Servius Sulpicius Rufus

Reading notes

• Ad Atticum 9.19 §2 he who sent his son to crush Cnaeus Pompeius

  The eminent jurist Servius Sulpicius Rufus (cos. 51 BC) had let his son join Caesar's army besieging Pompey at Brundisium; Cicero, who esteemed Servius's caution, judges him the most pitiless of the trimmers for so abandoning Pompey's cause.

• Ad Atticum 10.9 §3 I am expecting Servius by the Nones

  Servius Sulpicius Rufus, the eminent jurist and consul of 51 BC, was another waverer Cicero hoped to consult; his wife Postumia and his son ("young Servius") were urging the meeting. The Nones of May fell on the 7th.

• Ad Atticum 11.7 §4 As for Sulpicius's policy

  Servius Sulpicius Rufus, the great jurist and consul of 51 BC, took a cautious neutral course in the civil war rather than commit fully to Pompey. Cicero weighs Sulpicius's safe quietism against Cato's glorious but doomed resistance.

• Ad Atticum 11.13 §1 old Servius

  Servius Sulpicius Rufus, the great jurist and consul of 51 BC, an old friend of Cicero who like him had hesitated between the two sides. "Old Servius" distinguishes the father from his son Servius.

• Ad Atticum 12.18 §3 For my own principal I trust Sulpicius

  The "principal" (sors) is the capital sum of a loan as distinct from its interest; Cicero says he trusts Servius Sulpicius Rufus and the banker Egnatius to make the capital good. Sulpicius here is the eminent jurist, not any namesake.

• Ad Atticum 13.10 §1 What is your view of Servius

  Servius Sulpicius Rufus, consul 51 BC (Marcellus's colleague) and Rome's foremost jurist, then governing Achaia; he sent Cicero the famous letter of condolence on Marcellus's death (Ad Fam. 4.12). Cicero counts him too among the surviving consulars.

• Ad Atticum 14.18 §3 That Servius

  Ser. Sulpicius Rufus (cos. 51), Rome's leading jurist and a cautious friend of Cicero; his gloomy assessment of the political situation as he set off recurs across these letters.

• Ad Atticum 14.19 §4 I am with Servius

  Ser. Sulpicius Rufus (cos. 51), the jurist; Cicero, though he reads more fear than judgment in Servius's cautious line, sides with him because everyone is alike terrified in the unsettled aftermath of the Ides.

• Ad Atticum 15.7 §1 Servius, on the other hand, our peacemaker

  Servius Sulpicius Rufus, consul of 51 BC and Rome's foremost jurist; Cicero teases him as a timid "peacemaker" who approached a public mission as cautiously as a lawyer dreading a procedural slip. He later died in 43 BC on a peace embassy to Antony.

• Ad M. Brutum 1.15 §7 Servius first moved the lowering of the age for standing for office

  Servius Sulpicius Rufus (cos. 51 BC), the great Roman jurist and Cicero's friend, who died in January 43 BC on an embassy to Antony; before his death he moved that the age-requirement for the cursus honorum be waived for Octavian, and Servilius subsequently moved an even larger exemption.

• Ad Familiares 3.3 §1 the consul Sulpicius

  Servius Sulpicius Rufus, consul in 51 BC and the foremost jurist of the age, who blocked the proposed levy of reinforcements for the eastern provinces.

• Ad Familiares 4.1 §1 a defender of peace in your consulship and after your consulship

  Servius Sulpicius Rufus, the greatest Roman jurist of the age, was consul in 51 BC; in that year and after he urged compromise to head off the looming war between Caesar and Pompey. The letter dates to about April 49 BC, weeks after Caesar crossed the Rubicon, with civil war already under way.

• Ad Familiares 4.3 §1 you most carefully warned the Senate

  As consul in 51 BC, Servius Sulpicius Rufus had urged the Senate to remember the horrors of past civil wars and to avoid forcing a confrontation with Caesar. By the time of this letter (about 46 BC, after Caesar's victory) Cicero presents that warning as tragically vindicated.

• Ad Familiares 4.5 §1 I should have made my own sorrow plain to you face to face

  Servius Sulpicius Rufus (cos. 51), Rome's foremost jurist of the age and a longtime friend of Cicero, was at this time Caesar's governor of Achaea (Greece), which is why he writes from a distance rather than consoling Cicero in person.

• Ad Familiares 4.12 §1 finishing out the remainder of my judicial business

  Servius Sulpicius Rufus was Caesar's governor of Achaea (Greece), and was touring the province to hold assizes (administer justice) when he chanced to meet Marcellus at the Piraeus the day before the murder, making him an eyewitness reporter of events.

• Ad Familiares 6.1 §6 you have Servius Sulpicius, whom you have always uniquely loved

  Ser. Sulpicius Rufus (cos. 51 BC), the leading jurist of the late Republic and Cicero's close friend; he was himself in Athens or the Greek east at this period, and Cicero sees his proximity to Torquatus as a practical substitute for his own consoling letters.

