The First Man in Rome

by Colleen McCullough

  saltatrix tonsa Literally, “barbered dancing girl.” In other words, a male homosexual who dressed as a woman and sold his sexual favors.

  Samnites, Samnium The Oscan-speaking people who occupied the territory between Latium, Campania, Apulia, and Picenum. Most of Samnium was ruggedly mountainous and not particularly fertile; its towns tended to be poor and small, and numbered among them Bovianum, Caieta, and Aeclanum. Aesernia and Beneventum, the two biggest towns, were Latin Rights colonies implanted by Rome. Throughout their history, the Samnites were implacable enemies of Rome, and several times during the early and middle Republic inflicted crushing defeats upon Roman armies. However, they had neither the manpower nor the financial resources to throw off the Roman yoke permanently. About 180 B.C., the Samnites were sufficiently sapped to be incapable of refusing new settlers in the persons of Ligurians removed from Liguria by Rome to lessen Roman troubles in the northwest. At the time it seemed to Rome a good move; but the new settlers were fully absorbed into the Samnite nation, and harbored no more love for Rome than did their hosts, the Samnites. Thus did Samnite resistance grow anew.

  Sardinia One of Rome’s earliest two provinces. A large island in the Tuscan (Tyrrhenian) Sea to the west of peninsular Italy, Sardinia was mountainous yet fertile, and grew excellent wheat. Carthage had controlled it; Rome inherited it, with Corsica, from Carthage. Riddled with bandits and never properly subjugated during the Republic, it became the least esteemed of all Rome’s territorial possessions. The Romans loathed Sardinians, apostrophizing them as inveterate thieves, rogues, and oafs.

  satrap The title given by the Persian kings to their provincial or territorial governors. Alexander the Great seized upon the term and employed it, as did the later Arsacid kings of Parthia. The region ruled by the satrap was called a satrapy.

  Savus River The modern Sava, in Yugoslavia.

  Scipio (1) (Scipio Africanus) Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus was born in 236 B.C. and died around the end of 184 B.C. As a very young man he distinguished himself at the battles of Ticinu and Cannae, and at the age of twenty-six, still a private citizen, he was invested with proconsular imperium by the People rather than the Senate, and dispatched to fight the Carthaginians in Spain. Here for five years he did brilliantly, defeated every Carthaginian army, and won for Rome its two Spanish provinces. Despite bitter senatorial opposition, he succeeded when consul in 205 B.C. (at the early age of thirty-one) in gaining permission to invade Africa, which he did via Sicily. Both Sicily and Africa eventually fell, and Scipio was invited to assume the cognomen Africanus. He was elected censor and appointed Princeps Senatus in 199 B.C., and was consul again in 194 B.C. As farsighted as he was brilliant, Scipio Africanus warned Rome that Antiochus the Great would invade Greece; when it happened, he became his younger brother Lucius’s legate, and accompanied the Roman army to the war against Antiochus. But at some time he had incurred the enmity of Cato the Censor, who embarked upon a persecution of all the Cornelii Scipiones, particularly Africanus and his brother. It would appear that Cato the Censor emerged the victor, for Lucius (his cognomen was Asiagenus) was stripped of his knight’s status in 184 B.C., and Africanus died at the end of that year. Scipio Africanus was married to Aemilia Paulla, the sister of the conqueror of Macedonia. He had two sons, neither of whom distinguished himself, and two daughters; the older daughter became the wife of her cousin Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum, and the younger Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi.

  Scipio (2) (Scipio Aemilianus) Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus Numantinus was born in 185 B.C. He was not a Cornelian of the Scipio branch, but the son of the conqueror of Macedonia, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, who gave him in adoption to the elder son of Scipio Africanus. His brother was given to the Fabii Maximi for adoption, as Paullus had four sons; the tragedy is that after Paullus gave up these two, his younger sons died within days of each other in 167 B.C., thus leaving him without heirs. Scipio Aemilianus’s mother was a Papiria, and his wife was the surviving daughter of Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi, Sempronia the sister of the Brothers Gracchi, and his own close blood cousin. After a distinguished military career during the Third Punic War in 149 and 148 B.C., Scipio Aemilianus was elected consul in 147 B.C., though not old enough for the position, and bitterly opposed by many in the House. Sent to Africa to take charge of the Third Punic War, he displayed that relentless and painstaking thoroughness which was thereafter always to distinguish his career; he built a mole to close the harbor of Carthage, and blockaded the city. It fell in 146 B.C., after which he pulled it apart stone by stone. However, modern scholars discount the story that he ploughed salt into the soil to make sure Carthage never rose again, though the Romans themselves believed it. In 142 B.C. he was an ineffectual censor (thanks to an inimical colleague); in 140 and 139 B.C. he took ship for the East, accompanied by his two Greek friends, the historian Polybius and the philosopher Panaetius. In 134 B.C. he was elected consul a second time, and commissioned to deal with the town of Numantia in Nearer Spain; this small place had defied and defeated a whole series of Roman armies and generals over a period spanning fifty years. When Scipio Aemilianus came to deal with it, Numantia lasted eight months. After it fell, he destroyed it down to the last stone and beam, and executed or deported its four thousand citizens. News from Rome had informed him that his brother-in-law Tiberius Gracchus was undermining the mos maiorum—the established order of things—and he encouraged Gracchus’s enemies, especially their mutual cousin Scipio Nasica. Though Tiberius Gracchus was already dead when he returned to Rome in 132 B.C., he was commonly held responsible. Then in 129 B.C., aged forty-five, he died so suddenly and unexpectedly that it was ever afterward rumored he had been murdered. The principal suspect was his wife, Sempronia, Gracchus’s sister, who loathed her husband. By nature, Scipio Aemilianus was a curious mixture. A great intellectual with an abiding love for things Greek, he stood at the center of a group of men who patronized and encouraged the likes of Polybius, Panaetius, and the Latin playwright Terence. As a friend, he was everything a friend should be; as an enemy, he was cruel, cold-blooded, and utterly ruthless. A genius at organization, he yet could blunder as badly as he did in his opposition to Tiberius Gracchus; and though he was an extremely cultured and witty man of pronounced good taste, he was also morally and ethically ossified.

