Asinius Quadratus
Encyclopedia
Gaius Asinius Quadratus was a Greek
Koine Greek
Koine Greek is the universal dialect of the Greek language spoken throughout post-Classical antiquity , developing from the Attic dialect, with admixture of elements especially from Ionic....

 historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...

 of Rome and Parthia in the third century. Felix Jacoby
Felix Jacoby
Felix Jacoby was a German classicist and philologist. He is best known among classicists for his highly important work Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, a collection of text fragments of ancient Greek historians...

 in the Fragmente der griechischen Historiker
Fragmente der griechischen Historiker
Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, commonly abbreviated FGrHist or FGrH , is a collection by Felix Jacoby of the works of those ancient Greek historians whose works have been lost, but of which we have citations, extracts or summaries...

provides the thirty remaining fragments of his work. Most derive from the dictionary of Stephanus of Byzantium
Stephanus of Byzantium
Stephen of Byzantium, also known as Stephanus Byzantinus , was the author of an important geographical dictionary entitled Ethnica...

. The Suda
Suda
The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often...

 tells us that his work Chilieteris ("The Millennium") covered the period from the founding of Rome to the reign of Alexander Severus
Alexander Severus
Severus Alexander was Roman Emperor from 222 to 235. Alexander was the last emperor of the Severan dynasty. He succeeded his cousin Elagabalus upon the latter's assassination in 222, and was ultimately assassinated himself, marking the epoch event for the Crisis of the Third Century — nearly fifty...

. He also wrote a Parthika, presumably a narrative of the Parthia
Parthia
Parthia is a region of north-eastern Iran, best known for having been the political and cultural base of the Arsacid dynasty, rulers of the Parthian Empire....

n campaigns of the preceding century. Some scholars attribute to him a Germanika, as well, although this is debated. All of his works were in Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

.

The "thousand years" of Quadratus' title has been explained in various ways. Jacoby argues that Quadratus unusually dated the founding of Rome to the first Olympiad
Olympiad
An Olympiad is a period of four years, associated with the Olympic Games of Classical Greece. In the Hellenistic period, beginning with Ephorus, Olympiads were used as calendar epoch....

 in 776. Zecchini, on the other hand, claims that Quadratus used the traditional dating of the founding of Rome and intended the work to extend to 248, when Philip the Arab
Philip the Arab
Philip the Arab , also known as Philip or Philippus Arabs, was Roman Emperor from 244 to 249. He came from Syria, and rose to become a major figure in the Roman Empire. He achieved power after the death of Gordian III, quickly negotiating peace with the Sassanid Empire...

 celebrated the millennium, dying before its completion.

Asinius
Asinius
Asinius is the nomen of the plebian Gens Asinia of ancient Rome. Local tradition holds that the Italian town of Assignano derives its name from the gens, as well as the French town of Assignan....

 is the nomen
Roman naming conventions
By the Republican era and throughout the Imperial era, a name in ancient Rome for a male citizen consisted of three parts : praenomen , nomen and cognomen...

 of the gens Asinia of ancient Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

. He was the son of Gaius Julius Asinius Quadratus, brother of Gaius Asinius Rufus (b. ca 160) and Gaius Asinius Quadratus Protimus
Gaius Asinius Quadratus Protimus
Gaius Asinius Quadratus Protimus or Gaius Protimus Quadratus Asinius was the Proconsul of Achaea ca. 211 or in 220.He was the brother of Gaius Asinius Rufus, son of Gaius Asinius Nicomachus and wife and cousin Julia Quadratilla and paternal grandson of Gaius Asinius Rufus and wife...

 (b. ca 165), Proconsul
Proconsul
A proconsul was a governor of a province in the Roman Republic appointed for one year by the senate. In modern usage, the title has been used for a person from one country ruling another country or bluntly interfering in another country's internal affairs.-Ancient Rome:In the Roman Republic, a...

 of Achaea
Achaea (Roman province)
Achaea, or Achaia, was a province of the Roman Empire, consisting of the Peloponnese, eastern Central Greece and parts of Thessaly. It bordered on the north by the provinces of Epirus vetus and Macedonia...

 ca. 211 or in 220, children of Gaius Asinius Nicomachus (b. ca. 135) and wife and cousin Julia Quadratilla (b. ca 145) (or perhaps Asinia Marcellina, descendant of the family of Gaius Asinius Pollio
Gaius Asinius Pollio (consul AD 23)
Gaius Asinius Pollio, son of Gaius Asinius Gallus and Vipsania Agrippina, was a Roman politician.He was consul in AD 23 alongside Gaius Antistius Vetus. We know from his coins he was proconsul of Asia. Through his mother he was the half-brother of the younger Drusus...

), and grandchildren of Gaius Asinius Rufus
Gaius Asinius Rufus
Gaius Asinius Rufus was a notable in Lydia in 134 and 135 who became a Roman Senator in 136. He was probably the son of Gaius Asinius Frugi , monet. of Phrygia between 98 and 116....

 (ca 110 - aft. 136), a notable in Lydia
Lydia
Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern Turkish provinces of Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian....

 in 134 and 135 who became a Roman
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....

 Senator in 136, and wife Julia.
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