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

by Colleen McCullough

  consular The name given to a man after he had been consul. He was held in special esteem by the rest of the Senate, and until Sulla became dictator was always asked to speak or give his opinion in the House ahead of the praetors, consuls—elect, etc. Sulla changed that, preferring to exalt magistrates in office and those elected to coming office. The consular, however, 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 term for a senatorial decree, though it was expressed more properly as a senatus consultant. It did not have the force of law. In order to become law, a consultant 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 requested felt like voting it into law. Sulla’s reformations included a law that no Assembly could legislate a bill unless it was accompanied by a senatus consultum. However, many senatorial consulta (plural) were never submitted to any Assembly, therefore were never voted into law, yet were accepted as laws by all of Rome; among these consulta were decisions about provincial governors, declaration and conduct of wars, and all to do with foreign affairs. Sulla in 81 B.C. gave these senatorial decrees the formal status of laws.

  contio This was a preliminary meeting of a comitial Assembly in order to discuss the promulgation of a projected law, or any other comitial business. All three Assemblies were required to debate a measure in contio, which, though no voting took place, had nonetheless to be convoked by the magistrate empowered.

  contubernalis A military cadet: a subaltern of lowest rank and age in the hierarchy of Roman military officers, but excluding the centurions. No centurion was ever a cadet, he was an experienced soldier.

  corona civica Rome’s second—highest military decoration. A crown or chaplet made of oak leaves, it was 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 could not be awarded unless the saved soldiers swore a formal oath before their general that they spoke the truth about the circumstances. L. R. Taylor argues that among Sulla’s constitutional reforms was one relating to the winners of major military crowns; that, following the tradition of Marcus Fabius Buteo, he promoted these men to membership in the Senate, which answers the vexed question of Caesar’s senatorial status (complicated as it was by the fact that, while flamen Dialis, he had been a member of the Senate from the time he put on the toga virilis). Gelzer agreed with her—but, alas, only in a footnote.

  corona graminea or obsidionalis Rome’s highest military decoration. Made of grass (or sometimes a cereal such as wheat, if the battle took place in a field of grain) taken from the battlefield and awarded “on the spot,” the Grass Crown conferred virtual immortality on a man, for it had been won on very few occasions during the Republic. The man who won it had to have saved a whole legion or army by his personal efforts. Both Quintus Sertorius and Sulla were awarded Grass Crowns.

  cubit A Greek and Asian measurement of length not popular among Romans; it was normally held to be the distance between a man’s elbow and the tips of his fingers, and was probably about 18 inches (450mm).

  cuirass Armor encasing a man’s upper body without having the form of a shirt. It consisted of two plates of bronze, steel, or hardened leather, the front one protecting thorax and abdomen, the other the back from shoulders to lumbar spine. The plates were held together by straps or hinges at the shoulders and along each side under the arms. Some cuirasses were exquisitely tailored to the contours of an individual’s torso, while others fitted any man of a particular size and physique. The men of highest rank—generals and legates—wore cuirasses tooled in high relief and silver—plated (sometimes, though rarely, gold—plated). Presumably as an indication of imperium, the general and perhaps the most senior of his legates wore a thin red sash around the cuirass about halfway between the nipples and waist; the sash was ritual1^ knotted and looped.

  cultarius Scullard’s spelling: the O.L.D. prefers cultrarius. He was a public servant attached to religious duties, and his only job appears to have been to cut the sacrificial victim’s throat. However, in Republican Rome this was undoubtedly a full—time job for several men, so many were the ceremonies requiring sacrifice of an animal victim. He probably also helped dispose of the victim and was custodian of his tools. cunnus An extremely offensive Latin profanity—“cunt.” Cuppedenis Markets Specialized markets lying behind the upper Forum Romanum on its eastern side, between the Clivus Orbius and the Carinae/Fagutal. In it were vended luxury items like pepper, spices, incense, ointments and unguents and balms; it also served as the flower market, where a Roman (all Romans loved flowers) 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 actual land belonged to the State.

  Curia Hostilia The Senate House. It was thought to have been built by the shadowy third king of Rome, Tullus Hostilius, hence its name: “the meeting—house of Hostilius.”

  cursus honorum See the entry on magistrates.

  curule chair The sella curulis was the ivory chair reserved exclusively for magistrates owning imperium: at first I thought only the curule aedile sat in one, but it seems that at some stage during the evolution of the Republic, imperium (and therefore the curule chair) was also conferred upon the two plebeian aediles. Beautifully carved in ivory, the chair itself had curved legs crossing in a broad X, so that it could be folded up. It was equipped with low arms, but had no back.

