ABSOLVO The term employed by a jury when voting for the acquittal of the accused. It was used in the courts, not in the Assemblies.
advocate The term generally used by modern scholars to describe a man active in the Roman law courts. “Lawyer” is considered too modern, hence is not used in this book.
aedile There were four Roman magistrates called aediles; two were called plebeian aediles, two were called curule aediles. Their duties were confined to the city of Rome. The plebeian aediles were created first (in 493 b.c.) to assist the tribunes of the plebs in their duties, but, more particularly, to guard the rights of the plebs in relation to their headquarters, the temple of Ceres in the Forum Boarium. Elected by the Plebeian Assembly, the plebeian aediles soon inherited supervision of the city’s buildings as a whole, as well as archival custody of laws (plebiscites) passed in the Plebeian Assembly, together with any senatorial decrees (consulta) directing the passage of plebiscites. In 367 b.c. two curule aediles were created to give the patricians a share in custody of public buildings and archives; they were elected by the Assembly of the People in their tribes. Very soon, however, the curule aediles were as likely to be plebeians as patricians by status. From the third century b.c. onward, all four were responsible for the care of Rome’s streets, water supply, drains and sewers, traffic, public buildings, monuments and facilities, markets, weights and measures (standard sets of these were housed in the basement of the temple of Castor and Pollux), games, and the public grain supply. They had the power to fine citizens and noncitizens alike for infringements of any regulations connected to any of the above, and deposited the monies in their coffers to help fund the games. Aedile—plebeian or curule—was not a part of the cursus honorum, but because of the games was a valuable magistracy for a praetorian hopeful to hold.
Aeneas Prince of Dardania, in the Troad. He was the son of King Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans). When Troy fell to the forces of Agamemnon, he fled the burning city with his aged father perched on his shoulders and the Palladium under one arm. After many adventures, he arrived in Latium and founded the race from whom true Romans were descended. His son, Iulus, was the direct ancestor of the Julian family; therefore the identity of Iulus’s mother was of some import. Virgil says lulus was actually Ascanius, the son of Aeneas by his Trojan wife, Creusa, Aeneas having brought the boy with him from Troy (Ilium to the Romans). On the other hand, Livy says lulus was the son of Aeneas by his Latin wife, Lavinia. What the Julian family of Caesar’s day believed is not known. I shall go with Livy, who seems on the whole a more reliable source than Virgil.
Aesernia A small city in northwestern Samnium. It was given the Latin Rights in 263 b.c. to encourage its people to be loyal to Rome rather than to Samnium, the traditional Italian enemy of Rome.
Africa During the Roman Republic, the word “Africa” referred to that part of the North African coast around Carthage—modern Tunisia.
Africa Province That part of Africa which physically belonged to Rome. In size it was quite small—basically, the out-thrust of land which contained Carthage and Utica. This Roman territory was surrounded by the much larger Numidia.
ager publicus Land vested in Roman public ownership, most of it acquired by right of conquest or taken off its original owners as a punishment for disloyalty. This latter was particularly true of ager publicus in the Italian peninsula. The censors leased it out on behalf of the State in a manner favoring large estates. There was Roman ager publicus in every overseas province, in Italian Gaul, and in the Italian peninsula. The most famous and contentious of all the many pieces of ager publicus was the ager Campanus,
extremely rich land which had once belonged to the city of Capua, and was confiscated by Rome after several Capuan insurrections.
Agger A part of the Servian Walls of Rome, the Agger protected the city on its most vulnerable side, the Campus Esquilinus. The Agger consisted of a double rampart bearing formidable fortifications.
Allies of Rome Quite early in the history of the Roman Republic, its magistrates began to issue the title “Friend and Ally of the Roman People” to peoples and/or nations who had assisted Rome in an hour of need; the most usual form of assistance was military. The first Allies were located in the Italian peninsula, and as time went on toward the later Republic, those Italian peoples not enfranchised as full Roman citizens nor possessed of the Latin Rights were deemed the Italian Allies. Rome assured them military protection and gave them some other concessions, but in return they were expected to give Rome troops whenever she asked, and to support those troops in the field without financial assistance from Rome. Abroad, peoples and/or nations began to earn the title too; for instance, the Aedui of Gallia Comata and the Kingdom of Bithynia were formally deemed Allies. The Italian nations were mostly called “the Allies,” while overseas nations were accorded the full title “Friend and Ally of the Roman People.”
Amor Literally, “love.” Because it is “Roma” spelled backward, the Romans of the Republic commonly believed it was Rome’s vital secret name.
amphora Plural, amphorae. A pottery vessel, bulbous in shape, the amphora had a narrow neck and two handles connecting the shoulders with the upper neck; its bottom was pointed or conical, rather than flat, which meant it could not be stood upright on level ground. It was used for the bulk transport (usually maritime) of wheat and other grains, wine, oil, and other pourable substances. Its pointed bottom enabled it to be fitted easily into the sawdust which filled the ship’s hold or the cart’s interior, so that it was cushioned and protected during its journey. This pointed bottom also enabled it to be dragged across level .ground with considerable ease when being loaded and unloaded. The customary sized amphora held about twenty-five liters (six American gallons), which made it too heavy and awkward to be shouldered.
Anatolia Roughly, modern Asian Turkey. It extended from the south coast of the Euxine Sea (the Black Sea) to the north coast of the Mediterranean, and from the Aegean Sea in the west to modern Russian Armenia, Iran, Iraq, and Syria in the east. The Taurus and Anti-taurus mountains made its interior and much of its coastline very rugged, but it was then, as now, fertile and arable. The climate of the interior was continental.
Antiochus The generic name of many of the Kings of Syria and other, smaller kingdoms in that part of the East.
Apulia That part of southeastern Italy extending from Samnium in the north to ancient Calabria in the south (the back of the Italian leg). Fertile enough when there was water, the region has always suffered greatly from a sparse rainfall. Its people, the Apuli, were considered very poor and backward. The major towns were Luceria, Venusia, Barium, and Canusium.
aquilifer Presumably a creation of Gaius Marius’s at the time he gave the legions their silver eagles. The best man in the legion, the aquilifer was chosen to carry the legion’s silver eagle, and was expected never to surrender it to the enemy. As a mark of his distinction, he wore a wolf skin or a lion skin over his head and shoulders, and all his decorations for valor.
Arausio, Battle of On October 6, 105 b.c., the three Germanic peoples (Cimbri, Teutones, and Tigurini/ Marcomanni/Cherusci) who had been trying to migrate for fifteen years met Rome in battle outside the town of Arausio, in the valley of the Rhodanus (the Rhone). Due to a complete lack of co-operation between the two Roman commanders, Gnaeus Mallius Maximus and Quintus Servilius Caepio, the Roman forces were both separated from each other and hopelessly positioned; the result was the worst defeat in the history of the Republic. Eighty thousand Roman soldiers died.
Arpinum A town in Latium not far from the border of Samnium, and probably originally populated by Volsci. Together with Formiae Fundi, it was the last Latin Rights community to receive the full Roman citizenship (in 188 b.c.), but it did not enjoy proper municipal status during the late Republic. Arpinum’s chief claim to fame was as the birthplace and homeland of two very distinguished men, Gaius Marius and Marcus Tullius Cicero.
artillery Before the employment of gunpowder, these were military machines, usually spring-driven or spring-loaded, capable of launching projectiles—boulders, rocks, stones, darts, canister, grape, or bolts. Among the various kinds of Roman artillery were the ballista, the catapultus, and the onager.
Arx The Capitoline Mount of the city of Rome was divided into two humps by a declivity called the Asylum; the Arx was the more northern of the two humps, and contained the temple of Juno Moneta.
as The smallest in value of the coins issued by Rome; ten of them equaled one denarius. They were bronze. I have avoided all mention of the as in this book because of (a) its relative unimportance, and (b) its identical spelling to the English language adverb and/or conjunction “as”— most confusing!
Asia Minor Basically, modern Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Armenia. So little was known by the ancients about Arabia that its inclusion in Asia Minor was ephemeral; the Black Sea and the Caucasus formed the northern boundary of Asia Minor.
Asia Province The Roman province left to Rome in the will of King Attalus III of Pergamum. It consisted of the west coast and hinterland of what is now Turkey, from the Troad and Mysia in the north to the Cnidan peninsula in the south; thus it included Caria, but not Lycia. Its capital in Republican times was Pergamum, but Smyrna, Ephesus, and Halicarnassus rivaled the seat of the governor in importance. The islands lying off its coast—Lesbos, Lemnos, Samos, Chios, et cetera—were a part of the province. Its people were sophisticated and highly commercial in outlook, and were the descendants of successive waves of Greek colonization—Aeolian, Dorian, Ionian. It was not centralized in the modern sense, but was administered by Rome as a series of separate communities which were largely self-governing and gave tribute to Rome.
Assembly (comitia) Any gathering of the Roman People convoked to deal with governmental, legislative, judicial, or electoral matters. In the time of Marius and Sulla there were three true Assemblies—of the Centuries, the Whole People, and the Plebs.
The Centuriate Assembly (comitia centuriata) marshaled the People, patrician and plebeian, in their Classes, which were filled by a means test and were economic in nature. As this was originally a military assembly, each Class gathered in the form of Centuries (which by the time of Marius and Sulla numbered far in excess of one hundred men per century, as it had been decided to keep the number of Centuries in each Class the same). The Centuriate Assembly met to elect consuls, praetors, and (every five years) censors. It also met to hear trials involving a charge of major treason, and could pass laws. Because of the unwieldy nature of the Centuriate Assembly, which had to meet outside the pomerium on the Campus Martius at a place called the saepta, it was in normal times not convoked to pass laws or hear trials.
The Assembly of the People (comitia populi tributa) allowed the full participation of patricians, and was tribal in nature. It was convoked in the thirty-five tribes into which all Roman citizens were placed. When speaking of this Assembly throughout the book, I have mostly chosen to call it the Whole People to avoid confusion. It was called together by a consul or praetor, and elected the quaestors, the curule aediles, and the tribunes of the soldiers. It could formulate laws and conduct trials. The normal meeting place was in the lower Forum Romanum, in the Well of the Comitia.
The Plebeian Assembly (comitia plebis tributa or concilium plebis) did not allow the participation of patricians, and met in the thirty-five tribes. The only magistrate empowered to convoke it was the tribune of the plebs. It had the right to enact laws (strictly, plebiscites) and conduct trials. Its members elected the plebeian aediles and the tribunes of the plebs. The normal meeting place was in the Well of the Comitia.
In no Roman Assembly could the vote of one individual be credited directly to his wants; in the Centuriate Assembly his vote was incorporated into the vote of his Century in his Class, his Century’s majority vote then being cast as a single vote; in the two tribal Assemblies his vote was incorporated into the vote of his tribe, the majority vote of the tribe then being cast as one single vote.
atrium The main reception room of a Roman domus or private house; it contained a rectangular opening in the roof (the compluvium), below which was a pool (the impluvium). Originally the purpose of the pool was to provide a reservoir of water for household use, but by the late Republic the pool was usually purely ornamental.
Attalus III The last King of Pergamum, and ruler of most of the Aegean coast of western Anatolia as well as inland Phrygia. In 133 b.c. he died at a relatively early age, and without heirs closer than a collection of cousins. His will bequeathed his kingdom to Rome, much to the chagrin of the cousins, who promptly went to war against Rome. The insurrection was put down by Manius Aquillius in 129 and 128 b.c., after which Aquillius settled to organize the bequest as the Roman province of Asia. While going about this task, Aquillius sold most of Phrygia to the fifth King Mithridates of Pontus for a sum of gold which he put into his own purse. Discovered by those in Rome, this deed of greed permanently crippled the reputation of the family Aquillius.
