Gaius Asinius Gallus (before 38 BC – AD 33) was a Roman senator, son of

Gaius Asinius Pollio Gaius Asinius Pollio (75 BC – AD 4) was a Roman soldier, politician, orator, poet, playwright, literary critic, and historian, whose lost contemporaneous history provided much of the material used by the historians Appian and Plutarch. Po ...

and Quinctia. He was the second husband of

Vipsania Vipsania Agrippina (; unknown – 20 AD) was the first wife of the Emperor Tiberius. She was the daughter of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and Attica, thus being a granddaughter of Titus Pomponius Atticus, the best friend of Cicero. Biography She ...

, whose first husband

Tiberius Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus ( ; 16 November 42 BC – 16 March AD 37) was Roman emperor from AD 14 until 37. He succeeded his stepfather Augustus, the first Roman emperor. Tiberius was born in Rome in 42 BC to Roman politician Tiberius Cl ...

ultimately imprisoned him.

Biography

In 11 BC he married

Vipsania Agrippina Vipsania Agrippina (; unknown – 20 AD) was the first wife of the Roman emperor, Emperor Tiberius. She was the daughter of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and Attica (wife of Agrippa), Attica, thus being a granddaughter of Titus Pomponius Atticus, t ...

, daughter of

Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa (; BC – 12 BC) was a Roman general, statesman and architect who was a close friend, son-in-law and lieutenant to the Roman emperor Augustus. Agrippa is well known for his important military victories, notably the B ...

and his first wife

Caecilia Attica Attica (born ca 58–51 BC, perhaps died around 32–29 BC) was the daughter of Cicero's Epicurean friend Titus Pomponius Atticus. She was also the first wife of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, close friend of the emperor Augustus. Early life Attica is ...

, and the former wife of

. Their union proved fruitful and produced at least six children. Gallus also claimed true paternity of

Drusus Julius Caesar Drusus Julius Caesar (7 October – 14 September AD 23), also called Drusus the Younger, was the son of Emperor Tiberius, and heir to the Roman Empire following the death of his adoptive brother Germanicus in AD 19. He was born at Rome to a ...

, earning him Tiberius' animosity. If Gallus' claim was true, he might also have been the father of the child Vipsania was expecting on her divorce. He is mentioned among the speakers at the senate meeting discussing Augustus' funeral in AD 14; on the subject of last honours he proposed that the funeral train should pass under a triumphal gateway. When the senate met to discuss the transfer of power, Gallus made a joke at Tiberius' expense; when Tiberius made a formulaic protest against the total power the Senate had proposed to award him and said that he would instead take charge of whichever department was assigned to him (a demurral, the sources imply, that he expected the Senate to reject), Gallus responded by asking him to choose whichever he wished. This embarrassed Tiberius publicly, and although Gallus attempted to quell the emperor's anger, he was unsuccessful. In 30, he was arrested on Tiberius' orders. At Tiberius' instigation, the Senate declared Gallus a public enemy, and he was held in conditions of solitary confinement: "He had no companion or servant with him, spoke to no one, and saw no one, except when he was compelled to take food. And the food was of such quality and amount as neither to afford him any satisfaction or strength nor yet to allow him to die." He died in prison of starvation in the year 33. When Agrippina died in October of that same year, Tiberius accused her of "having had Asinius Gallus as a paramour and being driven by his death to loathe existence". His name was erased from public monuments (a practice known as ''

damnatio memoriae () is a modern Latin phrase meaning "condemnation of memory" or "damnation of memory", indicating that a person is to be excluded from official accounts. Depending on the extent, it can be a case of historical negationism. There are and have b ...

''), although this was reversed after Tiberius' death.

Marriage and children

Asinius Gallus' marriage to Vipsania (11 BC) led to the following known children: *

**He was consul in 23; exiled as an accuser of a conspiracy and later put to death on orders from Empress

Valeria Messalina Valeria Messalina (; ) was the third wife of Roman emperor Claudius. She was a paternal cousin of Emperor Nero, a second cousin of Emperor Caligula, and a great-grandniece of Emperor Augustus. A powerful and influential woman with a reputation ...

