Pollio

1. Gaius Asinius Pollio (76 BC–AD 4), Roman historian, literary patron, statesman, and supporter of the emperor Augustus. In his youth he was an associate of the poet Catullus, and a supporter first of Julius Caesar in the civil war against Pompey and later of Mark Antony, whose legate he was in Transpadane Gaul. He was consul in 40 BC, when he helped to bring about the treaty of Brundisium between Antony and Octavian. In 39 he obtained a triumph for his victory over an Illyrian tribe. He refused to fight against Antony at Actium, but became a supporter of the Augustan settlement. It was he who first recognized the genius of Virgil, and came to his assistance when Virgil's farm near Mantua was confiscated after the battle of Philippi in 42. The poet celebrated him in his fourth and eighth Eclogues. His history of the civil wars, from the consulship of Metellus in 60 BC (when Caesar and Pompey made their original pact) to the battle of Philippi in 42 BC (and perhaps continued to the end of the 30s), has unfortunately not survived but was used by Appian and Plutarch; it receives high praise from Horace in Odes 11. 1. Pollio also wrote tragedies and erotic poems, and won a reputation as an orator. A sharp critic, he ventured to correct Cicero, Caesar, and Sallust, and to criticize Livy for his provincialism (which he calls patavinitas). He founded the first public library in Rome, and is said by the Elder Seneca to have introduced the practice of reciting his own works to an audience.

1. Trebellius Pollio, see HISTORIA AUGUSTA.