POLLIO, CaiusAsinius (76 b.c.-4 a.d.), a Roman orator, poet, and historian, who played a conspicuous part in the troubled history of his time, was born in 76 b.c. In his twenty-second year (54 b.c. ) he impeached unsuccessfully C. Cato, who in his tribunate (56) had acted as the tool of the triumvirs. In the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, Pollio sided with Caesar, and after the successful campaigns against the remnants of the Pompeian party in Africa and Spain he was raised to the praetorship, and received the command of the war in Spain against Sextus Pompeius. At the time of Caesar’s assassination (March 15, 44) Pollio was in Spain. He was defeated by Sextus Pompeius and fled for his life. But by Lepidus’s influence a peace was patched up and Sextus left Spain, while Pollio remained with three legions under him. During the war between Mark Antony and the senate, Pollio, in a letter to Cicero, declared himself on the side of the senate, but found pretexts for waiting to cast in his lot with the victor. In fact no sooner had Octavian become reconciled to Antony and Lepidus, and compelled the senate to rescind the decrees against them, than Pollio joined Lepidus with two legions. Antony, Lepidus, and Octavian now formed the triumvirate (43), and Pollio was nominated consul for the year 40 b.c. Meantime he was entrusted by Antony with the administration of Gallia Transpadana, and in superintending the distribution of the Mantuan territory amongst the veterans he used his influence to save from confiscation the property of the poet Virgil. When L. Antonius, brother of Mark Antony, revolted against Octavian and was besieged in Perusia (41-40), he entreated Pollio to hasten to his relief. Pollio advanced hesitatingly, but was fain to take refuge in Ravenna when ...Octavian marched to meet him. After the fall of Perusia Octavian and Antony were reconciled for a time by the peace of Brundisium, which Pollio helped to negotiate. He was now consul (40); Virgil’s famous fourth eclogue is addressed to him in his consulship. Next year Pollio was sent by Antony against the Parthini, an Illyrian people who adhered to Brutus. He was successful, took the town of Salonae, and celebrated a triumph in the same year. The eighth eclogue of Virgil is addressed to Pollio while engaged in this campaign. From the spoils of the war he constructed the first public library at Rome. Thenceforward Pollio withdrew from active life and devoted himself to literature. When Octavian invited him to join in the war against Antony which ended in the battle of Actium, Pollio declined on the score of his former friendship with Antony. He seems to have maintained to a certain degree an attitude of independence if not of opposition towards Augustus. He lived to a green old age, and died in his villa at Tusculum in 4 a.d.
Pollio was a distinguished orator; his speeches showed ingenuity and care, but were marred by an affected archaism which rendered them somewhat crabbed and harsh. He wrote tragedies also, which Virgil declared to be worthy of Sophocles, and a prose history of the civil Avars of his time from the first triumvirate (60 B.C.) down to the death of Cicero (43 b.c. ) or perhaps to the battle of Philippi (42 b.c.) or even later. This history, in the composition of which Pollio received assistance from the grammarian Ateius, was used as an authority by Plutarch and Appian. As a literary critic Pollio was very severe. He censured Sallust and Cicero and professed to detect in Livy’s style certain provincialisms of his native Padua; he attacked the Commentaries of Julius Caesar, accusing their author of carelessness and credulity if not of deliberate falsification. Horace addressed one of his odes (ii. 1) to Pollio on the subject of his history. Pollio was the first Roman author who recited his writings to an audience of his friends, a practice which afterwards grew very common at Rome. All his writings are lost except a few fragments of his speeches (collected by Meyer, Orat. Rom. Frag. ), and three letters addressed to Cicero (Cic., Ad Fam., x. 31-33).
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