A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Calpurnia
CALPURNIA,
Daughter of Lucius Piso, of an ancient and an honourable family in Rome, married Cæsar, after his divorce from his third wife, Pompeia. In her he found a wife such as he desired, whose propriety of conduct placed her "above suspicion." To her virtues she added beauty, talents, prudence, an extraordinary eloquence, and a generosity and magnanimity of mind truly Roman. Unmoved by all reverses of fortune, she showed herself equally dignified when wife to Cæsar, senator of Rome, as when consort to the master of the world. Warned, as she thought, in a dream, of her husband's fate, she entreated him not to leave his house on the ides of March; but, urged by the conspirators, he disregarded her prayers, and was assassinated before his return, March 15th., B. C. 44.
Calpurnia, superior to the weakness of ordinary minds, pronounced publicly, in the rostra, the funeral eulogium of her husband in an impressive and eloquent manner. Having declared a loss like hers to be irreparable, she passed the remainder of her life in mourning, secluded in the house of Marc Antony, to whom she entrusted the treasures and papers of Cæsar, that she might be the better enabled to avenge his death.