¹ This Cato is not, of course, M. Cato ‘Uticensis’, pace Henderson, J., ‘Polishing off the politics: Horace's ode to Pollio, 2, 1’, MD 37 (1997), 59–136Google Scholar, at 104 n. 89. In the revised version of this article the misidentification is promoted to the main text: Fighting for Rome: Poets and Caesars, History and Civil War (1998), 108–62, at 139. For a discussion of this trial see Gruen, E. S., ‘Cicero and Licinius Calvus’, HSCP 71 (1966), 215–33Google Scholar, at 222–4.

² P. M. Brown, Horace, Satires 1 (1993), ad Serm. 1.10.42–3.

³ The expression ‘omnium horarum homo’ was used of Thomas More by Erasmus in the prefatory letter to his Praise of Folly (1511). Its origin and meaning had been explained in Erasmus', Adages (1500)Google Scholar. In Robert Whittington's, Vulgaria (1520)Google Scholar, a Latin schoolbook, ‘uir omnium horarum’ was given as the translation of ‘a man for all seasons’, again in a eulogy of More. As Erasmus explains in the Adages, the origin of the expression is Quintilian, who at Inst. 6.3.110 provides an example of a properly ‘urbane’ saying: ‘de Pollione Asinio seriis iocisque pariter accommodate dictum est esse eum omnium horarum’, ‘it was said of Asinius Pollio, who was equally suited to seriousness and frivolity, that he was “a man for all occasions’”. The phrase ‘a man for all seasons’ of course gained renewed currency with the play (1960) and film (1966) of that name by Robert Bolt. Examples of Pollio's wit are preserved in Seneca's Controversiae.

⁴ Henderson, art. cit. (n. 1); cf. Lowrie, M., Horace's Narrative Odes (1997), 175–86Google Scholar.

⁵ Moles, J. L., ‘Virgil, Pompey and the Histories of Asinius Pollio’, CW 76 (1982–1983), 287–8Google Scholar.

⁶ Hinds, S., Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (1998), 8–10, 100Google Scholar; cf. Narducci, E., ‘Il tronco di Pompeo’, Maia 25 (1973), 317–25Google Scholar.

⁷ Hinds, op. cit. (n. 6), 10.

⁸ Sen., , Suas. 6.21Google Scholar: ‘quotiens magni alicuius uiri mors ab historicis narrata est, totiens fere con summatio totius uitae et quasi funebris laudatio redditur’, ‘whenever the death of a great man is recounted by historians, they almost always give a recapitulation of his whole life and a kind of funeral eulogy’. Seneca proceeds to supply us with, amongst other things, our oldest example of such a life summary in Roman historiography, one of Cicero by Asinius Pollio (Suas. 6.24; fr. 5 Peter).

⁹ cf. Currie, H. MacL., ‘An obituary formula in the historians (with a Platonic connection?)’, Latomus 48 (1989), 346–53Google Scholar, who argues for ‘the prevalence, and indeed … the virtual constancy, of the use of the noun exitus (not excessus, or mors, or obitus, or some such other word) in the brief obituary notices inserted by Roman historians in their work from time to time’ (353). Note Pollio's use of exitus at the end of his ‘obituary notice’ for Cicero (see previous note): intriguingly, the historiographical ego talks of Cicero's exitus, but the real historical figure Cicero himself (ipse) of his mors.

¹⁰ Austin, R. G., P. Vergili Maronis Aeneidos Liber Secundus (1964), ad 554Google Scholar; cf. Bowie, A. M., ‘The death of Priam: allegory and history in the Aeneid’, CQ 40 (1990), 470–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 472. Austin's comments are also noted by Moles, art. cit. (n. 5).

¹¹ Bowie, art. cit. (n. 10), 474.

¹² cf. Woodman, A. J., ‘Virgil the historian: Aeneid 8.626–62 and Livy’, in Diggle, J., Hall, J. B. and Jocelyn, H. D. (eds), Studies in Latin Literature and its Tradition in Honour of C. O. Brink, PCPhS Supp. 15 (1989), 132–45, at 134Google Scholar: ‘Moreover, by introducing his description in “historical” terms … he wished his readers to recognise what he was doing.’

