ut fuit acris vehementiae, sic quoque spectari monumenta
sua voluit: Asinius Pollio
and his Library

T. Keith Dix (University of Georgia)

Pliny (HN 36.4.33) comments on Gaius Asinius Pollio (cos. 40 B.C.E.): "As he was a man of fierce ardor, so too he wished his monuments to be seen." This remark prefaces a list of works of art which Pollio housed in the rebuilt Atrium Libertatis, so Pliny presumably has in mind particularly Pollio's enthusiasm as an art collector; but Pollio's desire "to be seen" accords well with the competitive building programs of the late Republic. Pollio gets credit for three “firsts,” all to be associated with his rebuilding of the Atrium Libertatis: the first public library in the city of Rome (Ov. Tr. 3.1.71-72; Plin. HN 7.30.115, 35.2.9-10), the introduction into Rome of the use of authors' portraits as decoration for a library (HN 35.2.9-10), and the institution of public literary recitations (Sen. Controv. 4.Pref.2, 42).

Pollio’s establishment of a library has been viewed as a conscious effort to carry out one of Julius Caesar’s unfulfilled plans. In particular, Pollio's choice of the Atrium Libertatis (generally believed to have abutted the Forum of Caesar) and the presence in Pollio's library of a portrait of Marcus Terentius Varro, to whom Caesar had entrusted the task of assembling his library, have suggested to modern scholars a connection between Caesar's plan and Pollio's library.

This paper reexamines all aspects of Pollio’s Atrium project, especially its connections with predecessors and successors among Roman libraries, and particularly in light of the proposed identification of the Tabularium on the Capitoline as the Atrium Libertatis (N. Purcell, "Atrium Libertatis," PBSR 61 [1993], 125-55).