Mutina: Modern Modena in northern Italy.
Natiso: Ancient name for the Natisone river, flowing between Italy and Slovenia.
Nefastus: An unpropitious day, one on which it was unlucky to conduct public business.
Negotium: Latin, ‘business, both private and public’.
Nikal: Ancient Mesopotamian moon goddess worshipped at Carrhae; wife of Sin.
Nilus: Poem on the personification of the Nile alleged to have been written by Gordian the Elder; only the title survives.
Nisean Stallion: Ancient Iranian horse breed, prized in antiquity.
Nisibis: Border town that frequently changed hands between Rome and Persia; modern Nusaybin in southeastern Turkey.
Nobiles (singular Nobilis): Latin, ‘nobleman’; a man from a patrician family or a plebeian family, one of whose ancestors had been consul.
Nones: The ninth day of a month before the Ides, i.e. the fifth day of a short month, the seventh of a long month.
Noricum: Roman province to the northeast of the Alps.
Novus Homo (plural Novi Homines): Latin, literally ‘new man’; someone whose ancestors had not previously held Senatorial rank.
Numidia: Roman province in western North Africa.
Nymph: In Greek and Roman mythology, type of minor female deity associated with a particular place, often streams or woods.
O tempora, o mores: Famous complaint of Cicero, ‘O what times, oh what manners!’.
Odysseus: Legendary Greek warrior and traveller, famed for his guile.
Oligarchy: From the Greek ‘rule by the few’.
Olympus: Mountain in northern Greece; in Greek mythology, the home of the gods.
Optio: Junior officer in the Roman army, ranked below a Centurion.
Oracle of Delphi: Famed source of prophesy in antiquity; the maxim ‘know thyself’ was prominently inscribed on the oracle’s sanctuary in central Greece.
Orator: Latin term for a professional public speaker.
Orpheus: Mythical Greek musician who travelled to the underworld to bring his wife back from the dead; failing to follow divine instructions not to look at her before both had re-entered the world of the living, she returned forever to Hades.
Osrhoene: Roman province in northern Mesopotamia.
Ostia: Ancient port of the city of Rome, located at the mouth of the Tiber.
Ovile: Settlement in the Thracian highlands, named from the Latin for sheepfold.
Palatine Hill: One of the fabled seven hills of Rome, southeast of the Roman Forum. Site of the imperial palaces; the English term is derived from their location.
Palestina: see Syria Palestina.
Pannonia Inferior: Roman province lying along the south bank of the Danube, opposite the Sarmatian Iazyges.
Pannonia: Roman territory to the south of the Danube, split into two provinces.
Pantheon: Colossal domed temple dedicated to all the gods, located in the Circus Maximus; re-built by the Emperor Hadrian, it is one of the best preserved buildings from ancient Rome.
Parthia: Region of northeastern Iran; seat of the Arcasid dynasty, its name came to be synonymous with their empire.
Patrician: People of the highest social status at Rome; originally descendants of those men who sat in the very first meeting of the free senate after the expulsion of the last of the mythical kings of Rome in 509BC; under the Principate, Emperors awarded new families patrician status.
Pax deorum: Latin, ‘Peace of the gods’; important Roman concept signifying the agreement between mortals and gods, ensured by observance of correct (traditional) rituals.
Pedagogue: Greek term for a teacher borrowed by the Romans; literally ‘leader of a child’.
Persis: Most important region of the Parthian empire, ultimately giving rise to the word Persia; roughly the territory of the modern province of Fars in Iran.
Philanthropia: Greek, love of mankind; underpinned by philosophy, the concept acted as a powerful influence on the perceptions and actions of the Greek and Roman elites.
Phrygian: From Phrygia, an ancient region lying to the west of central Turkey.
Physiognomy: The ancient ‘science’ of studying people’s faces, bodies and deportment to discover their character, and thus both their past and future.
Picenum: Ancient region of Italy to the northeast of Rome along the shore of the Adriatic.
Pila: Roman throwing spear; its head was purposely weakened to bend on impact, preventing it from being reused by the enemy.
Plebs Urbana: Poor of the city of Rome, in literature usually coupled with an adjective labelling them as dirty, superstitious, lazy, distinguished from the plebs rustica, whose rural lifestyle might make them less morally dubious.
