also a pension from Fouquet, and one from the queen, which was withdrawn because he was suspected of Frondeur sentiments. When Mazarin received the dedication of Typhon coldly, Scarron changed it to a burlesque on the minister. In 1651 he definitely took the side of the Fronde in a Mazarinade, a violent pamphlet. He now had no resources but his “marquisat.”
In his early years he had been something of a libertine. In 1649 a penniless lady of good family, Céleste Palaiseau, kept his house in the Rue d'Enfer, and tried to reform the gay company which assembled there. But in 1652, sixteen years after he had become almost entirely paralysed, he married a girl of much beauty and no fortune, Françoise d'Aubigné, afterwards famous as Madame de Maintenon (q.v.). Scarron had long been able to endure life only by the aid of constant doses of opium, and he died on the 6th of October 1660.
Scarron's work is very abundant and very unequal. The piece most famous in his own day, his Virgile travesti (1648–1653), is now thought a somewhat ignoble waste of singular powers for burlesque. But the Roman comique (1651–1657) is a work the merit of which is denied by no competent judge. Unfinished, and a little desultory, this history of a troop of strolling actors is almost the first French novel, in point of date, which shows real power of painting manners and character, and is singularly vivid. It is in the style of the Spanish picaresque romance, and furnished Théophile Gautier with the idea and with some of the details of his Capitaine Fracasse. Scarron also wrote some shorter novels: La Précaution inutile, which inspired Sedaine's Gageure imprévue; Les Hypocrites, to which Tartuffe owes something, and others. Of his plays Jodelet (1645) and Don Japhet d'Arménie (1653) are the best.
The most complete edition of his works is by La Martinière, 1737 (10 vols., Amsterdam). The Roman comique and the Énéide travestie were edited by Victor Fournel in 1857 and 1858. Among the contemporary notices of Scarron, that contained in the Historiettes of Talemant des Réaux is the most accurate. The most important modern works on the subject are Scarron et le genre burlesque (1888) by Paul Morillot; a biography by J. J. Jusserand in English, prefixed to his edition of The Comical Romance and other tales by Paul Scarron, done into English by Tom Brown of Shifnal, John Savage and others (2 vols., 1892); and Paul Scarron et Françoise d'Aubigné d'après des documents nouveaux (1894) by A. de Boislisle.
SCAUP, the wild-fowler's ordinary abridgment of Scaup-Duck, meaning a duck so called “because she feeds upon Scaup, i.e. broken shell-fish,” as may be seen in F. Willughby's Ornithology (p. 365); but it would be more proper to say that the name comes from the “mussel-scaups,” or “mussel-scalps,” the beds of rock or sand on which mussels are aggregated. It is the Anas marila of Linnaeus and Fuligula marila of modern systematic writers, a very abundant bird around the coasts of most parts of the northern hemisphere, repairing inland in spring for the purpose of reproduction, though so far as is positively known hardly but in northern districts, as Iceland, Lapland, Siberia and the fur-countries of America. The scaup-duck has considerable likeness to the pochard (q.v.), both in habits and appearance; but it much more generally affects sea-water, and the head of the male is black, glossed with green; hence the name of “Blackhead,” by which it is commonly known in North America, where, however, a second species or race, smaller than the ordinary one, is also found, the Fuligula affinis. The female scaup-duck can be readily distinguished from the dunbird or female pochard by her broad white face. (A. N.)
SCAURUS, MARCUS AEMILIUS (c. 163–88 B.C.), Roman statesman, was a member of a great patrician family which had sunk into obscurity. His father had been a coal-dealer, and he himself had thought of becoming a money-changer, but finally decided in favour of a political career. Having served in the army in Spain and Sardinia, he became curule aedile, praetor and (after an unsuccessful attempt in 117) consul in 115. During his consulship he celebrated a triumph for his victory over certain Alpine tribes. In 112 he was one of the commissioners sent to Africa to arrange the dispute between Jugurtha and Adherbal. When a special committee was appointed to examine the charges of venality in their dealings with Jugurtha brought against the Roman representatives, Scaurus, who was equally guilty with the rest, was especially active in promoting the establishment of the committee, and even managed to get himself put at the head of it. He thus saved himself, but his intercession on behalf of the other offenders was of no avail. In 109 Scaurus was censor, and constructed the Via Aemilia and restored the Mulvian bridge.[1] In 104 he superseded Saturninus (q.v.) in the management of the corn supply at Ostia.
