Gaius Asinius Pollio
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Gaius Asinius Pollio (sometimes wrongly called Pollius or Philo; 75 BC – AD 4) was a Roman soldier, politician, orator, poet, playwright, literary critic and historian, whose lost contemporary history provided much of the material for the historians Appian and Plutarch. Pollio was most famously a patron of Virgil and a friend of Horace and had poems dedicated to him by both men.
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. 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.
