The Grass Crown

by Colleen McCullough

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 V
oconia 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.