  Scordisci A tribal confederation of Celts admixed with Illyrians and Thracians, the Scordisci lived in Moesia, between the valley of the Danubius and the highlands bordering Macedonia. Powerful and warlike, they plagued Roman Macedonia implacably, and made life difficult for many a Roman governor.

  Scylla One half of the awful dilemma; the other half was Charybdis (see that entry).

  Senate Properly, Senatus. The Romans themselves believed that it was Romulus who had founded the Senate by giving it a hundred patrician members, but it is more likely to have been a foundation of the time of the less shadowy kings of Rome. When the Republic began, the Senate was retained as a senior advisory council, now three hundred in number, but still entirely composed of patricians. However, a few scant years saw plebeians also admitted as senators, though it took the plebeians somewhat longer to secure the right to occupy the senior magistracies. Because of the Senate’s antiquity, legal definition of its powers, rights, and duties was gradual and at best only partial. Membership was for life, which predisposed it to the oligarchy it very quickly became; throughout its history, its members fought strenuously to preserve their—as they saw it—natural pre-eminence. Under the Republic, membership was given (and could be taken away) by the censors. By the time of Gaius Marius, it had become custom to demand a property qualification of at least one million sesterces, though during the entire Republic this was never a formal law; like much else, it simply was. Senators alone were entitled to wear a tunic bearing the latus clavus or broad purple stripe; they also wore closed shoes of maroon leather and a ring (originally of iron, it came to be gold). Meetings of the Senate had to be held in places which
had been properly inaugurated, for the Senate did not always meet in its own House, the Curia Hostilia. The ceremonies and meeting of New Year’s Day, for example, were held in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, while meetings to discuss war were held in the temple of Bellona, outside the pomerium. There was a rigid hierarchy among those allowed to speak in senatorial meetings, with the Princeps Senatus at the top of the list in Gaius Marius’s day; patricians always preceded plebeians of precisely the same status otherwise. Not all senators by any means were allowed to speak. The senatores pedarii (I have used the British parliamentary term “backbenchers” to describe them, as they sat behind those who did speak) were permitted only to vote, not speak. No restriction was placed upon a man’s oration in terms of length of time or germane content; hence the popularity of the technique now called filibustering—talking a motion out. Sessions could go on only between sunrise and sunset, and could not continue if the Comitia went into session, though meetings could be convoked on comitial days of the calendar if no Comitia met. If the issue was unimportant or the response completely unanimous, voting could be by voice or a show of hands, but formal voting was by division of the House. An advisory rather than a legislative body, the Senate issued its consulta or decrees as requests to the various Assemblies. If the issue was serious, a quorum had to be present before a vote could be taken, though we do not know the precise number constituting a quorum in Gaius Marius’s day; perhaps a quarter? Certainly most meetings were not heavily attended, as there was no rule which said a senator had to attend meetings on a regular basis. In certain areas it had become tradition for the Senate to reign supreme, despite its lack of legislating power; this was true of the fiscus, for the Senate controlled the Treasury, true of foreign affairs, and true of war. In civil emergencies, after the time of Gaius Gracchus the Senate could override all other bodies of government by passing the Senatus Consultum de republica defendenda—its “ultimate decree.”

  Sequana River The modern Seine, in France.

  Servian Walls Murus Servii Tullii or Tulli. The Romans believed that the walls enclosing the Republican city had been erected in the time of King Servius Tullius. However, evidence suggests that these walls were not actually built until after the Gauls under Brennus (1) sacked Rome in 390 B.C.

