Pisonian Conspiracy and Death
In 41 AD, the emperor Claudius recalled Piso to Rome and made him his co-consul. Piso then became a powerful senator during the reign of Emperor Nero and in 65 AD led a secret initiative to replace Emperor Nero that became known as the Pisonian Conspiracy.
Piso leveraged senatorial anger with the emperor Nero to gain power. Already in 62 AD, there had been talk among those of senatorial rank, in the nobility, and among the equites that Nero was ruining Rome. By 65 AD, the city had endured the Great Fire of Rome and the persecution of the Christians, spurring groups of conspirators to come together under the leadership of Piso with the goal of killing the emperor Nero.
On April 19, 65 AD, the freedman Milichus betrayed Piso’s plot to kill the emperor and the conspirators were all arrested. In all, 19 were put to death and 13 exiled, revealing the massive scope of the conspiracy. Piso was ordered to commit suicide and so killed himself.
Read more about this topic: Gaius Calpurnius Piso
Famous quotes containing the words conspiracy and/or death:
“If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working of a scheme. Silent nameless men with unadorned hearts. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It’s the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)