¹³ It obviously follows from its subject that Pollio's work was sombre in tone. It is striking, though natural, how prominent the description of death is in the outline of the Histories which is all that we are now in a position to see: the deaths of Pompey, Cato, Cicero, Verres, Brutus, and Cassius were all apparently dwelt upon. In Odes 2.1 Horace seems to suggest ‘an affinity between Pollio's tragedies and his histories’: R. G. M. Nisbet and Hubbard, M., A Commentary on Horace, Odes Book II (1978), 9Google Scholar; cf. Ullman, B. L., ‘History and tragedy’, TAPhA 73 (1942), 25–53Google Scholar, at 50–1. Virgil's passage also seems to gesture at the tragic tone of the Histories. Austin ad 2.554–8 notes the resemblance between these lines and the conclusion of a tragic ‘messenger speech’: cf. Heinze, R., Virgils epische Technik³ (1915), 44 n. 1Google Scholar. There had been links between historiography and tragedy from the beginning, links developed in interesting ways during the Hellenistic period: on the issue of Hellenistic ‘tragic history’ see, succinctly, Leigh, M., Lucan: Spectacle and Engagement (1997), 30–40Google Scholar. The aspiration towards vivid representation of events in history might bring it into particularly close proximity with the performance of tragedy. Manilius, intriguingly, chooses a convincing reenactment of the death of Priam as an example of the power of the actor: ‘cogetque uidere/ praesentem Troiam Priamumque ante ora cadentem’, ‘and he will make you see the actual Troy, and Priam falling before your eyes’ (5.484–5). Cf. n. 22 below.

¹⁴ cf. Hinds, op. cit. (n. 6), 13.

¹⁵ For a parallel cf. Servius ad 2.486, who states that Virgil's account is derived from ‘the razing of Alba’, presumably as described by Ennius: as Austin notes ad loc., Virgil's passage has affinities with Livy's account of the fall of Alba (1.29), best explained by a shared source. The destruction by Rome of its kin city Alba had much of the character of civil war (Livy calls it ‘ciuili similhmum bello’), and Virgil's allusion imparts these associations to the sack of Troy. The pattern of a Rome-like city destroyed in order that Rome be founded is a recurrent theme of the Aeneid, and central to its extended reflections on the recent civil wars.

¹⁶ Kornemann, E., Die historische Schriftstellerei des C. Asinius Pollio, Jahrbücher für classische Philologie Supp. 22 (1896), 555–692Google Scholar, at 601.

¹⁷ See Henderson, art. cit. (n. 1), 59–65 for further implications of the expression ‘motum ex Metello consule ciuicum’. For Pollio's belief that the source of the wars lay in the formation of the First Triumvirate see also André, J., La Vie et l'oeuvre d’ Asinius Pollio (1949), 47Google Scholar on Plut., Caes. 13.3, and Haller, B., C. Asinius Pollio als Politiker und zeitkritischer Historiker (1967), 97Google Scholar on Hor., , Carm. 2.1.3–4Google Scholar (‘grauesque principum amicitias’).

