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Publius Vedius Pollio (d. 15 BC) was a Roman
Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
 equestrian
Equestrian (Roman)

The Roman equestrian order constituted the lower of the two aristocratic classes of ancient Rome, ranking below the Roman senate Order . A member of the order was known as an eques , which in Latin has the general meaning of any person mounted on a horse , but in this context carries the specific meaning of "knight"....
 of the 1st century BC, and a friend of the Roman emperor Augustus, who appointed him to a position of authority in the province
Roman province

In Ancient Rome, a province was the basic, and until the Tetrarchy , largest territorial and administrative unit of the empire's territorial possessions outside of the Italia ....
 of Asia. In later life he became known for his luxurious tastes and cruelty to his slaves
Slavery in ancient Rome

The institution of slavery in ancient Rome reduced those held to a condition of less than persons under Roman law. Stripped of many rights, including the ability to marry, slaves were the property of their owners....
 – when they displeased him, he had them fed to lamprey eels he maintained for that purpose. This was unacceptable even by Roman standards.






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Publius Vedius Pollio (d. 15 BC) was a Roman
Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a civilization that grew out of a small agricultural community founded on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 10th century BC....
 equestrian
Equestrian (Roman)

The Roman equestrian order constituted the lower of the two aristocratic classes of ancient Rome, ranking below the Roman senate Order . A member of the order was known as an eques , which in Latin has the general meaning of any person mounted on a horse , but in this context carries the specific meaning of "knight"....
 of the 1st century BC, and a friend of the Roman emperor Augustus, who appointed him to a position of authority in the province
Roman province

In Ancient Rome, a province was the basic, and until the Tetrarchy , largest territorial and administrative unit of the empire's territorial possessions outside of the Italia ....
 of Asia. In later life he became known for his luxurious tastes and cruelty to his slaves
Slavery in ancient Rome

The institution of slavery in ancient Rome reduced those held to a condition of less than persons under Roman law. Stripped of many rights, including the ability to marry, slaves were the property of their owners....
 – when they displeased him, he had them fed to lamprey eels he maintained for that purpose. This was unacceptable even by Roman standards. When Vedius tried to apply this method of execution to a slave who broke a glass, Augustus, who was his guest at the time, not only prevented this but had all his valuable glasses broken. This incident, along with Augustus' demolition of the massive villa he inherited after Vedius' death in 15 BC, were frequently referred to in antiquity in discussions of ethics and of the public role of Augustus.

Biography

Publius Vedius Pollio was born in the 1st century BC. His father was a freedman
Freedman

Freedman is the term used to describe a former Slavery who has been Manumission or Emancipation. The first means the freeing of an individual by the owner, often through deed or will, and sometimes by legislative petition....
, also named Publius, but he himself attained membership of the equestrian
Equestrian (Roman)

The Roman equestrian order constituted the lower of the two aristocratic classes of ancient Rome, ranking below the Roman senate Order . A member of the order was known as an eques , which in Latin has the general meaning of any person mounted on a horse , but in this context carries the specific meaning of "knight"....
 order.

Ronald Syme
Ronald Syme

Sir Ronald Syme, Order of Merit , Fellow of the British Academy was a New Zealand-born historian and classics....
 suggests he may be identical with a "Publius Vedius" who appears in Cicero
Cicero

Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Ancient Rome philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Constitution of the Roman Republic. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest rhetoric and prose stylists....
's letters as a friend of Pompey
Pompey

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, commonly known as Pompey /'p?mpi/, Pompey the Great or Pompey the Triumvir , was a distinguished military and political leader of the late Roman Republic....
. In 50 BC, while Cicero was travelling near Laodicea
Laodicea Combusta

Laodicea or Laodicea Combusta – ), also transliterated as Laodiceia or Laodikeia; also Laodikeia Katakekaumen? and ?a?d??e?a ?e?a?????; later Claudiolaodicea – was a Hellenistic city in central Anatolia, in the region of Pisidia; its site is currently occupied by Ladik , Konya Province, in the A...
 as governor of Cilicia
Cilicia

In antiquity, Cilicia now known as ?ukurova, was a commonly used name of the south coastal region of the Anatolian peninsula, and a political entity in Roman times....
, this Vedius came out to meet him with a large retinue that included several wild asses
Onager

The Onager is a large mammal belonging to the genus Equus of the family Equidae and native to the deserts of Syria, Iran, Pakistan, India, Israel, and Tibet....
 and a baboon
Baboon

