sesterces The Latin singular is sestertius, the Latin plural is sestertii. Roman accounting practices were established in sesterces, though the denarius seems to have been a more common coin. In Latin writing, sesterces were abbreviated as HS. A small silver coin, the sestertius was worth a quarter of a denarius.
Sextilis Originally the sixth month when the Roman NewYear had begun in March, it kept its name after January New Year made it the eighth month. We know it, of course, as August; so too did the Romans—but not until the reign of Augustus.
Sibylline Books The Roman State possessed a series of prophecies written in Greek and called the Sibylline Books. Legend had it that the famous Sibyl at Cumae offered to sell the books to King Tarquinius Priscus of Rome, and he refused. So she burned one of the books (they were written on palm leaves). He refused again, she burned another book. Eventually he bought the remainder, which were placed in the care of a special college of minor priests, and only consulted when Senate or People commanded it, usually in the face of some major crisis. Sulla raised the number of priests in the college from ten to fifteen; they were thereafter known as the quindecimviri sacris faciundis. The books, however, were lost in the fire which destroyed Jupiter’s temple on July 6 of 83 B.C. Sulla ordered that a search of the world’s sibyls be made and the books reassembled. This was done.
sive Either, or.
sixteener With the sixteener we enter the world of the ancient dreadnoughts, the supergalleys. That there were more than three banks of oars is now not believed possible: two arrangements were feasible, namely a bireme of two banks and eight men per oar, or a trireme of three banks with six men to each of the upper banks of oars and four men on the lowest bank. One bank of oars is equally as impossible as four because the sweep and angle of an oar prevents its being operated by more than eight men. If the oar were designed to be operated by eight men, it would have been about 57 feet long; a six—man oar measured about 45 feet long. With a length growing close to 200 feet, the beam of a sixteener was probably about 25 to 28 feet, which enabled the deck to accommodate a large body of marines and several pieces of artillery, as well as several tall towers. There seems evidence to suggest that the sixteener owned fewer oars than a smaller galley, number of oars being compensated for by the increased power of each oar. The number of oarsmen probably lay in the vicinity of 500 to 800, and the sixteener may have been able to accommodate 400 marines. The supergalley was not of any use in genuine naval warfare; her size and unseaworthiness made her useful only for boarding or for firing missiles, though even the vastest galleys were equipped with rams. King Mithridates VI was enormously fond of sixteeners, as is recounted in The First Man in Rome. For those perusers of the glossary whose curiosity is piqued as to how big the ancient naval architects and shipwrights could make galleys, wait for later books in this series! I might have Cleopatra dig Ptolemy IV s “forty” river barge out of mothballs.
socius, socii A socius was a man of a citizenship having allied status with Rome.
Sol Indiges One of the most ancient Italian gods, apparently (as the Sun) the husband of Tellus (the Earth). Though little is known of his cult, he was apparently enormously reverenced. Oaths sworn by him were very serious affairs.
spelt A very fine, soft white flour used for making cakes, never bread. It was ground from the variety of wheat now known as Triticum spelta.
sponsio In cases of civil litigation where judgement was arrived at by one man rather than by a jury, the urban or foreign praetor could only allow the case to be heard after a sum of money called sponsio was lodged with him before the hearing began. This was either the sum being asked for in damages, or the sum of money in dispute. In bankruptcy or nonpayment of debts cases, the sum owed became the sponsio. Until Sulla was dictator, if the sum concerned could not be found by either the plaintiff or the defendant, the praetor could not allow the case to be heard. This meant many cases which ought to have been heard were not. Sulla fixed this by allowing the urban or foreign praetor to waive the lodgement of sponsio. He had first done this, incidentally, in 88 B.C. when he tried to shore up the constitution before leaving for the war against Mithridates; but these laws were quickly repealed. The law he put on the tablets as dictator remained in effect.
stibium The ancient version of mascara. A black antimony—based powder soluble in water, stibium was used to darken the brows and/or lashes, or to draw a line around the perimeter of the eye. It would be interesting to know just how recently a more benign substance than stibium replaced it, but, alas, no work of reference tells me.
stimulus, stimuli To the Romans a stimulus was a sharpened wooden stake placed in the bottom of a trench or ditch as part of defense fortifications. It could also mean a sharp instrument used to goad an animal. And by extension, a stimulus was something causing acute mental pain or worry.
strategoi A Greek word in the plural. A military commander or general.
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 people were notoriously polyglot and independent of mind; many Jews lived in the Subura, which at the time of Sulla contained Rome’s only synagogue. Suetonius says Caesar the Dictator lived in the Subura.
