172 
pltny's natural history. 
[Book VII. 
gained two spoils, and was the first of equestrian rank who re- 
ceived a mural crown ; he also gained six civic crowns, thirty- 
seven donations, and had twenty-three scars on the fore-part of 
his body. He saved the life of P. Servilius, the master of the 
horse, receiving wounds on the same occasion in the shoulders 
and the thigh. Besides all this, unaided, he saved the Capitol, 
when it was attacked by the Gauls, and through that, the 
state itself ; a thing that would have been the most glorious 
act of all, if he had not so saved it, in order that he might, as 
its king, become its master.^* But in all matters of this nature, 
although valour may effect much, fortune does still more. 
Iso person living, in my opinion at least, ever excelled M. 
Sergius,^^ although his great-grandson, Catiline, tarnished the 
honours of his name. In his second campaign he lost his right 
hand ; and in two campaigns he was wounded three and twenty 
times ; so much so, that he could scarcely use either his hands 
or his feet; still, attended by a single slave, he afterwards 
served in many campaigns, though but an invalided soldier. 
He was twice taken prisoner by Hannibal, (for it was with no 
ordinary enemy that he would engage,) and twice did he escape 
from his captivity, after having been kept, without a single 
day's intermission, in chains and fetters for twenty months. 
On four occasions he fought with his left hand alone, two horses 
being slain under him. He had a right hand made of iron, 
and attached to the stump, after which he fought a battle, and 
raised the siege of Cremona, defended Placentia, and took 
twelve of the enemy's camps in Gaul. All this we learn from 
an oration of his, which he delivered when, in his prsetorship, 
his colleagues attempted to exclude him from the sacred rites, 
on the ground of his infirmities.^^ What heaps upon heaps of 
crowns would he have piled up, if he had only had other ene- 
mies ! For, in matters of this nature, it is of the first impor- 
tance to consider upon w^hat times in especial the valour of 
We have an account of the victories, honours, and unfortunate fate of 
Manlius in Livy, B. vi. c. 14 — 20. In enumerating the honours conferred 
upon him, the numbers are given somewhat differently in c. 20 ; thirty 
spoils of enemies slain, forty donations from the generals, two mural and 
eight civic crowns. — B. 
95 M. Sergius Silus, He was one of the city praetors b,c. 197. 
9^ Among the Jews and other nations of antiquity, it was considered an 
essential point for the priests to be without blemish, perfect and free from 
disease. — B. 
