Apollonius (Ancient Greek: Απολλώνιος) was a freedman of Publius Licinius Crassus in ancient Rome in the 1st century BCE.
Apollonius afterwards became a useful friend of Cicero's, and served in the army of Julius Caesar in the Alexandrine war, and also followed him into Spain. He was a man of great diligence and learning, and anxious to write a history of the exploits of Caesar. For this reason Cicero gave him a very flattering letter of recommendation to Caesar.
Apollonius is also believed to have written a biography of Crassus. Since he was manumitted as a term of Publius's will, he is by Roman custom likely to have taken the name Publius Licinius Apollonius as a freedman. The highly laudatory account of Publius's death found in Plutarch suggests that Apollonius's biography was a source.
Notes
- Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares 13.16
- For the available evidence on Apollonius, see Andrew Lintott, “A Historian in Cicero: Ad familiares – P. Licinius (?) Apollonius,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 119 (1976) 368. See also Elizabeth Rawson, Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), pp. 79, 110, 229; F.B. Titchener, "Critical Trends in Plutarch's Roman Lives, 1975–1990," Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2.55.6 (De Gruyter 1992), p. 4146 online.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Schmitz, Leonhard (1870). "Apollonius". In Smith, William (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Vol. 1. p. 238.
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