The Grass Crown

by Colleen McCullough

  In certain areas the Senate traditionally reigned supreme, despite its lack of legislating power: the fiscus was controlled by the Senate, as it controlled the Treasury; foreign affairs were left to the Senate; war was the business of the Senate; and the appointment of provincial governors and the regulation of provincial affairs were left to the Senate to decide. After the time of Gaius Gracchus, in civil emergencies the Senate could override all other bodies in government by passing the Senatus Consultant de republica defendenda— its Ultimate Decree proclaiming its own sovereignty and the establishment of martial law. The Ultimate Decree, in other words, was a senatorial sidestep to prevent the appointment of a dictator.

  Servian Walls Murus Servii Tullii. Republican Romans believed that the formidable walls enclosing the city of Rome had been erected in the time of King Servius Tullius. However, evidence suggests that they were built after Rome was sacked by the Gauls in 390 b.c. (see Juno Moneta). Down to the time of Caesar the Dictator they were scrupulously kept up.

  sesterces Latin singular, sestertius. The commonest of Roman coins. Roman accounting practices were expressed in sesterces, hence their prominence in Latin writings of Republican date. The name sestertius derives from semis tertius, meaning two and a half ases (see as). In Latin writing, it was abbreviated as HS. A small silver coin, the sestertius was worth a quarter of a denarius. I have kept to the Latin when speaking of this coin in the singular, but have preferred to used the Anglicized form in the plural.

  Sibylline Books The Roman State possessed a series of prophecies written in Greek and called the Sibylline Books. They were acquired, it was believed, by King Tarquinius Priscus, at which date they were written on palm leaves; each time the King refused to buy them, one book was burned and the price for the rest went up until finally the King agreed to take the remainder. They were greatly revered and were in the care of a special college of minor priests called the decemviri sacris faciundis; in State crises they were solemnly consulted to see if there was a prophecy which fitted the situation.

  sinus A pronounced curve or fold. The term was used in many different ways, but for the purposes of this book, two only are of interest. One described the geographical feature we might call a gulf—Sinus Arabicus, et cetera. The second described the looping fold of toga as this garment emerged from under the right arm and was swept up over the left shoulder—the togate Roman's pocket.

  Sosius A name associated with the book trade in Rome. Two brothers Sosius published during the principate of Augustus. I have taken the name and extrapolated it backward in time; Roman businesses were often family businesses, and the book trade in Rome was already a flourishing one at the time of Marius and Sulla. Therefore, why not a Sosius?

  spelt A very fine, soft white flour. It was not suitable for making bread, but was excellent for making cakes. It was ground from the variety of wheat now known as Triticum spelta.

  sponsio In cases of civil litigation not calling for a hearing in a formal court of law (that is, cases which could be heard by the urban praetor), the urban praetor could only proceed to hear the case if a sum of money called sponsio was lodged in his keeping before the hearing began. This was either damages, or the sum of money in dispute. In bankruptcy complaints or nonpayment of debts, the sum owed was the sponsio. This meant that when the sum concerned could not be found by either the plaintiff or the defendant, the urban praetor was not empowered to hear the case. In times of money shortage, it became a problem, hence the inclusion by Sulla in his law regulating debt of a provision waiving the lodgement of sponsio with the urban praetor.

