Laus Pisonis information

The Laus Pisonis (Praise of Piso) is a Latin verse panegyric of the 1st century AD in praise of a man of the Piso family. The exact identity of the subject is not certain. Some scholars identify him with Gaius Calpurnius Piso, the leader of a conspiracy against Nero in AD 65;^[1] Others argue for a later date, one possible candidate being a Piso mentioned by Pliny the Younger as the young author of a poem in Greek, who became consul in 111 AD.^[2] The Latinity is straightforward; the subject is praised for his oratorical ability as an advocate in law cases, for the kindness with which he maintains his house open to poor men of talent, but also for his skill at playing ball, composing poetry in Greek, and especially the board game of latrunculi, for which the poem is one of our main sources. The author three times addresses Piso as a iuvenis ("young man"), but also mentions that he had been consul and had made a speech in the senate praising the Emperor.^[3]

About the author of the work there is considerably more doubt; it has been attributed to Saleius Bassus, Statius, Lucan and Calpurnius Siculus among others. Whoever he was, the author says in the concluding verses of his poem that he was not yet twenty years old.

The work, comprising 261 dactylic hexameters, has come down via a single manuscript once preserved in the monastery of Lorsch, and now lost; although sizeable portions were also preserved in several medieval florilegia, the manuscripts of which are still extant. The editio princeps is in J. Sichard's edition of Ovid, Basel, 1527, and the work has seen about a dozen editions over the centuries, having drawn the attention of Joseph Scaliger and Emil Baehrens among others. A restoration of the archetype of the florilegia was published by Berthold Ullman.^[4]