Gaius Calpurnius Piso (died AD 65) was a Roman senator in the first century. He was the focal figure in the Pisonian conspiracy of AD 65, the most famous and wide-ranging plot against the throne of Emperor Nero.
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Character and early life
He was the son of the consul Lucius Calpurnius Piso and his wife Licinia, daughter of the consul Marcus Licinius Crassus Frugi and sister of Marcus Licinius Crassus Frugi, a senator.
Piso was extremely well liked throughout Rome. Through his father he inherited connections with many distinguished families, and from his mother great wealth. Piso came from the ancient and noble house of the 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 Latrunculi, and owned the villa Pisoni 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 AD 40, the Emperor Caligula banished Piso from Rome after he took a fancy to Piso's wife, Livia Orestilla. 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. He later married Atria Galla, after she left her first husband Domitius Silus.