  steel The term Iron Age is rather misleading, as iron in itself is not a very usable metal. It only replaced bronze when ancient smiths discovered ways of steeling it; from then on, it was the metal of choice for tools, weapons, and other apparatus demanding a combination of hardness, durability and capacity to take an edge or point. Aristotle and Theophrastus, both writing in the Greece of the fourth century b.c., talk about steel, not about iron. However, the whole process of working iron into a usable metal evolved in total ignorance of the chemistry and metallurgy underlying it. The main ore used to extract iron was haematite; pyrites was little used because of the extreme toxicity of its sulphuric by-products. Strabo and Pliny the Elder both describe a method of roasting the ore in a hearth-type furnace (oxidation), and the shaft furnace (reduction). The shaft furnace was more efficient, could smelt larger quantities of ore, and was the method of choice. The carbon necessary for smelting was provided (as with bronze and other alloys) by charcoal. Most smelting works used both hearth and shaft furnaces side by side, and produced from the raw ore slag-contaminated "blooms" which were called sows (hence, presumably, our term "pig"). These sows were then reheated to above melting point and compelled to take up additional carbon from the charcoal by hammering (forging); this also drove out most of the contaminating slag, though ancient steels were never entirely free of slag. Roman smiths were fully conversant with the techniques of annealing, quenching, tempering, and cementation (this last forced yet more carbon into the iron). Each of these procedures changed the characteristics of the basic carbon steel in a different way, so that steels for various purposes could be made—razors, sword blades, knives, axes, saws, wood and stone chisels, cold chisels, nails, spikes, et cetera. So precious were the steels suitable for cutting edges that a thin piece of edge steel was welded (the Romans knew two methods of welding, pressure welding and fusion welding) onto a cheaper-quality base, as seen with ploughshares and axes. However, the Roman sword blade was made entirely from steel taking a cruelly sharp edge; it was produced by tempering at about 280°C. Tongs, anvils, hammers, bellows, crucibles, fire bricks, and the other tools in trade of a smith were known and universally used. Many of the ancient theories were quite wrong; it was thought, for instance, that the nature of the liquid used in quenching affected the quenching—urine was the quenching liquid of choice. And no one understood that the real reason why the iron mined in

  Noricum produced such superb steel lay in the fact that it naturally contained a small amount of manganese uncontaminated by phosphorus, arsenic, or sulphur, and therefore was modern manganese steel.

  stibium A black antimony-based powder soluble in water, stibium was used to dye or paint eyebrows and eyelashes, and to draw a line around the eyes.

  stips A wage. In the sense used in this book, the slips was the wage paid to a slave by his master. It was also called peculium.

  Subura The poorest and most densely populated part of the city of Rome. It lay to the east of the Forum Romanum in the declivity between the Oppian spur of the Esquiline Mount and the Viminal Hill. Its very long main street had three different names: at the bottom, where it was contiguous with the Argiletum, it was the Fauces Suburae; the next section was known as the Subura Major; and the final section, which scrambled up the steep flank of the Esquiline proper, was the Clivus Suburanus. The Subura Minor and the Vicus Patricii branched off the Subura Major in the direction of the Viminal. The Subura was an area composed entirely of insulae and contained only one prominent landmark, the Tunis Mamilia, apparently some kind of tower. Its people were notoriously polyglot and independent of mind; many Jews lived in the Subura, which at the time of Marius and Sulla contained Rome's only synagogue. Suetonius says Caesar the Dictator lived in the Subura.

  suffect consul Consul suffectus. When an elected consul died in office or was in some other way rendered incapable of conducting the duties of his office, the Senate appointed a substitute called the suffectus. He was not elected. Sometimes the Senate-would appoint a suffectus even when the consular year was just about over; at other times no substitute would be appointed even when the consular year was far from over. These discrepancies apparently reflected the mood of the House at the particular time. It seems too that the Senate needed the presence of the remaining consul to appoint a suffectus—witness senatorial helplessness when Cato the Consul was killed in 90 b.c. and the remaining consul, Lucius Julius Caesar, refus
ed to come to Rome for the choosing of a suffectus. The name of the suffect consul was engraved upon the consular fasti, and he was entitled to call himself a consular after his period in office was over.

  sumptuary law A lex sumptuaria. These laws sought to regulate the amount of luxurious (that is, expensive) goods and/or foodstuffs a Roman might buy or have in his house, no matter how wealthy he was. Presumably the goods targeted were imported from abroad. During the Republic many sumptuary laws were leveled at women, forbidding them to wear more than a specified amount of jewelry, or ride in litters or carriages within the Servian Walls; as several magistrates found out, women so legislated against were inclined to turn nasty and become a force to be reckoned with.

