sagum The Roman military cape. It was made on the principle of a Mexican poncho, cut on the circle with a hole in its middle through which the head was poked. It probably extended to the hips, leaving the hands free. It was made of untreated, very oily (and therefore water-repellent) Ligurian wool.
Sallust The English name given to the Roman historian Gaius Sallustius Crispus, who lived during Caesar’s time. It is interesting that the two historians who knew Caesar personally were both favorable to Caesar in their writings; the other was Gaius Asinius Pollio. Sallust seems to have been a rather randy fellow; his earliest claim to fame is that Milo took a horsewhip to him for philandering with Fausta, Milo’s wife. Sallust wrote two surviving works: a history of the war against Jugurtha of Numidia, and a history of the conspiracy of Lucius Sergius Catilina.
Salona Modern Split in Yugoslavia
Samara River The Somme River.
Samarobriva An oppidum belonging to the Belgic Ambiani, a tribe closely allied to the Atrebates. Modern Amiens.
Samnium That region of peninsular Italia lying between Latium, Campania, Apulia and Picenum. The area was mountainous and not remarkably fertile; Samnite towns tended to be small and poor, and included Caieta, Aeclanum and Bovianum. The two prosperous cities, Aesernia and Beneventum, were Latin Rights colonies seeded by Rome to keep an eye on things and form a nucleus of pro-Roman feeling. Samnium was inhabited by the true Samnites, but also by peoples called Frentani, Paeligni, Marrucini and Vestini; true Samnites also dominantly inhabited parts of southern Picenum and southern Campania. Several times during Rome’s history the Samnites inflicted hideous defeats upon Roman armies. They were still active in resistance to Rome in 82 B.C. when they contended with Sulla for possession of Rome in the battle at the Colline Gate. Sulla won.
Sampsiceramus The quintessential Eastern potentate, if one is to believe Cicero, who seems to have—typical wordsmith—fallen in love with the sound of “Sampsiceramus.” He was King of Emesa in Syria, which does not indicate a great degree of power or even of wealth. What Sampsiceramus apparently did par excellence was to flaunt what wealth he had in the most exotic way. Once Pompey became fabled, Cicero called him Sampsiceramus whenever they fell out.
satrap Originally the title given by the kings of Persia to their provincial or territorial governors. Alexander the Great seized upon the term and employed it, as did the later Arsacid kings of the Parthians and the kings of Armenia. The region administered by a satrap was a satrapy.
Scaldis River The Schelde River in Belgium.
Scipio Aemilianus Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus Numantinus was born in 185 B.C. He was not a Cornelian of the Scipio branch, but rather the son of the conqueror of Macedonia, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, who gave him in adoption to the elder son of Scipio Africanus. Scipio Aemilianus’s mother was a Papiria, and his wife was the surviving daughter of Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi, Sempronia; she was his close blood cousin. After a distinguished military career during the Third Punic War in 149-148 B.C., Aemilianus was elected consul in 147 B.C. As he was not old enough for the consulship, his election was bitterly opposed by many members of the Senate. Sent to Africa to take charge of the Third Punic War, he displayed that relentless and painstaking thoroughness which was thereafter the cornerstone of his career; he built a mole to close the harbor of Carthage and blockaded the city by land. It fell in 146 B.C., after which he pulled it apart stone by stone. However, modern scholars discount the story that he ploughed salt into the soil to make sure Carthage never rose again; the Romans themselves believed the salt story. He was an ineffectual censor thanks to an inimical colleague in 142 B.C.; then in 140 B.C. he took ship for the East, accompanied by his two Greek friends, the historian Polybius and the philosopher Panaetius. In 134 B.C. he was elected consul for the second time, and commissioned to deal with the town of Numantia in Nearer Spain. This tiny place had defied and defeated a whole series of Roman armies and generals for fifty years when Scipio Aemilianus arrived before it. Once he got there, Numantia lasted eight months. After it fell he destroyed it down to the last stone and beam, and deported or executed its four thousand citizens. News from Rome had informed him that his brother-in-law Tiberius Gracchus was undermining the mos maiorum; Aemilianus conspired with their mutual cousin Scipio Nasica to bring Tiberius Gracchus down. Though Tiberius Gracchus was already dead when Aemilianus returned to Rome in 132 B.C., he was commonly held responsible. Then in 129 B.C. Aemilianus died so suddenly and unexpectedly that it was ever afterward rumored that he had been murdered. The principal suspect was his wife, Sempronia, Tiberius Gracchus’s sister; she loathed her husband, all Rome knew it. By nature Scipio Aemilianus was a curious mixture. A great intellectual with an abiding love for things Greek, he stood at the center of a group of men who patronized and encouraged the likes of Polybius, Panaetius, and the Latin playwright Terence. As a friend, Aemilianus was everything a friend should be. As an enemy, he was cruel, coldblooded and utterly ruthless. A genius at organization, he could yet blunder as badly as he did in his opposition to Tiberius Gracchus. An extremely cultured and witty man of pronounced good taste, he was also morally and ethically ossified.
