Gaius and Lucius. While neither one is assigned a cognomen, all of the descendants of Gaius bear the surname Caesoninus, while all the descendants of Lucius bear the surname Frugi. The consul of 15 BC was the son of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, consul in 58 BC; the grandson of Caesoninus, quaestor in 100 BC; the great-grandson of Caesoninus, consul in 112 BC; and the great-great-grandson of Caesoninus, the consul of 148 BC. No explanation is given for why the last of this line would suddenly adopt Frugi as a surname, unless (and this is purely my hypothesis) he were adopted by the last of that family (perhaps not a legal adoption, but nevertheless done to preserve the name). I suppose it would be worth mentioning this in the article, and perhaps moving it to "Lucius Calpurnius Piso (consul 15 BC)", since I don't see any explanation for Frugi either. You mention that he's just surnamed Piso in Tacitus; Cassius Dio has the same; as do the Fasti Albenses; I can't find any inscription in the CS database identifying the consul of 15 BC with either surname. P Aculeius (talk) 15:42, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Drat. I was hoping this was a simple case where either "Caesoninus" correctly belonged in his name, or it was simply a mistake & could be fixed. Instead, the matter is complex. There are three variants of his name in the secondary literature, & a proper version of this article should not only mention all three but provide an explanation of when & why the secondary literature has shifted between these variants. The ugly part will be tracking down the reliable sources for this. -- llywrch (talk) 07:16, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

I may have solved one of the mysteries: that is, why the sources have changed, not what his name actually was. Just translated the relevant paragraphs from PW (pardon the errors from Google Translate; when my father was alive and able to help me translate the odd passage, he found the German scholarly terminology equally impenetrable, although I suspect part of it was a general unfamiliarity with Roman concepts as well as a general lack of interest).

Name. Λ. Λαλπουρνιος Λ. υι Πισων Φουρτιος Dio ind. l. LIV (the name of Fourtius is corrupted from Frugi, but Klebs doubts whether Piso actually carried this cognomen, since he would otherwise not have been called "pontifex" to distinguish him from other Lucii Pisones; a definite decision is not possible for the time being, but our pontiff's contemporary L. Piso augur No. 74, the son of Cn. Piso Frugi, the cognomen Frugi have led, why the two men of the same name were distinguished by the indication of their priestly dignity). . . .

Piso was the son of L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus Consul in 58, Censor in 50. His sister was therefore Calpurnia, the wife of Caesar. For the two sons he must have had according to Horace's Ars Poetica, Mommsen considers L. Piso and M. Licinius Crassus Frugi cos. 27, who was then adopted by a Licinier. The assumption has many things in it, u. a. also, that a son of this Crassus was named L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi Licinianus, d. H. except for the last cognomen the name of his grandfather. Piso's daughter was probably Calpurnia, the wife of Nonius Asprenas cos. 6; see the family table. A slave of Piso's is named in CIL VI 20743.

I think this is the gist of it, although the odd typo produces the odd side-effect; in place of "the two men of the same name were distinguished by their priestly dignity", two well-placed typos on my part had them distinguished by their "piratical ire". In any case, it seems to me that the identification of this Piso with a Frugi rests on the interpretation of "Fourtios" in a manuscript of Cassius Dio as a corruption of "Frugi", which Klebs considers suspect; not clear whether he considers the interpretation suspect, or the occurrence of the name, or both. Because it could be a misinterpretation of an enigmatic addition to the name in Cassius Dio; it could be the correct interpretation, but an erroneous interpolation by an editor of Dio; or it could be a mistake of Dio's; and then again it may be the right interpretation of a name he actually bore. Mommsen added weight to this interpretation by supposing that one of his sons was the Marcus Licinius Crassus Frugi who was consul in AD 27 (perhaps the Lucius Calpurnius Piso who was consul the same year was his brother).

The DGRBM mentions these as probable brothers under Piso No. 24, supposing that Lucius was the same Gaius Piso who was compelled by the Senate to change his praenomen, and that he was one of the two sons (Gaius and Marcus) of No. 23, Gaius Calpurnius Piso, consul in 7 BC, who was suspected of poisoning Germanicus, and found dead in his house under suspicious circumstances in AD 20. This actually makes more sense to me, since the chronology is better, and the names do seem to correspond, if he had a son named Marcus, who could be the Licinianus Mommsen supposed to be the son of our Piso, consul in 15 BC. If Mommsen were correct, then 42 years would have elapsed between the consulships of the father and his sons, which is certainly possible, but 34 years seems slightly more probable, particularly noting that in the latter case the father was still alive in 20, and perhaps not a very elderly man, while the consul of 15 BC was eighty when he died in 32. I note that his biography in DGRBM says that the identification of his sons with those mentioned by Horace is from Porphyrion, and that there is no clear reason to doubt it, but if Porphyrion was mistaken, then they might well have been the sons of the Piso who was consul in AD 7. Except, however, that Horace died in 8 BC, thirty-five years before their consulship in either scenario; so unless Horace was speaking of two young boys (I haven't checked), it seems likely that they weren't the sons of either of these Pisones... P Aculeius (talk) 11:26, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

Wow, you're definitely digging into this matter. Re-reading the relevant chapter on Piso the Pontifex in Syme's The Augustan Aristocracy, I found a brief comment that affirms the issue depends on a reading in Dio Cassius. (It's quite easy to miss something in Syme, especially if one is skimming one of his later writings. By that point in his life his style had grown notably terse & sometimes cryptic. I assume he was imitating his favorite Latin author, Tacitus, who is also known for his terse & forbidding style; in any case, I sometimes have to read a passage 3 or 4 times to fully understand what he is trying to say.) Syme states that the cognomen "Caesoninus", which belongs to the consul of 14 BC, was accidentally attached to Piso.