¹⁸ André, op. cit. (n. 17), 47–51 favours Philippi: accounts of the death of Cicero and Verres (Sen., , Suas. 6.24Google Scholar) date to 43, and a post-mortem eulogy of Brutus and Cassius to 42 (Tac., , Ann. 4.34.4Google Scholar), but Appian's extremely tangential reference to Pollio's campaign against the Parthini in 39 (BC 5.75), and his failure to attribute the campaign to Pollio at all, leads André to conclude that he no longer had Pollio's history to follow: cf. Badian, E., ‘Appian and Asinius Pollio’, CR NS 8 (1958), 161–2Google Scholar. On the other hand, Haller, op. cit. (n. 17), 96–105 and Pelling, C. B. R., ‘Plutarch's method of work in the Roman Lives’, JHS 99 (1979), 74–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar (at 84 n. 73) argue, with some force, that parallels between Dio, Plutarch, and Appian — which persist beyond Philippi — prove that Pollio, as their common source, must also have continued beyond 42. This cannot always apply, however: the various accounts of the death of Cicero, for example, display close similarities (see esp. Plut., , Cic. 48.4–49.1Google Scholar; Ant. 20.2; App., , BC 4.20Google Scholar; Dio 47.8.2–3) but show no sign of the malignitas which Seneca (Suas. 6.24) attributed to Pollio's account of his death. Not every correspondence need go back to Pollio, and other possible sources suggest themselves for the period after Philippi, for example the memoirs of M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus, origin of the information shared between Plut., Brut. 45 and App., , BC 4.112Google Scholar (HRR fr. 3). On balance 42 B.C. still has the edge.

¹⁹ This personal involvement allows Lieberg, G., Poeta Creator. Studien zu einer Figur der antiken Dichtung (1982), 71–81Google Scholar, to make of Hor., , Carm. 2.1Google Scholar a special instance of the poetic figure according to which the author is made to participate in the activity he is describing. Pollio really was both author and participant.

²⁰ On the possible origin of the expression in Menander see A. W. Gomme and F. H. Sandbach, Menander, A Commentary (1973), 690–1.

²¹ Statements of autopsy in historiography are discussed by Marincola, J., Authority and Tradition in Ancient Historiography (1997), esp. 63–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Eyewitness knowledge of events was highly valued in all periods. Polybius thus remarks that ‘Ephorus says that if it were possible to be present in person at all events, such knowledge would be superior to any other’ (12.27.7). Important partial precedents for Pollio's approach include Fabius Pictor (FGrHist F 19b); Cato the Censor, whose Origines in the later books (5–7) seems to have become ‘personal apologia' (Marincola 195); Sempronius Asellio (HRR F 1–2); and amongst Greek historians Thucydides in particular. In the civil war period we see something of an explosion of apparently eyewitness accounts: for example Q. Dellius' account of Antony's Parthian war, Munatius Rufus' life of Cato, C. Oppius' life of Caesar, M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus' autobiography, and P. Volumnius’ work on (apparently) the Battle of Philippi; not to mention Caesar's own Commentaries. Most of these works are discussed in Pelling, art. cit. (n. 18), but none of them is properly comparable to Pollio's Histories: they recount not the entire war but discrete sections of it, or else in the case of Messalla were explicitly personal memoirs of their author's experiences, rather than general histories which exploited the historian's immediate knowledge. The nature of Messalla's work is proved by Pan. Mess. 5–6, cf. Tränkle, H., Appendix Tibulliana (1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ad loc. Caesar's account of course eschewed first-person narrative entirely. Polybius' combination of ‘a largely unobtrusive narrative of the deeds with a highly intrusive explicator of that narrative’ (Marincola, 10) is different again: Polybius foregrounds his own person in his text, but generally as an interpreting historian rather than as a participant. The relation of Thucydides to Pollio will be returned to later (see below, Section III). But as far as we can tell, there does not seem to be any full parallel to Pollio's apparently constant assertion of his autopsy throughout the core period of a full-scale historical, as opposed to autobiographical, account. The ‘standard form’ for such assertion was, as Marincola writes (80), ‘one basic claim at the outset’, as in Thucydides.

²² In ‘uidi ipse' there is also an allusion to Ennius’ tragedy Andromacha. See Austin ad loc, and n. 13 above.

²³ We must assume that Pollio used the first person when describing his presence at historical events. It is hard to imagine how the source passage of, for example, Plut., Pomp. 72 and App., , BC 2.82Google Scholar could have expressed his presence on the ground otherwise.

²⁴ G. Kennedy, The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World (1972), 42.

