Publius Popillius Laenas, son of the preceding. When consul in 132 B.C. he incurred the hatred of the democrats by his harsh measures as head of a special commission appointed to take measures against the accomplices of Tiberius Gracchus. In 123 Gaius Gracchus brought in a bill prohibiting all such commissions, and declared that, in accordance with the old laws of appeal, a magistrate who pronounced sentence of death against a citizen, without the people’s assent, should be guilty of high treason. It is not known whether the bill contained a retrospective clause against Laenas, but he left Rome and sentence of banishment from Italy was pronounced against him. After the restoration of the aristocracy the enactments against him were cancelled, and he was recalled (121).
See Cicero, Brutus, 25. 34, and De domo sua, 31; Vell. Pat. ii. 7; Plutarch, C. Gracchus, 4.
[1] The name is said by Cicero to be derived from laena, the sacerdotal cloak carried by Marcus Popillius (consul 359) when he went to the forum to quell a popular rising.
LAER (or Laar), PIETER VAN (1613-c. 1675), Dutch painter, was born at Laaren in Holland. The influence of a long stay in Rome begun at an early age is seen in his landscape and backgrounds, but in his subjects he remained true to the Dutch tradition, choosing generally lively scenes from peasant life, as markets, feasts, bowling scenes, farriers’ shops, robbers, hunting scenes and peasants with cattle. From this taste, or from his personal deformity, he was nicknamed Bamboccio by the Italians. On his return to Holland about 1639, he lived chiefly at Amsterdam and Haarlem, in which latter city he died in 1674 or 1675. His pictures are marked by skilful composition and good drawing; he was especially careful in perspective. His colouring, according to Crowe, is “generally of a warm, brownish tone, sometimes very clear, but oftener heavy, and his execution broad and spirited.” Certain etched plates are also attributed to him.
LAESTRYGONES, a mythical race of giants and cannibals. According to the Odyssey (x. 80) they dwelt in the farthest north, where the nights were so short that the shepherd who was driving out his flock met another driving it in. This feature of the tale contains some hint of the long nightless summer in the Arctic regions, which perhaps reached the Greeks through the merchants who fetched amber from the Baltic coasts. Odysseus in his wanderings arrived at the coast inhabited by the Laestrygones, and escaped with only one ship, the rest being sunk by the giants with masses of rock. Their chief city was Telepylus, founded by a former king Lamus, their ruler at that time being Antiphates. This is a purely fanciful name, but Lamus takes us into a religious world where we can trace the origin of the legend, and observe the god of an older religion becoming the subject of fairy tales (see [Lamia]) in a later period.
The later Greeks placed the country of the Laestrygones in Sicily, to the south of Aetna, near Leontini; but Horace (Odes, iii. 16. 34) and other Latin authors speak of them as living in southern Latium, near Formiae, which was supposed to have been founded by Lamus.