[2] Asinius Pollio was born in Teate Marrucinorum, the modern current Chieti in Abruzzi, central Italy.
Pollio may therefore have been the grandson of Herius Asinius, a plebeian and a general of the Marrucini who fought on the Italian side in the Social War.
[5] Pollio moved in the literary circle of Catullus and entered public life in 56 BC by supporting Lentulus Spinther.
Curio marched to face Pompey's ally King Juba of Numidia, and was defeated and killed, along with most of his men, at the Bagradas River.
[13] A few months later his quaestor, Lucius Cornelius Balbus, absconded from Gades with the money intended to pay the soldiers and fled to Mauretania.
Virgil, like other Romans, hoped that peace was at hand and looked forward to a Golden Age under Pollio's consulship.
The following year, Pollio conducted a successful campaign against the Parthini, an Illyrian people who adhered to Marcus Junius Brutus,[20] and celebrated a triumph on 25 October.
[21] From the spoils of the war Pollio constructed the first public library at Rome, in the Atrium Libertatis, also erected by him,[22] which he adorned with statues of the most celebrated heroes.
After his military and political successes, Pollio appears to have retired into private life as a patron of literary figures and a writer.
According to the poet Horace (Odes 2.1.1–4), he dated the start of the Civil Wars to the consulship of Quintus Metellus Celer in 60 BC.
Johan Rudolph Thorbecke, a Dutch statesman of the nineteenth century, wrote a thesis about Pollio at the University of Leiden.