The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough
By the time of Marius and Sulla, to own a Public Horse was a social cachet of no mean order; the animals were handed down from generation to generation in the same families, so to possess a Public Horse was tantamount to saying your family had been around since the beginning. That this was not so we know from the fact that Pompey possessed a Public Horse—presumably when a family died out, its Public Horse was passed to someone of newer origins but enormous influence. Cato the Censor, considered a peasant New Man, was very proud to say that his great grandfather (who must have lived during the fourth century b.c.) had received from the Treasury of Rome the price of no less than five Public Horses killed under him in battle.
When Gaius Sempronius Gracchus (see The Gracchi) split the Senate off from the knights, there is no evidence that his law required that a senator give up his Public Horse because he was no longer a knight; on the contrary, those of senatorial family who had possessed the Public Horse continued to possess it, witness Pompey the Great, and presumably his father.
Though it was not always observed, some censors (including Cato the Censor) insisted that the 1,800 owners of the Public Horse parade themselves and their animals in order to make sure that these men were keeping themselves in shape and caring properly for their steeds. The parade of the Public Horse, when held, occurred perhaps on the Ides of July; the censors sat in state on a tribunal atop the steps of the temple of Castor and Pollux in the Forum Romanum and watched each holder of the Public Horse solemnly lead his mount in a kind of march-past. If the censors considered a man had let himself go to seed, they stripped him of his entitlement to the Public Horse.
Punic The adjective applied to Carthage and its people, but particularly to the three wars fought between Carthage and Rome. The word is derived from the origin of the Carthaginians—Phoenicia.
quaestor The lowest rung on the senatorial cursus honorum. At the time of Marius and Sulla, to be elected a quaestor did not mean a man was automatically a member of the Senate; however, it was the normal practice of the censors to admit quaestors to the Senate. Many who stood for election as quaestor were already in the Senate. The exact number of quaestors elected in any one year at this time is not known, but was perhaps twelve to sixteen. The age at which a man sought election as a quaestor was thirty, which was also the correct age for entering the Senate. A quaestor's chief duties were fiscal: he might be seconded to the Treasury in Rome, or to secondary treasuries, or to collecting customs and port dues (there were three such quaestors at this time, one in Ostia, one in Puteoli, and one who did the other ports), or to collecting Rome's rents from ager publicus at home and abroad, or to managing the finances of a province. A consul going to govern a province could ask by name for a particular man to serve as his quaestor—this was a great distinction for the man in question, and assured him of both election and a place in the Senate. Normally the quaestorship lasted for one year, but if a man was requested by name he was obliged to remain with his chief until his chief's term came to an end. Quaestors entered office on the fifth day of December.
Quirites Literally, Roman citizens of civilian status. What we do not know is whether the word' “Quirites "also implied that the citizens in question had never served as soldiers in Rome's armies; certain remarks of Caesar the Dictator might lead one to believe that this was so, for he addressed his mutinous soldiers as Quirites, and in doing so heaped such scorn upon them that they immediately pleaded for his pardon. However, much changed between the time of Marius and Sulla and the time of Caesar the Dictator. I have chosen to assume that at the time of Marius and Sulla, to be hailed as Quirites was no insult.
quizzing-glass A magnifying lens on a stick. It had much the same connotations in the ancient world as a monocle during the early twentieth century—it was an affectation. It was also, however, of great good use to one suffering the presbyopia of encroaching age in an era before the invention of spectacles. It could not contain a lens specifically ground for the purpose of enlarging print, but some stones accidentally possessed lens properties, and were thus immensely valuable objects. We know the emperor Nero had an emerald quizzing-glass; having seen the wealth of emeralds which came from Asia Minor, it is logical to assume that the Kings of Pontus had free access to emeralds, and that an occasional stone was suited for use in a quizzing-glass.