Senate Properly, Senatus. It came into being as a patricians-only body of one hundred men and served as an advisory council to the King of Rome. Not long into the Republic, it contained some three hundred senators, a great many of whom were plebeians. Because of its antiquity, the legal definitions of its rights, powers and duties were mostly nonexistent. Membership in the Senate was for life (unless a man was expelled by the censors for inappropriate behavior or impoverishment), which predisposed it toward the oligarchical form it acquired. Throughout its history its members fought strenuously to preserve their pre-eminence in government. Until Sulla stipulated that entry to the Senate was via the quaestorship, appointment was in the purlieus of the censors. The lex Atinia provided that tribunes of the plebs should automatically enter the Senate upon election. There was a means test of entirely unofficial nature: a senator was supposed to enjoy an income of a million sesterces per annum. Senators alone were permitted to wear the latus clavus or broad purple stripe upon the right shoulder of the tunic; they wore closed shoes of maroon leather (the black-and-white senatorial shoe belonged to Imperial times) and a ring which had originally been made of iron, but later came to be gold. Only men who had held a curule magistracy wore the purple-bordered toga praetexta; ordinary senators wore plain white togas. Meetings of the Senate had to be held in properly inaugurated premises. The Senate had its own meeting house or curia, the Curia Hostilia, but it was prone to meet elsewhere at the whim of the man convoking the meeting. Senatorial sessions could go on only between sunrise and sunset and could not take place on days when any of the Assemblies met, though they were permissible on comitial days if no Assembly meeting was scheduled. No matter what the speaking order of the particular era, a patrician senator always preceded a plebeian senator of equal rank. Not all members of the House were accorded the privilege of speaking. The senatores pedarii (described in my books by the Westminster Parliamentary term “backbenchers”) could vote, but could not open their mouths in debate. They sat behind the men permitted to speak, so “backbencher” is a reasonable English compromise. No restrictions were placed upon the time limit or content of a man’s speech, so filibustering was common. If an issue was unimportant or everyone was obviously inclined one way, voting might be by a show of hands; a formal vote took place by a division of the House, meaning that the senators left their stations and grouped themselves to either side of the curule dais according to their yea or nay, and were then physically counted. Always an advisory rather than a truly legislating body, the Senate issued its consulta or decrees as requests to the various Assemblies. If the issue was serious, a quorum had to be present before a vote could be taken, though we do not know what precise number constituted a quorum. Certainly most meetings were not heavily attended; there was no rule which said a man appointed to the Senate had t
o attend meetings of it, even on an irregular basis.
In some areas the Senate reigned supreme, despite its lack of formal legislating power: the fiscus was controlled by the Senate, as it controlled the Treasury; foreign affairs were left to the Senate; and the appointment of provincial governors, the regulation of provincial affairs and the conduct of wars were senatorial.
Senatus Consultum Ultimum Properly, senatus consultum de re publica defendenda. This was the Senate’s ultimate decree and dated from 121 B.C., when Gaius Gracchus resorted to violence to prevent the overthrow of his laws. Rather than appoint a dictator to deal with the violence, the ultimate decree came into being. Basically it was a declaration of martial law, though its restrictions on civilian movement were often clearly defined in the terms of its issuance. A Senatus Consultum Ultimum overrode all other governmental bodies and persons.
Sequana River The Seine River.
Serapis A hybrid chief deity for the more Hellenized parts of Egypt, especially Alexandria. Invented, it seems, during the reign of the first Ptolemy, an ex-marshal of Alexander the Great’s, Serapis was a peculiar fusion of Zeus with Osiris and the tutelary deity of the Apis bull—Osirapis. Statues of Serapis were rendered in the Greek manner and displayed a bearded man wearing a huge basket crown.
Serica The mysterious land we know as China. In Caesar’s day the Silk Route had not come into being; “silk” was a floss obtained from a moth native to the Aegean island of Cos.
sestertius, sesterces Roman accounting practices were established in sesterces, though the denarius, more valuable, was apparently a commoner coin in circulation. In Latin writing, “sesterces” was abbreviated as HS. A very small silver coin, the sestertius was worth one quarter of a denarius.
Sextilis Originally the sixth month of the Roman year when it began in March; its original name was retained even after the New Year shifted to January 1. During the principate of Augustus it acquired its modern name—August.
Sicoris River The river Segre in Spain.
Sol Indiges One of the most ancient Italian Gods. As the Sun, Sol Indiges was the husband of the Earth, Tellus. He was enormously reverenced. Oaths sworn by him were very serious affairs. sow A smelted lump of metal. Iron, copper, silver, gold and some other metals were kept as sows of various weight. Both silver and gold sows were smoother and more regular in shape because these were precious metals and quite soft. Base metal sows perhaps had a piggy shape, rounded on the underside, nipply on the upper side.
stadia A Greek measure of distance. The stadium (singular) was about a furlong in length, and is easiest reckoned at eight stadia to the Roman mile.
