417 



SERVIUS, MAURUS HONORATUS. 



SERVIUS, TULLIUS. 



418 



perforated, but that the blood in the right ventricle communicates 

 with that in the left through the medium of the pulmonary artery, anc 

 the circulation through the lungs. But though ho formed a perfectly 

 correct conception of the pulmonary circulation, he was quite ignorant 

 of the greater circulation, or of the existence of any means by which 

 blood from the left ventricle is returned to the right ; nor does he 

 appear to have seen the necessity for any such provision. 



SE'RVIUS, MAU'RUS HONORA'TUS, a Roman grammarian. 

 The time at which he lived is not quite certain, for some writers place 

 him in the reign of Valentiuian, and others in that of Hadrian; but 

 it is almost beyond doubt that ho lived towards the close of the 4th 

 century, perhaps in the reign of Theodosius I. (Macrob., ' Sat.,' i. 2.) 



The principal works of Servius are his Commentaries on the JEneid, 

 the Qeorgics, and the Eclogues of Virgil. These commentaries are 

 not only useful for a correct understanding of the poems of Virgil, 

 but they are rendered still more valuable to us by the vast stores of 

 learning which their author possessed ; they contain information on a 

 variety of subjects connected with the history, antiquities, and religion 

 of the Romans, and of which we should otherwise be totally ignorant. 

 Many valuable fragments of other writings, whose works are now lost, 

 ure preserved in the commentaries of Servius. It is however to be 

 lamented that these commentaries have come down to us in a very 

 interpolated condition, so that they cannot be used without great 

 caution. Besides these commentaries, we possess of Servius three 

 smaller grammatical works: 'In Secundam Donati.Editionem Inter- 

 pretatio,' ' De Ratione Ultimarum Syllabarum Liber ad Aquilinum,' 

 and ' Ars de Pedibus Versuum, sive de Centum Metris.' 



The commentaries on Virgil are printed in several of the early 

 editions of this poet ; but the best modern editions are that of Bur- 

 mann, in. his edition of Virgil, and a separate one by H. A. Lion, under 

 the title ' Servii Mauri Cornmentarii in Virgiliurn ; ad fidem cod. 

 guelferbyt. aliorumque recens. et potior. var. lect. indicibusque copio- 

 siss. iustruxit, &c. ;' 2 vols. 8vo, Gottingen, 1825-26. Compare Bur- 

 mann, 'Praefat. ad Virg.,' p. ******; Heyne, 'De Antiquis Virg. Inter- 

 pret.,' p. 536, &c. ; Fabricius, 'Biblioth. Lat.,' i. p. 319. The three 

 smaller works of Servius are printed in ' Putschii Grammatici Latini.' 



SE'RVIUS SULPI'CIUS RUFUS. [SULPICIUS.] 



SE'RVIUS TU'LLIUS, the sixth king of Rome, reigned from 

 B.C. 578 to 534. The history of his birth was handed down by 

 tradition in three different ways. The most marvellous and probably 

 the most ancient legend represents him as the son of Ocrisia, a slave 

 of Queen Tanaquil, and of a god, who according to some was Vulcan, 

 but according to others, one of the household gods of the royal 

 family. (Ovid, 'Fast.,' vi. 625, &c. ; Dionys., iv. p. 207; Sylburg.) 

