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Updated: June 20, 2025
It is possible that he now and then misapplied his pen to abuse his own enemies or those of his friends, for we know that the honourable Mucius Scaevola was violently attacked by him; and there is a story that being once lampooned in the theatre in a libellous manner, the poet sued his detractor, but failed in obtaining damages, on the ground that he himself had done the same to others.
Lastly, he supported, at all events, the true meaning and spirit of a will, against the literal construction: justly observing, that there would be an endless cavilling about words, not only in wills, but in all other legal deeds, if the real intention of the party was to be disregarded: and hinting very smartly, that his friend Scaevola had assumed a most unwarrantable degree of importance, if no person must afterwards presume to indite a legacy, but in the musty form which he himself might please to prescribe.
This Mucius is called Scaevola by all writers, but Athenodorus, the son of Sandon, in his book which is dedicated to Octavia, the sister of Caesar Augustus, says that he was also named Posthumus.
For as to the elegant language of Scaevola, we have sufficient proofs of it in the Orations he has left behind him." "For my part," said I, "the Oration I was speaking of, on Caepio's case, has been my pattern, and my tutoress, from my very childhood.
As the sole civil profession to which boys of high family would aspire was that of the bar, a father would send his son during that interval to a distinguished advocate to be taken as a pupil. Cicero himself was thus apprenticed to Mucius Scaevola the augur: and in the same way the young Caelius, as soon as he had taken his toga virilis, was brought by his father to Cicero.
The first great lawyer who left behind him important works was Q. Mucius Scaevola, who wrote a treatise in eighteen books on the civil law. "He was," says Cicero, "the most eloquent of jurists and the most learned of orators." This work, George Long thinks, had a great influence on contemporaries and on subsequent jurists, who followed it as a model.
Instances of this are found in SP. MUMMIUS, AEMILIUS LEPIDUS, C. FANNIUS, and the Augur MUCIUS SCAEVOLA, and perhaps, though it is difficult to say, in Carbo and the two Gracchi. These are the next names that claim our notice. In his time the quaestiones perpetuae were constituted, and thus he had an immense opportunity of enlarging his forensic experience.
On the other hand, a friend of your own family, Scaevola, Gains Blossius of Cumae, took a different course. I was acting as assessor to the consuls Laenas and Rupilius to try the conspirators, and Blossius pleaded for my pardon on the ground that his regard for Tiberius Gracchus had been so high that he looked upon his wishes as law.
It is the only remedy that supplies what all systems lack, however they arrange the decrees. These thoughts have already been favoured by St. Augustine, and one may say of Eve what the poet said of the hand of Mucius Scaevola: Si non errasset, fecerat illa minus.
"Indeed," said Brutus, "though I always thought I sufficiently understood the character of Scaevola, by the account I had heard of him from C. Rutilius, whose company I frequented for the sake of his acquaintance with him, I had not the least idea of his merit as an orator.
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