Masters of Rome Boxset: First Man in Rome, the Grass Crown, Fortune's Favourites, Caesar's Women, Caesar

by Colleen McCullough

  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 Assembli
es. 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.