S E R 
S fe R 
SE'RVING-MAID, s. A female servant.—They never 
acknowledged her mistress-ship over them, or themselves to 
be her serving-maids. Bp. Bull. 
SERVING-MALLET, a cylindrical piece of wood with 
a handle in the middle, used for serving rope. 
SEUVING-MAN, s. A menial servant. 
Just in the nick ; the cook knock’d thrice. 
And all the waiters in a trice 
His summons did obey; 
Each serving-man, with dish in hand, 
March’d boldly up, like our train’d band, 
Presented and away. Suckling. 
SERVISTAN, a village of Persia, in the province of Fars; 
35 miles south-east of Schiras. 
SERVITA, a settlement of South America, in the king¬ 
dom of New Granada, and provinces of Pamplona. It con¬ 
tains 400 whites, and 200 Indians. 
SERVITES, an order of religious, so denominated from 
their vowing a peculiar attachment to the service of the Virgin. 
The order was founded by seven Florentine merchants, 
who, about the year 1233, began to live in community on 
Mount Senar, two leagues from Florence. 
SERVITIIS Acquietandis, a writ judicial that lies for a 
man distrained for services to one, when he owes and per¬ 
forms them to another, for the acquittal of such services. 
SE'RVITOR, s. [serviteur, Fr.] Servant; attendant. 
A word obsolete 
Thus are poor servitors, 
When others sleep upon their quiet beds, 
Constrain’d to watch in darkness, rain and cold. Shalcspeare. 
One who acts under another; a follower.—Our Norman 
conqueror gave away to his servitors the lands and posses¬ 
sions of such as did oppose his invasion. Davies. —One 
who professes duty and obedience. 
My noble queen, let former grudges pass, 
And henceforth I am thy true servitor. Shalcspeare. 
One of the lowest order in the university of Oxford; si¬ 
milar to the sizer in that of Cambridge.—His learning is 
much of a size with his birth and education; no more of 
either than what a poor hungry servitor can be expected to 
bring with him from his college. Sioift. 
SERVITORS of Bills, denote such servants or mes¬ 
sengers of the marshal of the King’s Bench, as were sent 
abroad with bills or writs, to summon men to that court. 
They are now commonly called tip-staves. 
SE'RVITORSHIP, s. Office of a servitor.—Dr. John¬ 
son, by his interest with Dr. Adams, master of Pembroke 
College, Oxford, where he was educated for some time, ob¬ 
tained a servitorship for young M'Aulay. Boswell. 
SE'RVITUDE, s. [ servitude , Fr., servitus, Lat.] Sla¬ 
very ; state of a slave ; dependance. 
You would have sold your king to slaughter, 
His princes and his peers to servitude. 
His subjects to oppression and contempt. 
Unjustly thou deprav’st it with the name 
Of servitude, to serve whom God ordains. 
Or nature; God and nature bid the same. 
When he who rules is worthiest. 
Servants collectively. Not in use. 
After him a cumbrous train 
Of herds, and flocks, and numerous servitude. Milton. 
Under the declension of the Roman empire, a new kind 
of servitude was introduced, different from that of the ancient 
Romans: it consisted in leaving the lands of subjugated 
nations to the first owners, upon condition of certain rents, 
and servile offices, to be paid in acknowledgment. Hence the 
names of servi censiti, and ascriptitii, and addicti glebai; 
some of which were taxable at the reasonable discretion of 
the lord; others at a certain rate agreed on ; and others 
were mainmortable, who, having no legitimate children, 
could not make a will to above the value of five-pence, the 
lord being heir of all the rest; and others were prohibited 
marrying, or going to live out of the lordship. Most of 
63 
which services still subsist in one province or other of 
France; though they are all abolished in England. Such, 
however, was the original of our tenures, &c. 
SERVITZA, a large village of European Turkey, in 
Thessaly, the chief place of a district of the same name, 
stretching along a coast of the gulf of Salonica, to the north 
of Mount Olympus. It is a commercial place, being one of 
the chief points of communication between Larissa and Sa¬ 
lonica ; 40 miles north-by-east of Larissa. 
SERVIUS (Maurus-IIonoratus), a grammarian and critic, 
who flourished in the reigns of Arcadius and Honorius, is 
principally known by his Commentaries on Virgil, which, 
however, are considered rather as a collection of ancient 
remarks and criticisms on that poet than as made by himself. 
They contain many valuable notices of the geography and 
arts of antiquity. 
SERVIUS (Sulpicius Rufus), an eminent Roman jurist 
and statesman, was descended from the illustrious patrician 
family of Sulpicii. He was contemporary with Cicero, 
and bom probably about a century before the birth of 
Christ. He cultivated polite literature from a very early 
period, especially philosophy and poetry, and wrote some 
pieces in the latter class, which were marked with the licen¬ 
tiousness of the time. He bore arms in the Marsic war; 
but finding himself better pleased with the arts of peace, he 
appeared a pleader at the bar in the 25th year of his age. 
The professions of advocate and lawyer were then so distinct, 
that the former were accustomed to consult jurists upon all 
difficult points. Servius having once applied for that pur¬ 
pose to Quintus Mucius, a very eminent lawyer, the latter 
perceiving that Servius did not comprehend his explanations, 
asked him if it were not a shame that he, a patrician and 
pleader, should be ignorant of the law upon which he was 
frequently called to speak. This reproof is said to have 
had such an effect upon him, that Servius quilted the bar, 
and gave all his attention to legal studies; and such was 
his success, that Cicero said of him, “ If all, in every age, 
who in this city have acquired a knowledge of the law, were 
brought together, they would not be to be compared with 
Sulpicius Servius;” and he further adds, that, “he was 
not less the oracle of justice than of the law: he always 
referred to principles of equity and obvious interpretation 
what he deduced from the civil code, and was less desirous 
of finding grounds for actions than of settling disputes.” 
There was a great intimacy formed between these two 
personages, and there are several letters extant from Cicero to 
Sulpitius, and two from Sulpicius to Cicero, of which one is 
a well-known consolatory epistle on the death of Tullia. 
When Caesar was taken off he acted with the party who 
aimed at the restoration of public liberty. During the siege 
of Modena, by Mark Antony, he was urged by the senate to 
undertake a legation to him, which, after pleading his age 
and infirmities, he accepted: but he foresaw it would be 
fatal to him, and he died in Antony’s camp in the year 43 
B. C. Cicero’s ninth Philippic is entirely employed in 
pleading for a brass statue to the memory of this excellent 
man. Servius was author of a great number of volumes on 
legal topics, none of which have been preserved ; but quota¬ 
tions from some of them are extant in A. Gellius. 
SERVIUS (Tullius), the sixth king of Rome: see Rome. 
SERULA, the name of a web-footed sea-bird, a kind of 
mergus, very common about Venice, and called by Mr. Ray 
mergus cirratus fuscus, the brown-crested, or lesser-toothed 
diver, and supposed to be the anas longirostra, or long- 
beaked duck of Gesner. This is the red-breasted merganser 
of Pennant. 
SE'RUM, s. The thin and watery part that separates from 
the rest in any liquor, as in milk the whey from the cream. 
—’1 he part of the blood, which in coagulation separates 
from the crassamentum or grume. 
SERVOLO, St., or S r. Serf, a maritime village of Aus¬ 
trian Illyria, in Carniola; 4 miles south-east of Trieste. 
Here is made a large quantity of bay salt 
SERVONG, a town on the north coast of Sumatra. I,at. 
5. 3. N. long. 96. 18. W. 
SERWELL, 
Shalcspeare. 
Milton. 
