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Updated: June 13, 2025
Serapion looked lovingly after her; then he took two wooden tablets faced with wax out of his chest, and, with a metal style, he wrote on one a short letter to his brother, and on the other a longer one to the Roman, which ran as follows: "Serapion, the recluse of Serapis, to Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, the Roman.
The chief promoter of these affronts was Publius Nasica, who openly abandoned himself to his feelings of hatred against Tiberius, being a large holder of the public lands, and not a little resenting now to be turned out of them by force.
Nasica was an embarrassment to the senate and he might prove a convenient scapegoat. It was desirable that he should be at once rewarded and removed; and the opportunity for an honourable banishment was easily found. The impending war with Aristonicus necessitated the sending of a commission to Asia, and Nasica was included amongst the five members of this embassy.
The consul Scaevola was urged to have the traitor put to death at once. When that temperate man, by no means averse to reform in itself, indignantly refused the equally irrational and barbarous request, the consular Publius Scipio Nasica, a harsh and vehement aristocrat, summoned those who shared his views to arm themselves as they could and to follow him.
There was honour in the possession of such a post and wealth to be gained by its tenure; but the aristocracy had eventually to pay a still higher price for keeping Nasica beyond the borders of Italy. When the chief pontificate was vacated by the fall of Crassus in 130 B.C., the refugee was invested with the office so ardently sought by the nobles of Rome.
But the memory of the central act of the ghastly tragedy on the Capitoline hill could not be so easily obliterated, and the chief actor was everywhere received with lowered brows and ill-omened cries. It was superstition as well as hatred that sharpened the popular feeling against Nasica. A man was walking the streets of Rome whose hands were stained by a tribune's blood.
But Nasica, rising from his seat, "Since the consul," said he, "regards not the safety of the commonwealth, let everyone who will defend the laws, follow me." He, then, casting the skirt of his gown over his head, hastened to the capitol; those who bore him company, wrapped their gowns also about their arms. and forced their way after him.
And even as to the horrors attaching to his restoration, the proscriptions and confiscations are they, compared with the doings of Nasica, Popillius, Opimius, Caepio and so on, anything else than the legal embodiment of the customary oligarchic mode of getting rid of opponents?
Tiberius, it appears, in ignorance of this, had twice used the same building before announcing the new consuls. Now, understanding his error, he referred the matter to the senate: nor did the senate neglect this minute fault, but soon wrote expressly of it to Scipio Nasica and Caius Marcius; who, leaving their provinces and without delay returning to Rome, laid down their magistracy.
A great slaughter took place among the others as they fled, so that the plain and the skirts of the hills were covered with corpses, and the stream of the river Leukus ran red with blood even on the day after the battle; for, indeed, it is said that more than twenty-five thousand men perished. Of the Romans there fell a hundred, according to Poseidonius, but Nasica says only eighty.
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