Attic helmet An ornate helmet worn by Roman officers above the rank of centurion. It is the kind of helmet commonly worn by the stars of Hollywood Roman epic movies—though I very much doubt that any Attic helmet of Republican times was crested with ostrich feathers! There were ostrich feathers available, but their employment would have been deemed decadent, to say the least.
auctoritas A very difficult Latin term to translate, as it meant far more than the English word “authority” implies. It carried nuances of pre-eminence, clout, leadership, public importance, and—above all—the ability to influence events through sheer public reputation. All the magistracies possessed auctoritas as a part of their very nature, but auctoritas was not confined to those who held magistracies; the Princeps Senatus, Pontifex Maximus, consulars, and even some private individuals outside the Senate could also own auctoritas. Where the term occurs in the book, I have left it untranslated.
Augur A priest whose duties concerned divination rather than prognostication. He and his fellow augurs comprised the College of Augurs, an official State body, and at the time of this book numbered twelve, six patricians and six plebeians. Until 104 b.c., when Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus passed his lex Domitia de sacerdotiis, new augurs had been co-opted by those already in the College; after that law, augurs had to be elected by an Assembly of seventeen tribes chosen by lot. The augur did not predict the future, nor did he pursue his auguries at his own whim; he inspected the proper objects or signs to ascertain whether or not the projected undertaking was one having the approval of the gods, be the undertaking a meeting, a war, a proposed new law, or any other State business, including elections. There was a standard manual of interpretation to which the augur referred; augurs “went by the book.” The augur wore the toga trabea (see that entry), and carried a curved staff called the lituus.
auxiliary A legion of non-citizens incorporated into a Roman army was called an auxiliary legion; its soldiers were also called auxiliaries, and the term extended to cavalry as well. In the time of Marius and Sulla, most auxiliary infantry was Italian in origin, whereas most auxiliary cavalry was Numidian, Gallic, or Thracian, all lands where the soldiers habitually rode horses. The Roman soldier (and the Italian soldier) was not enamored of horses.
barbarian Derived from a Greek word having strong onomatopoeic overtones; on first hearing these peoples speak, the Greeks thought they sounded “bar-bar,” like animals barking. The word “barbarian” was used to describe races and nations deemed uncivilized, lacking in any admirable or desirable culture. Gauls, Germans, Scythians, Sarmatians, and Dacians were considered barbarian.
basilica A large building devoted to public activities such as courts of law, and also to commercial activities in shops and offices. The basilica was two-storeyed and clerestory-lit, and incorporated an arcade of shops under what we might call verandah extensions along either side. During the Republic it was erected at the expense of some civic-minded Roman nobleman, usually of consular status, often censorial as well. The first basilica was built by Cato the Censor on the Clivus Argentarius next door to the Senate House, and was known as the Basilica Porcia; as well as accommodating banking institutions, it was also the headquarters of the College of Tribunes of the Plebs. At the time of this book, there also existed the Basilica Aemilia, the Basilica Sempronia, and the Basilica Opimia, all on the fringes of the lower Forum Romanum.
Bellona The Roman goddess of war. Her temple lay outside the pomerium or sacred boundary of the city on the Campus Martius, and was vowed in 296 b.c. by the great Appius Claudius Caecus. A group of special priests called fetiales conducted her rituals. A large vacant piece of land lay in front of the temple of Bellona, and was known as Enemy Territory.
Bithynia A kingdom flanking the Propontis (the modern Sea of Marmara) on its Asian side, extending east to Paphlagonia and Galatia, south to Phrygia, and southwest to Mysia. It was fertile and prosperous, and was ruled by a series of kings of Thracian origin—the first two were named Prusias, the rest Nicomedes. The traditional enemy of Bithynia was Pontus. From the time of Prusias II, Bithynia enjoyed the status Friend and Ally of the Roman People.
boni Literally, “the Good Men.” First mentioned in a play by Plautus called The Captives, the term came into political use during the days of Gaius Gracchus. He used it to describe his followers—but so also did his enemies Opimius and Drusus. It then passed gradually into general use, indicating men of intensely conservative political inclination; the “true” government of Rome in this book—that is, the faction led by the consul Gnaeus Octavius Ruso—would have described its members as boni.
Brennus A king of the Gauls (or Celts) during the third century b.c.. Leading a large confraternity of Celtic tribes, Brennus invaded Macedonia and Thessaly in 279 b.c., turned the Greek defense at the pass of Thermopylae and sacked Delphi, in which battle he was badly wounded. He then penetrated into Epirus and sacked the enormously rich oracular precinct of Zeus at Dodona; and went on to sack the richest precinct in the world, that of Zeus at Olympia in the Greek Peloponnese. Retreating before a determined Greek guerrilla resistance, Brennus returned to Macedonia, where he died of his wound. Without Brennus to hold them together, his Gauls were rudderless. Some of them (the Tolistobogii, the Trocmi, and a segment of the Volcae Tectosages) crossed the Hellespont into Asia Minor and settled in a land thereafter called Galatia. Those Volcae Tectosages who did not go to Asia Minor returned to their homeland around Tolosa in southwestern Gaul; with them they carried the entire loot of Brennus’s campaign, holding it in trust against the return of the rest of the tribes to Gaul. Apparently they melted the gold and silver down (turning the silver into gigantic millstones) before hiding it in various sacred lakes within the precinct of Herakles in Tolosa. The gold amounted to fifteen thousand talents. See also Gold of Tolosa.
Burdigala Modern Bordeaux, in southwestern France. A great Gallic oppidum (fortress) belonging to the Aquitani, it lay on the south bank of the Garumna River (the modern Garonne) near its mouth. In 107 b.c. it was the scene of a debacle, when a combined force of Germans and Aquitani annihilated the Roman army of Lucius Cassius Longinus, consul (with Gaius Marius) in that year. Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus was killed, as was Cassius himself. Only Gaius Popillius Laenas and a handful of men survived.
Calabria Confusing for those who know modern Italy better than they do ancient Italy! Nowadays Calabria is the toe of the boot, but in ancient times Calabria was the heel. Brundisium was its most important city, followed by Tarentum. The region was not mightily involved in the Marsic War, though its people, the Calabri, were sympathetic to the Italian cause.
Campania A fabulously rich and fertile basin, volcanic in origin and soil, Campania lay between the Apennines of Samnium and the Tuscan Sea, and extended from Tarracina in the north to a point well south of the modern Bay of Naples. Watered by the Liris, Volturnus/Calor, Clanius, and Sarnus rivers, it grew bigger, better, and more of everything than any other region in Italy, even Italian Gaul of the Padus. Colonized during the seventh century b.c. by the Greeks, it fell under Etruscan domination, then affiliated itself to the Samnites (of whom there was a large element in its population), and eventually became subject to Rome. Because of the Greek and Samnite population, it was always an area prone to insurrection, and lost much of its best countryside to Rome as Roman ager publicus. The towns of Capua, Teanum Sidicinum, Venafrum, Acerrae, Nola, and Interamna were important inland centers, while the ports of Puteoli, Neapolis, Herculaneum, Pompeii, Surrentum, Stabiae, and Salernum constituted the best on Italy’s west coast. Puteoli was the largest and busiest port in all of Italy. The Viae Campana, Appia, and Latina passed through it.
campus Plural, campi. A plain, or a flat expanse of ground.
Campus Esquilinus The area of flat ground outside the Servian Walls and the double rampart of the Agger, between the Querquetulan Gate and the Colline Gate. Here lay Rome’s necropolis.
Campus Martius Situated to the north and northwest of the Servian Walls of Rome, the Campus Martius was bounded by the Capitol to its south and the Pincian Hill on its east; the rest of it was enclosed by a huge bend in the Tiber River. On the Campus Martius armies awaiting their general’s triumph were bivouacked, military exercises and the training of the young went on, the stables and exercise tracks for horses engaged in chariot racing were situated, assemblies of the comitia centuriata took place, and market gardening vied with public parklands. The Tiber swimming hole of the Trigarium lay at the apex of the bend, and just to the north of that were medicinal mineral hot springs called the Tarentum. The Via Lata (Via Flaminia) crossed the Campus Martius on its way to the Mulvian Bridge, and the Via Recta bisected it at right angles to the Via Lata.
Campus Vaticanus Situated on the opposite (north) bank of the Tiber from the Campus Martius, the Campus Vaticanus was an area of market gardening and had no importance in the Rome of Marius and Sulla.
Cannae An Apulian town on the Aufidius River in southeastern Italy. Here in 216 b.c. , Hannibal and his Punic army (allied with the Samnites) met a Roman army commanded by Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro. The Roman army was annihilated; until the Battle of Arausio in 106 b.c. , it ranked as Rome’s worst military disaster. Somewhere between 30,000 and 60,000 men died. The survivors were made to pass beneath the yoke (see yoke).
Capena Gate Porta Capena. This was one of the two most strategic gates in Rome’s Servian Walls (the other was the Colline Gate). It lay south of the Circus Maximus, and outside it was the common road which branched into the Via Appia and the Via Latina about half a mile from the gate itself.
capite censi Literally, “Head Count.” The capite censi were those full Roman citizens too poor to belong to one of the five economic classes, and so were unable to vote in the Centuriate Assembly at all. As most capite censi were urban in origin as well as in residence, they largely belonged to urban tribes, which numbered only four out of the total thirty-five tribes; this meant they had little influence in either of the tribal Assemblies, People or Plebs (see also Head Count, proletarii).
Cappadocia A kingdom located in central Anatolia (it is still known today as Cappadocia). Lying at high altitude, the land was created by the outpourings of many volcanos, the most notable of which was Mount Argaeus; Cappadocia’s only township, Eusebeia Mazaca, lay on the lower flanks of this mighty cone. Bountifully watered and rich of soil, Cappadocia was perpetually coveted by the more powerful kings to its north (Pontus) and south (Syria). However, Cappadocia maintained its own line of kings, who usually went by the title Ariarathes. The people were akin to the people of Pontus. The temple-state of Ma at Comana, rich enough to keep 6,000 temple slaves, was reserved as a fief for the reigning king’s brother, who functioned as its high priest.
Capua The most important inland town in Campania. A history of broken pledges of loyalty to Rome led to Roman reprisals which stripped Capua of its extensive and extremely valuable public lands; these became the nucleus of the ager Campanus, and included, for instance, the fabulous vineyards which produced Falernian wines. By the time of Marius and Sulla, Capua’s economic well-being depended upon the many military training camps, gladiatorial schools, and slave camps for bulk-lot prisoners that lay on the town’s outskirts; the people of Capua made their livings from supplying and servicing these huge institutions.
Carinae One of Rome’s more exclusive addresses. The Carinae (which incorporated the Fagutal) was the northern tip of the Oppian Mount on its western side; it extended between the Velia and the Clivus Pullius. Its outlook was southwestern, across the swamps of the Palus Ceroliae toward the Aventine.
Carthage Capital and chief center of the trading empire founded by Phoenician colonists in central North Africa (modern Tunisia). Situated on one of the finest harbors in the Mediterranean, Carthage’s port facilities were enhanced by massive man-made improvements. After Scipio Aemilianus terminated the activities of the Carthaginians in the Third Punic War, Carthage itself virtually ceased to exist.
Caudine Forks In 321 b.c. a Roman army was trapped in a gulch known as the Caudine Forks, somewhere near the Samnite town of Beneventum. It surrendered to the Samnite Gavius Pontius, who forced its soldiers to pass beneath the yoke, a terrible disgrace.
Celtiberian The name given to the members of that segment of the Celtic race which crossed the Pyrenees into Spain and settled in its central, northwestern, and northeastern regions. By the time of Marius and Sulla the Celtiberians were so well ensconced that they were generally regarded as indigenous to Spain.
