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; Controv. 1.2, 5;
As an orator, he was probably not above the ordinary declaimers of the time, at least the
author of the dialogue De Oratoribus (100.36; comp. Sidon. Apollin.
1.5.10) speaks of him with considerable contempt. Besides his declamations, such as the
speech for Bathyllus, we know that he published a work on rhetoric, which, however, is lost.
(Praefat. lib. viii. in Esaiam.)
Whether he is the same Gallio who is mentioned in the Acts (8.12) as proconsul of Achaia is uncertain.