Stoic One who subscribed to the system of philosophical thought founded by the Phoenician Zeno. Though Zeno’s system was a complete one, it is best summed up as holding that virtue is the only real good, and immorality or unethicality the only real evil. He taught that natural travails, from pain and death to poverty, are not important; a good man is a moral and ethical one, and a good man must always be a happy man. Called after the Stoa Poikile in Athens where Zeno taught, Stoicism eventually arrived in Rome. It was never very popular among such a pragmatic and commonsensible people, but it did have its Roman adherents. The most famous one was Cato Uticensis, Caesar’s bitterest enemy.
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 in Caesar’s time contained Rome’s only synagogue. Suetonius says that Caesar was brought up in the Subura.
Suebi A Germanic people who inhabited the wilder and more forested regions of Germania from south of the Rhenus’s (Rhine’s) confluence with the Mosella (Moselle) to the Vosegus (Vosges), the Jura and the approaches to the lands of the Helvetii (Switzerland). The name means wanderers.
Suessionum The main oppidum of the Belgic Suessiones. Modern Soissons.
Sugambri A Germanic people who inhabited the lands adjacent to the Rhenus (Rhine) from its confluence with the Luppia almost to its confluence with the Mosella (Moselle). They were numerous and had broken the soil to farm.
Sui iuris The term which indicated that a person of either sex was not under the authority of a paterfamilias figure. Such people were their own masters; they had complete control of their lives.
Sulla Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, whose remarkable career is detailed in the first three books in this series: The First Man in Rome, The Crass Crown, and Fortune’s Favorites. Superstes Means survivor.
talent This was the load a man could carry. Bullion and very large amounts of money were expressed in talents, but the term was not confined to precious metals and money. In modern mensuration, the talent weighed between 50 and 55 pounds (25 kilograms). A talent of gold weighed the same as a talent of silver, but was far more valuable, of course.
Tamesa River The river Thames.
Taprobane Modern Ceylon, Sri Lanka.
Taranis The Druidic God of thunder and lightning. His elemental nature was fire.
Tarnis River The river Tarn.
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 80 feet (24.5 meters), 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 way to execute Roman citizen traitors and murderers, who were either thrown from it or forced to jump. 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 Italian origin. After the navel stone of Magna Mater was imported from Pessinus in 205 B.C., worship of Tellus became neglected inside the city of Rome, though she never fell out of favor with Italians. Tellus had a big temple on the Carinae, in earlier days imposing; by the last century B.C. it was dilapidated. Quintus Cicero is said to have restored it.
Tergeste Modern Trieste.
Teutones See Cimbri.
Thessalonica Modern Thessaloniki.
toga praetexta The purple-bordered toga which was reserved for curule magistrates. Children of both sexes wore the toga praetexta until they were registered as adults at about the age of sixteen.
togate The proper term to indicate a man wearing a toga.
Tolosa Modern Toulouse.
torc A thick round necklace or collar, usually of gold. It did not quite form a full circle, as it was interrupted by a gap about an inch (25mm) wide. This gap was worn to the front; the ends of the torc on either side of the gap were always larger and more ornamented, forming knobs or animal heads or other objects. The torc was the mark of a Gaul, either Celtic or Belgic, though some Germans wore it also. Miniature versions of the torc, made of gold or silver, were awarded as military decorations for valor in the Roman army. They were worn on the shoulders of the shirt or cuirass.
Treves Modern Trier in Germany.
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 of these were rural, only four were urban. The sixteen oldest tribes bore the names of the various original patrician clans, indicating that the citizens who belonged to these tribes were either members of the patrician families, or had once lived on land owned by these patrician families, or, after the Italian War of 91-88 B.C., had been put into these tribes by the censors. When Roman-owned territory in t
he Italian Peninsula began to expand during the early and middle Republic, tribes were added to accommodate the new Roman citizens within the Roman body politic. Full Roman citizen colonies also became the nuclei of fresh tribes. The four urban tribes were said to have been founded by King Servius Tullus, though they probably emerged somewhat later. The last tribe, the thirty-fifth, 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, that of 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 their four votes constituted only one-ninth of the full vote. Members of rural tribes were not disbarred from living in Rome, nor were their progeny made to register in an urban tribe. Most senators and knights of the First and Second Classes belonged to rural tribes. It was a mark of distinction to belong to a rural tribe.
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. There were very many military tribunes in an army; they might but usually did not command legions, whereas they always acted as cavalry officers. They also did staff duties for the general.
tribune of the plebs This magistracy 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 Plebeian Assembly, the tribunes of the plebs 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 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 whole People (that is, by the patricians as well as 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 rested 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 magistrates to interpose a veto against almost any aspect of government: one single 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 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 without trial 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. The term of office was one year, and the tribunician year commenced on the tenth day of December. Headquarters were in the Basilica Porcia. As the real power of the office was vested in negative action—the veto (it was called intercessio)—tribunician contribution to government tended to be more obstructive than constructive. The conservative elements in the Senate loathed the tribunes of the plebs—unless they owned them. A very few tribunes of the plebs were real social engineers. Tiberius and Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, Gaius Marius, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, Publius Sulpicius Rufus, Aulus Gabinius, Titus Labienus, Publius Clodius, Publius Vatinius, Gaius Trebonius, Gaius Scribonius Curio and Marcus Antonius all defied the Senate; some of them died for it.
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