Early Life
An inscription tells us his father was called Gnaeus Asinius Pollio. He had a brother called Asinius Marrucinus, known for his tasteless practical jokes, whose name suggests a family origin among the Marrucini. He may therefore have been the grandson of Herius Asinius, a plebeian, General of the Marrucini who fought on the Italian side in the Social War.
Pollio moved in the literary circle of Catullus, and entered public life in 56 by supporting the policy of Lentulus Spinther. In 54 BC he unsuccessfully impeached Gaius Cato, a distant relative of the more famous Cato the younger, who, in his tribunate in 56 BC, had acted as the tool of the triumvirs Pompey, Crassus and Caesar.
Read more about this topic: Gaius Asinius Pollio (consul 40 BC)
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“I would observe to you that what is called style in writing or speaking is formed very early in life while the imagination is warm, and impressions are permanent.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The man Shelley, in very truth, is not entirely sane, and Shelley’s poetry is not entirely sane either. The Shelley of actual life is a vision of beauty and radiance, indeed, but availing nothing, effecting nothing. And in poetry, no less than in life, he is a beautiful and ineffectual angel, beating in the void his luminous wings in vain.””
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)