²⁵ Wheeldon, M. J., ‘“True stories”: the reception of historiography in antiquity’, in Cameron, A. (ed.), History as Text: the Writing of Ancient History (1989), 33–63, at 41.Google Scholar

²⁶ Fornara, C. W., The Nature of History in Greece and Rome (1983), 54Google Scholar.

²⁷ Pollitt, J. J., Art in the Hellenistic Age (1986), 163Google Scholar.

²⁸ Henderson, art. cit. (n. 1), 87–8, notes that the stanza confines itself to the kind of honourable achievement associated with traditional aristocratic activity, and pointedly avoids mention of his activitiesb in the civil wars.

²⁹ Butler, H. E., Cary, M. and Townend, G. B., Suetonius, Divus Julius (1982), ad 56.5Google Scholar; cf. Afzelius, A., ‘Die politische Bedeutung des jüngeren Cato’, Class et Med 4 (1941), 100–203Google Scholar, at 198–203, and Goar, R. J., The Legend of Cato Uticensis from the First Century BC to the Fifth Century AD (1987), ch. 2Google Scholar, for the continuation of this debate into the Principate.

³⁰ Kornemann, op. cit. (n. 16), 601.

³¹ André, op. cit. (n. 17), 62. For the various uses of autopsy in historiography see Marincola, op. cit. (n. 21), 80–5.

³² Zecchini, G., ‘Asinio Pollione: dall' attività politica alia riflessione storiografica’, ANRW 2.30.2 (1982), 1265–96Google Scholar, at 1267, interprets Pollio's statements about the river Rhine (Strab. 4.3.3) as also based on firsthand knowledge gained whilst serving with Caesar in Gaul, and if so their inaccuracy (the Rhine has more than two mouths) is telling. Assertion of autopsy is a powerful rhetorical device for commanding belief, but it is a device. It does not in reality guarantee accuracy: see Woodman, A. J., Rhetoric in Classical Historiography: Four Studies (1988), 15–23.Google Scholar

³³ Woodman, art. cit. (n. 12), 140.

³⁴ Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 13), ad 2.1.17. Cf. Porphyrio ad loc.

³⁵ cf. Quint., , Inst. 9.2.40Google Scholar on techniques for producing ἐνάρϒεια (euidentia): ‘Illa uero, ut ait Cicero, sub oculos subiectio tum fieri solet cum res non gesta indicatur sed ut sit gesta ostenditur, nec uniuersa sed per panes’, ‘As for the figure which Cicero calls “presentation to view”, this is achieved not when it is asserted that something was done but when it is shown how it was done, and not just in general terms but in detail’. Cf. Demetr., Eloc. 209. On Thucydidean enargeia through precise detail see Plut., Mor. 347a–c.

³⁶ Rawson, E., Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (1985), log n. 59Google Scholar.

³⁷ André, op. cit. (n. 17), 15. A further refinement of autopsy, perhaps, is the direct quotation of major historical figures, which Pollio apparently favoured. Besides ‘alea iacta est«o»’ we owe to Pollio Caesar's statement after the Battle of Pharsalus regarding the Pompeian dead, ‘hoc uoluerunt; tantis rebus gestis Gaius Caesar condemnatus essem, nisi ab exercitu auxilium petissem’ (Suet., , Jul. 30.4Google Scholar; cf. Plut., , Caes. 46.1–2Google Scholar), and an account of a conversation between Pollio and M. Cato in 49 (App. 2.40; Plut., , Cat. min. 53.1–3Google Scholar). This element of Pollio's history can incidentally lend support to the MSS reading ‘audire’ at Hor., , Carm. 2.1.21Google Scholar. Porphyrio ad loc. suggests that in ‘audire magnos iam uideor duces’ Horace may either be referring to Pollio's description of generals haranguing their troops, or else to ‘Pollionem de ducibus narrantem’, perhaps ‘a passing allusion to the recitatio by invitation’, an innovation of Pollio's (see Section IV below): D. West, Horace, Odes II: Vatis Amici (1998), 8. There is no pressing need to choose between these options; but it is tempting to see Horace's odd form of words, generally neutralized by emendation, as a reflection of a peculiarity of Pollio's text.