Plebs: Technically, all Romans who were not patricians; more usually, the non-elite.
Pluto: Roman god of the underworld.
Poliorcetic: From the Greek, ‘things belonging to sieges’; the science of besieging a city.
Polis: Greek, a city state; focus of Philanthropia and social competition.
Pollinctores: Roman undertakers; employed to wash the corpse and prepare it for cremation.
Pontifex Maximus: Most prestigious priesthood in Roman religion, monopolized by the Emperors.
Portico of Gaius and Lucius Caesar: Colonnade running in front of the Basilica Aemilia on the north side of the Forum Romanum; built by the Emperor Augustus in honour of his two grandsons.
Porticus Vipsania: Large colonnaded square completed by the Emperor Augustus in the Campus Martius.
Poseidon: Greek god of the sea.
Praefectus Annonae: Prefect of the Provisions, title of official in charge of the grain supply of Rome.
Praetor: Roman magistrate in charge of justice, senatorial office second in rank to the Consuls.
Praetorian Camp: Barracks of the Praetorian Guard, encircled by massive brick walls, located in northeastern Rome.
Praetorian Guard: Unit of elite soldiers, organized into ten cohorts, each with 1,000 troops; the Emperor’s personal guard in Rome, though detachments also served alongside the Emperor with the field armies campaigning along the frontiers.
Praetorian Prefect: Commander of the Praetorians, an equestrian; one of the most prestigious and powerful positions in the empire.
Praetorians: Soldiers of the Praetorian Guard, the Emperor’s bodyguard and the most prestigious and highly paid unit in the empire. Unfortunately for the Emperors, their loyalty could be bought with surprising ease.
Prefect of Egypt: Governor of Egypt; because of the strategic importance of the province, this post was never trusted to Senators (who might be inspired to challenge the Emperor) but was always filled by equestrians.
Prefect of Rome: See Prefect of the City.
Prefect of the Camp: Officer in charge of equipment, supply, and billeting.
Prefect of the City: Senior senatorial post in the city of Rome, commander of the Urban Cohorts.
Prefect of the Grain Supply: See Praefectus Annonae.
Prefect of the Imperial Camp: See Prefect of the Camp.
Prefect of the Poor Relief: Senator in charge of a rather haphazard project for alleviating rural poverty in Italy, instituted under the Emperor Nerva (AD96–98).
Prefect of the Vigiles: Equestrian officer in charge of Rome’s watchmen (the Vigiles), a paramilitary force for policing and firefighting.
Prefect of the Watch: Equestrian officer in charge of Rome’s Vigiles.
Prefect: Flexible Latin title for many officials and officers.
Priapus: Roman rustic god; always portrayed with a huge erection.
Primus Pilus: The most senior Centurion in a Roman Legion.
Princeps Peregrinorum: Officer in command of the frumentarii; the Emperor’s spymaster.
Princeps: Latin, leading man; often used as a means of referring to the Emperor, maintaining the polite fiction that he was first among equals, rather than an absolute monarch.
Principia: Headquarters building of a Roman army camp.
>
Pro-Consul: Title of the senatorial governors of some Roman provinces.
Procurator: Latin title for a range of officials, under the Principate typically appointed by the Emperor to oversee the collection of taxes in the provinces and keep an eye on their senatorial governors.
Providentia: Latin, ‘providence, foresight’; an abstract deity playing an important part in imperial propaganda, guiding the actions of the Emperor for the benefit of his subjects.
Pueri: Latin, ‘boys’; used to refer to adult male slaves, and by soldiers of each other.
Pupput: Modern Hammamet on the northeastern coast of Tunisia.
Quadrantaria: Something costing a small amount, a quarter of a copper as; slang for a cheap whore.
Quaestor: Roman magistrate originally in charge of financial affairs, first of the ‘higher magistracies’, those elected became Senators.
Quantum libet, Imperator: Latin, ‘whatever pleases, Emperor’.
Quirites: Archaic way of referring to the citizens of Rome; sometimes used by those keen to evoke the Republican past.
Ravenna: Base of the Roman fleet on the Adriatic Sea in northeastern Italy.
Res Publica: Latin, ‘the Roman Republic’; under the Emperors, it continued to mean the Roman empire.