Celts More the modern than the ancient term for a barbarian race which emerged from north-central Europe during the early centuries of the first millennium b.c. From about 500 b.c. onward, the Celts attempted to invade the lands of the European Mediterranean; in Spain and Gaul they succeeded, whereas in Italy, Macedonia, and Greece they failed. However, in Italian Gaul, Umbria, and Picenum in Italy (as well as in Macedonia, Thessaly, Illyricum, and Moesia) they seeded whole populations which gradually admixed with older local stock. Racially the Celts were different from, yet akin to, the later Germans; they considered themselves a discrete people, and had a more complex religious culture than the Germans. Their languages were similar in some ways to Latin. A Roman rarely if ever used the word “Celt”; he said “Gaul.”
censor The censor was the most senior of all Roman magistrates, though he lacked imperium and was not therefore escorted by lictors. No man who had not already been consul could seek election as censor, and only those consulars owning tremendous auctoritas and dignitas normally bothered to stand. To be elected censor (by the Centuriate Assembly) was a complete vindication of a man’s political career, as it told Rome he was one of the very top men. Two censors were elected to serve together for a period of five years called the lustrum, though the censors were active in their duties only for about the first eighteen months. The censors inspected and regulated membership in the Senate, the Ordo Equester (the knights), the holders of the Public Horse (the 1,800 most senior knights), and conducted a general census of Roman citizens throughout the Roman world. They also applied the means test. State contracts and various public works and buildings were in the domain of the censors.
census Every five years the censors brought the roll of the citizens of Rome up to date. The name of every Roman citizen male was entered on these rolls, together with information about each man’s tribe, his economic class, his property and means, and his family. Neither women nor children were formally registered as being Roman citizens, though there are cases documented in the ancient sources in which a woman was awarded the Roman citizenship in her own right. The city of Rome’s census was taken on the Campus Martius at a special station erected for the purpose; those living elsewhere in Italy had to report to the authorities at the nearest municipal registry, and those living abroad to the provincial governor. There is some evidence, however, that the censors of 97 b.c., Lucius Valerius Flaccus and Marcus Antonius Orator, changed the manner by which citizens living outside Rome but inside Italy were enrolled.
Centuriate Assembly See Assembly
centurion The regular officer of both Roman citizen and auxiliary legions. It is a mistake to equate him with the modern noncommissioned officer; centurions were complete professionals enjoying a status uncomplicated by our modern social distinctions. A defeated Roman general hardly turned a hair if he lost military tribunes, but tore his hair out in clumps if he lost centurions. Centurion rank was graduated; the most junior centurio (plural, centuriones) commanded a group of eighty soldiers and twenty noncombatants called a century. In the Republican army as reorganized by Gaius Marius, each cohort had six centurions, with the most senior man—the pilus prior—commanding the senior century of his cohort as well as commanding his entire cohort. The ten men commanding the ten cohorts making up a legion were also ranked in seniority, with the legion’s most senior centurion, the primus pilus, answering only to his legion’s commander (either one of the elected tribunes of the soldiers, or one of the general’s legates). Promotion during Republican times was up from the ranks.
chersonnese The name the Greeks gave to a peninsula, though they used it somewhat more flexibly than modern geographers employ the term peninsula. Thus the Tauric Chersonnese, the Cimbrian Chersonnese, the Thracian Chersonnese, the Cnidan Chersonnese, et cetera.
Chios A large island in the Aegean Sea, lying off the coast of Asia Minor (the Roman Asia Province) near Smyrna. Chios was chiefly famous for its wine, which had no peer. After an accident to his flagship caused by a Chian ship, King Mithridates VI of Pontus ever after harbored a huge grudge against Chios and Chians.
Cilicia Cilicia was that part of southern Anatolia lying opposite the Cleides peninsula of Cyprus and extending westward as far as the further end of Cyprus, where it adjoined Pamphylia. Its eastern border lay along the Amanus mountains, which separated it from Syria. Western Cilicia was harsh, arid, and extremely mountainous, but eastern Cilicia (known as Cilicia Pedia) was a large and fertile plain watered by the Pyramus, the Saras and the Cydnus rivers. Its capital was Tarsus, on the Cydnus. Modern scholars hold differing opinions as to when Cilicia was formally made a province of Rome, but there seems to me plenty of evidence to suggest that Marcus Antonius Orator annexed it during his campaign against the pirates in 101 b.c. Certainly Sulla was sent to govern Cilicia during the nineties, well before the Marsic War.
Cimbri A very large confraternity of Germanic tribes who lived in the more northern half of the Cimbric Chersonnese (the modern Jutland Peninsula) until about 120 b.c., when some natural disaster prompted them to migrate. Together with their southern neighbors, the Teutones, they began an epic trek to find a new homeland—a trek which lasted twenty years, took them thousands of miles, and finally brought them up against Rome—and Gaius Marius. They were virtually annihilated at the battle of Vercellae in 101 b.c.
citadel Properly, a fortress atop a precipitous hill. Sometimes it lay within its own walls within a larger, more open fortress, as was the case with the Roman stronghold on the Janiculum.
citizenship For the purposes of this book, the Roman citizenship. Possession of it entitled a man to vote in his tribe and his class (if he was economically qualified to belong to a class) in all Roman elections. He could not be flogged, he was entitled to the Roman trial process, and he had the right of appeal. At various times both his parents had to be Roman citizens, at other times only his father (hence the cognomen Hybrida); after the lex Minicia of 91 b.c., a Roman male marrying a non-Roman woman would have had to acquire conubium for his wife if the child was to be a Roman citizen. The male citizen became liable for military service on his seventeenth birthday, and had then to serve for ten campaigns or six years, whichever came first. Before Gaius Marius’s army reforms, a citizen had to possess sufficient property to buy his own arms, armor, gear, and provisions if he was to serve in the legions; after Gaius Marius, legions contained both propertied men and men of the capite censi, the Head Count.
citocacia A mild Latin profanity, meaning “stinkweed.”
citrus wood The most prized cabinet wood of the Roman world, seen at its very best during the last century of the Republic. Citrus wood was cut from vast galls on the root system of a cypresslike tree, Callitris quadrivavis vent., which grew in the highlands of North Africa all the way from the Oasis of Ammonium, and Cyrenaica, to the far Atlas of Mauretania; it must be emphasized that the tree was no relation of orange or lemon, despite the name of its timber. Different trees produced different patterns in the grain, all of which had names—tiger had a long and rippling grain, panther a spiral grain, peacock had eyes like those in a peacock’s tail, parsley a ruffled grain, and so on. In Republican times it was cut as solid wood rather than as a veneer (scarcity dictated veneer during the Empire), and always mounted upon an ivory leg or legs, usually inlaid with gold. Hence a special guild of tradesmen grew up, the citrarii et eborarii, combining citrus wood joiners with ivory carvers. Most citrus wood was reserved for making table-tops, where the beauty of its grain could really be displayed, but it was also turned as bowls. No tables have survived to modern times, but we do have a few bowls, and can see that citrus wood was certainly the most beautiful timber of all time.
classes These were five in number, and represented the economic divisions of property-owning or steady-income-earning Roman citizens. The members of the First Class were the richest, the members of the Fifth Class the poorest. The capite censi or Head Count did not have class status, and so could not vote in the Centuriate Assembly.
client In Latin, cliens. The term denoted a man of free or freed status (he did not have to be a Roman citizen, however) who pledged himself to a man he called his patron. In the most solemn and binding way, the client undertook to serve the interests and obey the wishes of his patron. In return he received certain favors—usually gifts of money, or a job, or legal assistance. The freed slave was automatically the client of his ex-master until discharged of this obligation— if he ever was. A kind of honor system governed the client’s conduct in relation to his patron, and was remarkably consistently adhered to. To be a client did not necessarily mean a man could not be a patron; more that he could not be an ultimate patron, as technically his own clients were also the clients of his patron. During the Republic there were no formal laws concerning the client-patron relationship because they were not necessary—no man, client or patron, could hope to succeed in life were he known as dishonorable in this vital function. However, there were laws regulating the foreign client-patron relationship; foreign states or client-kingdoms acknowledging Rome as patron were legally obliged to find the ransom for any Roman citizen kidnapped in their territories, a fact that pirates relied on heavily for an additional source of income. Thus, not only individuals could become clients; whole towns and countries often were.
client-king A foreign monarch might pledge himself as a client in the service of Rome as his patron, thereby entitling his kingdom to be called Friend and Ally of the Roman People. Sometimes, however, a foreign monarch pledged himself as the client of one Roman individual.
clivus A street on an incline—that is, a hilly street. Rome, a city of hills, had many.
cognomen Plural, cognomina. This was the last name of a Roman male anxious to distinguish himself from all his fellows possessed of an identical first and family name. In some families it became necessary to have more than one cognomen: for example, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica; Quintus was his first name (praenomen), Caecilius his family name (nomen), and Metellus Pius Scipio Nasica were all cognomina. The cognomen usually pointed up some physical characteristic or idiosyncrasy— jug ears, flat feet, hump back—or else commemorated some great feat—as in the Caecilii Metelli who were cognominated Dalmaticus, Balearicus, Numidicus, these being countries each man had conquered. Many cognomina were heavily sarcastic or extremely witty.
cohort After the reforms Gaius Marius carried out upon the Roman legion, the cohort became the tactical unit of the legion. It comprised six centuries of troops; in normal circumstances, a legion owned ten cohorts. When discussing troop movements, it was customary to speak of tactical strength in terms of cohorts rather than legions—thus, twenty-five cohorts rather than two and a half legions, or five cohorts rather than half a legion.
college A body or society of men having something in common. Thus, Rome owned priestly colleges (the College of Pontifices), political colleges (the College of Tribunes of the Plebs), religious colleges (the College of Lictors), and work-related colleges (the Guild of Undertakers). Certain groups of men from all walks of life, including slaves, banded together in what were called Crossroads Colleges to look after the city of Rome’s crossroads and conduct the annual feast of the crossroads, the Compitalia.
colonnade A roofed walkway flanked by one outer row of columns when attached to a building in the manner of a verandah, or two rows of columns, one on either side, if freestanding.
comitia See Assembly.
Comitia The large round well in which meetings of the comitia were held. It lay in the lower Forum Romanum adjacent to the steps of the Senate House and the Basilica Aemilia, and was formed of a series of tiers. When packed, perhaps three thousand men could be accommodated in it. The rostra, or speakers’ platform, was attached to its side.
CONDEMNO The word employed by a jury when delivering a verdict of “guilty.” It was a term confined to the courts (see also DAMNO).
confarreatio The oldest and the strictest of the three forms of Roman marriage. By the time of Marius and Sulla, only patricians still practised it—but by no means all patrician marriages were confarreatio, as it was not mandatory. The confarreatio bride passed from the hand of her father to the hand of her husband, thus preventing her acquiring any measure of independence; this was one reason why confarreatio was not a popular form of marriage, as the two easier forms allowed a woman more control over her dowry and business affairs. The other cause of its unpopularity lay in the extreme difficulty of dissolving it; divorce (diffarreatio) was a legally and religiously arduous business considered more trouble than it was worth unless the circumstances left no other alternative.
