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

by Colleen McCullough

  Pontus A large kingdom at the southeastern end of the Euxine Sea. In the west it bordered Paphlagonia at Sinope, in the east Colchis at Apsarus. Inland it bordered Armenia Magna on the east and Armenia Parva on the southeast; to proper south was Cappadocia, west of it was Galatia. Wild, untamed, beautiful, and mountainous, Pontus had a fertile littoral dotted with Greek colony cities like Sinope, Amisus and Trapezus. Some idea of the climate can be gained from the fact that Pontus was the original home of the cherry and the rhododendron. Because the interior of Pontus was divided by three ranges of very high peaks running parallel to the coastline, it was never in antiquity a truly combined entity; its kings took tribute rather than taxed, and allowed each district to run its affairs in the manner local terrain and sophistication dictated. Gemstones and much alluvial gold added to the wealth of its kings, the Mithridatidae, as did silver, tin and iron.

  praefectum fabrum “He who supervises the making.” One of the most important men in a Roman Republican army, technically he was not even a part of it; he was a civilian appointed to the post of praefectus fabrum by the general. The praefectus fabrum was responsible for the equipping and supplying of the army in all respects, from its animals and their fodder to its men and their food. Because he let out the contracts to businessmen and manufacturers for equipment and supplies, he was a very powerful figure—and unless he was a man of superior integrity, in a perfect position to enrich himself.

  praenomen The first name of a Roman man. There were very few of them in use—perhaps twenty at the time of Marius and Sulla, and half of that twenty were not common, or were confined to the men of one particular gens, as with Mamercus, confined to the Aemilii Lepidi. Each gens or clan favored certain praenomina only, which further reduced the number available! A modern scholar can often tell from a man’s praenomen whether or not that man was a genuine member of the gens; the Julii, for instance, favored Sextus, Gaius and Lucius only, so a man called Marcus Julius was not a true Julian of the patrician gens; the Licinii favored Publius, Marcus and Lucius; the Pompeii favored Gnaeus, Sextus and Quintus; the Cornelii favored Publius, Lucius and Gnaeus; the Servilii of the patrician gens favored Quintus and Gnaeus. Appius belonged only to the Claudii. One of the great puzzles for modern scholars concerns that Lucius Claudius who was Rex Sacrorum during the late Republic; Lucius is not a Claudian praenomen, but as he was certainly a patrician, Lucius Claudius the Rex Sacrorum must have been a genuine Claudian. I have postulated that there was a branch of the Claudian gens bearing the praenomen Lucius which traditionally always held the priesthood of Rex Sacrorum.

  praetor This was the second most senior position in the hierarchy of Roman magistrates (excluding the office of censor, a special case). At the very beginning of the Republic the two highest magistrates of all were called praetors. But by the end of the fourth century b.c. the word “consul” was being used to describe these highest magistrates. One praetor was the sole representative of this position for many decades thereafter; he was very obviously the praetor urbanus, as his duties were confined to the city of Rome, thus freeing up the two consuls for duty as war leaders away from Rome. In 242 b.c. a second praetor was created—the praetor peregrinus. There soon followed Rome’s acquisition of overseas provinces requiring governance, so in 227 b.c. two more praetors were created, to deal with Sicily and Sardinia/Corsica. In 197 b.c. the number was increased from four to six praetors, to cope with governance of the two Spains. However, after that no more praetors were created; at the time of Marius and Sulla, six seems to have been the standard number, though in some years the Senate apparently felt it necessary to bring the number up to eight. There is, I add, modern argument about this; some scholars think it was Sulla as dictator who increased the praetors from six to eight, whereas others consider the number became eight during the time of Gaius Gracchus.

  praetor peregrinus In English, I have chosen to describe the praetor peregrinus as the foreign praetor because he dealt only with legal matters and lawsuits involving one or more parties who were not Roman citizens. By the time of Marius and Sulla the foreign praetor’s duties were confined to the dispensation of justice; he traveled all over Italy, and sometimes further afield than that. He also heard the cases involving non-citizens within the city of Rome.

  praetor urbanus In English, the urban praetor. By the time of Marius and Sulla his duties were almost purely in litigation; he was responsible for the supervision of justice and the law courts within the city of Rome. His imperium did not extend beyond the fifth milestone from Rome, and he was not allowed to leave Rome for more than ten days at a time. If both the consuls were absent from Rome, he was its senior magistrate, therefore empowered to summon the Senate, make decisions about execution of government policies, even organize the defenses of the city if under threat of attack. It was his decision as to whether two litigants should proceed to court or to a formal hearing; in most cases he decided the matter there and then, without benefit of hearing or trial process.

  primus pilus Later, primipilus. The centurion in command of the leading century of the leading cohort of a Roman legion, and therefore the chief centurion of that legion. He rose to this position by a serial promotion, and was considered the most able man in the legion. During the time

  of Marius and Sulla, the centuries in the leading cohort appear to have been the same size as all the other centuries.

