Gaius Asinius Pollio (consul 40 BC)

Gaius Asinius Pollio (sometimes wrongly called Pollius or Philo; 75 BC – AD 4) was a Roman soldier, politician, orator, poet, playwright, literary critic and historian, whose lost contemporary history provided much of the material used by the historians Appian and Plutarch. Pollio was most famously a patron of Virgil and a friend of Horace and had poems dedicated to him by both men.

Asinius Pollio was born in Teate Marrucinorum, the modern current Chieti in Abruzzi, central Italy. According to an inscription his father was called Gnaeus Asinius Pollio. He had a brother called Asinius Marrucinus, known for his tasteless practical jokes, whose name suggests a family origin among the Marrucini. He may therefore have been the grandson of Herius Asinius, a plebeian and a general of the Marrucini who fought on the Italian side in the Social War.

Pollio moved in the literary circle of Catullus, and entered public life in 56 BC by supporting Lentulus Spinther. In 54 BC he unsuccessfully impeached Gaius Cato, a distant relative of the more famous Cato the younger. Gaius Porcius Cato had acted as the tool of the triumvirs Pompey, Crassus and Caesar in his tribunate in 56 BC.

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