Resaina: Town in northern Syria, modern Ra’s al-’Ayn.
Retiarius: Type of lightly armoured gladiator armed with a net and trident.
Rhetor: Greek term for a professional public speaker; equivalent to orator in Latin.
Rider God: A provincial deity worshipped in Pannonia, Moesia, and Thrace, based on elements of Roman and local religious traditions.
Roma: Ancient name for Rome; also worshipped in abstraction as the tutelary deity of the city.
Romae Aeternae: ‘To eternal Rome’; a political slogan found on coins of the Gordiani.
Romanitas: Roman-ness; increasingly important concept by the third century, with connotations of culture and civilization.
Rostra: Speaking platform at the western end of the Roman Forum; took its name from the beaks (rostra) of enemy warships with which it was decorated.
Roxolani: Nomadic barbarian tribe living north of the Danube and west of the Black Sea.
Sacramentum: Roman military oath, taken extremely seriously.
Sacred Way: At Rome, a processional route running below the northern flank of the Palatine and passing south of the Temple of Venus and Rome, ending at the Roman Forum to the west; at Ephesus, main road paved with marble passing the Library of Celsus and leading down to the major shrine of the city.
Saldis: A small town in the Salvus valley, located in modern Croatia.
Salus: ‘Health!’; a Roman expression of greeting or farewell.
Salutatio: An important Roman social custom; friends and clients of the wealthy and influential were expected to wait on their patrons at daybreak, being admitted into the atrium to greet them and see if they could be of any service in the day’s business.
Samos: Island in the eastern Aegean; it has retained its ancient name.
Samosata: City on the right bank of the Euphrates in southeastern Turkey protecting an important crossing point; now flooded by the Atatürk Dam.
Santicum: Roman town on the banks of the river Dravus; modern Villach in Austria.
Sarcophagus: From Greek, literally ‘flesh eater’; a stone chest containing a corpse and displayed above ground, often highly decorated.
Sarmatia: Tribal lands of the Sarmatians.
Sarmatians: Nomadic peoples living north of the Danube; see Iazyges and Roxolani.
Sassanid: Name for the Persians, from the dynasty that overthrew the Parthians in the 220sAD and was Rome’s great eastern rival until the seventh century AD.
Satyr: In Greek and Roman mythology, half-goat half-man creatures with excessive sexual appetites.
Satyrion: Ragwort, common ingredient of ancient aphrodisiacs; named from the licentious Satyrs.
Savus: Ancient name for the Sava river, a tributary of the Danube rising in the Julian Alps.
Saxa Rubra: Roman village on the Via Flaminia, some miles north of Rome.
Sciron: In Greek mythology, a divine-born bandit living on the Isthmus of Corinth, who enslaved travellers and disposed of those he tired of by throwing them into the sea. Fittingly, he met his own end in the same manner.
Scythian: Term used by the Greeks and Romans for peoples living to the north and east of the Black Sea.
Securitas: ‘Security’; personified as a tutelary goddess of the Roman state.
Senate House: See Curia.
Senate: The council of Rome, under the Emperors composed of about six hundred men, the vast majority ex-magistrates, with some imperial favourites. The richest and most prestigious group in the empire and once the governing body of the Roman Republic; increasingly side-lined by the Emperors.
Senator: Member of the senate, the council of Rome. The semi-hereditary senatorial order was the richest and most prestigious group in the empire.
Servitium: Roman town whose name literally means servitude, slavery. Modern Gradiška on the northern border of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Sestertius: Roman coin denomination; used as standard in ancient accounts.
Seven Hills: Metonym for Rome, from the seven hills on which the city was said to have been built; ancient lists, however, do not agree on their identity.
Shahba: Village on the border of Syria Phoenice and Arabia; some miles north of the modern town of Bosra on the southern Syrian border.
Sicilia: Ancient name for the island of Sicily.
Sicoris: Ancient name for the Segre river, a tributary of the Ebro in northeastern Spain.
Simulacrum: Latin, ‘imitation’.
Sin: Ancient Assyrian moon god worshipped at Carrhae; husband of Nikal.
Singara: Highly fortified eastern outpost of the Roman empire in northern Iraq; modern Balad Sinjar.
