Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/721

Rh LAELIUS. for a deliberative assembly than for tlie tumult of the forum. Cicero, indeed {/Jrut. 21), — and his censure is osnfirmed by the author of the dialogue De Causis Corruptae Eloque7itiae (25) — complains of a certain harshness and crudity in the diction of Laelius. The grammarians resorted to his writings for archaisms (Festus, s. v. Satura ; Nonius, s. v. Samiwn), and he may have shown habits of study rather than of business. But the defect was per- haps as much in the organ he employed as in Laelius himself. The Latin tongue was yet in the bondage of the old Saturnian forms (comp. Varr. R. R. i. 2) ; and had not acquired the ductility and copiousness it possessed in Cicero's age. A fragment of the younger Scipio's orations, preserved by Macrobius (Sutum. ii. 10), will aiford a notion of the language of Laelius. The titles of the following orations of Laelius have been preserved: — 1. De Collcgiis, delivered by Laelius when praetor, b, c. 145. It was directed against the rogation of C. Licinius Crassus, then tribune of the plebs, who proposed to transfer the election of the augurs from the college to the people in their tribes. The bill was rejected throxigh liaelius' eloquence. (Cic. B7-ut. 21, de Amic. 25, de Repuh. vi. 2, de Nat. Deor. iii. 2, 1 7, where it is described as aureola oratiuncula ; Nonius, s. v. Samium.) 2. Pro PvLUcaiiis^'B.c. 139. Laelius, after twice pleading in behalf of the revenue-con- tractors, resigned their cause to his rival C. Servius Galba, since it seemed to require a more acrimonious style than his own. (Cic. Brut. 22.) 3. Dissuasio Legk Papiriae, B.C. 131, against the law of C. Papirius Carbo, which enacted that a tribune, whose office had expired, might be re-elected as often as the people thought advisable. Scipio African us the younger supported, and C. Gracchus opposed Laelius in this debate. (Cic. de Amic. 25 ; Liv. Epit. lix.) 4. Pro se. The date and immediate occasion of this speech are uncertain ; but it was probably in reply to Carbo or Gracchus. An extract from it seems to have once been read in Festus (s. V. Satura; corap. Sallust. Jug. 29.) 5. Laudationes P. Africani mirioris, written after B.C. 129. These were mortuary orations, which Laelius, after the manner of Isaeus and the Greek rhetoricians, composed for other speakers. Q. Tu- bero, the nephew of Africanus (Cic. de Oral. ii. 84), delivered one, and Q. Fab. Maximus, brother of the deceased, the other of these orations, at Scipio's funeral. (Schol. Bob. pro Milon. p. 283, Orelli ; comp. Cic. pro Muraen. 36.) Laelius is the principal interlocutor in Cicero's dialogue De Amicitia; one of the speakers in the De Senectute, and in the De Republica, maintains the reality of justice against the sceptical acade- mician Philus. His domestic life is pleasingly de- scribed by Cicero {de Orat. ii. 6) and by Horace {Sat ii. 1. 65 — 74). He seems to have had a country house at Formiae (Cic. de Rep. i. 39). His two daughters were married, the one to Q. Mucius Scaevola, the augur, the other to C. Fannius Strabo {de Amic. 8). Of his wit and playfulness — hilaritas {de Off. i. 30), only two specimens have been transmitted {de Orat. ii. 71 ; Sen. Nat. Quaest. vi. 32). The opinion of his worth seems to have been universal, and it is one of Seneca's injunctions to his friend Lucilins " to live like Laelius." (Cic. Topic. 20, § 78 ; Sen. Ep. 104.) [W.B.D.] LAE'LIUS BALBUS. [Balbus, No. 7.] LAENAS. 707 LAE'LIUS DE'CIMUS. 1. Was one of Cn. Pompey's lieutenants in the Sertorian war. He was shiin in an engagement near the town of Lauro, B.C. 76, by Hirtuleius, a legatus of Ser- torius. (Sallust. Schol. Bob. pro Flacc. p. 235, Orelli ; Frontin. Strat. ii. 5. § 31 ; Obseq. de Prod. 119.) [HiRTULKiusJ Lucilius, the sa- tirist, as cited by Cicero {De Or. ii. 6), and Cicero himself {lb.) speaks with some contempt of Lae- lius's pretensions to literature. 2. Son probably of the preceding, impeached L. Flaccus for extortion in his government of Asia Minor b. c. 59. (Cic. pro Flacc. 1, 6 ; Schol. Bob. pro Flacc. p. 228, Orelli.) [Valerius Flaccus, No. 15.] In the civil wars b. c. 49, Laelius commanded a detachment of Cn. Pom- pey's fleet (Caes. B. C. iii. 5) ; conveyed Pom- pey's letters to the consuls (Cic. ad Att. viii. 11, D. 12, A.) ; watched M.Antony's passage over the Adriatic (Caes. B. C. iii. 40) ; and, about the time of the battle of Pharsalia, blockaded the har- bour of Brundisium. (Caes. B.C. iii. 100.) M. Antony placed Laelius on the list of Pompeians forbidden to return to Italy without licence from Caesar ; but the prohibition was subsequently re- moved. (Cic. ad Att. xi. 7, 14.) [W- B- D-] LAE'LIUS, FELIX. [Felix Laelius.] LAENAS, the name of a distinguished plebeian family of the gens Popillia. The name was derived, according to Cicero {Brut. 14), from the sacerdotal cloak {laena) with which the consul M. Popillius, who was at the same time fiamen Carmentalis, rushed from a public sacrifice into the forum, to pacify the plebeians, who were in open revolt against the nobility. The name is to be spelt accordingly Laenas, as the Fasti Capitolini and Diodorus (xvi. 15) have it, and not Lenas,as is found in some MSS. of Livy. The family of the Laenates was unfavourably distinguished even among the Romans for their sternness, cmelty, and haughtiness of character. 1. M. Popillius M. f. C. n. Laenas, was consul B. c. 359. The civil disturbances which he is said to have suppressed by his authority and eloquence were perhaps more effectually quelled, as Livy intimates (vii. 12), by a sudden attack in the night of the Tiburtines on Rome. The city was full of consternation and fear : at daybreak, how- ever, and as soon as the Romans had organised a sufficient corps, and sallied forth with it, the enemy was repulsed. In the second year after this M. Laenas is mentioned (Liv. vii. 16) as prosecutor of C. Licinius Stole for the transgression of his own law, which limited the possession of public land to 500 jugera. Pighius (Anrndes, vol. i. p. 284) has put down Popillius as praetor of the year B. c. 357, but this is not warranted by Livy's expression, as Drakenborch has shown (ad Liv. vii. 16); and it is even improbable, from the term {accusare) used by Valerius Maximus (viii. 6. § 3). Perhaps Po- pillius was aedile, whose duty it seems to have been to prosecute the transgressors of agrarian as well as usury laws. (Comp. Liv. x. 1 3.) Popil- lius was consul again in the next year (b. c. 356), when he drove the Tiburtines into their towns. (Liv. vii. 17.) He was chosen consul for a third time B. c. 350, when he won a hard-fought battle against the Gauls, in which he himself was wounded (Liv. vii. 23 ; App. Celt. i. 2.), and for which he celebrated a triumph — the first ever obtained by a plebeian. Popillius concluded zz 2