the son of Quintus, was a contemporary and friend of Cicero, and of about the same age ( Cic. Brut. 40) : Cicero was born B. C. 106. The name Lemonia is the ablative case, and indicates the tribe to which Servius belonged. (Cic. Philipp. 9.7.) According to Cicero, the father of Servius was of the equestrian order. (Cic. pro Mur. 7.) Servius first devoted himself to oratory, and he studied his art with Cicero in his youth, and also at Rhodus B. C. 78, for he accompanied Cicero there (Brut. 41). It is said that he was induced to study law by a reproof of Q. Mucius Scaevola, the pontifex, whose opinion Servius had asked on a legal question, and as the pontifex saw that Servius did not understand his answer, he said that " it was disgraceful for a patrician and a noble, and one who pleaded causes, to be ignorant of the law with which he had to be engaged." (Dig. 1. tit. 2. s. 2.43.) Henceforth jurisprudence became his study, in which he surpassed his teachers, L. Balbus and Aquillius Gallus, and obtained a reputation in no respect inferior to that of the pontifex who reproved him. As an orator he had hardly a superior, unless it were Cicero himself.
Servius was successively quaestor of the district or provincia of Ostia, in B. C. 74 (Cic. pro Mur. 8); aedilis curulis, B. C. 69; and during his praetorship, B. C. 65, he had the quaestio peculatus (pro Mur. 20). In his first candidateship for the consulship, B. C. 63, Servius was rejected, and Servius and Cato joined in prosecuting L. Murena, who was elected. Murena was defended by Cicero, Hortensius, and M. Crassus (Oratio pro Murena). In B. C. 52, as interrex, he named Pompeius Magnus sole consul. In B. C. 51, he was elected consul with M. Claudius Marcellus; and on this occasion Cato was an unsuccessful candidate. (Plut. Cato, 49.) There is no mention of any decided part that Servius took in the war between Caesar and Pompeius, but he appears to have been a partizan of Caesar, who, after the battle of Pharsalia, made him proconsul of Achaea, B. C. 46 or 45; and Sulpicius held this office at the time when Cicero addressed to him a letter, which is still extant (ad Fam. 4.3). Marcellus, the former colleague of Servius in the consulship, was murdered at Peiraeeus during the government of Servius, who buried him in the gymnasium of the Academia, where a marble monument to his memory was raised. The death of Marcellus is told in a letter of Servius to Cicero.
In B. C. 43 he was sent by the senate, with L. Philippus and L. Calpurnius Piso, on a mission to M. Antonius, who was besieging Decimus Brutus, in Mutina. Servius, who was in bad health, died in the camp of Antonius. Cicero, in the senate, pronounced a panegyric on his distinguished friend, and on his motion a public funeral was decreed, and a bronze statue was erected to the memory of Servius, and appropriately placed in front of the rostra. The statue was still there when Pomponius wrote. (Cic. Philipp. 9.7; Pomponius, Dig. 1. tit. 2. s. 2.43.)
Servius had a wife named Postumia, and he left a son, Servius.
Our chief information about Servius is derived from Cicero, who attributes his great superiority as a lawyer to his study of philosophy, not that philosophy itself made him a distinguished lawyer, but the discipline, to which his mind had been subjected, developed and sharpened his natural talents. In a passage in his Brutus (100.41) Cicero has, in few words and in a masterly manner, shown in what the excellence of Servius consisted. His
There are extant in the collection of Cicero's Epistles (ad Fam. iv.), two letters from Sulpicius to Cicero, one of which is the well-known letter of consolation on the death of Tullia, the daughter of the orator. The same book contains several letters from Cicero to Sulpicius. He is also said to have written some erotic poetry. (Ovid, Ov. Tr. 2.1, 141; Plin. Ep. 5.3.)
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