Pollio, CAIUS ASINIUS

Pollio, CAIUS ASINIUS, an orator, poet, historian, and soldier, was born in Rome, 76 B.C. He sided with Cæsar in the civil war fought at Pharsalia, and commanded in Spain against Sextus Pompeius, but was defeated. He sided with the triumvirs against the oligarchic senate, and was appointed by Antony to settle the veterans on the lands assigned them in Transpadane Gaul. It was now that he saved the property of the poet Virgil at Mantua from confiscation. After Antony and Octavian had quarrelled, it was Pollio who effected their temporary reconciliation at Brundusium (40). This year he was consul, when Virgil's fourth eclogue was addressed to him. The year after he went to Greece as legate of Antony, and defeated the Parthini, a people of Illyria. This was the period of Virgil's eighth eclogue, also addressed to Pollio. Thereafter he withdrew altogether from political life, and survived till 4 A.D. Pollio was the first to establish a public library at Rome, and was the patron of Virgil, Horace, and other poets. His own orations and tragedies and history have perished, and it is most probably no great loss. The severest critics are seldom themselves even decent writers, and he, we are told, detected Patavinitas in the limpid style of Livy, and censured Cicero, Sallust, and Cæsar.