The October Horse: A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra by Colleen McCullough
The quinquereme was always decked, and had room on board for marines and artillery. There were about 270 rowers, 30 sailors, and 120 marines. They were rowed by professional oarsmen, never by slaves, the latter a Christian era practice.
There were bigger galleys, apparently named according to the number of men per oar, including the “sixteener” made famous by Mithridates the Great at his attack on Rhodes.
Quin taces! Shut up!
Quirinus A numinous god of Sabine extraction, he was the spirit of the Roman citizenship, the god of the assemblies of Roman men. His temple was on the Quirinal, the original Sabine settlement.
Quiris, Quirites Citizen, citizens. From the evidence of Caesar in dealing with mutinous troops, it was a term reserved for civilian Romans who had not served in the legions.
redoubt A little fort incorporated into a defensive wall, but outside it. Usually square, it could also be polygonal.
Regia Rome’s oldest temple, situated in the Forum Romanum near the Domus Publica. Oddly shaped and oriented toward the north, it contained shrines and altars to some of Rome’s oldest and most numinous gods-Vesta, Opsiconsiva, Mars of the sacred shields and spears. The offices of the Pontifex Maximus and the College of Pontifices were attached to it.
Republic The form of government that Rome assumed after the last king, Tarquinius Superbus, was banished in 510 B.C. Ostensibly democratic, in that elections were a large feature of it, it was timocratic in that suffrage was not equal between all voters. Economic restrictions were applied, and the urban lowly were virtually disenfranchised by being lumped into only four of the thirty-five Roman tribes. Thus it was heavily weighted in favor of the First Class and members of the thirty-one rural tribes.
Republicans As used in this book, that group of men who opposed Caesar after he crossed the Rubicon. Led by the ultra-conservative boni, they appointed Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus their war leader and embarked upon civil war to crush Caesar. Though decisively beaten at Pharsalus, they continued opposition in Africa Province before going down to final defeat at Munda in Further Spain.
They should not be confused with Caesar’s assassins, the Liberators, many of whom had never been Republicans, and some of whom (Brutus, Cassius) had early given up the Republican fight.
res publica Literally, “the thing public.” Rome’s government, both legislative and executive.
Rhegium Modern Reggio, in Calabria.
Rhenus River The modern Rhine.
Rhodanus River The modern Rhone.
rostra The speaker’s platform in the lower Forum Romanum. The word means “ships’ beaks” and the platform got its name from the two lofty columns upon it, each holding the bronze beaks of enemy ships. Originally incorporated into the wall of the Well of the Comitia, a new, taller and more imposing rostra was built by Caesar after he took the Well as part of the site of his new Senate House.
Rubicon River The Adriatic boundary between Italy and Italian Gaul had been the Metaurus River, but when Sulla incorporated the ager Gallicus into Italy proper, he moved the boundary north to the Rubicon. Most modern scholars argue that it is a small, shallow stream of short length, the modern Rubicone or Pisciatello, whereas I argue that it had to have been a long river with a source very close to the source of the Arnus, Italy’s boundary on the western side of the peninsula. Due to extensive medieval drainage schemes around Ravenna, no one knows for sure, but I think it was the modern Ronco, which may have entered the sea lower down then.
saepta “The sheep fold.” An area on the Campus Martius wherein temporary barricades were erected to hold voting meetings of the Centuriate Assembly.
sagum A circular cape rather like a poncho, with a hole in its middle through which to poke the head. It was waterproof, and was an important item of legionary clothing; it also served as a sleeping blanket. The best were of greasy Ligurian wool.
Salona Modern Split, in Dalmatia.
saltatrix tonsa Literally, a barbered dancing-girl. A male homosexual who dressed as a woman and sold his sexual favors.
Salus Roman god of good health.
Samnium Rome’s most obdurate enemy in the Italian peninsula. An Oscan-speaking region, it comprised mainly mountainous country behind Latium, and extended to the Adriatic adjacent to Apulia.
satrap, satrapy A Persian title adopted by Alexander the Great, who used it to describe a ruler and region subject to a king.
Scipio Aemilianus Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus Numantinus was born in 185 B.C. Adopted into the Scipiones, he was ason of Lucius Aemilius Paullus, equally prestigious. After a distinguished military career during the Third Punic War, he was elected consul in 147 B.C., though not old enough by law, and bitterly opposed by many. Now in command against Carthage, he took the city and razed it to the ground.
An abortive censorship was followed by a second consulship in 134 B.C., during which he destroyed, in eight months, the Spanish town of Numantia, which had defied a whole series of Roman generals over a period of fifty years. His brother-in-law Tiberius Gracchus was interfering with the mos maiorum as a tribune of the plebs; though Gracchus was dead before Scipio Aemilianus reached Rome, his death was commonly laid at Scipio’s door. In 129 B.C. he died at the age of forty-five, so suddenly that his wife, Gracchus’s sister, was rumored to have poisoned him.
A great intellectual with a passion for things Greek, Scipio Aemilianus was the center of a group who patronized men like Polybius, Panaetius and the playwright Terence. As a friend, he was utterly loyal. As an enemy, he was cruel, cold-blooded and utterly ruthless.