  Princeps Senatus The Leader of the House. He was chosen by the censors according to the rules of the mos maiorum: he had to be a patrician, the leader of his decury, an interrex more times than anyone else, be of unimpeachable moral integrity, and have more auctoritas and dignitas than any other patrician senator. The title of Princeps Senatus was not given for life, but was subject to review by each new pair of censors, who could remove a man from the post and substitute another man did the Princeps Senatus fail to measure up. Marcus Aemilius Scaurus was chosen Princeps Senatus at an early age, apparently during his consulship in 115 b.c. and long before his term as censor (109 b.c.); it was unusual for a man to be appointed Princeps Senatus before he had been censor. Scaurus’s winning of the post was either a signal mark of honor for an extraordinary man, or else (as some modern scholars have suggested), in 115 b.c. Scaurus was the most senior patrician senator available for the job. Whatever the reason behind his appointment, Scaurus held the title Princeps Senatus until his death in 89 b.c. His successor was Lucius Valerius Flaccus, consul in 100 b.c. and censor in 97 b.c.

  privatus A private citizen. I use the term in this book to describe a man who was a member of the Senate but not serving as a magistrate.

  proconsul One serving with the imperium of a consul but not in office as consul. Proconsular imperium was normally given to a man who had just finished his year as consul and went to govern a province or command an army in the name of the Senate and People of Rome. A man’s term as proconsul usually lasted for one year, but was commonly prorogued beyond that year if the man was engaged in a campaign against an enemy still unsubdued, or there was no one suitable to take his place. If a consular was not available to govern a province difficult enough to warrant a proconsul, one of the year’s crop of praetors was sent to govern it, but endowed with proconsular imperium. Proconsular imperium was limited to the area of the proconsul’s province or task, and was lost the moment he stepped across the pomerium into the city of Rome.

  proletarii Another name for the lowliest of all Roman citizens, the capite censi or Head Count. The word proletarius derived from proles, which meant progeny, offspring, children in an impersonal sense; the lowly were called proletarii because children were the only thing they were capable of producing. I have avoided using the word because of its Marxist connotations, connotations having absolutely no validity in ancient times.

  propraetor One serving with the imperium of a praetor but not in office as a praetor. It was an imperium given to a praetor after his year in office was over in order to empower him to govern a province and, if necessary, conduct a defensive wa
r. Like the imperium of the proconsul, it was lost the moment its holder stepped over the pomerium into the city of Rome. In degree it was a lesser imperium than proconsul, and was normally given to the governor of a peaceful province. According to the rules, any war the propraetor engaged upon had to be forced upon him, he could not seek it out. However, that didn’t stop propraetors like Gaius Marius making war in their provinces.

  prorogue To extend a man’s tenure of magisterial office beyond its normal time span. It applied to governorships or military commands rather than to the magistracies themselves. That is, it affected proconsuls and propraetors. Metellus Numidicus was sent to Africa to fight Jugurtha while still consul, but had not got his campaign off the ground when his year as consul expired; his command in the war against Jugurtha was prorogued into the following year, and into the year following that. I include the word in this glossary because I have discovered that modern English language dictionaries of small and medium size neglect to give this meaning in treating the word “prorogue.”

  province Provincia. Originally this meant the sphere of duty of a magistrate or promagistrate holding imperium, and therefore applied as much to consuls and praetors in office inside Rome as it did to those in the field. Then the word came to mean the place where the imperium was exercised by its holder, and finally was applied to that place as simply meaning it was in the ownership of Rome. By the time of Marius and Sulla, all of Rome’s provinces were outside Italy and Italian Gaul.

  publicani Singular, publicanus. Tax-farmers. These were the great private companies run from Rome which “farmed” the taxes of various parts of Rome’s growing empire. The whole activity of farming the taxes was let out on contract by the censors every five years. The employees of these companies who actually collected the taxes in the provinces were also called publicani.

  Public Horse A horse which belonged to the State—to the Senate and People of Rome. Going all the way back to the kings, it had been State policy to provide the 1,800 most senior knights of Rome with horses. Presumably when the practice began horses were both scarce and colossally expensive, otherwise the State of Rome, notoriously parsimonious, would not have spent its precious money; it would simply have required its knights to provide their own mounts, as happened during the Republic when the number of knights far exceeded 1,800. By the time of Marius and Sulla, to own a Public Horse was a social cachet of no mean order; the animals were handed down from generation to generation in the same families, so to possess a Public Horse was tantamount to saying your family had been around since the beginning. That this was not so we know from the fact that Pompey possessed a Public Horse—presumably when a family died out, its Public Horse was passed to someone of newer origins but enormous influence. Cato the Censor, considered a peasant New Man, was very proud to say that his great grandfather (who must have lived during the fourth century b.c.) had received from the Treasury of Rome the price of no less than five Public Horses killed under him in battle. When Gaius Sempronius Gracchus (see The Gracchi) split the Senate off from the knights, there is no evidence that his law required that a senator give up his Public Horse because he was no longer a knight; on the contrary, those of senatorial family who had possessed the Public Horse continued to possess it, witness Pompey the Great, and presumably his father. Though it was not always observed, some censors (including Cato the Censor) insisted that the 1,800 owners of the Public Horse parade themselves and their animals in order to make sure that these men were keeping themselves in shape and caring properly for their steeds. The parade of the Public Horse, when held, occurred perhaps on the Ides of July; the censors sat in state on a tribunal atop the steps of the temple of Castor and Pollux in the Forum Romanum and watched each holder of the Public Horse solemnly lead his mount in a kind of march-past. If the censors considered a man had let himself go to seed, they stripped him of his entitlement to the Public Horse.

