Piso, who was
then completing his thirty-first year, had enjoyed more fame than good
fortune. His brothers, Magnus and Crassus, had been put to death by
Claudius
BEGINNINGS OF OTHO'S REIGN |
and
Nero respectively. He was himself for many years an exile, for four days a
Cæsar, and Galba's hurried adoption of him only gave him this
privilege over his elder brother, that he perished first. Vinius had lived
to the age of fifty-seven, with many changes of character. His father was of
a prætorian family, his maternal grandfather was one of the
proscribed. He had disgraced himself in his first campaign when he served
under the legate Calvisius Sabinus. That officer's wife, urged by a perverse
curiosity to view the camp, entered it by night in the disguise of a
soldier, and after extending the insulting frolic to the watches and the
general arrangements of the army, actually dared to commit the act of
adultery in the head-quarters. Vinius was charged with having participated
in her guilt, and by order of Caius was loaded with irons. The altered times
soon restored him to liberty. He then enjoyed an uninterrupted succession of
honours, first filling the prætorship, and then commanding a legion
with general satisfaction, but he subsequently incurred the degrading
imputation of having pilfered a gold cup at the table of Claudius, who the
next day directed that he alone should be served on earthenware. Yet as
pro-consul of
Gallia Narbonensis he administered the government with strict
integrity. When forced by his friendship with Galba to a dangerous
elevation, he shewed himself bold, crafty, and enterprising; and whether he
applied his powers to vice or virtue, was always equally energetic. His will
was made void by his vast wealth; that of Piso owed its validity to his
poverty.