Sulpicius Publius Sulpicius Rufus had been a conservative and moderate sort of man throughout his time in the Senate, and including the first part of his tribunate of the plebs in 88 B.C. It would seem that the news that King Mithridates had not distinguished between Italians and Romans when he murdered 80,000 of them in Asia Province caused Sulpicius to change his views about many things, including the limitations conservative and anti—Italian elements in Rome were placing upon the admission of the newly enfranchised Italians into the Roman rolls. Sulpicius turned militant radical, allying himself with Gaius Marius. He passed four laws, the most important of which stipulated that all the new Roman citizens must be distributed equally across the whole thirty-five tribes, but the most disturbing of which took the command of the war against Mithridates away from Sulla; he gave it to Marius instead. This provoked Sulla into marching on Rome that first time. Together with Marius, Old Brutus and some others, Sulpicius fled from the city after Sulla took it over. The rest of the refugees escaped overseas, probably because it was no part of Sulla’s intentions to apprehend them, but Sulpicius was taken in the Latin port of Laurentum and killed on the spot. His head was sent to Rome; Sulla fixed it to the rostra in an attempt to cow the newly elected consul Cinna. All four of Sulpicius’s laws were repealed by Sulla.
sumptuary law Any law attempting to regulate the purchase or consumption of luxuries.
tabled Of a law, and used in the British parliamentary sense. When a drafted proposed law or amendment or paper is tabled, it is “put on the table’’ for inspection, discussion, and thought. It then remains tabled until passed or rejected.
talent This was 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 50 to 55 pounds (25 kilograms). A talent of gold weighed the same as a talent of silver, but was far more valuable, of course.
Tarpeian Rock Its precise location is still hotly debated, but we do know that it was quite visible from the lower Forum Romanum, as people being thrown off it could be seen from the rostra. Presumably it was an overhang at the top of the Capitoline cliffs, but since the drop was not much more than eighty feet, the Tarpeian Rock must have been located directly over some sort of jagged outcrop—we have no evidence that anyone ever 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. The tribunes of the plebs were particularly fond of threatening to throw obstructive senators from the Tarpeian Rock. 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 actual Latin was “mamma.”
Tellus The Roman earth goddess, of undeniably Italian origin. After the navel stone of Magna Mater was imported from Pessinus in 205 B.C., worship of Tellus was neglected. Tellus had a big temple on the Carinae, in earlier days imposing; by the last century B.C. it was dilapidated. tergiversator Thank you, Professor Erich Gruen! You have given me much valued information and much food for thought—but “tergiversator” I especially prize, even if it is a small point. “Tergiversator” is a very imposing word for a political turncoat.
tetrarch The chief of a fourth section of any state or territory. The three tribes of Galatia—Tolistobogii, Trocmi, and Volcae Tectosages—were each divided into four parts, and each of the four parts was headed by a tetrarch.
Teutones See the entry entitled Cimbri.
theaters Republican Rome owned no permanent structures devoted to the staging of plays. Whenever the games included theatricals, temporary wooden structures had to be built for the occasion, and dismantled after the games were over. The old conviction that theater was morally degrading, a corrupting force, never quite died. A reflection of this can be seen in the fact that women were not allowed to sit with men, and were relegated to the very back rows of the audience. Only public pressure had obliged the magistrates to include plays in the public entertainments put on during games; the Roman people adored comedy, farces and mimes. The wooden theaters were built like permanent stone ones—amphitheatrical in shape, with a raised stage, wings, flies, and concealed entrances and exits for the actors. The scenae (backdrops) were as high as the top tier of the cavea (auditorium). The cavea was a semicircle of stepped tiers, which left a semicircular vacant space called the orchestra between the front row of the audience and the stage.
Thrace Loosely, that part of Balkan Europe between the Hellespont and a line just east of Philippi; it had coasts on both the Aegean and the Euxine Seas, and extended north as far as the mouth of the Danubius (the Danube). The Romans considered that its western boundary was the river Nestus. Thrace never really got itself organized, and remained until Roman occupation a place of partially allied Germano—Illyrian—Celtic tribes long enough settled in the area to warrant the name Thracian. Both the Greeks and the Romans considered the Thracians utterly barbaric. After 129 B.C. the strip of Thrace along the Aegean seaboard was governed by Rome as a part of Macedonia. For Rome had built the Via Egnatia, the great highway between the Adriatic and the Hellespont, and needed to protect this quickest way to move her soldiers between west and east. Thrace’s largest city by far was the old Greek colony of Byzantium, on the Thracian Bosporus, but it of course was not inhabited by Thracians; nor was any other seaport. The Bessi constituted the most warlike and Roman—hating tribal confraternity, but the Odrysiae were slightly more Hellenized, and had a king who strove to placate Rome.