  Punic The adjective applied to Carthage and its people, but particularly to the three wars fought between Carthage and Rome. The word is derived from the origin of the Carthaginians—Phoenicia.

  quaestor The lowest rung on the senatorial cursus honorum. At the time of Marius and Sulla, to be elected a quaestor did not mean a man was automatically a member of the Senate; however, it was the normal practice of the censors to admit quaestors to the Senate. Many who stood for election as quaestor were already in the Senate. The exact number of quaestors elected in any one year at this time is not known, but was perhaps twelve to sixteen. The age at which a man sought election as a quaestor was thirty, which was also the correct age for entering the Senate. A quaestor’s chief duties were fiscal: he might be seconded to the Treasury in Rome, or to secondary treasuries, or to collecting customs and port dues (there were three such quaestors at this time, one in Ostia, one in Puteoli, and one who did the other ports), or to collecting Rome’s rents from ager publicus at home and abroad, or to managing the finances of a province. A consul going to govern a province could ask by name for a particular man to serve as his quaestor—this was a great distinction for the man in question, and assured him of both election and a place in the Senate. Normally the quaestorship lasted for one year, but if a man was requested by name he was obliged to remain with his chief until his chief’s term came to an end. Quaestors entered office on the fifth day of December.

  Quirites Literally, Roman citizens of civilian status. What we do not know is whether the word’ “Quirites “also implied that the citizens in question had never served as soldiers in Rome’s armies; certain remarks of Caesar the Dictator might lead one to believe that this was so, for he addressed his mutinous soldiers as Quirites, and in doing so heaped such scorn upon them that they immediately pleaded for his pardon. However, much changed between the time of Marius and Sulla and the time of Caesar the Dictator. I have chosen to assume that at the time of Marius and Sulla, to be hailed as Quirites was no insult.

  quizzing-glass A magnifying lens on a stick. It had much the same connotations in the ancient world as a monocle during the early twentieth century—it was an affectation. It was also, however, of great good use to one suffering the presbyopia of encroaching age in an era before the invention of spectacles. It could not contain a lens specifically ground for the purpose of enlarging print, but some stones accidentally possessed lens properties, and were thus immensely valuable objects. We know the emperor Nero had an emerald quizzing-glass; having seen the wealth of emeralds which came from Asia Minor, it is logical to assume that the Kings of Pontus had free access to emeralds, and that an occasional stone was suited for use in a quizzing-glass.

  repetundae Extortion. Until the time of Gaius Gracchus, it was not standard practice to prosecute provincial governors who used their power to enrich themselves; one or two special courts had been set up to prosecute specific men, but that was all. These early special courts were staffed entirely by senators, and quickly became a joke—senatorial juries would not convict their fellows. Then in 122 b.c. Manius Acilius Glabrio, boon companion of Gaius Gracchus, passed a lex Acilia providing a permanent court staffed by knights to hear cases of repetundae, and impaneled 450 named knights to act as a pool from which the juries would be drawn. In 106 b.c. Quintus Servilius Caepio, consul in that year, returned all courts to the Senate, including the extortion court. Then in 101 b.c. Gaius Servilius Glaucia gave the extortion court back to the knights, with many innovative refinements which were to become standard practice in all courts. The cases we know of were all concerned with governors of provinces, but it would seem that after the lex Acilia of 122 b.c., the extortion court was empowered to try any kind of case dealing with illegal enrichment. There were rewards offered to citizen informants, and non-citizens who successfully brought a prosecution before the court were rewarded with the citizenship.

  Republic The word was originally two words—res publica—that is, the thing which constitutes the people as a whole—that is, its government. We use the word “republic” today to mean an elected government whi
ch does not acknowledge any monarch its superior, but it is doubtful if the Romans thought of it in quite that way, despite the fact that they founded their Republic as an alternative to kings.

  rhetoric The art of oratory, something both the Greeks and the Romans turned into an approximation of science. A proper orator spoke according to carefully laid out rules and conventions which extended far beyond mere words; body language and movements were intrinsic parts of it. In the early and middle Republic teachers of Greek rhetoric were despised, and sometimes even outlawed from Rome; Cato the Censor was an avowed enemy of the Greek rhetor. However, the Graecophilia of Scipio Aemilianus’s day broke down much of this Latin opposition, so that by the time of the Brothers Gracchi most young Roman noblemen were being taught by Greek rhetors. Whereupon the Latin rhetors fell into disfavor! There were different styles of rhetoric—Lucius Licinius Crassus Orator favored the Asianic style, more florid and dramatic than the Attic style. It must always be remembered that the audience which gathered to listen to public oration—be it concerned with politics or the law courts—was composed of connoisseurs of rhetoric. The audience watched and listened in a spirit of extreme criticism; it knew all the rules and techniques, and was not easy to please.