. *

Marcus Asinius Agrippa Marcus Asinius Agrippa was a Roman senator, who was active during the Principate. He was consul in AD 25 as the colleague of first Cossus Cornelius Lentulus, then of Gaius Petronius. Agrippa died at the end of the following year (26). According t ...

**He was consul in 25 and died in 26. *Gnaeus Asinius Saloninus, or simply Asinius Saloninus **

Tacitus Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historians by modern scholars. Tacitus’ two major historical works, ''Annals'' ( ...

describes him as an ‘eminent’ person. Saloninus was intended to marry one of the granddaughters of Emperor Tiberius. He died in 22. * Servius Asinius Celer **He was ''consul suffectus'' in 38. From Emperor

Caligula Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (31 August 12 – 24 January 41), also called Gaius and Caligula (), was Roman emperor from AD 37 until his assassination in 41. He was the son of the Roman general Germanicus and Augustus' granddaughter Ag ...

he purchased a fish at an enormous price. He is mentioned in

Seneca Seneca may refer to: People, fictional characters and language * Seneca (name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or surname : :* Seneca the Elder (c. 54 BC – c. AD 39), a Roman rhetorician, writer and father ...

's satire ''

The Pumpkinification of Claudius The ''Apocolocyntosis (divi) Claudii'', literally ''The Pumpkinification of ''(''the Divine'')'' Claudius'', is a satire on the Roman emperor Claudius, which, according to Cassius Dio, was written by Seneca the Younger. A partly extant Menippean ...

'', where he is listed among the many people killed by that emperor. His death probably occurred sometime before mid-47. Asinius Celer seems to have had a daughter by the name of Asinia Agrippina, though her existence is obscure. *Lucius Asinius Gallus (sometimes wrongly called Gallo) **In 46 he conspired with

Titus Statilius Taurus Corvinus Titus Statilius Taurus Corvinus was a member of the Titus Statilius Taurus family of Roman Senators which went back to Titus Statilius Taurus, the general of emperor Augustus. Corvinus was consul in 45 AD during the reign of the Emperor Claudius ...

against

Claudius Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus ( ; ; 1 August 10 BC – 13 October AD 54), or Claudius, was a Roman emperor, ruling from AD 41 to 54. A member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Claudius was born to Nero Claudius Drusus, Drusus and Ant ...

and was forced to go into exile.

Cassius Dio Lucius Cassius Dio (), also known as Dio Cassius ( ), was a Roman historian and senator of maternal Greek origin. He published 80 volumes of the history of ancient Rome, beginning with the arrival of Aeneas in Italy. The volumes documented the ...

describes him as being "very small and ugly". Later rehabilitated, he became

Consul Consul (abbrev. ''cos.''; Latin plural ''consules'') was the title of one of the two chief magistrates of the Roman Republic, and subsequently also an important title under the Roman Empire. The title was used in other European city-states thro ...

in 62. *Gnaeus Asinius **His existence is recorded by the townsfolk of Puteoli, whose patron he was. He may have been identical with Asinius Saloninus or the foregoing Asinius Gallus. Since the ''Asinius Gallus'' seems to have been the ''Lucius Asinius Gallus'' who became a Consul in 60, by exclusion of parts the ''Gnaeus Asinius'' must be the ''Asinius Saloninus''.

In fiction

In the BBC television series '' I, Claudius'', Gallus is portrayed by

Charles Kay Alfred Charles Piff (31 August 1930 – 8 January 2025), better known by his stage name Charles Kay, was an English actor. Early life and education Kay was born in Coventry, Warwickshire, the son of Frances (née Petty) and Charles Beckingham ...

. In Lloyd C Douglas's novel ''The Robe'', Gallus is furnished with a fictional daughter, Diana, the love interest of the story.

References

Sources

* Syme, Ronald, and Barbara M. Levick. "Asinius Gallus, Gaius". In Hornblower, Simon, and Antony Spawforth, eds., ''The Oxford Classical Dictionary''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 191–192.

External links

Coinage of Gaius Asinius Gallus
{{DEFAULTSORT:Asinius Gallus, Gaius 1st-century BC births Year of birth uncertain 33 deaths Senators of the Roman Empire 1st-century Roman consuls Roman governors of Asia Julio-Claudian dynasty Gallus, Gaius Deaths by starvation People who died in prison custody