Gaius Asinius Gallus
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Gaius Asinius Gallus was an ambitious Roman senator with family connections to the Julio-Claudian house.
He was son to Gaius Asinius Pollio. In 11 BC he married Vipsania Agrippina, daughter of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and his first wife Caecilia Attica. Vipsania was also the former wife of Tiberius. Asinius was consul in 8 BC, and proconsul of Asia in 6 BC/5 BC.
Asinius Gallus never denied his paternity of the son of Tiberius and Vipsania, Julius Caesar Drusus, heir from 19 AD to 23 AD; and he courted the widow of Germanicus, Agrippina. This and his sharp wit earned Tiberius' enmity. In 30 AD, at Tiberius' instigation, the Senate declared Gallus a public enemy, and he was held in conditions of solitary confinement (Dio Cassius 58.3): "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 in 33 of starvation (Tacitus, Annals 6.23). 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" (Annals 6.25). His name was erased from public monuments (a practice known as damnatio memoriae), though they were restored after Tiberius' death.
Roman coinage of him can be seen at [1]
| Preceded by: Nero Claudius Drusus and Titus Quinctius Crispinus Sulpicianus |
Consul of the Roman Empire 8 BC |
Succeeded by: Tiberius and Gnaeus Calpurnius Piso |
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