  Servius Tullius Or Servius Tullus. The sixth King of Rome, and the only King of Rome who was a Latin, if not a Roman. Though thought to have built the Servian Walls (which he didn’t), he probably did build the Agger, the great double rampart of the Campus Esquilinus. A lawmaker and an enlightened king, he negotiated a treaty between Rome and the Latin League which was still displayed carefully in the temple of Diana at the end of the Republic. His death was ever after a scandal, for his own daughter, Tullia, conspired with her lover, Tarquinius Superbus, to murder first her husband and then her father, Servius Tullius. He was cut down in a street off the Clivus Orbius, and Tullia then drove her carriage back and forth over her father’s body.

  sestertius, sesterces The commonest of Roman coins, the sestertius was the unit of Roman accounting, hence its prominence in Latin writings of Republican date. Its name derives from semis tertius, meaning two and a half (ases). In Latin writing, it was abbreviated as 7I5. A small silver coin, it was worth one quarter of a denarius. I have kept to the strict Latin when referring to this coin in the singular, but in the plural (more frequently mentioned by far) I have used the Anglicized “sesterces.”

  Sibyl, Sibylline Books Properly, Sibylla. An oracle. The Sibyl issued her prognostications in an ecstatic frenzy, as did most oracular priestesses. The most famous Sibyl lived in a cave at Cumae, on the Campanian coast. The Roman State possessed a series of written prophecies called the Sibylline Books, acquired, it was believed, by King Tarquinius Priscus; originally written on palm leaves (transferred later to paper), they were in Greek. At the time of Gaius Marius, these Sibylline Books were so revered that they were in the care of a special college of ten minor priests, the decemviri sacris faciundis, and in crises were solemnly consulted to see if there was a prophecy which fitted the situation.

  Silanus, Silenus The satyrlike face—ugly, leering, and flatly pug-nosed—which spewed water into Rome’s public fountains as set up in stone by Cato the Censor.

  sinus A pronounced curve or fold. The term was used in many different ways, but for the purposes of this book, two meanings are used. One refers to the geographical feature we call a gulf—Sinus Arabicus (the Red Sea), Sinus Ligusticus (the Gulf of Genoa), Sinus Gallicus (the Gulf of Lions). The second refers to the folds of the toga as it emerged from under the right arm and was swept up over the left shoulder—the togate Roman’s pocket.

  Skeptic An adherent of the school of philosophy founded by Pyrrhon and his pupil Timon, and based upon the town of Scepsis in the Troad, hence the name. Skeptics did not admit that dogma existed, and believed that no man would ever master knowledge. In consequence, they disbelieved everything.

  smaragdus Emerald. It is debatable whether the stone the ancients called emerald was our emerald, though those stones from Scythia may have been; the stones mined on islands in the Red Sea and a part of the private entitlements of the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt were definitely beryl.

  Smyrna One of the greatest of the port cities on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor. It lay near the mouth of the river Hermus. Originally an Ionian Greek colony, it suffered an extinction of nearly three hundred years, from the sixth to the third century B.C. When re-established by Alexander the Great, it never looked back. Its chief business was money, but it was also a center for learning.

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

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

  steel The term “Iron Age” is rather misleading, for 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 requiring a combination of hardness, durability, and capacity to take an edge or a point. Aristotle and Theophrastus, both living in the Greece of the fourth century B.C., talk about “steel,” not “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 utilized 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 the method of roasting (oxidation) the ore in a hearth-type furnace; but the shaft furnace (reduction) was more efficient, could smelt larger quantities of ore, and was the method of choice. Most smelting yards used both hearth and shaft furnaces, and produced slag-contaminated “blooms” which were called sows. 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 much of the contaminating slag, though ancient steels were never entirely free of it. Roman smiths were fully conversant with the techniques of annealing, quenching, tempering, and cementation (this last forced more carbon into the iron). Each of these procedures changed the characteristics of the basic carbon steel in a different way, so that steels suitable for various purposes were made—razors, sword blades, knives, axes, saws, wood chisels, cold chisels, nails, spikes, etc. 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 base. However, the Roman sword blade was made entirely of steel, taking a cruelly sharp edge; it was produced by tempering at about 280°C. (Those readers who are old enough may remember carving kn
ives or machetes made of nonstainless carbon steel, and remember with longing in our stainless-steel age how viciously sharp they were, and how easy they were to keep viciously sharp—these blades were very similar indeed to Roman ones.) 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; and no one understood that the real reason why the iron mined in Noricum produced such superb steel lay in the fact that it contained a small amount of manganese uncontaminated by phosphorus, arsenic, or sulphur, and so was the raw material of manganese steel.

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

  Stoic An adherent of the school of philosophy founded by the Phoenician Cypriot Zeno, in the third century B.C. Stoicism as a philosophical system of thought particularly appealed to the Romans. The basic tenet was concerned with nothing beyond virtue (strength of character) and its opposite, weakness of character. Virtue was the only good, weakness of character the only evil. Money, pain, death, and the other things which plague Man were not considered important, for the virtuous man is an essentially good man, and therefore by definition must be a happy and contented man, even if impoverished, in perpetual pain, and under sentence of death. As with everything Greek they espoused, the Romans did not so much modify this philosophy as evade its unpalatable concomitants by some very nice—if specious—reasoning. Brutus is an example.