Brutus
18. M.
Junius Brutus, praetor in B. C. 88, was sent with his colleague Servilius by the senate, at the request of Marius, to command Sulla, who was then at Nola, not to advance nearer Rome. (
Plut. Sull. 9.) On Sulla's arrival at Rome, Brutus was proscribed with ten other senators. (Appian,
App. BC 1.60.)
He subsequently served under Cn Papirius Carbo, the consul, B. C. 82, and was sent by him in a fishing-boat to Lilybaeum; but finding himself surrounded by Pompey's fleet, he put an end to his own life, that he might not fall into the hands of his enemies. (
Liv. Epit. 89.) Cicero, in a letter to Atticus (9.14), mentions a report, that Caesar intended to revenge the death of M. Brutus and Carbo, and of all those who had been put to death by Sulla with the assistance of Pompey. This M. Junius Brutus is not to be confounded, as he often is, with L. Junius Brutus Damasippus, praetor in 82 [No. 19], whose surname we know from Livy (
Liv. Epit. 86) to have been Lucius; nor with M. Junius Brutus [No. 20], the father of the so-called tyrannicide.