Conscript Fathers When it was established by the kings of Rome, the Senate consisted of one hundred patricians titled patres—”fathers.” Then, after the Republic was established and plebeians were also admitted to the Senate, and its membership had swelled to three hundred, and the censors were given the duty of appointing new senators, the word “conscript” came into use as well because the censors conscripted these new members. By the time of Marius and Sulla, the two terms had been run together and senators were addressed in the House as Conscript Fathers.
consul The consul was the most senior Roman magistrate owning imperium, and the consulship (modern scholars do not refer to it as “the consulate” because a consulate is a modern diplomatic institution) was considered the top rung of the cursus honorum. Two consuls were elected each year by the Centuriate Assembly, and served for one year. The first day of the new consul’s office was New Year’s Day, January 1. The senior of the two consuls—who had polled his requisite number of centuries first—held the fasces for the month of January, which meant he officiated while his junior colleague looked on. Each consul was attended by twelve lictors, but only the lictors of the consul officiating during the month (it was the junior consul’s turn in February, and they then alternated for the rest of the year) carried the fasces on their shoulders. By the first century b.c. consuls could be either patrician or plebeian, excepting only that two patricians could not hold office together. The proper age for a consul was forty-two, twelve years after entering the Senate at thirty. A consul’s imperium knew no bounds; it operated not only in Rome, but throughout Italy and the overseas provinces as well, and overrode the imperium of a proconsular governor. The consul could command any army.
consular The name given to a man who had been consul. He was held in special esteem by the rest of the Senate, was asked to speak ahead of the junior magistrates, and might at any time be sent to govern a province should the Senate require the duty of him. He might also be asked to take on other duties, like caring for the grain supply.
consultum The proper term for a senatorial decree. It did not have the force of law. In order to become law, a consultum had to be presented by the Senate to any of the Assemblies, tribal or centuriate, which then voted it into law—if the members of the Assembly in question felt like voting it into law. However, many senatorial consulta (plural) were never submitted to an Assembly, nor voted into law, yet were accepted as law by all of Rome; such were senatorial decisions about who was going to govern a province—the declaration or pursuit of war—who has to command an army—and foreign affairs.
contio Plural, contiones. A preliminary meeting to discuss the promulgation of a law or any other comitial business. All three Assemblies were required to debate a measure in contio, which, though no voting took place, was formally convoked by the magistrate so empowered in the particular Assembly concerned.
contubernalis A military cadet, a subaltern of lowest rank in the hierarchy of Roman legion officers, but excluding the centurions—no centurion was ever a cadet, he was an experienced soldier.
corona A crown. The word was usually confined to military decorations for the very highest valor. Those crowns mentioned in this book are:
corona graminea or obsidionalis The Grass Crown. Made of grass (or sometimes a cereal like wheat, if the battle took place in a field of grain) taken from the battlefield and awarded “on the spot,” the Grass Crown was the rarest of all Roman military decorations. It was given only to a man who had by personal efforts saved a whole legion—or a whole army.
corona civica The Civic Crown. It was made of ordinary oak leaves. Awarded to a man who had saved the lives of fellow soldiers and held the ground on which he did this for the rest of the duration of a battle, it was not given unless the soldiers in question swore a formal oath before their general that such were the circumstances.
Crater Bay The name the Romans used when referring to what is today called the Bay of Naples. Though the ancient sources assure us that the eruption of Vesuvius in a.d. 79 was the first ever known, the name Crater Bay suggests that at some time during prehistory a much larger eruption of a volcano had created this huge bay.
cuirass The name for the armor which encased a man’s upper body. It consisted of two plates of bronze or steel or hardened leather, one protecting the thorax and abdomen, the other his back from shoulders to lumbar spine. The plates were held together by straps or ties at the shoulders and along each side under the arms. Some cuirasses were exquisitely tailored to the contours of the torso, whereas others fitted all men of a certain size and physique. The men of highest rank—especially generals—wore cuirasses tooled in high relief and silver-plated (sometimes, though rarely, gold-plated). The general and his legates also wore a thin red sash around the cuirass about halfway between the nipples and the waist; this sash was ritually knotted and looped.
Cumae This town was the first Greek colony in Italy, established early in the eighth century b.c. It lay on the Tuscan Sea side of Cape Misenum just to the north of Crater Bay, and was a very fashionable seaside resort for Republican Romans.
cunnus A Latin obscenity of extremely offensive nature— “cunt.” It meant the female genitalia. Cuppedenis market This area lay behind the upper Forum Romanum on its eastern side, between the Clivus Orbius and the edge of the Fagutal/Carinae. It was devoted to luxury and specialty items such as pepper, spices, incense, ointments and unguents and balms, and also served as the flower markets, where a Roman could buy anything from a bouquet to a garland to go round the neck or a wreath to go on the head. Until sold to finance Sulla’s campaign against King Mithridates, the land belonged to the State.
Curia Hostilia The Senate House. It was thought to have been built by Tullus Hostilius, the shadowy third of Rome’s kings, hence its name (“meeting house of Hostilius”).
cursus honorum “The Way of Honor.” If a man aspired to be consul, he had to take certain steps, collectively called the cursus honorum. First he was admitted to the Senate (in the time of Marius and Sulla, he was appointed by the censors or was elected a tribune of the plebs—the office of quaestor did not then automatically admit a man to the Senate); he had to serve as a quaestor, either before admission to the Senate of after it; a minimum of nine years after entering the Senate he had to be elected a praetor; and finally, two years after serving as a praetor, he could stand for the consulship. The four steps—senator, quaestor, praetor, consul—constituted the cursus honorum. All other magistracies, including the censorship, were independent of the cursus honorum and did not constitute a part of it.
curule chair The sella curulis was the ivory chair reserved exclusively for magistrates owning imperium—a curule aedile sat in one, a plebeian aedile did not. In style, the curule chair was beautifully carved from ivory, with curved legs crossing in a broad X; it was equipped with low arms, but had no back.
custodes These were the minor officials who took care of electoral procedures—tally clerks, keepers of the ballot tablets, et cetera.
DAMNO This was the word used to deliver a verdict of condemnation (that is, “guilty”) in a trial conducted by one of the Assemblies. It did not belong to the courts, which used CONDEMNO. The glossary entry in my first Roman book was not informative because I hadn’t tracked the words down; when rereading Dr. L. R. Taylor’s Roman Voting Assemblies during the writing of The Grass Crown, I discovered the information now tendered. Research never stops! Nor does one get everything out of a valuable book on first reading.
Delphi The great sanctuary of the god Apollo, lying in the lap of Mount Parnassus, in central Greece. From very ancient times it was an important center of worship, though not of Apollo until about the seventh or sixth century b.c.. The shrine contained an omphalos or navel stone (probably a meteorite), and Delphi itself was thought to be the center of the earth. An oracle of awesome fame resided at Delphi, its prophecies delivered by a crone in a state of ecstatic frenzy; she was known as Pythia, or the Pythoness. Fabulously rich due to the constant stream of costly gifts from grateful petitioners, Delphi was sacked and plundered several times during antiquity (see Brennus), but recovered quickly afterward, as the gifts never stopped coming in.
demagogue Originally a Greek concept, meaning a politician whose chief appeal was to the crowds. The Roman demagogue preferred the arena of the Comitia well to the Senate House, but it was no part of his policy to “liberate the masses,” nor on the whole were those who listened to him composed of the very lowly. The term was employed by ultra-conservative factions within the Senate to describe the more radical tribunes of the plebs.
denarius Plural, denarii. Save for a very rare issue or two of gold coins, the denarius was the largest denomination of coin during the Roman Republic. Of pure silver, it contained about 3.5 grams of the metal, and was about the size of a dime—very small. There were 6,250 denarii in one silver talent.
diadem A thick white ribbon about one inch (25 mm) wide, each end embroidered, and often finished with a fringe. It was worn tied around the head, either across the forehead or behind the hairline, and was knotted at the back beneath the occiput; the ends trailed down onto the shoulders. Originally a mark of Persian royalty, the diadem became the symbol of the Hellenistic monarch after Alexander the Great removed it from the tiara of the Persian kings as being a more appropriately Greek understatement of kingship than either a crown or a tiara. It could be worn only by a reigning sovereign but was not confined to the male sex—women wore the diadem too.
dignitas A concept peculiar to Rome, dignitas cannot be translated to mean English “dignity.” It was a man’s personal share of public standing in the community, and involved his moral and ethical worth, his reputation, his entitlement to respect and proper treatment by his peers and by the history books. Auctoritas was public, dignitas personal, an accumulation of clout and standing stemming from a man’s own personal qualities and achievements. Of all the assets a Roman nobleman possessed, dignitas was likely to be the one he was most touchy about; to defend it, he might be prepared to go to war or into exile, to commit suicide, or to execute his wife and son. I have elected to leave the term in my text untranslated. diverticulum In the sense used in this book, a road connecting the main arterial roads which radiated out from the gates of Rome—in effect, a “ring road.”
Dodona A temple and precinct sacred to Zeus. Located among the inland mountains of Epirus some ten miles to the south and west of Lake Pamboris, it was the home of a very famous oracle situated in a sacred oak tree which was also the home of doves. Like all the great oracular shrines, Dodona was the recipient of many gifts, and was in consequence extremely rich. It was sacked several times in antiquity: by the Aetolians in 219 b.c., by the Roman Aemilius Paullus in 167 B:C., and by the Scordisci in 90 b.c. On each occasion, the temple recovered quickly and accumulated more riches.
dominus Literally, “lord.” Domine, the vocative case, was used in address. Domina meant “lady” and dominilla “little lady.”
Ecastor! The exclamation of surprise or amazement considered polite and permissible for women to utter. Its root suggests it invoked Castor.
Edepol! The exclamation of surprise or amazement considered polite and permissible for men to utter when in the company of women. Its root suggests it invoked Pollux.
Elysian Fields Republican Romans had no real belief in the intact survival of the individual after death, though they did believe in an underworld and in “shades,” which latter were rather mindless and characterless effigies of the dead. To both Greeks and Romans, however, certain men were considered by the gods to have lived lives of sufficient glory (rather than merit) to warrant their being preserved after death in a place called Elysium, or the Elysian Fields. Even so, these privileged shades were mere wraiths, and could only come to re-experience human emotions and appetites after drinking blood. The living human being requiring an audience with a dweller in the Elysian Fields had to dig a pit on the border, sacrifice his animal, and fill the pit with blood. After drinking, the shade could talk.
emporium This word had two meanings. It could denote a seaport whose commercial activities were tied up in maritime trade, as in the case of the island of Delos; or it could denote a large waterfront building where importers and exporters had their offices.
epulones Some of the religious holidays in the Republican year were celebrated by a feast, or a feast was a part of the day’s festivities. The task of organizing these feasts was the responsibility of the College of Epulones, a minor priestly institution. If the feast involved only the Senate or a similarly small number of men, catering for it was easy; but some feasts involved the entire free population of Rome. Originally there had been only three epulones, but by the time of Marius and Sulla, there were eight or ten of them. ergastula Singular, ergastulum. These were locked barracks for criminals or slaves. Ergastula became infamous when large-scale pastoralists increased in numbers from the time of the Brothers Gracchi onward; such land leasers used chain-gang labor to run their latifundia (ranches) and locked them into ergastula.
ethnarch The Greek word for a city or town magistrate.
Etruria The Latin name for what had once been the kingdom of the Etruscans. It incorporated the wide coastal plains west of the Apennines, from the Tiber in the south to the Arnus in the north. During the late Republic its most important towns were Veii, Cosa, and Clusium. The Viae Aurelia, Clodia, and Cassia ran through it.