  DAMNO The word employed by a comitial Assembly to indicate a verdict of “guilty.” It was not used in the courts, perhaps because the courts did not have the power to execute a death penalty.

  decury A group of ten men. The tidy—minded Romans tended to subdivide groups containing several hundred men into tens for convenience in administration and direction. Thus the Senate was organized in decuries (with a patrician senator as the head of each decury), the College of Lictors, and probably all the other colleges of specialized public servants as well. It has been suggested that the legionary century was also divided into decuries, ten men messing together and sharing a tent, but evidence points more to eight soldiers. As a legionary century contained eighty soldiers, not one hundred, this would give ten groups of eight soldiers. But perhaps each eight legionaries were given two of the century’s twenty noncombatants as servants and general factotums, thus bringing each octet up to a decury.

  demagogue Originally a Greek concept, the demagogue was a politician whose chief appeal was to the crowds. The Roman demagogue (almost inevitably a tribune of the plebs) 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 flocked to listen to him composed of the very lowly. The term simply indicated a man of radical rather than ultra-conservative bent.

  denarius Plural, denarii. Save for a very rare issue or two of gold coins, the denarius was the largest denomination of coin under the 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 to one silver talent. Of actual coins in circulation, there were probably more denarii than sesterces.

  diadem This was not a crown or a tiara, but simply a thick white ribbon about one inch (25mm) wide, each end embroidered and often finished with a fringe. It was the symbol of the Hellenic sovereign; only King and/or Queen could wear it. The coins show that it was worn either across the forehead or behind the hairline, and was knotted at the back below the occiput; the two ends trailed down onto the shoulders.

  dies religiosi Days of the year regarded as ill-omened. On them nothing new ought to be done, nor religious ceremonies conducted. Some dies religiosi commemorated defeats in battle, on three dies religiosi the mundus (underworld gate) was left open, on others certain temples were closed, on yet others the hearth
of Vesta was left open. The days after the Kalends, Nones and Ides of each month were dies religiosi, and thought so ill-omened that they had a special name: Black Days.

  diffarreatio See the entry on confarreatio.

  dignitas Like auctoritas (q.v.), the Latin dignitas has connotations not conveyed by the English word derived from it, “dignity.” It was a man’s personal standing in the Roman world rather than his public standing, though his public standing was enormously enhanced by great dignitas. It gave the sum total of his integrity, pride, family and ancestors, word, intelligence, deeds, ability, knowledge, and worth as a man. Of all the assets a Roman nobleman possessed, dignitas was likely to be the one he was most touchy about, and protective of. I have elected to leave the term untranslated in my text.

  diverticulum In the two earlier books, I used this term to mean only the “ring roads” around the city of Rome that linked all the arterial roads together. In Fortune’s Favorites it is also used to indicate sections where an arterial road bifurcated to connect with important towns not serviced by the arterial road itself, then fused together again, as with the two diverticula on the Via Flaminia which must have already existed by the late Republic, though not generally conceded to exist until imperial times. Did the diverticulum to Spoletium not exist, for example, neither Carrinas nor Pompey would have been able to fetch up there so quickly.

  divinatio Literally, guesswork. This was a special hearing by a specially appointed panel of judges to determine the fitness of a man to prosecute another man. It was not called into effect unless a man’s fitness was challenged by the defense. The name referred to the fact that the panel of judges arrived at a decision without the presentation of hard evidence—that is, they arrived at a conclusion by guesswork.

  doctor The man who was responsible for the training and physical fitness of gladiators.

  drachma The” name I have elected to use when speaking of Hellenic currency rather than Roman, because the drachma most closely approximated the denarius in weight at around 4 grams. Rome, however, was winning the currency race because of the central and uniform nature of Roman coins; during the late Republic, the world was beginning to prefer to use Roman coins rather than Hellenic.

  Ecastor! Edepol! The most genteel and inoffensive of Roman exclamations of surprise or amazement, roughly akin to “Gee!” or “Wow!” Women used “Ecastor!” and men “Edepol!” The roots suggest they invoked Castor and Pollux.

  electrum An alloy of gold and silver. In times dating back to before the Republic electrum was thought to be a metal in itself, and like the electrum rod in the temple of Jupiter Feretrius on the Capitol, it was left as electrum. By the time of the Republic, however, it was known to be an alloy, and was separated into its gold and silver components by cementationwith salt, or treatment with a metallic sulphide.

  Epicurean Pertaining to the philosophical system of the Greek Epicurus. Originally Epicurus had advocated a kind of hedonism so exquisitely refined that it approached asceticism on its left hand, so to speak; a man’s pleasures were best sampled one at a time, and strung out with such relish that any excess defeated the exercise. Public life or any other stressful work was forbidden. These tenets underwent considerable modification in Rome, so that a Roman nobleman could call himself an Epicure yet still espouse his public career. By the late Republic, the chief pleasure of an Epicurean was food.

  epulones A minor order of priests whose business was to organize senatorial banquets after festivals of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and also to arrange the public banquets during games and some feast days.

  equestrian Pertaining to the knights.

  ethnarch The general Greek word for a city or town magistrate. There were other and more specific names in use, but I do not think it necessary to compound confusion in readers by employing a more varied terminology.

