Life After The Civil War
From the spoils of the war he constructed the first public library at Rome, in the Atrium Libertatis, also erected by him, which he adorned with statues of the most celebrated heroes. The library had Greek and Latin wings, and reportedly its establishment posthumously fulfilled one of Caesar's ambitions. There was a magnificent art collection attached to this library, according to Paul Zanker's book The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, Pollio loved Helenistic art at its most imaginative, even including the rather extravagant group known as the Farnese Bull, etc. like the library the art gallery was open to the public. After his military and political successes, he appears to have retired into private life as a patron of literary figures and a writer. He was known as a severe literary critic, fond of an archaic style and purity.
In retirement, Pollio organized literary readings where he encouraged authors to read their own work, and he was the first Roman author to recite his own works. One of the most dramatic such readings brought the poet Virgil to the attention of the imperial family, when Virgil read from his work-in-progress the Aeneid, and flattered the imperial family by his portrayal of Aeneas, whom the Julii Caesares believed to be their direct patrilineal ancestor. As a result, Virgil was praised by Augustus himself.
Pollio may have died in his villa at Tusculum. He was apparently a staunch republican, and thus held himself somewhat aloof from Augustus.
Married to Quinctia, daughter of Lucius Quinctius, who was executed in 43 BC, Pollio is also notable as the father of Gaius Asinius Gallus Saloninus, the second husband of Vipsania Agrippina, daughter of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Augustus's partner, second-in-command and second son-in-law. The son Gallus and Vipsania had several sons together, of whom two were full consuls and a third was consul suffect.
Pollio makes a cameo appearance in Robert Graves's novel I, Claudius, where he discusses the ethics of writing history with young Claudius and Titus Livy.
Read more about this topic: Gaius Asinius Pollio (consul 40 BC)
Famous quotes containing the words civil war, life, civil and/or war:
“Luxury, or a refinement on the pleasures and conveniences of life, had long been supposed the source of every corruption in government, and the immediate cause of faction, sedition, civil wars, and the total loss of liberty. It was, therefore, universally regarded as a vice, and was an object of declamation to all satyrists, and severe moralists.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Virtue and vice suppose the freedom to choose between good and evil; but what can be the morals of a woman who is not even in possession of herself, who has nothing of her own, and who all her life has been trained to extricate herself from the arbitrary by ruse, from constraint by using her charms?... As long as she is subject to man’s yoke or to prejudice, as long as she receives no professional education, as long as she is deprived of her civil rights, there can be no moral law for her!”
—Flora Tristan (1803–1844)
“He was one whose glory was an inner glory, one who placed culture above prosperity, fairness above profit, generosity above possessions, hospitality above comfort, courtesy above triumph, courage above safety, kindness above personal welfare, honor above success.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 1 (1962)
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)