Caius Mucius Scaevola

Scævola is the name of a family of Patriciens of the ancient Rome whose origin goes up according to the traditional tradition with Caius Mucius Scævola , hero of the war which the Roman people against the Etruscan king supported Porsenna, which, combined with Tarquin Superb the, claimed to restore this last on the throne of Rome.

Caius Mucius, in front of the terrible spectrum of a defeat which the head office of Rome by the Étrusque S made fear, decides itself to be introduced into the enemy camp and to assassinate its king. To prevent that one takes it for a deserter, it puts the Sénat at the current of its decision. With the assent, therefore, conscript fathers, it crosses the the Tiber and equipped with the manner of Étrurie succeeds in entering the evening the tent of countryside of Porsenna. But by fearing that if he did not hasten, he could be discovered before leading to end his intentions, he precipitates on the person that, because of its beautiful clothes, he confused with the king and wounds mortally it.

At once, he sees himself surrounded by the soldiers of the royal guard who, on order of Porsenna, hold up torches and threaten to subject it to fire if he does not reveal which he is, by where he arrived and how much were with him. In this situation, Caius Mucius, punishing itself and showing at the same time its whole resolution in front of those which captured it, introduced into a brazier which was beside him its right hand - this same right hand which had not carried its sword in the body of the good person - and, at the same time as fire consumes its flesh quickly, in the middle of the dreadful noise and of the smoke who gets clear, exclaims with total impassibility: “The body is little of thing, for that which aspires only to glory” (Tite-Live, Décades ).

Porsenna, admiring supreme courage and the value of the young man, decides to leave him the life; also Caius Mucius makes it mines to be shown recognizing and to be solved to acknowledge with the king what by the force it could not do to him to acknowledge, i.e. dozen young people had lent oath to put a term at the life of the king or to die in this attempt, and that at this same time some were grinding around the camp Lending faith to this invention of the Romain, and fearing that they were young people as courageous as this one, Porsenna decides to withdraw its troops and to put an end to the war.

After this exploit, and as its right hand was definitively invalid, Caius Mucius accepted the nickname of Scævola , which in Latin means “left-handed”. Its descendants preserved its nickname proudly.

The history of Scævola fascinated an infinity of people during the history, of which Jean-Jacques Rousseau which, in the first book of its Confessions , tells how its tutors were frightened when, while he repeated the history to them which he had read in a work of Plutarque, transfer it to advance towards the chimney. One also says that at the time where he studied traditional philology, as a professor had declared that in his opinion there had not been nor could not be martyrs like Scævola, Nietzsche laid out one to rough-hew with books and books, helped of some of his companions, and exposed his hand to fire during several seconds, receiving wounds who lasted several months, only to show that its professor did not have any certainty.

Scaevola inspired the opera in three acts (“Pasticcio”) Muzio Scevola created with London in 1721, which with the characteristic to be put in music by three different type-setters, each one being charged with an act: Filippo Amadei, Giovanni Bononcini and Georg Friedrich Haendel.

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