Euxine Sea The modern Black Sea. It was extensively explored by the Greeks during the seventh and sixth centuries b.c., and several colonies of Greek traders were established on its shores. Because of the large number of mighty rivers which emptied into it, it was always less salty than other seas, and the current through the Thracian Bosporus and the Hellespont always flowed from the Euxine to the Aegean—a help leaving, a hindrance entering. By far the most powerful nation bordering it was Pontus; the Euxine shores were subdued and conquered by the sixth King Mithridates of Pontus. However, Bithynia controlled the Thracian Bosporus, the Propontis, and the Hellespont, and so made a large income from levying duty and passage fees upon ships passing through these bodies of water. Bithynia’s
ownership of the Euxine entrance undoubtedly accounted for the bitter enmity between Bithynia and Pontus.
extortion See repetundae.
faction This is the term usually applied to Republican Roman political groups by modern scholars. These groups could in no way be called political parties in the modern sense, as they were extremely flexible, with a constantly changing membership. Rather than form around an ideology, the Republican Roman faction formed around an individual owning enormous auctoritas or dignitas. I have completely avoided the terms “Optimate” and “Popularis” because I do not wish to give any impression that political parties existed.
fasces The fasces were bundles of birch rods ritually tied together in a crisscross pattern by red leather thongs. Originally an emblem of the Etruscan kings, they passed into the customs of the emerging Rome, persisted in Roman public life throughout the Republic, and on into the Empire. Carried by men called lictors, they preceded the curule magistrate (and the propraetor and proconsul as well) as the outward symbol of his imperium. Within the pomerium, only the rods went into the bundles, to signify that the curule magistrate had only the power to chastise; outside the pomerium axes were inserted into the bundles, to signify that the curule magistrate also had the power to execute. The number of fasces indicated the degree of imperium—a dictator had twenty-four, a consul (and proconsul) twelve, a praetor (and propraetor) six, and a curule aedile two.
fasti This Latin word actually meant days on which business could be transacted, but by the time of Marius and Sulla it had come to mean several other things: the calendar, lists relating to holidays and festivals, and the list of consuls (this last probably because Republican Romans did not reckon their years by number as much as by who had been consuls). The entry in the glossary to The First Man in Rome contains a fuller explanation of the calendar than space permits me here—under fasti, of course.
flamen Plural, flamines. A priest of a very special kind. There were fifteen flamines, three major and twelve minor. The three major flamines were the flamen Dialis (priest of Jupiter Optimus Maximus), the flamen Martialis (priest of Mars), and the flamen Quirinalis (priest of Quirinus). Save for the flamen Dialis, no flamen seemed to have very onerous duties, yet the three major priests at least received their housing and living at the expense of the State. They were probably Rome’s most ancient pontifices.
Fortuna The Roman goddess of fortune, and one of the most fervently worshipped deities in the Roman pantheon. There were many temples to Fortuna, each dedicated to the goddess in a different guise or light. But the aspect of Fortuna who mattered most to politicians and generals was Fortuna Huiusque Diei—”The Fortune of This Present Day.” Even men as formidably intelligent and able as Gaius Marius, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, and Gaius Julius Caesar the Dictator believed in the machinations of Fortuna implicitly, and courted her favor.
forum An open-air meeting place for all kinds of business, public and private. Some fora (plural) were devoted to meat, others to vegetables, or fish, or grain, while others witnessed political assemblies and the business of government. Even an army camp had its forum, situated alongside the general’s tent.
freedman A manumitted slave. Though technically a free man (and, if his former master was a Roman citizen, a Roman citizen himself), the freedman remained in the patronage of his former master. At the time of Marius and Sulla he had little chance to exercise his right to vote in the tribal assemblies, as he belonged to one of two urban tribes—Esquilina and Suburana. If he was of superior ability or ruthlessness, he might, however, be able to vote in the classes of the Centuriate Assembly once he acquired sufficient wealth; freedmen capable of amassing a fortune usually bought their way into a rural tribe and so possessed the complete franchise.
free man A man born free and never sold into slavery (except as a nexus or debt slave, which was rare among Roman citizens during the time of Marius and Sulla, though still prevalent among the Italian Allies). Fregellae This had been a Latin Rights community with an unblemished record of loyalty to Rome; then in 125 b.c. it revolted against Rome and was crushed by the praetor Lucius Opimius in circumstances of singular cruelty. Destroyed completely, the town never recovered. It was situated on the Via Latina and the Liris River just across the border in Samnium.
Further Spain Hispania Ulterior. This was the further of Rome’s two Spanish provinces—that is, it lay further away from Rome than the other province, called Nearer Spain. In the time of Marius and Sulla the border between Nearer and Further Spains was somewhat tenuous. By and large, the Further province encompassed the entire basins of the Baetis and Anas rivers, the ore-bearing mountains in which the Baetis and the Anas rose, the Atlantic littoral from the Pillars of Hercules to Olisippo at the mouth of the Tagus, and the Mediterranean littoral from the Pillars to the port of Abdera. The largest city by far was Gades, but the seat of the governor was Corduba. Strabo calls it the richest growing land in the world.
Gallia Comata Long-haired Gaul. Having excluded the Roman province of Gaul-across-the-Alps, Gallia Comata incorporated modern France and Belgium, together with that part of Holland south of the Rhine. The Rhine throughout its length formed the border between Gaul and Germania. The inhabitants of all areas away from the Rhine were Druidical Celts; close to the Rhine the strains were mixed due to successive invasions of Germans. Long-haired Gaul was so called because its peoples wore their hair uncut. games In Latin, ludi. They were a Roman institution and pastime which went back at least as far as the very early Republic, and probably a lot further. At first they were celebrated only when a general triumphed, but in 336 b.c., the ludi Romani became an annual event held in honor of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, whose feast day occurred on September 13. At first the ludi Romani were over in a single day, but as the Republic aged they increased in length; at the time of Marius and Sulla they went on for ten days. Though there were a few rather half-hearted boxing and wrestling bouts, Roman games never possessed the athletic nature of Greek games. At first the games consisted mostly of chariot races, then gradually came to incorporate animal hunts, and plays performed in specially erected theaters. On the first day of every games, there was a spectacular religious procession through the Circus, after which came a chariot race or two, and then the boxing and wrestling, limited to this first day. The succeeding days were taken up with plays in the theater; tragedies were far less popular than comedies, and by the time of Marius and Sulla mimes were most popular of all. Then as the games drew to a close, chariot racing reigned supreme, with wild beast hunts to vary the program. Gladiatorial combats did not form a part of Republican games (they were put on by private individuals, usually as part of a funeral, in the Forum Romanum rather than in the Circus). The games were put on at the expense of the State, though men ambitious to make a name for themselves dug deep into their purses when serving as aediles to make “their” games more spectacular than the State allocation of funds permitted. Most of the big games were held in the Circus Maximus, some of the smaller ones in the Circus Flaminius. Free Roman citizen men and women could attend (there was no admission charge), with women segregated in the theater but not in the Circus; neither slaves nor freedmen were allowed admission, probably because even the Circus Maximus, which held perhaps 150,000 people, was not large enough to contain freedmen as well as free men.
Gaul-across-the-Alps Gallia Transalpina. I have preferred to endow Gallia Transalpina with a more pedestrian name because of the hideous confusion nonclassical readers would experience if they had to deal with Cis and Trans. Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus won the Roman Gallic province for Rome just before 120 b.c. to ensure that Rome would have a safe land route for her armies marching between Italy and Spain. The province consisted of a coastal strip all the way from Liguria to the Pyrenees, with two inland incursions—one to Tolosa in Aquitania, the other up the valley of the Rhodanus as far as the trading post of Lugdunum (Lyon).
gens Plural, gentes. A Roman clan whose members all owned the same nomen or family name, also called the gentilicial name. Julius, Domitius, Cornelius, Aemilius, Servilius, Livius, Porcius, Junius and Licinius were all gentilicial names, for example. All the genuine members of the same gens (that is, excluding freed slaves who adopted their masters’ names) could trace their line back to a common ancestor. The terms gens was feminine gender, hence gens Julia, gens Cornelia, gens Servilia, and so forth.
gig A two-wheeled vehicle drawn by either two or four animals, more usually mules than horses. The gig was very lightly and flexibly built within the limitations of ancient vehicles—springs and shock absorbers did not exist—and was the vehicle of choice for a Roman in a hurry because it was easy for the animals to draw, therefore speedy. However, it was open to the elements. In Latin it was cisia. The two-wheeled closed-in carriage, a heavier and slower vehicle, was called the carpentum.
gladiator A soldier of the sawdust, a professional warrior who performed his trade before an audience as a form of entertainment. An inheritance from the Etruscans, he always flourished throughout Italy, including Rome. During the Republic he was an honorable as well as an heroic figure, was well cared for and free to come and go. His origins were several: he might be a deserter from the legions, a condemned criminal, a slave, or a free man who voluntarily signed himself up. In Republican times he served for perhaps four to six years, and on an average fought perhaps five times in any one year; it was rare for him to die, and the Empire’s “thumbs-up, thumbs-down” verdict was still far in the future. When he retired he was prone to hire himself out as a bodyguard or bouncer. To own a gladiatorial school was considered a smart investment for a Roman businessman.
Gold of Tolosa Perhaps several years after 278 b.c., a segment of the tribe Volcae Tectosages returned from Macedonia to their homeland around Aquitanian Tolosa (modern Toulouse) bearing the accumulated spoils from many sacked temples (see Brennus). These were melted down and stored in the artificial lakes which dotted the precincts of Tolosa’s temples; the gold was left lying undisturbed beneath the water, whereas the silver was regularly hauled out—it had been formed into gigantic millstones which were used to grind the wheat. In 106 b.c. the consul Quintus Servilius Caepio was ordered during his consulship to make war against migrating Germans who had taken up residence around Tolosa. When he arrived in the area he found the Germans gone, for they had quarreled with their hosts, the Volcae Tectosages, and been ordered away. Instead of fighting a battle, Caepio the Consul found a vast amount of gold and silver in the sacred lakes of Tolosa. The silver amounted to 10,000 talents (250 imperial tons) including the millstones, and the gold to 15,000 talents (370 imperial tons). The silver was transported to the port of Narbo and shipped to Rome, whereupon the wagons returned to Tolosa and were loaded with the gold; the wagon train was escorted by one cohort of Roman legionaries, some 520 men. Near the fortress of Carcasso the wagon train of gold was attacked by brigands, the soldier escort was slaughtered, and the wagon train disappeared, together with its precious cargo. It was never seen again.
At the time no suspicion attached to Caepio the Consul, but after the odium he incurred over his conduct at the battle of Arausio a year later, it began to be rumored that Caepio the Consul had organized the attack on the wagon train and deposited the gold in Smyrna in his own name. Though he was never tried for the Great Wagon Train Robbery, he was tried for the loss of his army, convicted, and sent into exile. He chose to spend his exile in Smyrna, where he died in 100 b.c. The story of the Gold of Tolosa is told in the ancient sources, which do not state categorically that Caepio the Consul stole it. However, it seems logical. And there is no doubt that the Servilii Caepiones who succeeded Caepio the Consul down to the time of Brutus (the last heir) were fabulously wealthy. Nor is there much doubt that most of Rome thought Caepio the Consul responsible for the disappearance of more gold than Rome had in the Treasury. Good Men See boni.
governor A convenient English word to describe the consul or praetor, proconsul or propraetor, who—usually for the space of one year—ruled a Roman province in the name of the Senate and People of Rome. The degree of imperium the governor owned varied, as did the extent of his commission. However, no matter what his imperium, while in his province he was virtual king of it. He was responsibly for its defense, administration, the gathering of its taxes and tithes, and all decisions pertaining to it. Provinces notoriously difficult to govern were generally given to consuls, peaceful backwaters to praetors.
