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Nov. 29th, 2010 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardGah, throwaway lines in Livy make me go, "OMG I want THAT story!" Like this paragraph from Book XXX:
THOUGHT HIS FATHER WAS DEAD. RESCUED HIM FROM SLAVERY. OMG. *flails*
Gaius Servilius does not really do much, in the grand scheme of things, but how about that for a shocker? Father missing for fifteen years, presumed dead in battle! Son, now consul, finds him enslaved and rescues him and whoever Gaius Lutatius Catulus is, I'm not entirely sure -- there's a consul of that name in 241 BC, and the index in Livy cites them all as the same person, but that seems a bit unlikely given the timing; he and Papa Servilius are rescued in 203, and if he was consul in 241, he'd have to be over seventy at the very least. Given the timing, I think Lutatius and Papa Servilius are probably the Roman officials captured by the Boii in 218; Livy mentions them both by name. Still. DRAMATIC!
ETA: Although to be fair it is entirely possible it could be the same Gaius Lutatius Catulus, as Livy goes on to state that there were still men in the Senate who remembered when the last treaty had been negotiated, and called out the Carthaginian youngsters who were negotiating. So it's possible. Hmm.
The consul Gaius Servilius achieved no noteworthy successes in Etruria -- or in Gaul, whither he had also gone. He did, however, rescue from slavery his father and Gaius Lutatius Catulus, who fifteen years before had been taken prisoner by the Boii near the village of Tannetum. He thereupon returned to Rome, entering the city between the two of them. Though of no great national importance, this was a personal triumph and brought him distinction accordingly. A bill was brought before the people to clear Servilius from the charge of acting illegally in having held -- contrary to the law as it then stood -- the offices of tribune and aedile of the people while his father, who had occupied a curule chair, was still alive -- a fact of which he was ignorant. The bill was passed into law and Servilius returned to his province.
THOUGHT HIS FATHER WAS DEAD. RESCUED HIM FROM SLAVERY. OMG. *flails*
Gaius Servilius does not really do much, in the grand scheme of things, but how about that for a shocker? Father missing for fifteen years, presumed dead in battle! Son, now consul, finds him enslaved and rescues him and whoever Gaius Lutatius Catulus is, I'm not entirely sure -- there's a consul of that name in 241 BC, and the index in Livy cites them all as the same person, but that seems a bit unlikely given the timing; he and Papa Servilius are rescued in 203, and if he was consul in 241, he'd have to be over seventy at the very least. Given the timing, I think Lutatius and Papa Servilius are probably the Roman officials captured by the Boii in 218; Livy mentions them both by name. Still. DRAMATIC!
ETA: Although to be fair it is entirely possible it could be the same Gaius Lutatius Catulus, as Livy goes on to state that there were still men in the Senate who remembered when the last treaty had been negotiated, and called out the Carthaginian youngsters who were negotiating. So it's possible. Hmm.