The passage in Horace's Ars Poetica is relevant, though. Porphyrio glosses that passage by stating it applies to "Lucius Piso", which led Mommsen & others to assume it meant the Pontifex, when it might also mean the consul of 27 BC. (Yet Syme points out, "Scholiasts vary enormously in value; from facts or rational inference to sad ineptitude." It's possible Porphyrio is entirely wrong, & Horace might not have meant either Piso.) In his paper "The Sons of Piso the Pontifex", (American Journal of Philology, 101 (1980), pp. 333-341), Syme looks at the Pontifex's possible sons. He presents 6 identifiable individuals who could be the sons of the Pontifex -- which include the consul of 7 BC you mention above. Some of these 6 could be separate references to the same man. Then he analyses the passage in Horace, the date of Ars Poetica, & assuming Porphyrio is correct, points out Horace could mean either man. Either Ars was written around 18 BC & best fits Piso the Augur (who is attested as having 2 sons), or around 10 BC & best fits Piso the Pontifex (who then can be argued to have 2 sons, likely to be found as one of the 6 Syme listed).

But returning to my original question. As you pointed out, Drumann led the editors of DGRBM to think he was a "Caesoninus", while Mommsen led the author of the Realencyclopädie to assume the Pontifex was a Frugi, when it appears that the Pontifex was all along simply "L. Calpurnius Piso". (Although Syme states that by this point they dropped the "Calpurnius". I think he had read too much Tacitus -- who often omits the gentilicum to conserve space -- by this point in his life.) -- llywrch (talk) 20:55, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

You're right, gentilicia were frequently omitted for nothing other than convenience, just as we're doing. The cognomina are much more distinctive in some cases, of which Frugi is a textbook example. I think we're agreed that the safest place for this article would be at the current title, omitting "Caesoninus". I tried to move it there already, but the move is blocked, probably due to a redirect. However, I wouldn't write off either cognomen merely because they don't appear in the small number of surviving sources. They could be omitted or used at the option of the writer, and it's usually safe to assume that they were inherited from one's father unless new cognomina were substituted, which would only have begun in earnest a generation or two after this. Best to explain the differing possibilities in the article. I'll take a stab at it. P Aculeius (talk) 23:19, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

No Connection with M. Licinius Crassus Frugi Cos. 27

It is probably relevant to this discussion that Syme stated in The Augustan Aristocracy that it was now discovered that M. Licinius Crassus Cos. 14 BCE was now shown to be M. Licinius Crassus Frugi. Owing to this new information, it was now believed that Cos. 14 BCE was not the son of M. Licinius Crassus Cos. 30 BCE, but only his adopted son. Possibly, the consul of 14 BCE was rather the son of M. Pupius M. f. Piso Frugi Pr. 44 BCE, and hence a descendant of the Frugi lineage through that connection. What this means for the current article is that L. Calpurnius Piso the Pontifex Cos. 15 BCE is not possibly the father of M. Licinius Crassus Frugi Cos. 27, so all reference to that connection should be dropped, because Cos. 27 is rather the son of the similarly-named Cos. 14 BCE. Therefore, there is no demonstrable connection with the Frugi lineage of the Calpurnii. On the other hand, I think it is odd that the Pontifex is never referred to as Caesoninus, so that secondary cognomen also should not be made a part of his nomenclature, even if it is true that his father was the consul of 58 BCE. The Calpurnii Pisones are quite a mess to figure out, I think, because they are so numerous and so many bear the same names. I don't think relationships should be posited unless they are directly attested. LCalpurniusPiso (talk) 18:18, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Birthdate of Piso the Pontifex

The article, following perhaps New Pauly and other such sources, gives 48 BCE as Piso's birthdate, but that is probably off by one or two years. As far as I know, the main datum giving Piso's birth year is Tacitus's statement that he lived to 80 and that he died in 32 CE. If he completed 80 years as Tacitus states, he must then have been born either in 50 or in 49 BCE. This is because while 32 + 48 = 80, one has to add a year to the calculation to account for the fact that there is no year zero, so then he could not be born later than 49 BCE, or possibly in 50 BCE if he hadn't yet reached his birthday in 32 CE when he died. Interestingly, this also better accords with his consulship of 15 BCE, because were he born in 48 BCE, he would only have been 32 years old on entering his consulship, rather than a more plausible 33 (although this is not decisive, as Augustus sometimes allowed some to enter their consulships earlier, but these were almost always imperial relatives, which Piso the Pontifex was not). So his dates ought to read (50 or 49 BCE - 32 CE). LCalpurniusPiso (talk) 19:17, 23 June 2018 (UTC)