Quintus Mucius Scaevola Pontifex
Roman politician and jurist
117 BCE to 82 BCE
Quintus Mucius Scaevola Pontifex (died 82 BCE), the son of Publius Mucius Scaevola (consul in 133 BCE and also Pontifex Maximus) is a politician of the Roman Republic and an important early authority on Roman law.
He is credited with founding the study of law as a systematic discipline.
He is nephew and son of two men elected Pontifices Maximi, and is himself elected chief priest of Rome.
He is probably also the first Roman Pontifex Maximus to be murdered publicly, in Rome in the very Temple of the Vestals, signifying a breakdown of historical norms and religious taboos in the Republic.
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Dissatisfaction in the Roman province of Asia has given new hope to Mithridates VI of Pontus.
Ineffectively organized after annexation and corrupt in its cities' internal administration, it had soon been overrun with Italian businessmen and Roman tax collectors.
When the Senate realizes the danger, it sends its most distinguished jurist, Quintus Mucius Scaevola, who has just completed his consulate, on an unprecedented mission in 94 to reorganize Asia.
He takes with him as his senior officer.
Publius Rutilius Rufus—jurist, stoic philosopher, and former consul —whose consular main achievements concerned the discipline of the army and the introduction of an improved system of drill.
Publius Rutilius Rufus, who had started his military career in 134 BCE, as a member of the staff of Scipio Africanus Minor during the Numantine War, later became a legate of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus in the campaign against Jugurtha of Numidia of 109 BCE, along with Gaius Marius.
He distinguished himself in the battle of the Muthul, where he faced a charge by the foe Bomilcar and managed to capture or maim most of the Numidian war elephants.
He was in 105 BCE elected to the consulship as a senior partner of Gnaeus Mallius Maximus.
His main achievements concerned the discipline of the army and the introduction of an improved system of drill.
Subsequently, he served as legate to Quintus Mucius Scaevola, governor of Asia.
Scaevola, completing his reorganization of Asia, returns to Rome, leaving in Pergamon Rufus, who firmly applies the new principles they have established.
This causes an outcry from businessmen, whose profits Scaevola has kept within bounds.
Rufus, by assisting his superior in his efforts to protect the provincials from the extortions of the publicani, or farmers of taxes, has incurred the hatred of the equestrian order, to which the publicani belong.
He is charged in 92 BCE with the very offense of extortion over those whom he had done his utmost to prevent.
The charge is widely known to be false, but as the juries at this time are chosen from the equestrian order, his condemnation is only to be expected, as the order bears a grudge against him.
Rufus is defended by his nephew Gaius Aurelius Cotta and accepts the verdict with the resignation befitting a Stoic and pupil of Panaetius.
He retires to Mytilene, and afterwards to Smyrna, where he is to spend the rest of his life (possibly as an act of defiance against his prosecutors: he is welcomed with honor into the very city he had been prosecuted for allegedly looting).
The two forces meet on November 1 of 82 BCE, at the battle of the Colline Gate, just outside of Rome.
The battle is a huge and desperate final struggle with both sides certainly believing their own victory will save Rome.
Sulla is pushed hard on his left flank with the situation so dangerous that he and his men are pushed right up against the city walls.
Crassus' forces, fighting on Sulla's right, however, manage to turn the opposition's flank and drive them back.
The Samnites and the Marian forces fold up and break.
In the end, over fifty thousand combatants lose their lives and Sulla stands alone as the master of Rome.
Having observed the violent results of radical popular reforms, Sulla is naturally conservative.
As such, he seeks to strengthen the aristocracy, and by extension the Senate.
At the end of 82 BCE or the beginning of 81 BCE, the Senate appoints Sulla dictator legibus faciendis et reipublicae constituendae causa ("dictator for the making of laws and for the settling of the constitution").
The decision is subsequently ratified by the "Assembly of the People", with no limit set on his time in office.
Sulla has total control of the city and republic of Rome, except for Hispania (which Marius's general Quintus Sertorius has established as an independent state).
This unusual appointment (used hitherto only in times of extreme danger to the city, such as the Second Punic War, and then only for six-month periods) represents an exception to Rome's policy of not giving total power to a single individual.
Sulla can be seen as setting the precedent for Julius Caesar's dictatorship, and the eventual end of the Republic under Augustus.