Publius Vedius Pollio

Publius Vedius Pollio
Coin showing Vedius Pollio (left)
Born	1st century BC
Died	15 BC
Residence	Gulf of Naples, Italy
Nationality	Ancient Roman

Publius Vedius Pollio (died 15 BC) was a Roman of equestrian rank, and a friend of the Roman emperor Augustus, who appointed him to a position of authority in the province of Asia. In later life he became known for his luxurious tastes and cruelty to his slaves – when they displeased him, he had them fed to lampreys that he maintained for that purpose, which was deemed to be an exceedingly cruel act. When Vedius tried to apply this method of execution to a slave who broke a crystal cup, Emperor Augustus (Pollio's guest at the time) was so appalled that he not only intervened to prevent the execution but had all of Pollio's valuable drinking vessels deliberately broken. This incident, and Augustus's demolition of Vedius's mansion in Rome he inherited in his will, were frequently referred to in antiquity in discussions of ethics and of the public role of Augustus.

Publius Vedius Pollio, the son of a freedman whose given name he shared, was born in the 1st century BC and attained membership of the equestrian order.

Vedius Pollio's first certain appearance in historical sources comes after Octavian (later Augustus) became sole ruler of the Roman world in 31 BC; at some point Vedius held authority in the province of Asia on behalf of the emperor. For a mere equestrian to govern this province was anomalous, and there were presumably special circumstances; Vedius' term of office could have been in 31–30 BC before the appointment of a regular proconsular governor, or after a major earthquake in 27 BC. He later returned to Rome, and when Alexander and Aristobulus, the sons of Herod the Great, came to the city in about 22 BC, they may have stayed with him.

Despite these services to the state, it was for his reputed and cruelty that Vedius would become best known. He owned a massive villa at Posillipo on the Gulf of Naples, later described by the poet Ovid as "like a city". Most notoriously, he kept a pool of lampreys into which slaves who incurred his displeasure would be thrown as food – a particularly unpleasant means of death, since the lamprey "clamps its mouth on the victim and bores a dentated tongue into the flesh to ingest blood".