>>9713708>And what will you do with it, once you have incredible power?edius Pollio's first certain appearance in historical sources comes after Octavian (later Augustus) became sole ruler of the Roman world in 31 BC; at some point Vedius held authority in the province of Asia on behalf of the emperor.[3] 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 proconsular governor, or after a major earthquake in 27 BC.[4] He later returned to Rome, and when Alexander and Aristobulus, the sons of Herod the Great, came to the city in about 22 BC, they may have stayed with him.[5]
Despite these services to the state, it was for his reputed luxury and cruelty that Vedius would become best known.[1] He owned a massive villa at Posillipo on the Gulf of Naples,[6] later described by the poet Ovid as "like a city".[7] Most notoriously, he kept a pool of moray eels into which slaves who incurred his displeasure would be thrown as food[8] – 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".[9]
Nevertheless, he retained, at least for a while, the friendship of Augustus, in whose honour he built a shrine or monument at Beneventum[2]. 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 executed in some more humane way. Horrified, the emperor had all of Vedius's expensive glasses smashed and the pool filled in. According to Seneca, Augustus also had the slave freed; Dio merely remarks that Vedius "could not punish his servant for what Augustus also had done".[10]