³⁸ Marincola, op. cit. (n. 21), 82.

³⁹ Marincola, op. cit. (n. 21), 218–36.

⁴⁰ Woodman, op. cit. (n. 32), 150 n. 45. Cf. Tacitus' comment on Pollio's ferocia (Ann. 1.12), Seneca's on his contumacia (Contr. 4 praef. 2), and Pliny's on his uehementia(HN 36.33).

⁴¹ André, op. cit. (n. 17), 58.

⁴² The natural interpretation of ‘quae per alios erant gesta’, cf. Gardner, J. F., Caesar, The Civil War (1967), 28–9Google Scholar.

⁴³ Marincola, op. cit. (n. 21), 67

⁴⁴ Marincola, op. cit. (n. 21), 217–18.

⁴⁵ C. S. Kraus and A. J. Woodman, Latin Historians (1997), 73.

⁴⁶ For the controversy — ‘The Battle of Bosworth’, Henderson, art. cit. (n. 1), 87 n. 45 — as to which side of the boundary between Octavian's and Antony's jurisdiction Polho was operating see Bosworth, A. B., ‘Asinius Pollio and Augustus’, Historia 21 (1972), 441–73, 463–8Google Scholar, and Woodman, A. J., Velleius Paterculus: the Caesarian and Augustan Narrative (2.41–93) (1983), ad 78.2.Google Scholar Haller, op. cit. (n. 17), 72–6, plausibly interprets Pollio's activity during his provincial command on both sides of the border as a post-Brundisium ‘Garant der Einigung der Triumvirn’.

⁴⁷ Bosworth, art. cit. (n. 46), 466.

⁴⁸ Woodman, op. cit. (n. 46), ad loc.

⁴⁹ Bosworth, art. cit. (n. 46).

⁵⁰ Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 13), ad 2.1.6.

⁵¹ Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 13), 9.

⁵² R. Syme, The Roman Revolution (1939), 291; Bosworth, art. cit. (n. 46), 447.

⁵³ R. Syme, Sallust (1964), 13–14.

⁵⁴ See the discussion of Avenarius, G., Lukians Schrift zur Geschichtsschreibung (1956), 85–104Google Scholar; Pelling, art. cit. (n. 18), 94–5.

⁵⁵ André, op. cit. (n. 17), 108–9.

⁵⁶ Woodman, op. cit. (n. 32), 150–1.

⁵⁷ With this interpretation cf. Pomeroy, A. J., The Appropriate Comment: Death Notices in the Ancient Historians (1991), 144–5 and n. 38Google Scholar.

⁵⁸ Woodman, op. cit. (n. 32), 127–8 (cf. 45–7).

⁵⁹ Kornemann, E., ‘Thukydides und die römische Historiographies’ Philologus 63 (1904), 148–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 148–9. He also notes a similar remark attributed to Pompey before the battle of Pharsalus by Appian (BC 2.69).

⁶⁰ Woodman, op. cit. (n. 32), 147 n. 5, and n. 13 above.

⁶¹ Dion. Hal., Thuc. 6, ἕνα προχειρισάμενος πὀλεμον, ὃν ἐπολέμησαν Άθηναῖοι καὶ Πελοποννήσιοι πρὸς ἀλλήους, τοῦτον ἐσπούδασεν ἀναγράψαι.

⁶² Thucydides' autopsy of events was valued, for the accuracy it guaranteed. Cicero makes an instructive mistake at Brutus 47, talking about Antiphon of Rhamnus, ‘quo neminem umquam melius ullam orauisse capitis causam, cum se ipse defenderet, se audiente locuples auctor scripsit Thucydides’, ‘concerning whom we have the reliable evidence of Thucydides that no one ever pleaded a capital case better, when Antiphon conducted his own defence in Thucydides' hearing’. Cicero is referring to Thuc. 8.68.2. But Thucydides cannot have heard Antiphon's speech (which defended his role in the oligarchic coup of 411) since he was in exile from Athens at the time. He himself, as usual, is inexplicit as to the source of his knowledge for the speech. But Cicero's inaccuracy is telling. The essence of Thucydides' authority as a historian resides in the impression that he had immediate, first-hand knowledge of the events he described.

