Publius Decius Mus (consul 340 BC)

Publius Decius Mus, of the plebeian gens Decia, was a Roman consul in 340 BC, remembered above all for giving his life in battle through the ritual of devotio. He first appears in 352 BC as one of the quinqueviri mensarii, the public bankers who eased citizens' debts. In the First Samnite War, in 343 BC, he took 1,600 men to seize a height that blocked the Samnites while the consul Cossus Arvina's army was trapped in a valley, held it until nightfall and rejoined the army, which then won a complete victory; both armies awarded him the Grass Crown. In 340 BC he and Titus Manlius Torquatus were consuls in the Latin War. According to Livy, when the left wing began to give way at the Battle of Vesuvius, he devoted himself and the enemy to the gods of the underworld and charged into the Latin line, where he was killed, and the Roman wings then won the battle.