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

by Colleen McCullough

  boni Literally, “the good men.” It was used of those men who belonged to an ultraconservative faction within and without the Senate of Rome. I have sometimes misused it in its Latin grammatical form because it is so clumsy in English always to use it as a noun; hence I have used it as an adjective or adverb from time to time.

  Brothers Gracchi See Gracchi.

  Campus Martius The Field of Mars. Situated north of the Servian Walls, the Campus Martius was bounded by the Capitol on its south and the Pincian Hill on its east; the rest of it was enclosed by a huge bend in the Tiber River. In Republican times it was not inhabited as a suburb, but was the place where triumphing armies bivouacked, the young were trained in military exercises, horses engaged in chariot racing were stabled and trained, public slaves had their barracks, the Centuriate Assembly met, and market gardening vied with parklands. At the apex of the river bend lay the public swimming holes called the Trigarium, and just to the north of the Trigarium were medicinal hot springs called the Tarentum. The Via Lata (Via Flaminia) crossed the Campus Martius on its way to the Mulvian Bridge, and the Via Recta bisected it at right angles to the Via Lata.

  Carinae One of Rome’s more exclusive addresses. Incorporating the Fagutal, the Carinae was the northern tip of the Oppian Mount on its western side; it extended between the Velia and the Clivus Pullius. Its outlook was southwestern, across the swamps of the Palus Ceroliae toward the Aventine.

  Castor The never-forgotten Heavenly Twin. Though the imposing temple in the Forum Romanum was properly the temple of Castor and Pollux (also called the Dioscuri), it was always referred to by Romans as Castor’s. This led to many jokes about dual enterprises in which one of the two prime movers was consistently overlooked. Religiously, Castor and Pollux were among the principal deities worshiped by Romans, perhaps because, like Romulus and Remus, they were twins.

  catamite A youth used for homosexual purposes.

  Celtiberian The general term covering the tribes inhabiting northern and north-central Spain. As the name suggests, racially they were an admixture of migratory Celts from Gaul and the more ancient indigenous Iberian stock. Their towns were almost all erected upon easily fortified crags, hills or rocky outcrops, and they were past masters at guerrilla warfare.

  censor The censor was the most august of all Roman magistrates, though he lacked imperium and was therefore not entitled to be escorted by lictors. Two censors were elected by the Centuriate Assembly to serve for a period of five years (called a lustrum); censorial activity was, however, mostly limited to the first eighteen months of the lustrum, which was ushered in by a special sacrifice, the suovetaurilia, of pig, sheep and ox. No man could stand for censor unless he had been consul first, and usually only those consulars of notable auctoritas and dignitas bothered to stand. The censors inspected and regulated membership in the Senate and the Ordo Equester, and conducted a general census of Roman citizens throughout the Roman world. They had the power to transfer a citizen from one tribe to another as well as one Class to another. They applied the means test. The letting of State contracts for everything from the farming of taxes to public works was also their responsibility. In 81 B.C. Sulla abolished the office, but the consuls Pompey and Crassus restored it in 70 B.C. The censor wore a solid purple toga, the toga purpurea.

  Centuriate Assembly See Assembly.

  centurion The regular professional officer of both Roman citizen and auxiliary infantry legions. It is a mistake to equate him with the modern non-commissioned officer; centurions enjoyed a relatively exalted status uncomplicated by modern social distinctions. A defeated Roman general hardly turned a hair if he lost even senior military tribunes, but tore his hair out in clumps if he lost centurions. Centurion rank was graduated; the most junior commanded an ordinary century of eighty legionaries and twenty noncombatant assistants, but exactly how he progressed in what was apparently a complex chain of progressive seniority is not known. In the Republican army as reorganized by Gaius Marius, each cohort had six centuriones (singular, centurio), with the most senior man, the pilus prior, commanding the senior century of his cohort as well as the entire cohort. The ten men commanding the ten cohorts which made up a full legion were also ranked in seniority, with the legion’s most senior centurion, the primus pilus (this term was later reduced to primipilus), answering only to his legion’s commander (either one of the elected tribunes of the soldiers or one of the general’s legates). During Republican times promotion to centurion was up from the ranks. The centurion had certain easily recognizable badges of office: he wore greaves on his shins, a shirt of scales rather than chain links, and a helmet crest projecting sideways rather than front-to-back; he carried a stout knobkerrie of vine wood. He also wore many decorations.

  chryselephantine A work of art fashioned in a combination of gold and ivory.

