Gaius Asinius Pollio (consul 23)

Statue of Gaius Asinius Pollio

Gaius Asinius Pollio was a Roman senator and orator active during the Principate. He was ordinary consul for 23 with Gaius Antistius Vetus as his colleague.[1][2] He was the oldest son of Gaius Asinius Gallus; his brother was Marcus Asinius Agrippa, consul in 25.[3] Pollio's mother was Vipsania Agrippina.[4] Through her, he was the half-brother of the younger Drusus.[5]

We know from his coins Pollio was proconsular governor of Asia.[6] In 45, Pollio was exiled as an accuser of a conspiracy and later was put to death on orders from Empress Valeria Messalina.

The Asinia Pollionis filia mentioned on an inscription from Tusculum may have been his daughter.[7] Pollio was perhaps the father (or brother) of Gaius Asinius Placentinus who lived around the middle of the 1st century.[8]

  1. ^ Tacitus, Annals IV.1
  2. ^ Pliny the Elder, Natural History 33.8
  3. ^ Ronald Syme, The Augustan Aristocracy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 135
  4. ^ Tacitus, Annals, I.12
  5. ^ William Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1870, Vol. 3 p. 438 Archived 2006-05-11 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ^ Syme, "Problems about Proconsuls of Asia", Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 53 (1983), p. 196
  7. ^ CIL XIV, 2599
  8. ^ I.G. II2, 4172