Tingitanian ape The Barbary ape, a macaque, terrestrial and tailless. Monkeys and primates were not common around the Mediterranean, but the macaque still found on Gibraltar was always present in North Africa.
toga The garment only a full citizen of Rome was entitled to wear. Made of lightweight wool, it had a 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 produced a perfect-looking toga. To fit a man 5 feet 9 inches (175cm) tall having a waist of 36 inches (89.5cm), the toga was about 15 feet (4.6m) wide, and 7 feet 6 inches (2.25m) long. The length measurement is draped on the man’s height axis and the much bigger width measurement is wrapped around him. However, the shape was far from being a simple rectangle! It looked like this:
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 the last century B.C. was very large (the size varied considerably during the thousand years it was the customary garb of the Roman). And a man draped in his toga could not have worn a loincloth or other undergarment! toga Candida The specially whitened toga worn by those seeking office as an elected magistrate. Its stark whiteness was achieved by bleaching the garment in the sun for many days, then working finely powdered chalk through it. 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 toga worn by children of both sexes. toga trabea Cicero’s “particolored toga.” It was the striped toga of the augur, and very likely of the pontifex also. Like the toga praetexta, it had a purple border all the way around it, but it was also striped in broad bands of alternating red and purple down its length. toga virilis The plain white toga of a Roman male. It was also called the toga alba, or the toga pura.
togate The correct English-language term to describe a man clad in his toga.
torc A thick round necklace or collar, usually of gold. It didn’t quite form a full circle, as it had a gap about an inch wide interrupting it; this was worn at the front. The torc was the mark of a Gaul or Celt, though some Germans wore it also. The ends of the torc at the gap were normally finished in some decorative way, with knobs, animal heads, twists, swirls. Smaller versions of the torc were awarded as Roman military decorations and worn on the shoulders of the shirt or cuirass.
transvectio The parade of the Public Horse held on the Ides of Quinctilis (July). Abandoned as part of the aftermath of Gaius Gracchus, it was revived in 70 B.C. by Pompey, who wanted to make it clear that he was a knight.
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 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. When Roman-owned territory in the peninsula began to expand during the early and middle Republic, 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 they probably originated somewhat later. The last tribe of the thirty-five was created in 241 B.C. Every member of a tribe was entitled to register one vote in a tribal Assembly, but his vote counted only in helping to determine which way the tribe as a whole voted, for a tribe delivered just one vote, the majority of its members. This meant that in no tribal Assembly could the huge number of citizens enrolled in the four urban tribes sway the vote, as the urban tribes delivered only four of the thirty-five ultimate votes. Members of rural tribes were not disbarred from living in Rome, nor were their progeny obliged to be enrolled in an urban tribe. Most senators and knights of the First Class belonged to rural tribes. It was a mark of distinction.
tribune, military Those on the general’s staff who were not elected tribunes of the soldiers but who ranked above cadets and below legates were called military tribunes. If the general was not a consul in office, military tribunes might command legions. Otherwise they did staff duties for the general. Military tribunes also served as cavalry commanders.
tribune of the plebs These magistrates came into being early in the history of the Republic, when the Plebs was at complete loggerheads with the Patriciate. Elected by the tribal body of plebeians formed as the concilium plebis or comitia plebis tributa (the Plebeian Assembly), they took an oath to defend the lives and property of members of the Plebs, and to rescue a member of the Plebs from the clutches of a (patrician in those days) magistrate. By 450 B.C. there were ten tribunes of the plebs. A lex Atinia de tribunis plebis in senatum legendis in 149 B.C. provided that a man elected to the tribunate of the plebs automatically entered the Senate. Because they were not elected by the
People (that is, by the patricians as well as by the plebeians), they had no power under Rome’s unwritten constitution and were not magistrates in the same way as tribunes of the soldiers, quaestors, curule aediles, praetors, consuls, and censors; their magistracies were of the Plebs and their power in office resided in the oath the whole Plebs took to defend the sacrosanctity—the inviolability—of its elected tribunes. The power of the office also lay in the right of its officers to interpose a veto (intercessio) against almost any aspect of government: a tribune of the plebs could veto the actions or laws of his nine fellow tribunes, or any—or all!—other magistrates, including consuls and censors; he could veto the holding of an election; he could veto the passing of any law; and he could veto any decrees of the Senate, even those dealing with war and foreign affairs. Only a dictator (and perhaps an interrex) was not subject to the tribunician veto. Within his own Plebeian Assembly, the tribune of the plebs could even exercise the death penalty if his right to proceed about his duties was denied him. The tribune of the plebs had no imperium, and the authority vested in the office did not extend beyond the first milestone outside the city of Rome. Custom dictated that a man should serve only one term as a tribune of the plebs, but Gaius Gracchus put an end to that; even so, it was not usual for a man to stand more than once. As the real power of the office was vested in negative action—the veto—tribunician contribution to government tended to be more obstructive than constructive. The conservative elements in the Senate loathed the tribunate of the plebs. The College of Tribunes of the Plebs entered office on the tenth day of December each year, and had its headquarters in the Basilica Porcia. Sulla as dictator in 81 B.C. stripped the tribunate of the plebs of all its powers save the right to rescue a member of the Plebs from the clutches of a magistrate, but the consuls Pompey and Crassus restored all the powers of the office in 70 B.C. It was too important to do without. See also the entry under auxilii ferendi. And Plebs, of course.
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