  Circus Flaminius The circus situated on the Campus Martius not far from the Tiber and the Forum Holitorium. Built in 221 B.C., it sometimes served as a place for a comitial meeting, when the Plebs or the People had to meet outside the pomerium. It seems to have been well used as a venue for the games, but for events pulling in smaller attendances than the Circus Maximus, as it could accommodate no more than fifty thousand spectators.

  Circus Maximus The old circus built by King Tarquinius Priscus before the Republic began. It filled the whole of the Vallis Murcia, a declivity between the Palatine and Aventine mounts. Even though its capacity was at least 150,000 spectators, there is ample evidence that during Republican times freedman citizens were classified as slaves when it came to admission to the Circus Maximus, and were thus denied. Just too many people wanted to go to the circus games. Women were permitted to sit with men.

  citizenship For the purposes of this series of books, the Roman citizenship. Possession of it entitled a man to vote in his tribe and his Class (if he was economically qualified to belong to a Class) in all Roman elections. He could not be flogged, he was entitled to the Roman trial process, and he had the right of appeal. The male citizen became liable for military service on his seventeenth birthday. After the lex Minicia of 91 B.C., the child of a union between a Roman citizen of either sex and a non-Roman was forced to assume the citizenship of the non-Roman parent.

  Classes These were five in number, and represented the economic divisions of property-owning or steady-income-earning Roman citizens. The members of the First Class were the richest, the members of the Fifth Class the poorest. Those Roman citizens who belonged to the capite censi or Head Count were too poor to qualify for a Class status, and so could not vote in the Centuriate Assembly. In actual fact, it was rare for the Third Class to be called upon to vote in the Centuriate Assembly, let alone members of the Fourth or Fifth Class!

  client In Latin, cliens. The term denoted a man of free or freed status (he did not have to be a Roman citizen) who pledged himself to a man he called his patron. In the most solemn and binding way, the client undertook to serve the interests and obey the wishes of his patron. In return he received certain favors—usually gifts of money, or a job, or legal assistance. The freed slave was automatically the client of his ex-master until discharged of this obligation—if he ever was. A kind of honor system governed the client’s conduct in relation to his patron, and was adhered to with remarkable consistency. To be a client did not necessarily mean that a man could not also be a patron; more that he could not be an ultimate patron, as technically his own clients were also the clients of his patron. During the Republic there were no formal laws concerning the client-patron relationship because they were not necessary—no man, client or patron, could hope to succeed in life were he known as dishonorable in this vital function. However, there were laws regulating the foreign client-patron relationship: foreign states or client-kings acknowledging Rome as patron were legally obliged to find the ransom for any Roman citizen kidnapped in their territories, a fact that pirates relied on heavily for an additional source of income. Thus, not only individuals could become clients; whole towns and even cou
ntries often were.

  clivus A hilly street.

  coercitio The right of a curule magistrate to exact obedience to his directives by punitive measures. A citizen could not appeal against a magistrate invoking coercitio unless he was a plebeian and appealed to all ten tribunes of the plebs to rescue him. The customary measures were fines or confiscation of property; for a magistrate to physically chastise was extremely rare.

  cognomen The last name of a Roman male anxious to distinguish himself from all his fellows possessed of identical first (praenomen) and family (nomen) names. He might adopt one for himself, as did Pompey with the cognomen Magnus, or simply continue to bear a cognomen which had been in the family for generations, as did the Julians cognominated Caesar. In some families it became necessary to have more than one cognomen: for example, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Pius Cornelianus Scipio Nasica, who was the adopted son of Metellus Pius the Piglet. Quintus was his first name (praenomen), Caecilius was his family name (nomen); Metellus Pius were cognomina belonging to his adoptive father; Cornelianus indicated that he was by blood a Cornelian; and Scipio Nasica were the cognomina of his blood father. As things turned out, he was always known as Metellus Scipio, a neat compromise to both blood and adoptive family. The cognomen often pointed up some physical characteristic or idiosyncrasy—jug ears, flat feet, humpback, swollen legs—or else commemorated some great feat—as in the Caecilii Metelli who were cognominated Dalmaticus, Balearicus, Macedonicus, Numidicus, these being related to a country each man had conquered. The best cognomina were heavily sarcastic—Lepidus, meaning a thoroughly nice fellow, attached to a right bastard—or extremely witty—as with the already multiple-cognominated Gaius Julius Caesar Strabo Vopiscus, who earned an additional name, Sesquiculus, meaning he was more than just an arsehole, he was an arsehole and a half.

