A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

a Roman rhetorician, and a contemporary and friend of M. Annaeus Seneca, the rhetorician, whose son he adopted. He was a senator; and on one occasion he proposed in the senate that the praetorians, after the expiration of their time of service, should receive a distinction otherwise reserved for equites, namely, the right of sitting in the quatuordecim ordines in the theatre. Tiberius, who suspected that this was done merely to win the faivour of the soldiers, began to fear him : he first removed him from the senate, and afterwards sent him into exile. Gallio accordingly went to Lesbos; but Tiberius, grudging him the quiet and ease which he was likely to enjoy there, had him conveyed back to Rome, where he was kept in custody in the house of a magistrate. (Tac. Ann. vi. 3; D. C. 58.18.) In his early years he had been a friend of Ovid (Ov. Pont. 4.11), and one one occasion he had defended Bathyllus, one of the favourites of Maecenas. (Senec. Controv. 1.2, 5; Quint. Inst. 9.2.91.) According to Dio Cassius (62.25), he was put to death by the command of Nero.

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