 A second legend describes his mother as a slave of the Etruscan town 

 of Tarquiuii, and his father as a client of Tarquinius Priscus ; and 

 Servius himself, according to the same account, was in his youth a 

 slave. (Cic., ' De Republ.,' ii. 21.) The third account, which however 

 eeems to be merely an arbitrary interpretation of the second, made 

 with the intention of giving to the story a somewhat more probable 

 appearance, represents Servius Tullius as the son of a man of the 

 same name, who was of royal descent, lived at Corniculum, one of the 

 Latin towns, and was slain when his native place was taken by the 

 Romans. His wife Ocrisia, then in a state of pregnancy, was conveyed 

 to Rome and assigned to Queen Tanaquil, who, considering her rank, 

 soon restored her to liberty and treated her with great regard. (Liv., 

 i. 39 ; Dionys., iv. p. 206.) Ocrisia was delivered of a son, whom she 

 called Serviua Tullius, after the name of her husband. One day, con- 

 tinues the story, when the boy was asleep, his head was seen sur- 

 rounded with names. The queen, being informed of the wondrous 

 sight, said that the child was destined to do great things, and forbade 

 the flames to be extinguished ; when the child awoke the flame disap- 

 peared. He was henceforth brought up and educated as the king's 

 own child. If in the course of his education he became, as Cicero 

 supposes, acquainted with the affairs of Greece, this would in some 

 measure account for the analogy between the constitution of Solon 

 and that which Servius afterwards gave to the Romans. Fortune, who 

 had so signally favoured Servius in his childhood, continued her par- 

 tiality for him, raised him to the highest honours that man can attain, 

 and even made him the object of her love. (Ovid., ' Fast.,' vi. 570, 

 &c.) He made a grateful return by dedicating to her a temple outside 

 of the city. (Varro, 'De Ling. Lat.,' v., p. 56, ed Bipont.) 



When Servius Tullius had grown up to manhood, he distinguished 

 himself in several battles against the Etruscans and Sabines, and he 

 was also a useful counsellor in the affairs of the administration. The 

 king not only rewarded his services with the hand of one of his 

 daughters, but in his old age frequently entrusted him with the 

 management of his private as well as public affairs, and in the dis- 

 charge of these duties Servius evinced such wisdom and justice that 

 hs soon became the favourite of the people. When the king was 

 murdered by the sons of Ancus Marcius, and Tanaquil concealed his 

 death from the people, they willingly submitted to the regency of 

 Servius, whom the king was said to have appointed to govern in his 

 stead until his recovery, which probably means that he was appointed 

 cuatos urbis (praefectus urbi), hi which capacity he had a right to hold 

 the comitia for a new election, as he afterwards did (populum consuluit 

 de se). When the death of the king became known, Servius was, as 

 Livy (i. 41) says, made king by the senate, but without a decree of 



BIOG. DIV. VOL. v. 



the populus ; but, according to Cicero and Dionysius (iv., p. 218), he 

 found his chief support in the populus, who gave him the imperium 

 by a lex curiata. The sons of Ancus Marcius, seeing their hopes frus- 

 trated, went into exile, and Servius Tullius, to prevent any hostile 

 feeling on the part of Lucius and Aruns Tarquinius, the sons of his 

 predecessor, gave them his two daughters in marriage. The incon- 

 sistency of this part of the legend with chronology has been pointed 

 out by Niebuhr. 



After Servius had thus established himself on the throne, he made 

 a successful war against the Veientines and some other Etruscan 

 towns, which Dionysius represents as a war with all Etruria. This is 

 the only war which is said to have occurred during his reign, which, 

 like that of Numa Pompilius, was a reign of peace. The most memo- 

 rable events of the reign of Servius Tullius are his fortification and 

 extension of the city, and the new constitution which he is said to 

 have given to the Roman state. Several of the Latin towns already 

 belonged to Rome, and had grown up with it into one nation, and 

 this nation was leagued with the other independent Latins. Servius 

 effected a federal union among these nations, and induced the Latins, 

 who had hitherto held their general meetings at the fountain of Feren- 

 tina, to build at Rome, on the Aventine, a temple of Diana, as the 

 common property of the Latins and Romans. The Latins agreed, and 

 this was on their part a tacit acknowledgment of the supremacy of 

 Rome. (Liv., i. 45 ; Dionys., iv., p. 230.) The Sabines appear to 

 have likewise been included in this confederacy, and to have joined 

 the Latins and Romans in the worship at the common sanctuary of 

 Diana ; for the story is, that a Sabine attempted to gain the supre- 

 macy for his own nation : he possessed among his cattle a cow of 

 extraordinary size, and the soothsayers declared that the government 

 should belong to that nation whose citizen should sacrifice this cow to 

 Diana on the Aventine. He therefore took the animal at an opportune 

 time to Rome. But the Roman priest, who had been informed of the 

 prophecy, reprimanded the Sabine for attempting to sacrifice with 

 unclean hands, and bade him go down to the Tiber and wash them. 