  suovetaurilia This was a special sacrifice consisting of a pig (su), a sheep (ove), and an ox or bull (taur). It was offered to certain gods on critical occasions; Jupiter Optimus Maximus was one, Mars another. The ceremonies surrounding the suovetaurilia called for the sacrificial victims to be led in a solemn procession before being killed. Besides these special occasions of national crisis, there were two regular occasions on which a suovetaurilia was offered; the first occurred in late May when the land was purified by the twelve minor priests called the Arval Brethren; the second occurred at five-year intervals when the censors set up their booth on the Campus Martius and prepared to take the full census of Roman citizens.

  tablinum This room was the exclusive domain of the paterfamilias in a Roman family unit; unless too poor to have more than one or two rooms, he had his study, as I have chosen to call it.

  talent This ancient unit of weight was defined as the load a man could carry. Bullion and very large sums of money were expressed in talents, but the term was not confined to precious metals and money. In modern terms the talent weighed about fifty to fifty-five pounds (25 kilograms). A talent of gold weighed the same as a talent of silver, of course, but was far more valuable.

  Tarpeian Rock Its precise location is still hotly debated, but it is known to have been quite visible from the lower Forum Romanum, and presumably was an overhang at the top of the Capitolium cliffs. Since the drop was not much more than eighty feet from the Tarpeian Rock to the bottom, the rock itself must have been located precisely above some sort of jagged outcrop—we have no evidence that anyone survived the fall. It was the traditional place of execution for Roman citizen traitors and murderers, who were either thrown from it or forced to jump from it. I have located it on a line from the temple of Ops.

  tata The Latin diminutive for "father"—akin to our "daddy." I have, by the way, elected to use the almost universal "mama" as the diminutive for mother, but the Latin was "mamma."

  Tellus The Roman earth goddess. Her worship became largely neglected after the importation of Magna Mater from Pessinus. Tellus had a big temple on the Carinae, in early days imposing; by the time of Marius and Sulla it was dilapidated.

  Tiddlypuss, Lucius I needed a joke name of the kind people in all places at all times have used when they want to refer to a faceless yet representative person. In the USA it would be "Joe Blow," in the UK "Fred Bloggs." As I am writing in standard English for a largely non-Latinate readership, it was not possible to choose a properly Latin name to fulfill this function. I coined "Lucius Tiddlypuss" because it looks and sounds patently ridiculous, has an "uss" ending—and because of a mountain. This mountain was named in a Latin distortion after the villa of Augustus's infamous freedman, Publius Vedius Pollio, which lay on its flanks. The villa's name, a Greek one, was Pausilypon, whereas the Latin name of the mountain was Pausilypus— a clear indication of how much Pollio was loathed, for pus then meant exactly the same as' 'pus'' does today in English. Speakers of Latin punned constantly, as we know. And that's how Lucius Tiddlypuss came into being, one of the few fictitious characters in this book.

  toga The garment only a full citizen of Rome was permitted to wear. Made of lightweight wool, it was a most peculiar shape (which is why the togate "Romans" in Hollywood movies never look right). After exhaustive and brilliant experimentation, Dr. Lillian Wilson of Johns Hopkins worked out a size and shape which produce a perfect-looking toga. To fit a man five feet nine inches (175 cm) tall and having a waist of thirty-six inches (89.5 cm), the toga was about fifteen feet (4.6 m) wide, and seven feet six inches (2.25 m) long; the length measurement is draped on his height axis while the much bigger width measurement is wrapped around him. However, the shape was not a simple rectangle! It looked like this:

  [GC 1068.jpg]

