Publius Sempronius Asellio (born around 158 BC, died after 91 BC
1) was an early Roman historian and one of the first writers of historiographic work in Latin. He was a military tribune of P.
Scipio Aemilianus AfricanusPublius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus Numantinus , also known as Scipio Aemilianus or Scipio Africanus the Younger, was a leading general and politician of the ancient Roman Republic...
at the siege of
NumantiaNumantia is the name of an ancient Celtiberian settlement, whose remains are located 7 km north of the city of Soria, on a hill known as Cerro de la Muela in the municipality of Garray.In the year 153 B.C...
in
HispaniaHispania was the name given by the Romans to the whole of the Iberian Peninsula . When Rome was a republic, Hispania was divided into two provinces: Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior...
in 134 B.C. Later he joined the circle of writers centred around Scipio Aemilianus. Asellio wrote the history of the events of which he was engaged in (Aulus Gellius,
Noctes Atticae 2.13.3), and thus preceded
CaesarGaius Julius Caesar , , was a Roman military and political leader. He played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
in his more famous accounts of his military campaigns.
Asellio, whose background is unknown, probably belonged to the prestigious plebeian gens
SemproniaSempronius or Sempronia was a Roman nomen of the gens Sempronia. The gens refers either to the patrician family Sempronius, or to one of the plebeian gentes of ancient Rome...
.
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Publius Sempronius Asellio (born around 158 BC, died after 91 BC
1) was an early Roman historian and one of the first writers of historiographic work in Latin. He was a military tribune of P.
Scipio Aemilianus AfricanusPublius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus Numantinus , also known as Scipio Aemilianus or Scipio Africanus the Younger, was a leading general and politician of the ancient Roman Republic...
at the siege of
NumantiaNumantia is the name of an ancient Celtiberian settlement, whose remains are located 7 km north of the city of Soria, on a hill known as Cerro de la Muela in the municipality of Garray.In the year 153 B.C...
in
HispaniaHispania was the name given by the Romans to the whole of the Iberian Peninsula . When Rome was a republic, Hispania was divided into two provinces: Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior...
in 134 B.C. Later he joined the circle of writers centred around Scipio Aemilianus. Asellio wrote the history of the events of which he was engaged in (Aulus Gellius,
Noctes Atticae 2.13.3), and thus preceded
CaesarGaius Julius Caesar , , was a Roman military and political leader. He played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
in his more famous accounts of his military campaigns.
Life
Asellio, whose background is unknown, probably belonged to the prestigious plebeian gens
SemproniaSempronius or Sempronia was a Roman nomen of the gens Sempronia. The gens refers either to the patrician family Sempronius, or to one of the plebeian gentes of ancient Rome...
. He was greatly influenced by his co-writer supported by Scipio Aemilianus
PolybiusPolybius was a Greek historian of the Hellenistic Period noted for his book called The Histories covering in detail the period of 220–146 BC...
, who attempted not only to record events as they took place, but also to look for the causes that led to them. Asellio was the first Roman historian to follow this method
2. In his work, he showed contempt for the previous Roman historians of annalistic school. According to him, they wrote nothing else than a diary as far as form was concerned (Asellio cited by Gellius 5.18.7-9).
3.
Work
Sempronius Asellio composed
Rerum Gestarum Libri (sometimes cited as
Historiae or
libri rerum gestarum) in at least fourteen books, where he dealt mostly with the events of the
Third Punic WarThe Third Punic War was the third and last of the Punic Wars fought between the former Phoenician colony of Carthage, and the Roman Republic...
(149-146 BC) and onwards
4. But it is also possible he only started recording history after Polybius stopped at 146 B.C. The last reported events in Asellio's work date from the year 91 BC or even 83 BC.
Cicero did not think highly of Asellio's work and spoke slightingly of its simple style. Nothing apart from 15 citations preserved in later authors (Aulus Gellius and some grammarians) survives of his work.