  Euxine Sea The modern Black Sea. Because of the enormous number of major rivers which flowed into it (especially in times before water volume was regulated by dams), the Euxine Sea contained less salt than other seas; the current through Thracian Bosporus and Hellespont always flowed from the Euxine toward the Mediterranean (the Aegean)—which made it easy to quit the Euxine, but hard to enter it.

  exeunt omnes Literally, “Everybody leave!” It has been a stage direction employed by playwrights since drama first came into being.

  faction The following of a Roman politician is best described as a faction; in no way could a man’s followers be described as a political party in the modern sense. Factions formed around men owning auctoritas and dignitas, and were purely evidence of that individual’s ability to attract and hold followers. Political ideologies did not exist, nor did party lines. For that reason I have avoided (and will continue to avoid) the terms Optimate and Popularis, as they give a false impression of Roman political solidarity to a party—acclimatized modern reader.

  Faesulae Modern Fiesole. Possibly because it was settled by the Etruscans before Rome became a power, it was always deemed a part of Etruria; in actual fact it lay north of the Arnus River, in what was officially Italian Gaul.

  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 life throughout the Republic, and on into the Empire. Carried by men called lictors (q.v.), 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 the power to chastise, but not to execute; outside the pomerium axes were inserted into the bundles, to signify that the curule magistrate or promagistrate did have the power to execute. The only man permitted to insert the axes into the midst of the rods inside the pomerium was the dictator. 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 the aediles two. Sulla, incidentally, was the first dictator to be preceded by twenty-four lictors bearing twenty-four fasces; until then, dictators had used the same number as consuls, twelve.

  fasti The fasti were originally days on which business could be transacted, but came to mean other things as well: the calendar, lists relating to holidays and festivals, and the list of consuls (this last probably because Romans preferred to reckon up their years by remembering who had been the consuls in any given year). 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.

  fellator Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa! My fault entirely that in the two previous volumes of this series, I managed to give the man on the receiving end the wrong name! It does happen that one becomes confused, as I do by opposites, left and right, and clockwise versus anticlockwise. A cerebral aberration of sorts. The fact remains that I was wrong. The fellator was the man sucking the penis, the irrumator the man whose penis was being sucked. Fellator sucker, irrumator suckee.

  feriae Holidays. Though attendance at public ceremonies on such holidays was not obligatory, feriae traditionally demanded that business, labor and lawsuits not be pursued, and that quarrels, even private ones, should be avoided. The rest from normal labors on feriae extended to slaves and also some animals, including oxen but excluding equines of all varieties. fetiales A special college of priests whose duties were to serve Bellona, the goddess of war. Though it was an honor to be appointed a fetialis, during the late Republic the rites of making war or peace as pertaining to Bellona were much neglected; it was Caesar’s great—nephew, Augustus, who brought the college back to full practice.

  filibuster A modern word for a political activity at least as old as the Senate of Rome. It consisted, then as now, of “talking a motion out”: the filibusterer droned on and on about everything from his childhood to his funeral plans, thus preventing other men from speaking until the political danger had passed. And preventing
the taking of a vote!

  flamen The flamines (plural) were probably the oldest of Rome’s priests in time, dating back at least as far as the Kings. There were fifteen flamines, three major and twelve minor. The three major flaminates were Dialis (Jupiter Optimus Maxi—mus), Martialis (Mars), and Quirinalis (Quirinus). Save for the poor flamen Dialis—his nature is discussed fully in the text—none of the flamines seemed terribly hedged about with prohibitions or taboos, but all three major flamines qualified for a public salary, a State house, and membership in the Senate. The wife of the flamen was known as the flaminica. The flamen and flaminica Dialis had to be patrician in status, though I have not yet discovered whether this was true of the other flamines, major or minor. To be on the safe side, I elected to stay with patrician appointments.

  Fortuna One of Rome’s most worshipped and important deities. Generally thought to be a female force, Fortuna had many different guises; Roman godhead was usually highly specific. Fortuna Primigenia was Jupiter’s firstborn, Fors Fortuna was of particular importance to the lowly, Fortuna Virilis helped women conceal their physical imperfections from men, Fortuna Virgo was worshipped by brides, Fortuna Equestris looked after the knights, and Fortuna Huiusque Diei (“the fortune of the present day”) was the special object of worship by military commanders and prominent politicians having military backgrounds. There were yet other Fortunae. The Romans believed implicitly in luck, though they did not regard luck quite as we do; a man made his luck, but was—even in the case of men as formidably intelligent as Sulla and Caesar—very careful about offending Fortuna, not to mention superstitious. To be favored by Fortuna was considered a vindication of all a man stood for.