Asinius Pollio, Gaius
Gaius Asinius Pollio (ca. 76 bce–4 ce) was a Roman literary and political figure of the Late Republican and early imperial periods. His brother was the Asinius Marrucinus accused by catullus of stealing napkins (Catullus 12). Pollio entered public life in the mid-50s and supported julius caesar (c. iulius caesar) in the civil war. He subsequently backed Mark Antony (see antonius marcus (mark antony)), serving as his legate in Transpadane Gaul. As consul, in 40 bce, Pollio brokered the Treaty of Brundisium between Antony and Octavian (see augustus). He celebrated a triumph in 39 for victories in Illyricum. He became a supporter of Octavian but declined to participate at Actium. Thereafter he retired from public life and devoted himself to his literary pursuits. 
 
 
Keywords: 
 
Augustan Age; 
literature; 
military history; 
Roman history
The Autopsy of C. Asinius Pollio*
The historical record of the Roman civil wars gives an unusual prominence to C. Asinius Pollio (76 b.c.–a.d. 4). There is more than one reason for the anomaly, not the least being that Pollio was himself largely responsible for creating that record in the form of his celebrated Historiae of the civil wars. It was this work which provided the authors we read — Appian, Dio, Plutarch, and Suetonius — with their major source for the period, and a characteristic feature of the work, as these later texts attest, was the emphasis which Pollio placed on his presence on the scene and immediate, eyewitness knowledge of much of the historical material he narrated. And yet Pollio had earned for himself at least a small place in history, independently of his historiographical activity. After the death of Caesar he played an important role in the manoeuvring which brought Mark Antony to power (three letters to Cicero survive from the period), and held the consulship in 40 B.C. (cf. Ecl. 4.1–17). Whilst consul he acted as co-sponsor of the pact of Brundisium between Antony and Octavian, and subsequently celebrated a triumph over the Parthini, a Balkan tribe.
Lucan: Spectacle and Engagement
The Pharsalia, Lucan's epic on the civil war between Caesar and Pompey, is a document of fundamental importance for students of the history and literature of Rome in the early imperial period. Whether one is a historian of the Republican opposition to Nero, or a literary critic teasing out the ideological implications of intertextuality, it is impossible to ignore this poem. Taking as his guiding theme the unusual prominence of spectacle and spectators in the Pharsalia - the tendency of either the narrator to represent complicity with or apathy towards the action of various charactyers as that of one who watches and does not engage, or of individual characters to celebrate the actions which they undertake by turning them into theatrical displays for others to watch - Dr Leigh demonstrates the importance of this phenomenon for narrative, and intertextual concerns as well as for history and socio-political matters. He shows how Lucan can take devices characteristic of Virgilian narrative and transform them to launch an attack on the Augustan ideology of the Aeneid and produce a savagely Republican anti-Aeneid which represents the civil wars as the death of Rome. By studying the tension between the narrator's impassioned interventions and his characters' often manic zeal to transform civil war into performance, this work discovers a Lucan who is as funny as he is serious, as reflective as he is committed.