repetundae Extortion. Until the time of Gaius Gracchus, it was not standard practice to prosecute provincial governors who used their power to enrich themselves; one or two special courts had been set up to prosecute specific men, but that was all. These early special courts were staffed entirely by senators, and quickly became a joke—senatorial juries would not convict their fellows. Then in 122 b.c. Manius Acilius Glabrio, boon companion of Gaius Gracchus, passed a lex Acilia providing a permanent court staffed by knights to hear cases of repetundae, and impaneled 450 named knights to act as a pool from which the juries would be drawn. In 106 b.c. Quintus Servilius Caepio, consul in that year, returned all courts to the Senate, including the extortion court. Then in 101 b.c. Gaius Servilius Glaucia gave the extortion court back to the knights, with many innovative refinements which were to become standard practice in all courts. The cases we know of were all concerned with governors of provinces, but it would seem that after the lex Acilia of 122 b.c., the extortion court was empowered to try any kind of case dealing with illegal enrichment. There were rewards offered to citizen informants, and non-citizens who successfully brought a prosecution before the court were rewarded with the citizenship.
Republic The word was originally two words—res publica—that is, the thing which constitutes the people as a whole—that is, its government. We use the word "republic" today to mean an elected government which does not acknowledge any monarch its superior, but it is doubtful if the Romans thought of it in quite that way, despite the fact that they founded their Republic as an alternative to kings.
rhetoric The art of oratory, something both the Greeks and the Romans turned into an approximation of science. A proper orator spoke according to carefully laid out rules and conventions which extended far beyond mere words; body language and movements were intrinsic parts of it. In the early and middle Republic teachers of Greek rhetoric were despised, and sometimes even outlawed from Rome; Cato the Censor was an avowed enemy of the Greek rhetor. However, the Graecophilia of Scipio Aemilianus's day broke down much of this Latin opposition, so that by the time of the Brothers Gracchi most young Roman noblemen were being taught by Greek rhetors. Whereupon the Latin rhetors fell into disfavor! There were different styles of rhetoric—Lucius Licinius Crassus Orator favored the Asianic style, more florid and dramatic than the Attic style. It must always be remembered that the audience which gathered to listen to public oration—be it concerned with politics or the law courts—was composed of connoisseurs of rhetoric. The audience watched and listened in a spirit of extreme criticism; it knew all the rules and techniques, and was not easy to please.
Roma The Latin name of Rome.
Romulus and Remus The twin sons of Rhea Silvia, daughter of the King of Alba Longa and the god Mars. Her uncle Amulius, who had usurped the throne, put the twins in a basket made of rushes and set them adrift on the Tiber. They were washed up beneath a fig tree at the base of the Palatine, found by a she-wolf, and suckled by her in her cave nearby. They were rescued by Faustulus and his wife Acca Larentia, who raised them to manhood. After deposing Amulius and putting their grandfather back on his throne, the twins founded a settlement on the Palatine. Once its walls were built, Remus jumped over them and was put to death by Romulus, apparently for sacrilege. Romulus then set out to acquire subjects to live in his town, which he did in respect of males by establishing an asylum in the depression between the two humps of the Capitol, there collecting refugees who seem to have been criminals. Female citizens he acquired by tricking the Sabines of the Quirinal into bringing their women to a feast and then kidnapping them as wives for his men. Romulus ruled for a long time. Then one day he went hunting in the Goat
rostra The plural form of "rostrum," meaning a ship's bronze or reinforced oaken beak. This fierce object jutted well forward of the bows just below the level of the water, and was used to hole an enemy ship in the maneuver called "ramming." When in 338 b.c. the consul Gaius Maenius attacked the Volscian fleet in Antium harbor, he defeated it completely. To mark the end of the Volsci as a rival power to Rome, Maenius removed the beaks of the ships he had sent to the bottom or captured and fixed them to the Forum wall of the speaker's platform tucked into the well of the Comitia. Ever after, the speaker's platform was known as the rostra—the ships' beaks.