Baboons are African Old World monkeys belonging to the genus Papio, part of the subfamily Cercopithecinae. There are five species, which are some of the largest non-hominid members of the primate order; only the Mandrill and the Drill are larger....
 in a chariot
Chariot

The chariot is the earliest and simplest type of carriage, used in both peace and war as the chief vehicle of many ancient peoples. Chariots were built in Mesopotamia by the Mesopotamians as early as 3000 BC and in China during the 2nd millennium BC....
. Cicero was not impressed. "I never saw a more worthless man," he wrote to his friend Atticus
Titus Pomponius Atticus

Titus Pomponius Atticus, born Titus Pomponius , came from an old but not strictly noble Ancient Rome family of the Equestrian class and the Pomponia....
, adding a salacious anecdote: before meeting Cicero, Vedius had left some items with one Vindulus, who had meanwhile died. When Vindulus' heir examined the contents of the house, he discovered among Vedius' possessions five portrait-busts of married ladies. One Vidius or Vedius, possibly the same person, is mentioned in a letter of 46 BC as involved in a dispute with the scholar-politician Curtius Nicias.

Vedius Pollio's first certain appearance in history comes after Octavian (later Augustus) became sole ruler of the Roman world in 31 BC; at some point Vedius held authority in the province
Roman province

In Ancient Rome, a province was the basic, and until the Tetrarchy , largest territorial and administrative unit of the empire's territorial possessions outside of the Italia ....
 of Asia on behalf of the emperor. For a mere equestrian to govern this province was anomalous, and there were presumably special circumstances; Vedius' term of office could have been in 31–30 BC before the appointment of a regular proconsul
Proconsul

Ancient RomeIn the Roman Republic, a proconsul was a promagistrate who, after serving as consul, spent a year as a Roman governor of a Roman province....
ar governor, or after a major earthquake
Earthquake

An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes are recorded with a seismometer, also known as a seismograph....
 in 27 BC. He later returned to Rome, and when Alexander and Aristobulus
Aristobulus IV

Aristobulus IV was a prince of Judea from the :Category:Herodian dynasty, and was married to his cousin, Berenice , daughter of Costobar and Salome....
, the sons of Herod the Great
Herod the Great

Herod , also known as Herod I or Herod the Great , was a Roman Empire client state of Israel. Herod is known for his colossal building projects in Jerusalem and other parts of the ancient world, including the rebuilding of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, sometimes referred to as Herod's Temple....
, came to the city in about 22 BC, they may have stayed with him.

Despite these services to the state, it was for his reputed luxury
Luxury

Luxury can refer to several things:*Luxury good, an economic good for which demand increases more than proportionally as income rises; contrast with inferior good and normal good....
 and cruelty
Cruelty

Cruelty can be described as indifference to suffering, and even positive pleasure in inflicting it. Sadism can also be related to this form of action or concept....
 that Vedius would become best known. He owned a massive villa
Villa

A villa was originally an upper-class country house, though since its origins in Roman Republic times the idea and function of a villa has evolved considerably....
 on the Gulf of Naples
Gulf of Naples

The Gulf of Naples is located in the south western coast of Italy . It opens to the west into the Mediterranean Sea. It is bordered on the north by the cities of Naples and Pozzuoli, on the east by Mount Vesuvius, and on the south by the Sorrentine Peninsula and its main town Sorrento, Italy; the Peninsula separates it from the Gulf of Sal...
, later described by the poet Ovid
Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso was a Roman Empire poet known as Ovid to the English language-speaking world, who wrote about love, seduction, and Roman mythology transformation....
 as "like a city". Most notoriously, he kept a pool of lamprey
Lamprey

A lamprey is a parasitic marine animal with a toothed, funnel-like sucking mouth. While lampreys are well known for those species which bore into the flesh of other fish to hematophagy, these species make up the minority....
s into which slaves
Slavery in ancient Rome

The institution of slavery in ancient Rome reduced those held to a condition of less than persons under Roman law. Stripped of many rights, including the ability to marry, slaves were the property of their owners....
 who incurred his displeasure would be thrown as food – a particularly unpleasant means of death, since the lamprey "clamps its mouth on the victim and bores a dentated tongue into the flesh to ingest blood".