⁶³ R. Syme, Tacitus (1958), 135.

⁶⁴ Stylistics (in the broadest sense) may also be at the bottom of Pollio's obscure remark about Livy's Patauimtas, if the interpretation of Syme, op. cit. (n. 48), 485–6 is correct.

⁶⁵ Syme, op. cit. (n. 49), 56.

⁶⁶ Woodman, op. cit. (n. 32), 127.

⁶⁷ cf. Marcellinus, , Vita Thuc. 26Google Scholar, according to whom Thucydides was Φιλαλήθης.

⁶⁸ Leeman, A. D., Orationis ratio (1963), 72Google Scholar; cf. Kraus and Woodman, op. cit. (n. 45), 42 n. 19.

⁶⁹ Martin, R. H., Tacitus (1981), 24–5Google Scholar; Marincola, op. cit. (n. 21), 252–3.

⁷⁰ Syme, op. cit. (n. 49), 56.

⁷¹ Woodman, op. cit. (n. 32), 151 n. 49.

⁷² Kornemann, op. cit. (n. 59), 150.

⁷³ Marincola, op. cit. (n. 21), 77; cf. Rawson, op. cit. (n. 36), 92. Cicero fondly imagines himself following the model at Leg. 1.10.

⁷⁴ Marincola, op. cit. (n. 21), 138–9.

⁷⁵ Martin, R. H., ‘Tacitus and his predecessors’, in Dorey, T. A. (ed.), Tacitus (1969), 117–47, at 119Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ Wirszubski, Ch., Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome During the Late Republic and Early Principate (1950), 122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷⁷ cf. André, op. cit. (n. 17), 67 : ‘It eût abordé tous les genres de causes si les circonstances politiques ne lui eussent barre l'accés du Forum.’

⁷⁸ Syme, op. cit. (n. 48), 483.

⁷⁹ The diminished status of Augustan oratory rankled with him: see Sen., , Suas. 6.27Google Scholar.

⁸⁰ op. cit. (n. 48), 482–6.

⁸¹ Williams, G., Tradition and Originality in Roman Poetry (1968), 82Google Scholar.

⁸² Bosworth, art. cit. (n. 46).

⁸³ Martin, R. H. and Woodman, A. J., Tacitus, Annals Book IV (1989), ad 4.34.4.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ In many respects M. Valerius Messalla Corvinus provides an instructive parallel here. Consular, triumphator, patron of letters and author of an account of his actions in the civil wars, Messalla also represents a prominent senator outside the core power structure of the Augustan regime, and his relations with the princeps on occasion display an awkwardness reminiscent of Pollio's. The same man who controversially resigned the post of praefectus urbi in 25 (Tac., , Ann. 6.11Google Scholar) also proposed that Augustus be awarded the title pater patriae in 2 B.C. (Suet., , Aug. 58.2Google Scholar). Cf. the interesting analysis of (Nepos' account of) Atticus' precarious neutrality during the civil wars in Millar, F. G. B., ‘Cornelius Nepos, “Atticus” and the Roman Revolution’, G&R 35 (1988), 40–55Google Scholar.

⁸⁵ Henderson, art. cit. (n. 1), 93.

⁸⁶ A. Barchiesi, Il poeta e il principe. Ovidio e il discorso augusteo (1994), 78. Cf. Nisbet and Hubbard, op. cit. (n. 13), 8; P. Zanker, Augustus und die Macht der Bilder (1987), 77, ‘Schon die Wahl dieses Baus war impolitischen Klima jener Jahre keine Loyalitätskundgebung für die Triumvirn’; and Purcell, N., ‘Atrium Libertatis’, PBSR 61 (1993), 125–55Google Scholar, at 144 ‘a building known for its role in the definition of what was Roman’.

