Gaius Asinius Pollio

• 1. Introduction

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  Gaius Asinius Pollio, who lived from 75 BC to AD 4, was present when Julius Caesar deliberated over whether to cross the Rubicon and start a civil war. He was a soldier, a politician, an orator, a poet, a playwright and a literary critic. He also wrote a history of the very years he lived through. What became of that history, and why do later writers owe it so much? What happened to the consulship that Virgil greeted with such hope? Why did Pollio refuse to take a side when Octavian called him to Actium? And what did he give to Rome that no citizen had given before?

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• 2. Roots and Rivals

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  Pollio was born in Teate Marrucinorum, the modern Chieti in Abruzzi, central Italy. An inscription names his father as Gnaeus Asinius Pollio. His brother, Asinius Marrucinus, drew a rebuke from the poet Catullus for a tasteless practical joke. The name Marrucinus suggests family origins among the Marrucini. For that reason Pollio may have been the grandson of Herius Asinius, a plebeian general who fought for the Italian side in the Social War.

  In 56 BC Pollio entered public life by supporting Lentulus Spinther, while moving in the literary circle of Catullus. In 54 he tried to impeach Gaius Porcius Cato and failed. This Cato was a distant relative of the better-known Cato the Younger. During his tribunate in 56 BC he had acted as a tool of Pompey, Crassus and Caesar. Pollio therefore opened his career by attacking an instrument of the three most powerful men in Rome, and one of them would soon become his leader.

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• 3. Caesar's Lieutenant

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  When civil war split Caesar from Pompey, Pollio chose Caesar, whatever his earlier loyalties had been. After Pompey and the Senate fled to Greece, Caesar sent him to Sicily. His task there was to relieve Cato of his command.

  Africa brought a harder test. Pollio and Gaius Scribonius Curio were sent to fight Publius Attius Varus, the Pompeian governor of the province. Their opponents poisoned the water supply, yet Curio defeated Varus at Utica. Curio then marched against King Juba of Numidia, an ally of Pompey. At the Bagradas River he was defeated and killed, together with most of his men. Pollio retreated to Utica with a small force.

  At the Battle of Pharsalus in 48, Pollio served as Caesar's legate. He recorded the Pompeian casualties there at 6,000. In 47 BC he was probably a tribune, and he resisted the plan of a fellow tribune, Publius Cornelius Dolabella, to cancel all debts. The following year he returned to Africa, this time beside Caesar, in pursuit of Cato and Metellus Scipio. Four years later Caesar would be dead, and Pollio would be far from Rome with an army.

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• 4. Stand in Hispania

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  In 44 BC, when Caesar was assassinated, Pollio was leading his forces in Hispania against Sextus Pompeius. He was doing well early in the campaign. He had taken the command reluctantly, because of a personal enmity with another of Caesar's allies.

  Marcus Aemilius Lepidus was then named the new governor of the province. Pollio stayed loyal to Caesar's supporters, yet he refused to yield. At Corduba he announced that he would hand his province only to someone holding a commission from the Senate.

  A few months later his quaestor, Lucius Cornelius Balbus, slipped away from Gades with the money meant to pay the soldiers. Balbus fled to Mauretania. Pollio was then so badly beaten by Pompeius that he left the battlefield in disguise. His next choices would be between two men, Mark Antony and Octavian.

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• 5. A Consul Between Poets

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  As conflict built between Mark Antony and Octavian, Pollio vacillated, but he ultimately backed Antony. Antony, Lepidus and Octavian soon formed the Second Triumvirate, and in 43 BC it promised Pollio a consulship.

  The triumvirs also began a series of bloody proscriptions. Pollio's father-in-law, Lucius Quintius, was among the first marked for death. He fled by sea and drowned himself by throwing himself overboard. In the division of the provinces, Gaul fell to Antony. Antony gave Pollio the administration of Gallia Transpadana, the part of Cisalpine Gaul between the Po and the Alps. While distributing Mantuan land among the veterans, Pollio used his influence to protect the property of the poet Virgil from confiscation.

  In 40, Pollio helped arrange the peace of Brundisium, which reconciled Octavian and Antony for a time. That same year his consulship began. Virgil addressed his famous fourth eclogue to him. Scholars are unsure whether Virgil wrote it in anticipation of the consulship or to celebrate Pollio's part in the treaty. Like other Romans, Virgil hoped that peace was near and looked ahead to a Golden Age. Pollio did not complete the year. Antony and Octavian removed him and his co-consul from office in the final months.

  The following year Pollio campaigned successfully against the Parthini, an Illyrian people loyal to Marcus Junius Brutus. He celebrated a triumph on the 25th of October. Virgil addressed his eighth eclogue to him while the campaign was under way.

  In 31 BC Octavian asked him to join the fight against Antony at Actium. Pollio remembered the kindness Antony had shown him and stayed neutral. After that, he seems to have stepped away from public life.

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• 6. The First Public Library

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  The plunder from the Parthini campaign paid for something new in Rome, its first public library. Pollio placed it in the Atrium Libertatis, which he also built. He decorated the building with statues of the most celebrated heroes. The library had a Greek wing and a Latin wing. Reports say that creating it fulfilled one of Caesar's ambitions, after Caesar's death.

  An art collection was attached to the library. The gallery, like the library itself, was open to the public. Pollio now turned from stone and statues to the spoken word, and to a stage for living authors.

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• 7. Reading Aloud

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  In retirement, Pollio gave literary readings and urged authors to read their own work to an audience. He was himself the first Roman author to recite his own writings. He had a reputation as a severe critic, fond of an archaic style and of purity in language.

  One of those readings had large consequences. Virgil read from the Aeneid, then still in progress, and the imperial family heard it. Virgil's portrayal of Aeneas flattered them, because the Julii Caesares believed Aeneas to be their direct ancestor through the male line. As a result, Augustus praised Virgil.

  Pollio himself was apparently a staunch republican, and he kept somewhat apart from Augustus. His gathering therefore sent a poet toward the favor of a ruler whom the host held at a distance.

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• 8. Family and Afterlife

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  Pollio may have died in his villa at Tusculum. He married Quinctia and had at least one daughter, Asinia, and one son, Gaius Asinius Gallus. Gallus became the second husband of Vipsania Agrippina. She was the daughter of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, who was Augustus's partner, second-in-command and second son-in-law. Gallus and Vipsania had several sons. Two became full consuls and a third became consul suffectus.

  Pollio's contemporary history is now lost, but the historians Appian and Plutarch drew much of their material from it. Through them he shaped how later readers saw a pivotal moment in Roman history. The poet Horace, in Odes 2.1.1-4, shows how Pollio framed it. He dated the start of the Civil Wars to the consulship of Quintus Metellus Celer in 60 BC.

  The Dutch statesman Johan Rudolph Thorbecke wrote a thesis on Pollio at the University of Leiden in the nineteenth century. Pollio also makes a cameo in Robert Graves's novel I, Claudius. There he discusses the ethics of writing history with the young Claudius and Titus Livius.

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