PISO, Cneius Calpurnius, was consul in the reign of Augustus, and governor of Syria under Tiberius, whose confidant he was. It is said, that by the order of this emperor he caused Germanicus to be poisoned. Being accused of that crime, and seeing himself abandoned by every body, he laid violent hands on himself in the 20th year of our Lord. He was a man of insupportable pride and excessive violence. Some instances of his wicked cruelty have been handed down to us. Having given orders in the heat of his passion to conduct to punishment a soldier, as guilty of the death of one of his companions, because he had gone out of the camp with him and returned without him, no prayers or intreaty could prevail with Piso to suspend the execution of this sentence until the affair should be properly investigated. The soldier was led without the entrenchments, and had already presented his head to receive the fatal stroke, when his companion whom he was accused of having killed made his appearance again. Whereupon the centurion, whose office it was to see the sentence executed, ordered the executioner to put up his sword into the scabbard. Those two companions, after embracing each other, are conducted to Piso, amidst the acclamations of the whole army, and a prodigious crowd of people. Piso, foaming with rage, ascends his tribune, and pronounces the same sentence of death against the whole three, without excepting the centurion who had brought back the condemned soldier, in these terms: "You I order to be put to death because you have been already condemned: you, because you have been the cause of the condemnation of your comrade; and you, because having got orders to put that soldier to death, you have not obeyed your prince."