⁸⁷ Purcell, art. cit. (n. 86), esp. 149 on the ‘magnificence of the site’; cf. Favro, D., The Urban Image of Augustan Rome (1996), 34Google Scholar: ‘the Tabularium forms an impressive scenographic backdrop for the Forum Romanum.’

⁸⁸ Feeney, D. C., ‘Si licet et fas est: Ovid's Fasti and the problem of free speech under the Principate’, in Powell, A. (ed.), Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus (1992), 1–25, at 7–8Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ For Timagenes' status as a model of historiographical outspokenness (which made him a natural house guest of Pollio), see Marincola, op. cit. (n. 21), 255.

⁹⁰ The remark of Labienus cited by Seneca — ‘ille triumphalis senex ἀκροάσεις suas numquam populo commisit’ — does refer to declamations rather than recitations, despite the use of the standard Greek term for recitatio, ἀκρόασις. The (correct) gloss ‘tuas id est declamationes’ has entered the text after the Greek term.

⁹¹ Dupont, F., ‘Recitatio and the reorganization of the space of public discourse’, in Habinek, T. and Schiesaro, A. (eds), The Roman Cultural Revolution (1997), 44–59, at 44.Google Scholar

⁹² cf. Syme, op. cit. (n. 48), 483.

⁹³ Dalzell, A., ‘C. Asinius Pollio and the early history of public recitation at Rome,’ Hermathena 86 (1955), 20–8Google Scholar.

⁹⁴ As argued by Rocca, E. La, ‘Artisti rodii negli horti romani’, in Cima, M. and La Rocca, E. (eds), Horti romani: atti del convegno internazionale, Roma, 4–6 maggio 1995 (1998), 203–74Google Scholar, at 229–73; cf. Delaine, J., The Baths of Caracalla: A Study in the Design, Construction, and Economics of Large-scale Building Projects in Imperial Rome, JRA Supp. 25 (1997), 79Google Scholar. La Rocca points out that, although the Atrium Libertatis has been universally assumed to be the site of Pollio's art collection, the sources never actually equate the monumenta Asini Pollionis with the Atrium. Instead he argues from the presence of the Farnese Bull sculpture group in both Pollio's monumenta (Plin., , HN 36.34Google Scholar) and the Baths of Caracalla (where it was rediscovered in the Renaissance) that the horti Asiniani are the more likely location. This unfortunately punctures the impressive conclusion of Henderson, art. cit. (n. 1), 134–6 (toned down in the revised version, 158–9).

⁹⁵ For uehemens and acer as terms of élite approbation see Gell. 10.3.1; Cic., Brut. 107; and cf. Cicero's approving description of C. Pansa as a uehementissimus et fortissimus consul at Phil. 12.18. The aspiration that oneself or one's work be seen by others is of the very essence of the Roman notion of distinction.

⁹⁶ Isager, J., Pliny on Art and Society: the Elder Pliny's Chapters on the History of Art (1991), 113Google Scholar; cf. 157–8.

⁹⁷ On art collecting in Rome see Rawson, op. cit. (n. 36), 193–200. There was a tradition of temporary public exhibition, typically by magistrates with a view to the prestige which would thereby accrue to their time in office. The permanent exhibition of Pollio, a private citizen, seems different. For the evidence see Pollitt, J. J., The Art of Rome, c. 753 BC to AD 337: Sources and Documents (1966), 74–81Google Scholar.

⁹⁸ cf. Dupont, art. cit. (n. 91), 48, on Maternus' recitation of his play Cato (Tac., Dial. 2), which was said to have offended the court because Maternus threw himself so wholeheartedly into the role of his protagonist. It was the talk of the town, no longer contained within the confines of the recitatio venue.

⁹⁹ Hardie, P. R., The Epic Successors of Virgil: A Study in the Dynamics of a Tradition (1993), 1Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁰ Zanker, op. cit. (n. 86), 213–17.