  Unless the toga is cut as illustrated, it will absolutely refuse to drape the way it does on the togate men of the ancient statues. The Republican toga of Marius and Sulla's day was very large (the toga varied considerably in size between the time of the Kings of Rome and 500 a.d., a period of one thousand years). One final observation about the toga resulted from my own experimentation—I proved rather conclusively that the togate Republican Roman could not possibly have worn under-drawers or a loincloth. The toga itself disqualified the left hand from performing any task at groin level, as the left arm carried multiple folds and most of the weight of the garment. But when the toga is properly draped, the right hand can part it with astonishing ease, push up the hem of the tunic, and perform the act of urinating from a standing position—provided, that is, that there are no under-drawers or loincloth to fiddle with! I mention this interesting fact only because it is still said the Roman wore some sort of nether under-garment. Well, if he was wearing a toga, he couldn't have.

  toga alba Or toga pura, or toga virilis. This was the plain white toga of manhood as worn by an ordinary citizen. It was probably more cream or ecru than stark white.

  toga Candida This was the specially whitened toga worn by those seeking office as an elected magistrate (our word "candidate" comes from the toga Candida). The candidate wore his special toga on the day when he registered his candidacy, as he went about Rome canvassing, and on election day. Its stark whiteness was achieved by bleaching the garment in the sun for many days, and then working finely powdered chalk through it.

  toga picta The all-purple toga of the triumphing general, lavishly embroidered (presumably in gold) with pictures of people and events. The kings of Rome had worn the purple toga picta, and so too did the statue of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in his temple on the Capitol.

  toga praetexta The purple-bordered toga of the curule magistrate, it continued to be worn by these men after their term in office was over. It was also the garment worn by children of both sexes.

  toga pulla This was the toga of mourning, and was made of wool as close to black as possible. Senators in mourning also wore a knight's tunic bearing the angustus clavus, or "narrow stripe," on its shoulder.

  toga trabea Cicero's "particolored toga." It was the striped toga of the augur, and very likely the pontifex also. Like the toga praetexta, it had a purple border, but also was striped in alternate red and purple down its length.

  togate The correct English-language term to describe a man clad in his toga.

  tribe Tribus. By the beginning of the Republic, tribus to a Roman was not an ethnic grouping of his people, but a political grouping of service only to the State. There were thirty-five tribes altogether; thirty-one of these were rural, only four urban. The sixteen really old tribes bore the names of the various original patrician gentes, indicating that the citizens who belonged to these tribes were either members of the patrician families, or had once lived on land owned by the patrician families. During the early and middle Republic, when Roman-owned territory in the Italian peninsula began to expand, tribes were added to accommodate the new citizens within the Roman body politic. Full Roman citizen colonies also became the nuclei of fresh tribes. The four urban tribes were supposed to have been founded by King Servius Tullius, though the time of their actual foundation is more likely to have been during the early Republic. The last date of a tribal creation was 241 b.c. Every member of a tribe was entitled to register one vote in a tribal assembly; but his vote was not in itsel
f significant. The votes in each tribe were counted first, then the tribe as a whole cast one single vote, the majority vote within the ranks of its members. This meant that in no tribal assembly could the huge number of citizens enrolled in the four urban tribes

  influence the outcome of a vote, as each of the thirty-one rural tribes had the exact same degree of voting power as each urban tribe. Members of rural tribes were not disbarred from living within the city of Rome, nor were their progeny forced into an urban tribe. Most senators and knights of the First Class belonged to rural tribes.

  tribune Tribunus. An official representing the interests of a certain part of the Roman body politic. The name originally referred to those men who represented the tribes (tri-bus—tribunus), but, as the Republic got into its stride, the name came to mean an official representing various institutions not directly connected with the tribes per se.

  tribune, military Those on the general's staff who were not elected tribunes of the soldiers, yet who ranked below legate but above cadet. If the general was not a consul currently in office, military tribunes might command his legions. Otherwise they did staff duties for the general. Military tribunes also served as commanders of cavalry units.