Rubico River Also known as the Rubicon, it was the river which formed the boundary between Italian Gaul and peninsular Italy on the eastern side of the Apennines (the Arnus did the same thing to the west). No one today is sure which modern river is the antique Rubico; scholarly opinion favors a very short and uninspiring stream now called the Rubicone. I beg to differ. Surely the Rubico was that river which had its source in closest proximity to the source of the Arnus? Ancient boundaries wherever possible were visible phenomena—otherwise, why have the border of Italian Gaul follow the contour of the huge loop in the Arnus? I contend that the Rubico was not a short little coastal stream, but a long river with its source high enough up in the Apennines to give it a respectable volume of water in its bed as well as the necessary proximity to the source of the Arnus. My pick is the modern Ronco, which enters the Adriatic between Ravenna and Rimini (Ariminum) and rises very close to the Arnus. Why would a people as sensible as the Romans choose a little coastal trickle as the boundary when a much larger and longer river was in the vicinity? Extensive drainage and canal work has been going on for so many centuries around Ravenna that no one can be sure.
saepta "The sheepfold." In Republican times, this was simply an open area on the Campus Martius not far from the Via Lata, and in proximity to the Villa Publica; it possessed no permanent buildings. Here the comitia centuriata met in its centuries. As the Centuriate Assembly normally called for a voting procedure, the saepta was divided up for the occasion by temporary fences so that the Five Classes could vote in their Centuries'.
sagum The soldier's heavy-weather cape. It was made out of greasy wool to make it as waterproof as possible, cut on the full circle with a hole in its middle for the head to poke through, and came well down the body for maximum protection; it was capacious enough to cover the soldier's back-borne kit also. The best kind of sagum came from Liguria, where the wool was exactly right for it.
saltatrix tonsa "Barbered dancing-girl." That is, a male homosexual who dressed as a woman and sold his sexual favors.
Samnium The territory lying between Latium, Campania, Apulia, and Picenum. Most of Samnium was ruggedly mountainous and not particularly fertile; its towns tended to be poor and small, and numbered among them Bovianum, Caieta, and Aeclanum. Aesernia and Beneventum, the two biggest towns, were Latin Rights communities implanted in Samnite territory by Rome. The people of the general area called Samnium were of several different nations—the Paeligni, the Marrucini, the Vestini, and the Frentani each occupied a different part, and the Samnites the rest. Throughout their history the Samnites were implacable enemies of Rome, and several times during the early and middle Republic inflicted crushing defeats on Rome. However, they had neither the manpower nor the financial resources to throw off the Roman yoke permanently. About 180 b.c. the Samnites were sufficiently sapped of strength to prove incapable of refusing a foreign race of settlers; to lessen Roman troubles in the northwest, Rome shifted forty thousand Ligurians to Samnium. At the time it had seemed to Rome an excellent idea, but the new settlers were eventually fully absorbed into the Samnite nation—and harbored no more love for Rome than their Samnite hosts. Thus Samnite resistance grew afresh.
satrap The title given by the Persian kings to their provincial or territorial governors. Alexander the Great seized upon the term and employed it, as did the later Arsacid kings of Parthia. The region ruled by a satrap was called a satrapy.
Saturninus Lucius Appuleius Saturninus was born about 135 b.c., of a respectable family with close links to Picenum (his sister was married to the Picentine Titus Labienus, his colleague in his last tribunate of the plebs). Elected quaestor for 104 b.c. , he was given the job of looking after the grain supply and the port of Ostia, only to be sacked from his position and expelled from the Senate when Marcus Aemilius Scaurus the Princeps Senatus blamed him for a premature increase in the price of grain. Saturninus didn't take this disgrace lying down; he stood for election as a tribune of the plebs for 103 b.c., and got in. During this first term as a tribune of the plebs Saturninus allied himself with Gaius Marius, and passed laws benefiting Marius, particularly one allocating land in Africa for Marius's Jugurthine War veterans. He also passed a law establishing a special court to try those accused of a crime he called maiestas minuta— "little treason."