Nevertheless he retained, at least for a while, the friendship of Augustus, in whose honour he built a shrine
Shrine

A shrine, from the Latin scrinium is a holy or sacred place which is dedicated to a specific deity, ancestor veneration, hero, martyr, saint or similar figure of awe and respect, at which they are veneration or worshipped....
 or monument
Monument

A monument is a type of structure either explicitly created to commemorate a person or important event or which has become important to a social group as a part of their remembrance of past events....
 at Beneventum. On one occasion, Augustus was dining at Vedius' home when a cup-bearer broke a crystal glass. Vedius ordered him thrown to the lampreys, but the slave fell to his knees before Augustus and pleaded to be saved. Horrified, the emperor had all of Vedius' expensive glasses smashed and the pool filled in. According to Seneca
Seneca the Younger

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Ancient Rome Stoicism philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature....
, Augustus also had the slave freed; Dio merely remarks that Vedius "could not punish his servant for what Augustus also had done".

Vedius died in 15 BC. Among his many heirs, Augustus received a large part of Vedius' estate, including his villa on the Gulf of Naples
Gulf of Naples

The Gulf of Naples is located in the south western coast of Italy . It opens to the west into the Mediterranean Sea. It is bordered on the north by the cities of Naples and Pozzuoli, on the east by Mount Vesuvius, and on the south by the Sorrentine Peninsula and its main town Sorrento, Italy; the Peninsula separates it from the Gulf of Sal...
, along with instructions to erect a suitable monument on the site. The emperor demolished the house and constructed in its place a colonnade
Colonnade

In classical architecture, a colonnade denotes a long sequence of columns joined by their entablature, often free-standing, as in the famous elliptically curving colonnades that Bernini added to the fa?ade of The apostel Peter's Basilica in Rome, which embrace and define the Piazza....
 in honour of his wife Livia
Livia

Livia Drusilla, after 14 AD called Julia Augusta was the wife of Augustus and one of the most powerful women in the Roman Empire, being Augustus' faithful advisor....
, which he dedicated in 7 BC.

Legacy

Vedius' treatment of his slaves and Augustus' conduct towards him became popular subjects for anecdotes in antiquity. During or shortly after Augustus' reign, Ovid
Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso was a Roman Empire poet known as Ovid to the English language-speaking world, who wrote about love, seduction, and Roman mythology transformation....
 praised his demolition of Vedius' house as a grand statement against immoral luxury made even at the emperor's own cost. Scott notes that in replacing the house with a public monument Augustus merely "carried out the terms of the will", and argues that any suggestion he wished to censure Vedius' memory may have been mere "gossip".

Also in the 1st century AD, Vedius' story was used by the philosopher Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Ancient Rome Stoicism philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature....
 and the encyclopedist Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder

Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was an ancient author, naturalist or natural philosopher and naval and military commander of some importance who wrote Natural History ....
. In two ethical treatises, Seneca used Vedius' treatment of the cup-bearer and Augustus' response to illustrate the extremes to which anger
Anger

Anger is an emotional state that may range from minor irritation to intense rage. The physical effects of anger include increased heart rate, blood pressure,and levels of adrenaline and noradrenaline....
 could lead and the need for clemency. Pliny the Elder mentioned Vedius' lampreys in his Natural History while treating varieties of fish, noting the man's friendship with Augustus while ignoring the story of the latter's clemency. Pliny was no admirer of Augustus and his handling of the story has been seen as "a gratuitous jibe" at the emperor. In a highly rhetorical passage, the Christian
Christian

A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism#Christian view religion centered on the life and teachings of Jesus and interpreted by Christians to have been prophesied in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament....
 writer Tertullian
Tertullian

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, anglicised as Tertullian, was a prolific and controversial early Christian author, and the first to write Christian Latin literature....
 stated that after executing slaves, Vedius had his lampreys "cooked straight away, so that in their entrails he himself might have a taste of his slaves' bodies too".

In several works, Adam Smith
Adam Smith

Adam Smith was a Scotland Ethics and a pioneer of political economy. One of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, Smith is the author of The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations....
 cited Augustus' intervention to save the cup-bearer in support of an argument that the condition of slaves was better under a monarchy than a democracy. He embellished the story by claiming that Augustus manumitted
Manumission

Manumission is the act of freeing individual Slavery, done at the will of the owner....
 all of Vedius' slaves, a statement not based on any ancient source, in one 1763 lecture even estimating the value of the property their master thus lost.