During all his life Scaurus was a firm adherent of the moderate aristocratical party, which frequently involved him in quarrels with the representatives of the people and the extremists on his own side. Though not a great orator, his speeches were weighty and impressive. His wife was Caecilia Metella, who after his death married the dictator Sulla. His daughter Aemilia was the wife of Manius Acilius Glabrio, and subsequently of Pompey, the triumvir.
See Sallust, Jugurtha; Orelli's Onomasticon Tullianum; Asconius, In Scaurum; Aurelius Victor, De viris illustribus, 72; A. H. J. Greenidge, Hist. of Rome, i. 296; and M. G. Bloch, Mélanges d'histoire ancienne, i. (1909).
Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, his son, served during the third Mithradatic War (74–61 B.C.) as quaestor to Pompey, by whom he was sent to Judaea to settle the quarrel between Hyrcanus and Aristobulus. Scaurus decided in favour of the latter, who was able to offer more money. On his arrival in Syria, Pompey reversed the decision, but, ignoring the charge of bribery brought against Scaurus, left him in command of the district. An incidental campaign against Aretas, king of the Nabataeans, was ended by the payment of 300 talents by Aretas to secure his possessions. This agreement is represented on coins of Scaurus—Aretas kneeling by the side of a camel, and holding out an olive branch in an attitude of supplication. As curule aedile in 58, Scaurus celebrated the public games on a scale of magnificence never seen before. Animals, hitherto unknown to the Romans, were exhibited in the circus, and an artificial lake (euripus) was made for the reception of crocodiles and hippopotamuses. One of the greatest curiosities was a huge skeleton brought from Joppa, said to be that of the monster to which Andromeda had been exposed. A wooden theatre was erected for the occasion, capable of holding 80,000 spectators. In 56 Scaurus was praetor, and in the following year governor of Sardinia. On his return to Rome (54) he was accused of extortion in his province. Cicero and five others (amongst them the famous Q. Hortensius) undertook his defence, and, although there was no doubt of his guilt, he was acquitted. During the same year, however (according to some, two years later, under Pompey's new law), Scaurus was condemned on a charge of illegal practices when a candidate for the consulship. He went into exile, and nothing further is heard of him.
See Josephus, Antiq. xiv. 3-5, Bell. Jud. i. 7; Appian, Syr. 51, Bell. civ. ii. 24; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 24; Cicero, Pro Sestio, 54, fragments of Pro Scauro, numerous references in the Letters; Asconius, Argumentum in Scaurum. See also, for both the above, Aemelius (Nos. 140, 141) in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, i. pt. 1. (1894), and Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, s.v. Scaurus.
SCAURUS, QUINTUS TERENTIUS, Latin grammarian, flourished during the reign of Hadrian (Aulus Gellius xi. 15). He was the author of an ars grammatica and commentaries on Plautus, Virgil's Aeneid and probably Horace. Under his name two fragments are extant—the longer from his work on orthography (De orthographia), the shorter (chiefly on the use of prepositions) from another grammatical work.
SCAVENGER, now one who cleans the streets, removes refuse, generally a workman employed by the local public health authority (see Public Health). The name is properly “scavager” or “scaveger” (the n being intrusive as in “passenger” and “messenger”), an official who was concerned with the receipt of custom duties and the inspection (scavage) of imported goods. The “scavagers” are found with such officials of the City of London as aleconners, beadles, &c., in the Liber Albus (Munimenta Gildhallae Londoniensis, ed. Riley). These officials seem to have been charged also with the cleaning of the streets, and the name superseded the older rakyer for those who performed this duty. Skeat takes “scavage” to be a Low French corruption of “showage," spelled variously as schewage, scevage, &c., and, therefore, to be derived from “show,” to exhibit for inspection.
- ↑ The view that he was consul again in 108 is disproved by Bloch (see bibliog.).