The Gracchi More generally known as the Brothers Gracchi. Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus and Aemilia Paulla, was married when eighteen years old to the forty-five-year-old Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus; the year was about 172 b.c., and Scipio Africanus had been dead for twelve years. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus was consul in 177 b.c., censor in 169 b.c., and consul a second time in 163 b.c. By the time he died in 154 b.c. he was the father of twelve children. However, they were a universally sickly brood; only three of them did Cornelia manage to raise to adulthood, despite assiduous care. The oldest of these three was a girl, Sempronia, who was married as soon as she was of age to her cousin Scipio Aemilianus. The two younger children were boys. Tiberius was born in 163 b.c., his brother Gaius not until the year of his father’s death, 154 b.c. Thus both boys owed their upbringing to their mother, who by all accounts did a superlative job. Both the Brothers Gracchi served under their mother’s first cousin (and their own brother-in-law) Scipio Aemilianus—Tiberius during the Third Punic War, Gaius at Numantia—they were conspicuously brave. In 137 b.c. Tiberius was sent as quaestor to Nearer Spain, where he single-handedly negotiated a treaty to extricate the defeated Hostilius Mancinus from Numantia, thus saving Mancinus’s army from annihilation; however, Scipio Aemilianus considered Tiberius’s action disgraceful, and managed to persuade the Senate not to ratify the treaty. Tiberius never forgave his cousin and brother-in-law. In 133 b.c. Tiberius was elected a tribune of the plebs and set out to right the wrongs the State was perpetrating in its leasing of the ager publicus. Against furious opposition, he passed an agrarian law which limited the amount of public land any one man might lease or own to 500 iugera (with an extra 250 iugera per son), and set up a commission to distribute the surplus land this limit produced among the civilian poor of Rome. His aim was not only to rid Rome of some of her less useful citizens, but also to ensure that future generations would be in a position to give Rome sons qualified at the means test to serve in the army. When the Senate chose to filibuster, Tiberius took his bill straight to the Plebeian Assembly—and stirred up a hornets’ nest thereby, as this move ran counter to all established practice. One of his fellow tribunes of the plebs, his relative Marcus Octavius, vetoed the bill in the Plebeian Assembly, and was illegally deposed from office—yet another enormous offense against the mos maiorum (that is, established custom and practice). The legality of these ploys mattered less to Tiberius’s opponents than did the fact that they contravened established practice, however unwritten that. established practice might be. When Attalus III of Pergamum died that year and was discovered to have bequeathed his kingdom to Rome, Tiberius ignored the Senate’s right to decide what ought to be done with this bequest, and legislated to have the lands used to resettle more of Rome’s poor. Opposition in Senate and Comitia hardened day by day. Then when 133 b.c. drew to a close without Tiberius’s seeing a successful conclusion to his program, he flouted another established practice—the one which said a man might be a tribune of the plebs only once. Tiberius Gracchus ran for a second term. In a confrontation on the Capitol between his own faction and an ultra-conservative faction led by his cousin Scipio Nasica, Tiberius was clubbed to death, as were some of his followers. His cousin Scipio Aemilianus—though not yet returned from Numantia when this happened—publicly condoned the murder, alleging that Tiberius had wanted to make himself King of Rome. Turmoil died down until ten years later, when Tiberius’s little brother Gaius was elected a tribune of the plebs in 123 b.c. Gaius Sempronius Gracchus was the same kind of man as his elder brother, but he had learned from Tiberius’s mistakes, and was besides the more able of the two. His reforms were far wider; they embraced not only agrarian laws, but also laws to provide very cheap grain for the urban lowly, to regulate service in the army, to found Roman citizen colonies abroad, to initiate public works throughout Italy, to remove the extortion court from the Senate and give it to the knights, to farm the taxes of Asia Province by public contracts let by the censors, and to give the full Roman citizenship to all those having the Latin Rights, and the Latin Rights to every Italian. His program was nowhere near completed when his term as a tribune of the plebs came to an end, so Gaius did the impossible—he ran for a second term, and got in. Amid mounting fury and obdurate enmity, he battled on to achieve his program of reform, which was still not completed when his second term expired. He stood a third time for the tribunate of the plebs. This time he was defeated, as was his friend and close colleague, Marcus Fulvius Flaccus. When 121 b.c. dawned, Gaius saw his laws and policies attacked at once by the consul Lucius Opimius and the ex-tribune of the plebs Marcus Livius Drusus. Desperate to prevent everything he had done being torn down again, Gaius Sempronius Gracchus resorted to violence. The Senate responded by passing its first-ever “ultimate decree” to stop the escalating Forum war; Fulvius Flaccus and two of his sons were murdered and the fleeing Gaius Gracchus committed suicide in the Grove of Furrina on the flanks of the Janiculan hill. Roman politics could never be the same; the aged citadel of the mos maiorum was now irreparably breached. The same thread of tragedy wove through the personal lives of the Brothers Gracchi also. Tiberius married a Claudia, the daughter of Appius Claudius Pulcher, consul in 143 b.c., an inveterate enemy of Scipio Aemilianus and as idiosyncratic as most Claudius-Pulcher men tended to be. There were three sons of the marriage between Tiberius and Claudia, none of whom lived to achieve a public career. Gaius Gracchus also married the daughter of one of his stoutest supporters—Licinia, daughter of Publius Licinius Crassus Mucianus. They had one child only, a daughter, Sempronia, who married a Fulvius Flaccus Bambalio—she produced a daughter, Fulvia, who became in turn the wife of Publius Clodius Pulcher, Gaius Scribonius Curio, and Mark Antony.
grammaticus Not a teacher of grammar! He taught the basic arts of rhetoric—public speaking (see rhetoric).
Greece By the beginning of the first century b.c. Greece had been stripped of the territories of Macedonia and Epirus. It comprised Thessaly, Dolopia, Malis, Euboeia, Ocris, Phocis, Locris, Aetolia, Acarnania, Boeotia, Attica, Corinth, and the various states of the Peloponnese. Things Greek had fallen into almost complete decline; many of Greece’s regions were bare of people, their towns ghost, their coffers empty. Only places like Athens continued in some way to thrive. Centuries of war—with foreign invaders, at the whim of would-be conquerors, and—most often of all—between Greek states, had impoverished the country and halved its population, many of whom (if fortunate enough to possess a good trade or education) voluntarily sold themselves into slavery.
Hannibal The Carthaginian prince who led his country in the second of its three wars against Rome. Born in 247 b.c. , the son of Hamilcar, Hannibal was taught to soldier in Spain as a mere child; he spent his youth in Spain, where his father was the Carthaginian governor. In 218 b.c. Hannibal invaded Italy, a shock tactic which confounded Rome; his crossing of the Alps (complete with elephants) through the Montgenèvre Pass was brilliantly done. For sixteen years he roamed at will through Italian Gaul and Italy, defeating Roman armies at Trebia, Trasimene, and finally Cannae. But Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosis Cunctator evolved a strategy which eventually wore Hannibal out; relentlessly he shadowed the Carthaginian army with an army of his own, yet never offered battle nor allowed his men to be trapped into battle—the so-called “Fabian tactics.’’ Because Fabius Maximus was always in his vicinity somewhere, Hannibal never quite got up the courage to attack the city of Rome herself. Then his allies among the Italians began to flag; after his hold on Campania was broken, Fabius Maximus forced Hannibal further and further south in Italy. The Carthaginian lost the (verbal) battle for Tarentum at about the same time as his younger brother, Hasdrubal, was defeated at the Metaurus River in Umbria. Penned up in Bruttium, the very toe of Italy, he evacuated his undefeated army back to Carthage in 203 b.c. At Zama he was beaten by Scipio Africanus, after which, as the Head of State, he intrigued with Antiochus the Great of Syria against Rome. Roman pressure forced him to flee from Carthage and seek asylum with Antiochus in Syria; after Rome subdued the King, Hannibal had to move on. He is reputed to have wandered to Armenia, where he helped King Artaxias design and build his capital, Artaxata. So oriental a court could not please; Hannibal journeyed west across Anatolia and fetched up with King Prusias in Bithynia. Then in 182 b.c., Rome demanded that Prusias hand the Carthaginian over. Rather than fall into Roman hands, Hannibal committed suicide. An unrepentant enemy of Rome, he was always admired and respected by Rome.
“hay on his horn” Ancient oxen were endowed with most formidable horns, and not all ancient oxen were placid, despite their castrated state. A beast which gored was tagged in warning; hay was wrapped around the horn it gored with, or around both horns if it gored with both. Pedestrians scattered wildly on seeing an ox tagged in this manner. The saying “hay on his horn” came to be applied to a very large, good-natured, placid man after it was discovered that this same man could turn like lightning and strike with the ruthlessness of a born killer.
Head Count This is the term I have used throughout the book to describe the lowliest of Roman citizens—those who were too poor to belong to one of the five economic Classes. All the censors did was to take a “head count” of them. I have preferred Head Count to “the proletariat” or “the masses” because of our modern post-Marxist attitudes— attitudes entirely misleading in the ancient context (see also capite censi and proletarii).
Hellenic The term used to describe Greek culture outside Greece after Alexander the Great introduced a Greek element into the courts and kingdoms of Mediterranean and Asian rulers.
Herakles The Greek form. In Latin, Hercules. A mortal man (though a son of Zeus), his sheer strength, indomitability and perseverance in adversity immortalized him for all time. After he died inside the poisoned shirt, Zeus also immortalized him. However, it was undoubtedly his human qualities which made him such an attractive object of worship; he held sway from one end of the Mediterranean to the other. His cult was exclusively male, and he was regarded as the embodiment of all traditional male virtues. His was the statue dressed in the raiment of the triumphing general. In Rome, he was also a god of merchant trading, particularly for vendors of olive oil. Some men thought themselves his descendants; this was true of Mithridates and the Roman Antonii.
Hyperboreans Literally, the people beyond the home of Boreas, the North Wind. They were mythical, said to worship only the god Apollo, and to live an idyllic existence. The Land of the Hyperboreans was, however, definitely thought by the ancients to exist somewhere in the far north. Ilium The name the Romans gave to the city of Troy. imago Plural, imagines. This was the beautifully painted and bewigged, lifelike mask of a Roman family’s consular (or perhaps also praetorian) ancestor. It was made out of beeswax and kept in a dust-free cupboard shaped like a miniature temple. The mask and its cupboard were the objects of enormous reverence. When a man of the family died, an actor was hired to don the mask and wig and impersonate the dead ancestor in the funeral procession. If a man became consul, his mask was added to the family collection. From time to time a man who was not consul did something so remarkable it was considered he deserved an imago.
imperator Literally, the commander-in-chief or the general of a Roman army. However, the term gradually came to be given only to a general who won a great victory; his troops hailed him imperator on the field. In order to gain permission from the Senate to celebrate a triumph, a general had to prove that his men had indeed hailed him as imperator on the field. Imperator is the root of the word “emperor.”
imperium Imperium was the degree of authority vested in a curule magistrate or promagistrate. Imperium meant that a man owned the authority of his office, and could not be gainsaid (provided he was acting within the limits of his particular level of imperium and within the laws governing his conduct). It was conferred by a lex Curiata, and lasted for one year only; extensions had to be ratified by Senate and/or People in the case of promagistrates who had not completed their original commissions in the space of one year. Lictors bearing fasces indicated that a man possessed imperium, the higher the number, the higher the imperium (see also fasces; lictor; magistrate),
insula Plural, insulae. Literally, “island.” Because it was usually surrounded on all sides by streets or lanes or alleys, an apartment building became known as an insula. Roman insulae were very tall (up to one hundred feet—thirty meters—in height), and most were large enough to warrant the incorporation of an internal light-well; many were large enough to contain more than one internal light-well. Then, as now, Rome was a city of apartment dwellers. This in itself is a strong clue to the answer to the vexed question— how many people lived in Rome? We know the dimensions of the city within the Servian Walls: one-plus kilometers in width, two-plus kilometers in length. That meant the population of Rome at the time of Marius and Sulla had to have been at least one million, probably more. Otherwise the insulae would have been half empty and the city smothered in parks. Rome teemed with people, its insulae were multitudinous. Two million (including slaves) might be closer to the truth of the matter.
Interrex The word means “between the kings.” It dates back to the kings of Rome, when the patrician Senate appointed one of its members to act after the death of one king and before the accession of a new king. After the establishment of the Republic the practice survived in cases where, due to death or other disaster, no consuls were left in office, and no elections had yet been held. The members of the Senate were divided into decuries of ten men, each decury being headed by a patrician senator; this was always so. But while Rome had no consuls, an interrex was chosen from among the patrician heads of the senatorial decuries. He could serve for five days only, then was succeeded by another patrician head of a decury; this went on until elections could be held and proper consuls take office. While in office the interrex was endowed with a full consular imperium, had the full complement of twelve lictors, and could perform all the functions of the consul. No man could be an interrex unless he was the patrician head of a senatorial decury. The first in a series of interreges (plural) was not allowed to hold consular elections.