 The Sabine obeyed, and the Roman in the meanwhile sacrificed the 

 cow to Diana. According to Livy it was nob until this time that the 

 populus unanimously declared Servius their king. 



But although Servius was a favourite of the people, a storm was 

 gathering over his head, which ultimately terminated his life in the 

 tragic manner so inimitably described by Livy (i. 47). Lucius Tar- 

 quinius, the son of Tarquinius Priscus, had never given up the hope 

 of occupying the throne of his father ; and stimulated by Tullia, the 

 wife of his brother Aruns, he agreed with her to murder his wife and 

 his brother, and to unite himself with her, that thus they might be 

 able the more energetically to prosecute their ambitious and criminal 

 signs. Lucius, now urged on by his unnatural wife, one day ap- 

 peared in the senate with the badges of royalty. As soon as the 

 aged king heard of the rebellious act, he hastened to the curia, and 

 rebuked the traitor, but he was thrown down the stone steps of the 

 curia, and on his way home he was murdered by the servants of his 

 son-in-law. His body was left lying in its blood. Tullia, the wife of 

 Lucius, anxious to learn the issue of his undertaking, rode in her 

 chariot to the curia ; but her more than brutal joy at his success 

 induced even Tarquin to send her home. On her way thither she 

 found the corpse of her father, and ordered her servant to drive over 

 it! The place where this took place was ever after termed the Vicus 

 Sceleratus. (Ovid., 'Fast.,' vL 598; Dionys., iv. p. 242 ; Varro, 'De 

 Ling. Lat.,' iv., p. 44.) 



Such are the legends which were current among the Romans about 

 Servius Tullius ; and although they may be based on some historical 

 groundwork, yet in the form in which they are handed down they are 

 little more than fiction. The existence of a king, Servius Tullius, 

 cannot however be denied. The Etruscan traditions, as we learn from 

 an ancient inscription (ap. Gruter, p. Dil.) which contained a speech 

 of the Emperor Claudius, stated that Servius, originally called by the 

 Etruscan name of Mastarna, was a follower of Cseles Vivenna; and 

 that after being overwhelmed by disasters, he quitted Etruria with 

 the remains of the army of Caoles, and went to Rome, where he 

 occupied the Cselian hill, and afterwards obtained the kingly power, 

 (See Niebuhr, ' Hist, of Rome,' i. p. 381, &c.) But it is not im- 

 probable that this version of the story merely arose from the circum- 

 stance of Servius being received at Rome among the Luceres or 

 Etruscans (Gottling, ' Gesch. d. Rom. Staats," p. 231), for two other 

 legends describe him as a Latin ; and the whole spirit of his legisla- 

 tion seems to warrant the conclusion that the man who devised the 

 constitution ascribed to him could not have been an Entruscan, but 

 must have been a Latin. How much of the tragic story of his death 

 may be historical cannot be decided, nor is it of great importance. 

 This however seems to be clear, that at the end of the career of 

 Servius a counter-revolution took place, which frustrated all the beue- 

 icial workings of his new constitution, and showed its fruits ha the 

 iyrannical rule of his successor. 



The constitution of Servius Tullius was always looked upon by the 

 Romans as the basis of their civil and political institutions, and there 

 s no doubt that in subsequent ages much more was attributed to him 

 ;han he actually did, and that the plebeians in particular considered 

 lim as the great protector of their order, who had granted them 

 almost all the rights which they afterwards regained one by one in 



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