Mummius
1.
Lucius. A tribune of the plebs B.C. 187, and praetor 177.
2.
Lucius, surnamed Achaĭcus,
son of the last, was praetor 154, when he carried on the war successfully in further Spain
against the Lusitanians. He was consul in 146, when he won for himself the surname of
Achaicus by the conquest of Greece and the establishment of the Roman province of Achaia.
After defeating the army of the Achaean League at the isthmus of Corinth, he entered Corinth
without opposition. The city was burned, razed, and abandoned to pillage; the native
Corinthians were sold for slaves, and the rarest specimens of Grecian art were given up to
the rapacity of an ignorant conqueror. Polybius, the historian, saw Roman soldiers playing at
draughts upon the far-famed picture of Dionysus by Aristides; and Mummius himself was so
unconscious of the real value of his prize that he sold the rarer works of painting,
sculpture, and carving to the king of Pergamus, and took bonds from the masters of vessels
who conveyed the remainder to Italy to replace by equivalents any picture or statue lost or
injured in the passage (Polyb. iii. 32; xl. 7-11; Vell. Paterc. i. 13). He remained in Greece
during the greater part of 145 with the title of proconsul. He arranged the fiscal and
municipal constitution of the newly-acquired province, and won the confidence and esteem of
the provincials by his integrity, justice, and equanimity. He triumphed in 145. He was censor
in 142 with Scipio Africanus the younger. The political opinions of Mummius inclined to
the popular side.
3.
Spurius, brother of the preceding, and his legate at Corinth in
146-145, was an intimate friend of the younger Scipio Africanus. In political opinions
Spurius was opposed to his brother Lucius, and was a noted aristocrat. He composed ethical
and satirical epistles, which were extant in Cicero's day, and were probably in the style
which Horace afterwards cultivated so successfully.
4.
A writer of Atellanae, who flourished later than B.C. 90 (Macrob.
Sat. i. 10, 3).
