Mucius Scaevola

“ All other writers call this man Mucius Scaevola, yet Athenodorus, son of Sandon, in a book addressed to Octavia, Caesar's sister, avers he was also called Postumus. Poplicola, not so much esteeming Porsenna's enmity dangerous to Rome as his friendship and alliance serviceable, was induced to refer the controversy with Tarquin to his arbitration, and several times undertook to prove Tarquin the worst of men, and justly deprived of his kingdom. ”

“ Such things did not interest him; in public life the State religion was to him a piece of the constitution, to be maintained where it was clearly essential; in his own study it was a matter of philosophical discussion. In his young days he was intimate with the famous Pontifex Maximus, Mucius Scaevola, who held that there were three religions,—that of the poets, that of the philosophers, and that of the statesman, of which the last must be accepted and acted on, whether it be true or not. [538] Cicero could hardly have complained if this saying had been attributed to himself. ”

“ Quintus Mucius Scaevola, the chief pontiff, and the first jurist who attempted to systematise Roman law, fled to the temple of Vesta, and was there slain. The corpses of those who had been killed were thrown into the Tiber, and Marius had the ferocious satisfaction of feeling that his enemies would not be able to exult over his own imminent ruin. [Sidenote: Sulla comes to Rome.] Sulla, leaving Ofella to blockade Praeneste, hastened to Rome, but there was no one on whom to take vengeance, for his foes had fled. ”

“ Cicero, in his government of Cilicia, following the precedent of Mucius Scaevola, the ideal governor of Asia, allowed the greatest freedom to the native laws, courts, and judges, and remarks on the quickened life which their use inspired in the provincials. [1537] The attempt, indeed, to substitute her own for the native law was abhorrent to the political sense of Rome, and her most ambitious representatives never attempted to make their edicts into codes. The importance of the edict was chiefly felt in matters of private international law, administrative jurisdiction, and procedure. ”

“ His outlook on life is not sufficiently serious, he shows little interest in Rome of the past, and has nothing of the retrospective note so prominent in Lucan, Juvenal, or Tacitus; he lives in and for the present. He writes, it is true, of the famous suicide of Arria and Caecina Paetus, [671] of the death of Portia the wife of Brutus, [672] of the bravery of Mucius Scaevola. [673] But in none of these poems does he give us of his best. They lack, if not sincerity, at least enthusiasm; emotion is sacrificed to point. ”

“ When the heroism of Mucius Scævola was represented, a real criminal must thrust his hand without a groan into the flame and stand motionless while it is being burned. Prometheus must be really chained to his rock, and Dirce in very fact be tossed and gored by the wild bull; and Orpheus be torn to pieces by a real bear; and Icarus must really fly, even though he fall and be dashed to death; and Hercules must ascend the funeral pyre and there [Pg 144] be veritably burned alive; and slaves and criminals must play their parts heroically in gold and purple till the flames envelop them. ”

“ He returned with Scipio to Rome, where he did much to introduce Stoic doctrines and Greek philosophy. He had a number of distinguished Romans as pupils, amongst them Q. Mucius Scaevola the augur and Q. Aelius Tubero. After the murder of Scipio in 129, he resided by turns in Athens and Rome, but chiefly in Athens, where he succeeded Antipater of Tarsus as head of the Stoic school. The right of citizenship was offered him by the Athenians, but he refused it. His chief pupil in philosophy was Posidonius of Apamea. In his teaching he laid stress on ethics ”

“ And the dialogue De Amicitiâ is accordingly addressed with peculiar propriety to Atticus, who, as Cicero tells him in his dedication, could not fail to discover his own portrait in the delineation of [pg 263] a perfect friend. This treatise approaches nearer to dialogue than that De Senectute, for there is a story, with the circumstances of time and place. Fannius, the historian, and Mucius Scævola, the Augur, both sons-in-law of Lælius, paid him a visit immediately after the sudden and suspicious death of Scipio Africanus. ”

“ It was customary, therefore, for the young citizen to attach himself for a time to some older man, eminent in these lines or in some one of them, in order to gain an opportunity for observation and practical experience in the performance of duties that would sooner or later devolve upon him. So Cicero learned the civil law under Quintus Mucius Scaevola, the most eminent jurist of the time, and in later years the young Marcus Coelius Rufus in turn served the same voluntary apprenticeship (tīrōcinium forī) under Cicero. ”