In 102 and 101 b.c. Saturninus was out of office, but sufficiently obnoxious to irritate the censor Metellus Numidicus, who tried to expel him from the Senate; the result was a riot in which Metellus Numidicus was severely beaten about. He stood for a second term as tribune of the plebs for 100 b.c., and was elected, still in alliance with Marius. A second land bill, to settle Marius's veterans from the war against the Germans on land in Gaul-across-the-Alps, provoked huge fury in the Senate, but Saturninus went ahead and procured it. The members of the Senate were required to swear an oath to uphold the law; all swore except Metellus Numidicus, who elected to pay a heavy fine and go into exile. From there on, Saturninus became an increasing embarrassment for Marius, who sloughed him off, his own reputation having suffered greatly.
Saturninus then began to woo the Head Count with promises of grain; there was a famine at the time, and the Head Count was hungry. When the elections for tribunes of the plebs for 99 b.c. were held, Saturninus ran for a third term, and was defeated; his boon companion Gaius Servilius Glaucia conveniently arranged that one of the successful candidates be murdered, and Saturninus gained office to replace the dead man. Stirred to the point of revolution, the Forum crowds threatened the government of Rome sufficiently to spur Marius and Scaurus into an alliance which produced the Senate's Ultimate Decree. Saturninus and his friends were apprehended after Marius cut off the water supply to the Capitol, where the group had taken refuge. Put in the Senate House for safekeeping, they were stoned to death by a rain of roof tiles. All of Saturninus's laws were then annulled.
Scordisci A tribal confederation of Celts admixed with Illyrians and Thracians, the Scordisci lived in Moesia between the valley of the Danubius and the Macedonian border. Powerful and warlike, they plagued the Roman governors of Macedonia-perpetually.
Scythians This people was probably of Germanic stock, and spoke an Indo-European language. They lived in the Asian steppelands to the east of the Tanais River, extending south as far as the Caucasus. They were well organized enough socially to have kings, and were fabled goldsmiths.
Senate Properly, Senatus. The Romans believed that Romulus himself founded the Senate by collecting one hundred patrician men into an advisory body and giving them the title patres ("fathers"). However, it is more likely that the Senate was an advisory body set up by the later kings of Rome. When the Republic replaced the kings, the Senate was retained, now comprising three hundred patricians. Scant years later it contained plebeian senators also, though it took the plebeians somewhat longer to attain the senior magistracies.
Because of the Senate's antiquity, legal definition of its powers, rights, and duties were at best inadequate; it was an important constituent of the mos maiorum. Membership of the Senate was for life, which predisposed it toward the oligarchy it soon became. Throughout its history, its members fought strenuously to preserve their—as they saw it— natural pre-eminence. Under the Republic, senators were
Senators alone were entitled to wear the latus clavus or broad stripe on their tunics; they wore closed shoes of maroon leather, and a ring which had originally been made of iron, but came to be of gold. Meetings of the Senate had to be held in properly inaugurated premises. The Senate had its own meeting-house, the Curia Hostilia, but often chose to assemble elsewhere. The ceremonies and meeting of New Year's Day, for example, were held in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, while meetings to discuss war were held outside the pomerium in the temple of Bellona. Sessions could only go on between sunrise and sunset, and could not take place on days when any of the Comitia met, though could take place on a comitial day if no Comitia meeting was convoked.
There was a rigid hierarchy among those allowed to speak in senatorial meetings, with the Princeps Senatus at the top of the list at the time of Marius and Sulla; patricians always preceded plebeians of exactly the same status otherwise. Not all members of the House were allowed the privilege of speaking. The senatores pedarii (I have used a British parliamentary term, backbenchers, to describe them, as they sat behind those permitted to speak) were allowed to vote only, not to speak. No restrictions were placed upon a man's oration in terms of length of time or germane content— hence the popularity of the technique now called filibustering—talking a motion out. If the issue was unimportant or the response completely unanimous, voting could be by voice or a show of hands, but a formal vote took place by 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. An advisory rather than a true legislating body always, the Senate issued its consulta or decrees as requests to the various Comitia. If the issue was serious, a quorum had to be present before a vote could be taken, though we do not know the precise number of senators who constituted a quorum—perhaps a quarter? Certainly most meetings were not heavily attended, as there was no rule which said a senator had to attend meetings on a regular basis.