• Ad Familiares 6.4 §5 I was sorry to hear that Servius had left Athens

  Ser. Sulpicius Rufus (cos. 51 BC), whose presence in Athens had been the comfort Cicero commended in Fam. 6.1.6; his departure deprives Torquatus of the daily philosophical conversation that had been his chief consolation. Sulpicius was probably recalled to Rome on public business.

• Ad Familiares 7.29 §1 Sulpicius's successor

  Ser. Sulpicius Rufus (cos. 51 BC), the great jurist, was governing the province of Achaia (45 BC); Curius, a Roman banker resident at Patrae, asks Cicero to commend him to whoever replaces Sulpicius in the proconsulship.

• Ad Familiares 7.31 §2 Sulpicius's help

  Servius Sulpicius Rufus, consul 51 BC and Rome's foremost jurist, was proconsul of Achaea in 46-45 BC; as governor he was the official whose aid Curius, a Roman banker at Patrae, would naturally seek for his tangled business affairs in Greece.

• Ad Familiares 10.28 §3 great loss has been suffered in Servius

  The jurist Servius Sulpicius Rufus (consul 51) had died in January 43 while serving on the senatorial embassy to Antony, depriving the consular bench of one of its most authoritative members.

• Ad Familiares 12.2 §3 Ser. Sulpicius

  Servius Sulpicius Rufus (cos. 51), the celebrated jurist; he later died as one of the senatorial envoys to Antony in early 43 BC.

• Ad Familiares 12.5 §2 With Servius Sulpicius's death we have lost a great bulwark

  Servius Sulpicius Rufus, the eminent jurist and consular, died while serving on the senatorial embassy to Antony at Mutina; his loss removed a steadying voice from the Senate.

• Ad Familiares 13.17 §1 CICERO S. D. SERVIO SULPICIO

  S.D. = salutem dicit. Servius Sulpicius Rufus (consul 51 BC) was one of Rome's greatest jurists; at this date (46 BC) he was governing Achaea as proconsul. Cicero and Sulpicius maintained one of their era's most celebrated friendships, documented across Ad Familiares 4.

• Ad Familiares 13.18 §1 CICERO SERVIO S.

  The heading "Cicero to Servius, greetings." The recipient is Servius Sulpicius Rufus (cos. 51 BC), the great jurist, who served as proconsul of Achaea 46--45 BC; he died on embassy in 43 BC and received a public funeral lauded by Cicero in the Ninth Philippic.

• Ad Familiares 13.23 §1 CICERO SERVIO S.

  The letter-heading: "Cicero to Servius, greetings." The recipient is Servius Sulpicius Rufus (cos. 51 BC), the eminent jurist serving as proconsul of Achaea in 46–45 BC. S. = salutem (dicit), the standard epistolary salutation.

• Ad Familiares 13.24 §1 he was in the habit of speaking at Rome against your standing

  An accusation that Lyso had slandered Servius's dignitas (standing, reputation) at Rome. Dignitas was a Roman aristocrat's most prized social-political asset; even a rumour of disparagement in the capital could damage a proconsul's position and post-provincial career.

• Ad Familiares 13.24 §2 thanks to your easy temper and humanity

  Facilitas (easy temper) and humanitas (cultivated benevolence) are paired as the marks of a just and educated provincial governor; Cicero frequently deploys this flattery in recommendation letters to characterise the recipient as already inclined toward clemency.

• Ad Familiares 13.27 §1 as you jurists do with the formulae of legal pleading, I shall put it ``On the same matter, in another mode.''

  Cicero makes a learned joke at Servius's expense: the phrase de eadem re alio modo is a technical formula from Roman legal procedure, used when an alternative action or writ was offered for the same legal issue. Servius Sulpicius Rufus was the most eminent jurist of his generation, so the in-joke flatters him while acknowledging that this recommendation is repetitive.

• Ad Familiares 13.28 §1 CICERO SERVIO S.

  Heading: Cicero to Servius [Sulpicius Rufus], greetings. The recipient is Servius Sulpicius Rufus, the great jurist, then proconsul of Achaea 46--45 BC; not his son of the same name. S. = salutem dicit.

• Thirteenth Philippic §29 Servius Sulpicius, and before him his colleague Marcus Marcellus

  Two recently dead consulars Cicero mourns: Servius Sulpicius Rufus, the great jurist who died as an envoy to Antony in early 43, and M. Claudius Marcellus (cos. 51), the optimate pardoned in Pro Marcello and later murdered abroad.

• Ninth Philippic §1 Servius Sulpicius

  Servius Sulpicius Rufus, consul of 51 BC and the foremost jurist of his age, who died on the embassy the Senate sent to Antony at Mutina. The Ninth Philippic is Cicero's proposal of posthumous honours for him.

• Ninth Philippic §10 interpreting the laws

  Sulpicius was the greatest jurisconsult of his generation, who systematised the civil law and trained many pupils. Cicero, himself trained in law, ranks him above every other Roman expert in jurisprudence.