“ In his de Officiis, [479] writing of the virtue of liberalitas, Cicero gives a list of men who had been munificent as aediles, including the elder and younger Crassus, Mucius Scaevola (a man, he says, of great self-restraint) , the two Lueulli, Hortensius, and Silanus; and adds that in his own consulship P. Lentulus outdid all his predecessors, and was imitated by Scaurus in 58 B.C. [480] Cicero himself had to undertake the Ludi Romani, Megalenses, and Florales in his aedileship ”

“ The second period, the learned and splendid age of jurisprudence, may be extended from the birth of Cicero to the reign of Severus Alexander. A system was formed, schools were instituted, books were composed, and both the living and the dead became subservient to the instruction of the student. The tripartite of Aelius Paetus, surnamed Catus, or the Cunning, was preserved as the oldest work of Jurisprudence. Cato the censor derived some additional fame from his legal studies, and those of his son: the kindred appellation of Mucius Scaevola was illustrated by three sages of the law ”

“ As he was a friend of Tiberius, it is probable that a Marcus Fulvius Flaccus is meant, who is mentioned in the Life of Caius.
[76] This was P. Mucius Scævola. His colleague L. Calpurnius Piso was conducting the war in Sicily against the slaves who had risen. The Senate, according to Appian (Civil Wars, i. 16) , was assembled in the Temple of Fides on the Capitol. The circumstances of the death of Tiberius are told by Appian (Civil Wars, i. 15. 16) , who states that there was a fight between the partisans of Tiberius and the other party before the Senate met. ”

“ For he had contracted an affinity with that accomplished Speaker Servius Galba above-mentioned, by giving his daughter in marriage to Galba's son; and being likewise himself the son of Mucius, and the brother of P. Scaevola, he had a fine opportunity at home (which he made the best use of) to gain a thorough knowledge of the Civil Law. He was a man of unusual application, and was much beloved by his fellow-citizens; being constantly employed either in giving his advice, or pleading causes in the Forum. ”

“ In fine, you are thought to be wise in this sense, that you regard all that appertains to your happiness as within your own soul, and consider the calamities to which man is liable as of no consequence in comparison with virtue. I am therefore asked, and so, I believe, is Scaevola, who is now with us, how you bear the death of Africanus ”

“ But while he was regarded as foremost among the jurists of his time, he professed himself less thoroughly versed in the laws relating to mortgages than two of his coevals, to whom he was wont to send those who brought cases of this class for his opinion or advice. He was remarkable for early rising, constant industry, and undeviating punctuality,—at the meetings of the Senate being always the first on the ground.
No man held a higher reputation than Scaevola for rigid and scrupulous integrity. ”

“ He was a great authority on law, and at an advanced age he gave instruction to Cicero and Atticus. He had a high appreciation of Marius, and when Sulla assembled the senate, to obtain from it a declaration that Marius was the enemy of his country, Scaevola refused his assent. He married Laelia (the daughter of Gaius Laelius, the friend of the younger Scipio) , by whom he had a son and two daughters, one of whom became the wife of Licinius Crassus the orator. Scaevola is one of the interlocutors in Cicero's De oratore, De amicitia and De republica. ”

“ One Scaevola was Pontifex Maximus, another was Augur; Cicero himself was Augur, so was Caesar. The two things were kept quite distinct. Philosophy did not influence political action in any way. It was simply a refuge for the mind, such as all thinking men must have, and which if not supplied by a true creed, will inevitably be sought in a false or imperfect one. And the noble doctrines professed by the great Greek schools were certainly far more worthy of the adhesion of such men as Scaevola and Laelius, than the worn-out cult which the popular ceremonial embodied. ”

“ Mucius disguised himself in an Etrurian helmet—a sort of Tuscan bonnet—and with a sword concealed under the folds of his ample Roman wrap-rascal, he arrived at Porsenna's camp, just as the salaries were being paid to the soldiers. While the troops were intent on drawing their pay, Mucius slily drew his sword, and seeing an individual rather handsomely dressed, rushed upon him to administer to him, with the weapon, a most unhandsome dressing. ”