Italia For the purposes of this book, the word has two meanings. First of all, it refers to all of ancient peninsular Italy south of the Arnus and Rubico rivers. Secondly, it is used to refer to the rebel Italian nations which rose against Rome in 91 b.c. and fought the Marsic (later known as the Social) War.
Italian Allies The peoples, tribes, or nations (they are variously described as all three) who lived in the Italian peninsula without enjoying either the full Roman citizenship or the Latin Rights were known as the Italian Allies. In return for military protection and in the interests of peaceful co-existence, they were required by Rome to furnish properly armed soldiers for the armies of Rome, and to pay for the upkeep of these soldiers. The Italian Allies also bore the brunt of general taxation within Italy at the time of Marius and Sulla, and in many instances had been obliged to yield part of their lands to swell the Roman ager publicus. Many of them had either risen against Rome (like the Samnites) or sided with Hannibal and others against Rome (like parts of Campania). To some extent, there was always some movement among the Italian Allies to throw off the Roman yoke, or to demand that Rome accord them the full citizenship; but until the last century of the Republic, Rome was sensitive enough to act before the grumbling grew too serious. After the joint enfranchisement of Formiae Fundi and Arpinum in 188 b.c., no more Italian Allied communities were rewarded with the citizenship or even the Latin Rights. The final straw which turned Italian Allied discontent into open revolt was the lex Licinia Mucia of 95 b.c.; at the end of 91 b.c. war broke out. The regions of Italy which remained loyal to Rome were: Etruria, Umbria, Northern Picenum, Northern Campania, Latium, the Sabine country. The nations which rose up against Rome were: Marsi (after whom the war was named, the Marsic War), Samnites, Frentani, Marrucini, Picentes south of the Flosis River, Paeligni, Vestini, Hirpini, all of whom rose up together, and were soon joined by: Lucani, Apuli, Venusini. The two regions in the extreme south, Bruttium and Calabria, were sympathetic to the Italian cause, but took little part in hostilities. Quintus Poppaedius Silo of the Marsi and Gaius Papius Mutilus of the Samnites were the heads of the Italian Allied government.
Italian Gaul Gallia Cisalpina—Gaul-on-this-side-of-the-Alps. In the interests of simplicity, I have elected to call it Italian Gaul. It incorporated all the lands north of the Arnus-Rubico border on the Italian side of the formidable semicircle of alps which cut Italy off from the rest of Europe. It was bisected from west to east by the Padus River (the modem Po). South of the river the people and towns were heavily Romanized, many of them possessing the Latin Rights. North of the river the peoples and towns were more Celtic than Roman; Latin was at best a second language, if spoken at all. The lex Pompeia promulgated by Pompey Strabo in 89 b.c. gave the full Roman citizenship to all the Latin Rights communities south of the Padus, and gave the Latin Rights to the towns of Aquileia, Patavium, and Mediolanum to the north of the Padus. Politically Italian Gaul dwelt in a kind of limbo at the time of Marius and Sulla, for it had neither the status of a true province nor was it a part of Italia. The Marsic (Social) War saw for the first time the men of Italian Gaul drafted into Rome’s armies—as auxiliaries before the lex Pompeia, as full Roman legions after that.
Italica The capital of the new nation of Italia as dreamed of by the insurgents of the Marsic (Social) War. It was actually the city of Corfinium, and enjoyed the name Italica only while the war went on.
iugera Singular, iugerum. The Roman unit of land measurement. In modern terms one iugerum was 0.623 (or five eighths) of an acre, or 0.252 (one quarter) of a hectare. The modern user of imperial measure will get close enough in acres by dividing the iugera in two; in metric measure, to divide by four will be very close in hectares.
ius Latii See Latin Rights.
Janiculum The Janiculan hill consisted of the heights behind the northwest bank of the Tiber, opposite the city of Rome. During the Republic-there was a defensive fortress upon it; this was still kept up and was ready to be garrisoned during the time of Marius and Sulla. A flagpole stood atop the citadel inside the stronghold; if the red flag flying from it was pulled down, it was a signal that Rome lay under threat of attack.
Jugurtha King of Numidia from 118 b.c. until his capture by Sulla in 105 b.c.. An illegitimate son, he gained his throne by murdering those more legitimately entitled to the throne than himself, and he hung onto it grimly, despite great opposition from certain elements in the Roman Senate led by Marcus Aemilius Scaurus the Princeps Senatus. In 109 b.c. (after a disgraceful act of aggression by the young Aulus Postumius Albinus) Jugurtha went to war against Roman Africa; Quintus Caecilius Metellus the consul was sent to Africa to subjugate him, his legates being Gaius Marius and Publius Rutilius Rufus (both of whom had served as cadets with Jugurtha in Spain years before). Metellus (who earned the extra cognomen Numidicus from this campaign) and Marius could not get on, with the result that Marius ran for consul in 108 b.c. for 107 in office, and had the Plebeian Assembly take the command in the war off Metellus Numidicus, who never forgave him. Marius did well against the Numidian army, but Jugurtha himself constantly eluded capture until Sulla, then Marius’s quaestor, persuaded King Bocchus of Mauretania to trick Jugurtha, who was captured and sent to Rome. He walked in Marius’s triumphal parade on New Year’s Day of 104 b.c., then was thrown into the lower chamber of the Tullianum and left there to starve to death.
Juno Moneta Juno of Warnings, or perhaps Reminders. Rome’s highest goddess, Juno had many guises, including Juno Moneta. It was her gaggle of sacred geese which cackled so loudly they woke Marcus Manlius in time for him to dislodge the Gauls trying to scale the Capitol cliffs in 390 b.c. The mint was located inside the podium of her temple on the Arx of the Capitol; from this fact, we obtain our English word “money.”
Jupiter Optimus Maximus Literally, “Jupiter Best and Greatest.’’ He was the king of the Roman pantheon, Rome’s Great God. He had a huge and magnificent temple on the Capitolium of the Capitol, and his own special priest, the flamen Dialis.
Jupiter Stator Jupiter the Stayer. It is a title having to do with military men and matters; Jupiter Stator was that aspect of Jupiter who arrested retreats, gave soldiers the courage to stand and fight, hold their ground. Two temples of Jupiter Stator existed, one very old establishment on the corner of the Via Sacra and the Velia adjacent to the Clivus Palatinus (it was here Gaius Marius hid after his defeat by Sulla in 88 b.c.), and the other Rome’s first all-marble temple, on the Campus Martius adjacent to the Porticus Metelli.
Kingdom of the Parthians Regnum Parthorum. This is the way the ancients expressed the name of that vast area of western Asia under the domination of the King of the Parthians. It was not called Parthia; Parthia was a small nation to the northeast of the Caspian Sea, near Bactria, and was important only because it had produced the seven great Pahlavi families, and the Arsacid Parthian kings. By the time of Marius and Sulla the Arsacid Parthian kings held sway over all of the lands between the Euphrates River of Mesopotamia and the Indus River of modern Pakistan. The King of the Parthians did not live in Parthia itself, but ruled his domains from Seleuceia-on-Tigris in winter and Ecbatana in summer. Pahlavi satraps ruled the various regions into which the Kingdom of the Parthians was split up, but only as the King’s designated representatives. Though government was loose and no genuine national feeling existed, the King of the Parthians held his empire together by military excellence. The army was purely cavalry, but of two different kinds: light-armed bowmen who delivered the “Parthian shot” twisted facing backward as they pretended to flee, and cataphracts who were clad from head to foot in chain mail, as were their horses. Thanks to Syrian Seleucid contacts, the Parthian court’s oriental atmosphere was partially leavened by a little Hellenism.
knights The equites, the members of the Ordo Equester. It had all started when the kings of Rome enrolled the city’s top citizens as a special cavalry unit provided with horses paid for from the public purse. At that time, horses of good enough quality were both scarce and extremely costly. When the young Republic came into being there were 1,800 men so enrolled, grouped into eighteen centuries. As the Republic grew, so too did the number of knights, but all the extra knights were obliged to buy their own horses and maintain them at their own expense. However, by the second century b.c. Rome was no longer providing her own cavalry; the knights became a social and economic entity having little to do with military matters, though the State continued to provide the 1,800 senior knights with the Public Horse. The knights were now defined by the censors in economic terms; the original eighteen centuries holding the 1,800 senior knights remained at one hundred men each, but the rest of the knights’ centuries (some seventy-one) swelled within themselves to contain many more than one hundred men. Thus all the men who qualified at the census as knights were accommodated within the First Class. Until 123 b.c., all senators were knights as well; it was Gaius Sempronius Gracchus (see The Gracchi) who in that year split the Senate off as a separate body of three hundred men, and gave the knights the title Ordo Equester. The sons of senators and other nonsenatorial members of senatorial families continued to be classified as knights. To qualify as a knight at the census (held on a special tribunal in the lower Forum Romanum), a man had to have property or assets giving him an income in excess of 400,000 sesterces. There was no restriction upon the nature of the activities which brought him in his income, as there was on the senator. From the time of Gaius Gracchus down to the end of the Republic, the knights either controlled or temporarily lost control of the major courts which tried senators for minor treason or provincial extortion; this meant the knights were often at loggerheads with the Senate. There was nothing to stop a knight who qualified for the senatorial means test becoming a senator if the censors agreed upon a vacancy falling due; that by and large the knights did not aspire to the Senate was purely because of the knightly love of trade and commerce, both forbidden fruit for senators. The members of the Ordo Equester liked the thrills of the business forum more than they craved the thrills of the political forum.
Lar Plural, Lares. These were among the most Roman of all gods, having no form, shape, sex, number, or mythology. They were numina. There were many different kinds of Lares, who might function as the protective spirits or forces of a locality (as with crossroads and boundaries), a social group (as with the family’s private Lar, the Lar Familiaris), an activity such as voyaging (the Lares Permarini), or a whole nation (as with Rome’s public Lares, the Lares Praestites). By the late Republic they had acquired both form and sex, and were depicted (in the form of small statues) as two young men with a dog. It is doubtful, however, whether a Roman actually believed by this that there were only two of them, or that they owned this form and sex; more perhaps that the increasing complexity of life made it convenient to tag them in a concrete way.
latifundia Large tracts of public land leased by one person and run as a single unit in the manner of a modern ranch. That is, the activity was purely grazing, not farming. They were usually staffed by slaves who increasingly became treated like chain-gang prisoners and were locked at night in barracks called ergastula.
Latin Rights ius Latii. They were an intermediate citizen status between the nadir of non-citizenship as suffered by the Italian Allies and the zenith of the full Roman citizenship. In other words, they were a typically Roman ploy to soothe ruffled non-citizen feelings without conceding the full citizenship. Those having the Latin Rights shared privileges in common with Roman citizens; booty was divided equally, contracts with full citizens could be entered into and legal protection sought for these contracts, marriage was allowed with full citizens, and there was the right to appeal against capital convictions. However, there was no suffragium—no right to vote in any Roman election. Nor the right to sit on a Roman jury. After the revolt of Fregellae in 125 b.c. (this was a Latin Rights town grown tired of waiting for the full citizenship), an unknown tribune of the plebs in 123 b.c. passed a law allowing the magistrates of Latin Rights communities to assume the full citizenship for themselves and their direct descendants in perpetuity—another typically Roman ploy, as it soothed the ruffled feelings of a town’s important men, yet did nothing to enfranchise the ordinary residents.
Latium The region of Italy in which Rome was situated; it received its name from the original inhabitants, called Latini. Its northern boundary was the Tiber, its southern a point extending inland from the seaport of Circei; on the east it bordered the lands of the Sabines and Marsi. When the Roman conquest of the Volsci and the Aequi was completed by 300 b.c., Latium became purely Roman.