  cohort The tactical unit of the legion. It comprised six centuries, and each legion owned ten cohorts. When discussing troop movements, it was more customary for the general to speak of his army in terms of cohorts than legions—which perhaps indicates that, at least until the time of Caesar, the general deployed or peeled off cohorts in battle. The maniple, formed of two centuries (there were three maniples to the cohort), ceased to have any tactical significance from the time of Marius.

  college A body or society of men having something in common. Rome owned priestly colleges (such as the College of Pontifices), political colleges (as the College of Tribunes of the Plebs), civil colleges (as the College of Lictors), and trade colleges (for example, the Guild of Undertakers). Certain groups of men from all walks of life, including slaves, banded together in what were called crossroads colleges to look after the city of Rome’s major crossroads and conduct the annual feast of the crossroads, the Compitalia.

  comitia See Assembly.

  Comitia The large round well in which meetings for the comitia were held. It was located in the lower Forum Romanum adjacent to the steps of the Senate House and the Basilica Aemilia, and proceeded below ground level in a series of steps, forming tiers upon which men stood; comitial meetings were never conducted seated. When packed, the well could hold perhaps two or three thousand men. The rostra, or speaker’s platform, was grafted into one side.

  CONDEMNO The word employed by a jury to deliver a verdict of “guilty.” It was a term confined to the courts; both courts and Assemblies had their own vocabularies.

  confarreatio The oldest and strictest of the three forms of Roman marriage. By the time of Caesar, the practice of confarreatio was confined to patricians, and then was not mandatory. One of the chief reasons why confarreatio lost much popularity lay in the fact that the confarreatio bride passed from the hand of her father to the hand of her husband, and thus had far less freedom than women married in the usual way; she could not control her dowry nor conduct business. The other main reason for the unpopularity of confarreatio lay in the extreme difficulty of dissolving it; divorce (diffareatio) was so legally and religiously arduous that it was more trouble than it was worth unless the circumstances left no alternative.

  Conscript Fathers When it was established by the kings of Rome (traditionally by Romulus himself), the Senate consisted of one hundred patricians entitled patres—”fathers.” Then when plebeian senators were added during the first years of the Republic, they were said to be conscripti—”chosen without a choice.” Together, the patrician and plebeian members were said to be patres et conscripti; gradually the once-distinguishing terms were run together, and all members of the Senate were simply the 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 the top rung on the cursus honorum. Two consuls were elected each year by the Centuriate Assembly, and served for one year. They entered office on New Year’s Day (January 1). One was senior to the other; he was the one who had polled his requisite number of Centuries first. The senior consul held the fasces (q.v.) for the month of January, which meant his junior colleague looked on. In February the junior consul held the fasces, and they alternated month, by month throughout the year. Both consuls were escorted by twelve lictors, but only the lictors of the consul holding the fasces that month shouldered the actual fasces as they preceded him wherever he went. By the last century of the Republic, a patrician or a plebeian could be consul, though never two patricians together. The proper age for a consul was forty-two, twelve years after entering the Senate at thirty, though there is convincing evidence that Sulla in 81 B.C. accorded patrician senators the privilege of standing for consul two years ahead of any plebeian, which meant the patrician could be consul at forty years of age. A consul’s imperium knew no bounds; it operated not only in Rome and Italy, but throughout the provinces as well, and overrode the imperium of a proconsular governor. The consul could command any army.

  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 consultum. 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 requested felt like voting it into law. 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, the declaration and conduct of wars, and all to do with foreign affairs. Sulla in 81 B.C. gave these particular senatorial decrees the formal status of laws.

  contio Plural, contiones. 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 constitu
tional 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.

  corpus animusque Body and soul.

  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 shoulder 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 ritually knotted and looped. cunnus An extremely offensive Latin profanity—“cunt.”