“ And, by Hercules, I believe it is the case; nothing can be stripped cleaner than his kingdom, or be more needy than the king. Accordingly, I am thinking either of renouncing my guardianship, or, as Scaevola did on behalf of Glabrio, of stopping payment altogether—principal and interest alike. However, I have conferred the prefectures which I promised Brutus through you on M. Scaptius and L. Gavius, who were acting as Brutus's agents in the kingdom: for they were not carrying on business in my own province. ”

“ A young man named Caius Mucius determined to kill Lars Porsena. He succeeded in passing through the enemy’s lines and made his way into their camp. There he saw a man clad in purple whom he took to be Lars Porsena. In his heart he plunged the dagger he had hidden under the folds of his toga. The man fell dead. But he was not the King. Mucius was carried before Lars and to him he said, ‘I am a Roman, my name Caius Mucius. There are in Rome hundreds of young men resolved, as I was, to take your life or perish in the attempt. ”

“ At the end of the first dialogue, Scaevola, in order that strict dramatic propriety may be observed (see ad Att. iv. 16) , retires, and his place, in the two remaining colloquies, is supplied by Q. Lutatius Catulus, and his half-brother, C. Julius Caesar Strabo, both distinguished as public speakers, the former celebrated for the extreme purity of his diction, the latter for the pungency of his wit.
An animated debate first arises on the qualifications essential for pre-eminence in oratory. ”

“ The obstinacy of resolute impostors seems, indeed, capable of emulating the torture-proof perseverance of religious enthusiasts and such martyrs of patriotism as Mueius Scaevola or Grand Master Ruediger of the Teutonic Knights, who refused to reveal the hiding place of his companion even when his captors belabored him with red-hot irons. ”

“ But we cannot help admiring Scaevola for his patriotism, though we may not envy him his ethics. The state religion could never be supported on the arguments of expediency; [Pg 142] every one granted its expediency, and still it fell; its worst enemies, the politicians, granted it most of all, and they were the only ones who put the doctrine to any practical use. It was precisely this discovery of its expediency and its great practical value which caused its downfall. ”

“ Porsena entertained a hope that by continuing the siege he should take the city, when C. Mucius, a young nobleman, to whom it seemed a disgrace that the Roman people, when enslaved under kings, had never been confined within their walls in any war, nor by any enemy, should now when a free people be blocked up by these very Etrurians whose armies they had often routed, thinking that such indignity should be avenged by some great and daring effort, at first designed of his own accord to penetrate into the enemy's camp. ”

“ Dionysius makes Mucius an ingenious Greek, who terrifies good Porsenna and saves himself by a stratagem with a double result. In Livy Mucius is a hero. “Seized by the guards and brought before the king’s court, even then, in the midst of such dangers, he was more to be feared than to be frightened. ‘I am a Roman citizen,’ he said, ‘I am called C. Mucius, enemy. I wished to kill an enemy, and I am as ready to die as to kill. A Roman can dare all and suffer all. I am but the first to bring against thee their courage; behind me is a long train of men who seek the same honour. ”

“ But Porsenna laying close siege to the city, and a famine raging amongst the Romans, also a new army of the Tuscans making incursions into the country, Poplicola, a third time chosen consul, designed to make, without sallying out, his defense against Porsenna, but, privately stealing forth against the new army of the Tuscans, put them to flight, and slew five thousand. The story of Mucius is variously given; we, like others, must follow the commonly received statement. He was a man endowed with every virtue, but most eminent in war ”

“ As Crassus, therefore, in my mind, acted more prudently than Scaevola; (for the latter was very fond of pleading causes, in which he was certainly inferior to Crassus; whereas the former never engaged himself in an unequal competition with Scaevola, by assuming the character of a Civilian;) so Servius pursued a plan which sufficiently discovered his wisdom; for as the profession of a Pleader, and a Lawyer, are both of them held in great esteem, and give those who are masters of them the most extensive influence among their fellow-citizens ”

“ For Scaevola the double truth of Ennius has grown into a triple truth, and there [Pg 141] are no less than three distinct religions: the religion of poets, of philosophers, and of statesmen. The religion of the poets, by which he means the mythological treatment of the gods, he condemns as worthless because it tells a great many things about the gods which are not true and which are entirely unworthy of them. The religion of philosophers he does not consider suitable to the state, because it contains many things which are superfluous, and some which are injurious. ”