Publius Decius Mus (consul 340 BC)

Publius Decius Mus, son of Quintus, of the plebeian gens Decia, was a Roman consul in 340 BC. He is noted particularly for sacrificing himself in battle through the ritual of devotio, as recorded by the Augustan historian Livy.

Decius Mus first enters history in 352 BC as an appointed official, one of the quinqueviri mensarii, public bankers charged with relieving citizen debts to some extent.

He served with distinction in the First Samnite War under Marcus Valerius Corvus Arvina. In 343 BC, Corvus, leading his army through the mountain fastnesses of Samnium, became trapped in a valley by the Samnites. Decius, taking 1,600 men, seized a strong point through which the Samnites were obliged to pass, and held it against them until nightfall; breaking through their lines, he re-joined the main body of the army, which had gained the summit of the mountain and relative safety. The army then swept into the Samnites, gaining a complete victory and the spoils of the enemy camp. For the rescue of the trapped army he was awarded the Grass Crown by both his own army and by the army he relieved.

In 340 he was raised to the consular rank as co-consul with Titus Manlius Torquatus, and the Romans allied themselves with their former enemies against the Latins in the Latin War. When during his consulate, an oracle announced that an army and the opposite army's general both would go to their deaths, Mus devoted himself and his foes to the Dii Manes and mother Earth to give his army the victory in the Battle of Vesuvius, in which he was slain and the enemy annihilated.

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