Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Serapio (182 or 181 – 132 BC) was a Roman politician. He is most well known for mobilising the mob which killed Tiberius Gracchus, who was at the time attempting to stand for re-election as plebeian tribune in 133 BC. He was consul in 138 BC and served as pontifex maximus, from possibly 141 through to his death in 132 BC.
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Career
Nasica's first known public office was that of military tribune, which T.R.S. Broughton provisionally dated to 149 BC in Magistrates of the Roman Republic. If he held that office, he would have been an officer during the Third Punic War and the siege of Carthage. Alexander Yakobson, writing in the Encyclopedia of Ancient History, tentatively identifies this Scipio with the one who committed a gaffe when, during a canvass for the aedileship, he asked whether a farmer with rough hands had a habit of walking on his hands.
Nasica had become praetor by 141 BC, and may have been the Cornelius who in that year was defeated by the Scordisci. Around that year, his father died and he was elected to a pontificate in his place. He may have become pontifex maximus in that year, but the specifics of when he was elected to that post are unclear.
His next magistracy was the consulate of 138 BC. During his year, he and his co-consul – Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus – were charged with investigation into murders. The colleagues also were imprisoned by a plebeian tribune that year due to their refusal to exempt certain persons from the levy.