Sirmium: Strategic border town in Pannonia Inferior; modern Sremska Mitrovica in Serbia.
Sistan: Ancient region in eastern Iran and southern Afghanistan.
Sogdia: Ancient region to the north of Bactria, centred around Samarkand in modern Uzbekistan.
Sogdian Rock: A mountain fortress in Sogdia, captured by Alexander the Great in 328/7BC.
Sophist: A high-status teacher, usually of rhetoric; the sophists often travelled from city to city giving instruction and delivering speeches for entertainment.
Spatha: Long Roman sword, primarily designed for cutting; increasingly popular in the third century AD.
Speculatores: Roman army scouts and spies.
Stadium of Domitian: A running track originally intended for Greek-style athletic contests (never popular in Rome), constructed by the Emperor Domitian in the Campus Martius; its outline is preserved in the modern Piazza Navona.
Statii: Members of the Statius family.
Stationarii: Soldiers serving on semi-permanent detachment from their units for local policing and other duties.
Statue of Victory: Statue of the goddess placed at the far end of the Curia; before each meeting of the Senate, rituals were performed at the accompanying altar.
Stoic: Ancient school of philosophy; followers were instructed to believe that everything that does not affect one’s moral purpose is an irrelevance; so poverty, illness, bereavement and death cease to be things to fear and are treated with indifference.
Street of the Sandal-makers: Street in ancient Rome running behind the Forum of Augustus and Temple of Peace.
Stylus: Pointed implement of metal or bone, used for writing in wax.
Styx: River marking the border of Hades in Greek mythology; impassable to the living, the dead were rowed across.
Subura: Poor quarter in the city of Rome.
Succurrite: Latin, ‘help me, save me’.
Suffect Consul: One of the additional Consuls appointed later in the year by the Emperors during the Principate; less prestigious than the pair of Consuls who held office at the start of the
year.
Symposium: Greek drinking party, adopted as social gathering of choice by the Roman elite.
Synodiarchs: Greek term for a caravan protector, the unusual group of rich and powerful men historically known in Palmyra and in this novel in the city of Arete.
Syria Coele: Hollow Syria, Roman province.
Syria Palestina: Palestinian Syria, Roman province.
Syria Phoenice: Phoenician Syria, Roman province.
Syriac: Semitic language spoken in much of ancient Syria and Mesopotamia.
Syrtes: In antiquity, notoriously dangerous shoals off the coast of modern Libya.
Taenarus: The modern Cape Matapan on the southern shore of the Peloponnese; site of a cave believed to be an entrance to Hades.
Tantalus: In Greek mythology, punished eternally for stealing the food and drink of the gods by being forced to stand in a pool below a fruit tree, but unable to eat or drink.
Tarraco: Capital of the Roman province of Hispania Tarraconensis; modern Tarragona in northeastern Spain.
Tarpeian Rock: Cliff overlooking the Forum Romanum in Rome, from which prisoners were thrown to their deaths.
Telamon: Modern Talamone on the northwestern shore of Italy.
Temple of Antoninus and Faustina: Temple dedicated to the deified Emperor Antoninus Pius and his wife Faustina, at the northeastern corner of the Forum Romanum; much of the ancient building survives as the church of San Lorenzo in Miranda.
Temple of Peace: Monumental building with planted courtyard north- east of the Roman Forum.
Temple of Veiovis: The ancients were unsure whether this deity represented a youthful or ‘bad’ Jupiter; the temple, originally built by Romulus, overlooked the Forum Romanum from high ground to the west.
Temple of Venus and Rome: Temple designed by the Emperor Hadrian with back-to-back shrines for Venus, Roman goddess of love, and Rome, a deified personification of the city. In Latin, Roma (Rome) spelled backwards is amor, love. Situated east of the Roman Forum on the north side of the Sacred Way.
Tempus fugit: Latin, ‘time flies’.
Tervingi: Gothic tribe living between the Danube and Dnieper rivers.
Testudo: Latin, literally ‘tortoise’; by analogy, a Roman infantry formation with overlapping shields, giving overhead protection.
Thamugadi: Or Timgad, Roman city in northeastern Algeria; abandoned after antiquity.
Blood and Steel Page 33