Lautumiae The ancient tufa-stone quarry in the base of the northeast cliffs of the Arx of the Capitol. The earliest of the buildings contained in the Forum Romanum of Marius and Sulla’s day were made from stone quarried there. At some time a prison was built in the convenient quarry’s lap, but as lengthy incarceration was not a Roman concept, the place was never rendered secure. The Lautumiae was a collection of holding cells—mostly used, it seems, to confine recalcitrant magistrates and politicians. As punishment for crime, the Romans preferred exile to imprisonment. It was much cheaper.
legate Legatus. The most senior members of the Roman general’s military staff were his legates. In order to be classified as a legate, a man had to be of senatorial rank, and often was a consular (it appears these elder statesmen occasionally hankered after a spell of army life, and volunteered their services to a general commanding some interesting campaign). Legates answered only to the general, and were senior to all types of military tribune.
legion Legio. This was the smallest Roman military unit capable of fighting a war on its own (though it was rarely called upon to do so). That is, it was complete within itself in terms of manpower, equipment, and facilities. By the time of Marius and Sulla, a Roman army engaged in any major campaign rarely consisted of fewer than four legions—though equally rarely of more than six legions. Single legions without prospect of reinforcement did garrison duty in places where rebellions or raids were small-scale. A legion contained something over five thousand soldiers divided into ten cohorts of six centuries each, and about one thousand men of noncombatant status; there was a modest cavalry squadron attached to the legion under normal circumstances. Each legion fielded its own artillery and matèriel. If a legion was one of the consul’s legions, it was commanded by up to six elected tribunes of the soldiers; if it belonged to a general not currently consul, it was commanded by a legate, or else by the general himself. Its regular officers were centurions, of which it possessed some sixty. Though the troops belonging to a legion camped together, they did not live together en masse; instead, they were divided into units of eight men who tented and messed together.
legionary This is the correct English word to describe an ordinary soldier (miles gregarius) in a Roman legion. “Legionnaire,” which I have sometimes seen instead, is more properly the term applied to a member of the French Foreign Legion.
lex Plural, leges. A law. The word “lex” came to be applied also to a plebiscitum (plebiscite), which was a law passed in the Plebeian Assembly. A lex was not considered valid until it had been inscribed on bronze or stone and deposited in the vaults below the temple of Saturn. However, logic says the tablet’s residence in the temple of Saturn must have been brief, as the vaults could not have contained anything like the number of tablets necessary to hold the body of Roman law at the time of Marius and Sulla— especially not when the Treasury also lay beneath the temple of Saturn. I imagine the tablets were whisked in and out to be stored permanently elsewhere.
leges Caecilia Didia I have called the first one prima, as it figures more prominently in the book than the second lex Caecilia Didia. The first of these two laws stipulated that three nundinae or market days must elapse between the first contio to promulgate a law in any of the Assemblies and the vote which passed a bill into law. There is some debate as to whether the waiting period was seventeen or twenty-four days; I have chosen the smaller wait because it seems more Roman. The second lex Caecilia Didia forbade the tacking of unrelated matters together to form one law. They were passed by the consuls of 98 b.c.
lex Calpurnia de civitate sociorum The law of Piso Frugi passed in 89 b.c. Originally it stipulated that all the new citizens of the lex Julia should be placed in two newly created tribes; when this caused a huge outcry, Piso Frugi changed his law to admit the new citizens to his two new tribes plus eight existing tribes.
leges Corneliae The laws of Sulla, passed in 88 b.c., during his consulship. They fall into three lots, passed at different times. At the beginning of his consulship he passed two laws to regulate Rome’s rocky finances; the first stipulated that all debtors were to pay simple interest only on loans at the rate agreed to by both parties at the time the loan was made. The second waived the lodgment of sponsio (that is, the sum in dispute) with the praetor in cases of debt, enabling the praetor to hear the case. After the slaughter in Asia Province by Mithridates and before the laws of Sulpicius came Sulla’s agrarian law. It gave the confiscated lands of the rebel towns Pompeii, Faesulae, Hadria, Telesia, Bovianum, and Grumentum to Sulla’s veteran soldiers upon their retirement. The final batch of laws was passed after Sulla’s march on Rome. The first waived the waiting period of the lex Caecilia Didia prima. The second added three hundred members to the Senate, to be appointed by the censors in the usual way. The third repealed the lex Hortensia of 287 b.c. by stipulating that nothing could now be brought before the tribal Assemblies unless the Senate issued a consultum. The wording of the consultum could not be changed in the Assemblies. The fourth returned the Centuriate Assembly to the form it had known under King Servius Tullius, thus giving the First Class of voters almost 50 percent of the voting power. The fifth prohibited either discussion of or passing of laws in the tribal Assemblies. All laws in future were to be discussed and passed in the Centuriate Assembly only. The sixth repealed all of the leges Sulpiciae because they had been passed with violence during legally declared religious holidays. The seventh indicted twenty men on charges of high treason (perduellio)—and damned them—in the Centuriate Assembly. Gaius Marius, Young Marius, Sulpicius, Brutus the urban praetor, Cethegus, the Brothers Granii, Albinovanus, Laetorius, and eleven more were named.
lex Domitia de sacerdotiis Passed in 104 b.c. by Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, later Pontifex Maximus. It required that future members of the College of Pontifices and College of Augurs be elected by a special tribal Assembly comprising seventeen tribes chosen by lot.
lex Julia de civitate Latinis et sociis danda Passed by Lucius Julius Caesar at the end of his consulship in 90 b.c. It gave the Roman citizenship to all Italians who had not taken up arms against Rome during the Marsic War. Presumably it also fully enfranchised all Latin Rights communities in Italy.
lex Licinia Mucia Passed by the consuls of 95 b.c. in response to an outcry about the number of spurious Roman citizens who appeared on the census rolls in 96 b.c. It legislated the creation of a number of special courts (quaestiones) to enquire into the credentials of all new names on the citizen register, and prescribed severe penalties for those found to have falsified citizenship.
lex Plautia iudiciaria Passed in the Plebeian Assembly in 89 b.c. It changed the frame of reference of the so-called Varian Commission to prosecute those who had opposed enfranchisement of the Italians. Further, it took the court off the knights and gave it to citizens of all and any Classes right across the thirty-five tribes.
lex Plautia Papiria Passed by the Plebeian Assembly in 89 b.c. It extended the full citizenship to any Italian with his name on an Italian municipal roll (if an insurgent, it required that he withdraw from all hostilities against Rome) provided the applicant lodged his case with the urban praetor inside Rome within sixty days of the passing of the law.
lex Pompeia Passed by the consul of 89 b.c., Pompey Strabo. This law gave the full citizenship to every Latin Rights community south of the Padus River in Italian Gaul, and gave the Latin Rights to Celtic tribes attached to the towns of Aquileia, Patavium, and Mediolanum north of the Padus River.
leges Sulpiciae There were four such, passed after the consul Sulla had been given command of the war against Mithridates in about September of 88 B.c: The first recalled all those exiled under the terms of the Varian Commission; the second provided that all the new Roman citizens should be distributed equally across the thirty-five tribes, and that the freedmen of Rome also be distributed across the thirty-five tribes; the third expelled all senators in debt for more than two thousand denarii from the Senate; and the fourth took the command of the war against Mithridates off Sulla and gave it to Marius. After Sulla’s march on Rome, his laws were annulled.
lex Varia de maiestate Passed in the Plebeian Assembly by Quintus Varius Severus Hybrida Sucronensis in 90 b.c. It created a special court (thereafter always called the Varian Commission) to try those accused of attempting to secure the Roman citizenship for Italians.
lex Voconia de mulierum hereditatibus Passed in 169 b.c. This law severely curtailed the right of women to inherit from wills. Under no circumstances could she be designated the principal heir, even if she was the only child of her father; his nearest agnate relatives (that is, on the father’s side) superseded her. Cicero quotes a case where it was argued that the lex Voconia did not apply because the dead man’s property had not been assessed at a census; but the praetor (Gaius Verres) overruled the argument and refused to allow the girl in question to inherit. The law was certainly got around, for we know of several great heiresses; by securing a law waiving the lex Voconia, perhaps; or by dying intestate, in which case the old law prevailed, and children inherited irrespective of sex or close agnate relatives. Until Sulla as dictator established permanent quaestiones there does not appear to have been a court to hear testamentary disputes, which meant the urban praetor must have had the final say.
LIBERO The verdict of acquittal in a trial conducted in one of the voting Assemblies.
licker-fish A freshwater bass of the Tiber River. It was found only between the Wooden Bridge and the Pons Aemilius, where it lurked around the outflows of the great sewers and fed upon what the sewers disgorged. Apparently it was so well fed that it was notoriously difficult to catch— which may be why it was regarded as a great delicacy.
lictor One of the few genuine public servants of Rome. There was a College of Lictors; how many it contained is uncertain, but enough certainly to provide the traditional single-file escort for all holders of imperium, both within and without the city, and to perform other duties as well. Two or three hundred lictors all told may not have been unlikely. A lictor had to be a full Roman citizen, but that he was lowly seems fairly sure, as his official wage was minimal; he relied heavily upon gratuities from those he escorted. Within the college the lictors were divided into groups of ten (decuries), each headed by a prefect; there were several presidents of the college as a whole. Inside Rome the lictor wore a plain white toga; outside Rome he wore a crimson tunic with a wide black belt heavily ornamented in brass; at funerals he wore a black toga. I have located the College of Lictors behind the temple of the Lares Praestites on the eastern side of the Forum Romanum adjacent to the great inn on the corner of the Clivus Orbius, but there is no factual evidence to support this location. Long-haired Gaul See Gallia Comata. Lucania Western peninsular Italy lying south of Campania and north of Bruttium—the front of the Italian ankle and foot. It was a wild and mountainous area and contained huge and magnificent forests of fir and pine. Its people— called Lucani—had strong ties with the Samnites, the Hirpini, and the Venusini, and bitterly resented Roman incursions into Lucania.
Lucius Tiddlypuss See Tiddlypuss, Lucius.
ludi Romani See games.
Lusitani The people of the southwestern and western areas of the Iberian peninsula; they lay beyond the frontiers of the Roman province of Further Spain, and strenuously resisted all Roman attempts to penetrate their lands. They also regularly invaded Further Spain to annoy the Roman occupiers.
lustrum This word came to mean two things, both connected with the office of censor. It meant the entire five-year term the censors served, but also meant the ceremony with which the censors concluded the census of the ordinary Roman People on the Campus Martius.
magistrates The elected executives of the Senate and People of Rome. By the middle Republic, all the men who held magistracies were members of the Senate (elected quaestors, if not already senators, were normally approved as senators by the next pair of censors). This gave the Senate a distinct advantage over the People, until the People (in the person of the Plebs) took over the lawmaking. The magistrates represented the executive arm of government. In order of seniority, the most junior magistrate was the elected tribune of the soldiers, who was not old enough to be admitted to the Senate under the lex Villia annalis, yet was nonetheless a true magistrate. Then; in ascending order came the quaestor, the tribune of the plebs, the plebeian aedile, the curule aedile, the praetor, the consul, and the censor. Only the curule aedile, the praetor, and the consul held imperium. Only the quaestorship, praetorship, and consulship constituted the cursus honorum. Tribunes of the soldiers, quaestors, and curule aediles were elected by the Assembly of the People; tribunes of the plebs and plebeian aediles were elected by the Plebeian Assembly; and praetors, consuls, and censors were elected by the Centuriate Assembly. In times of emergency, the Senate was empowered to create an extraordinary magistrate, the dictator, who served for six months only, and was indemnified against answering for his dictatorial actions after his term as dictator was over. The dictator himself appointed a Master of the Horse to function as his war leader and second-in-command. On the death or incapacitation of a consul, the Senate was also empowered to appoint a suffect consul without holding an election. Save for the censors, all magistrates served for one year only.