Scipio Africanus Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus was born in 236 B.C. and died around the end of 184 B.C. As a very young man he distinguished himself in battle, and at the age of twenty-six, not even a senator, he was given command of the war against Carthage by the People, and pursued it in Spain. There he did brilliantly, beat the Carthaginians in five years, and took the two Spanish provinces for Rome.
Consul in 205 B.C. at the age of thirty-one, he invaded Africa via Sicily. Both eventually fell to him; Scipio took the name of Africanus. He was elected censor, and became Princeps Senatus.
Brilliant, cultivated and farsighted, he incurred the enmity of Cato the Censor, who hounded him relentlessly for alleged un-Roman corruption. After Cato the Censor ruined his brother Asiagenus, Scipio Africanus is said to have died of a broken heart. But one can see the roots of our Cato’s relentless persecution of Caesar; again, the fanatical advocate of virtue concentrated his energies on one of Rome’s most brilliant, aristocratic men. Family tradition.
scurra A buffoon.
Senate Originally an advisory council of 100 patricians under the Kings, it expanded to 300 patricians when the Republic began. A few years later, plebeians were also being admitted to it.
Because of the Senate’s antiquity, legal definition of its powers, rights and duties was at best only partial. Membership was for life, which predisposed it toward the oligarchy it quickly became; throughout its history, its members fought strenuously to preserve its supremacy and exclusivity. Entry had been adlection by the censors, but by Caesar’s day it was through the office of quaestor unless circumstances dictated otherwise.
Senators wore a broad purple stripe on the right shoulder of their tunics, closed shoes of maroon leather, and a ring. Meetings had to be held in properly inaugurated premises. It had its own house, the Curia Hostilia, but also met in certain temples. The speaking order was rigidly hierarchical, though the hierarchy did vary from time to time. The humble backbencher senators, called pedarii, were forbidden to speak because they had not held any magistracy. However, they could vote. If the issue was unanimous or unimportant, voting might be by a show of hands, but the formal vote was by a division. The permanent chief of the Senate was its senior patrician, the Princeps Senatus.
The Senate remained an advisory body; it was never empowered to make laws, only recommend them to the Assemblies. A quorum had to be present at a meeting, though how many constitute
Senatus Consultum Ultimum The Senate’s Ultimate Decree, invented to deal with the crisis precipitated by Gaius Gracchus in 121 B.C., thus avoiding the appointment of a dictator. The S.C.U. overruled all legislative bodies and magistrates, and was tantamount to martial law. This name is generally attributed to Cicero, who evidently grew tired of calling it by its proper name: senatus consultum de republica defendenda.
Serapis Apeculiarly Macedonian-Egyptian hybrid god, said to have been dreamed up by the first Ptolemy and the then high priest of Ptah, one Manetho. Serapis was a fusion of Zeus with Osiris and the tutelary deity of the Apis bull, and was engineered to appeal to the Hellenized inhabitants of Alexandria and the Delta, who disliked Egypt’s traditional “beast gods.”
Sertorius Quintus Sertorius, a relative of Gaius Marius’s, was born about 120 B.C. One of Marius’s greatest marshals, he fell foul of Sulla after Marius’s death in 86 B.C. In 83 B.C. he was given governorship of all Spain, but was driven out by Sulla’s dictate, sought refuge in Mauretania, and was invited back by the Lusitani, who loved him. In Spain he seceded from Rome and set up his own “Senate and People” with an emphasis upon the native Spanish, though he also tried to drawrebel Romans into his fold. His military genius was such that he defeated a series of Roman generals up to and including the young Pompey the Great, whom he humiliated on the battlefield between 76 and 72 B.C. In 72 B.C. a desperate Pompey posted a fat reward, and Sertorius was murdered by a fellow Roman, Perperna. Sertorius was said to have possessed animal magic.
Servian Walls The walls the tourist of today sees did not exist under the Republic, whose walls, now buried, were purportedly built by King Servius Tullius. But as they enclosed more of the city than the pomerium did, they were probably not built until after the Gauls sacked the city in 390 B.C. They were massive and kept in good repair, especially when the Germans threatened to invade in Gaius Marius’s time. Caesar went to the trouble of rebuilding them around the perimeter of his new forum.
sestertius, sesterces Though the denarius was more common, the Roman accounting unit was the sestertius, abbreviated on paper as HS. It was a minute silver coin; a talent contained 25,000 of them.
silphium This small north African shrub, never satisfactorily identified, was almost the sole vegetation along vast coastal tracts between Cyrenaica and Africa Province. It yielded laserpicium, a substance that was highly esteemed as a digestive.
Skenite Arabs A tribe of Arabs who inhabited the area east of the Euphrates River in the vicinity of the Bilechas River. Anomadic desert people, the Skenites received the gift of the Euphrates tolls after King Tigranes of Armenia conquered Syria in 83 B.C. This led to enmity between the Skenites and the local Syrian Hellenes, and culminated in the Skenites’ choosing to side with the Parthians. Their king, Abgarus, led Marcus Crassus into the trap at Carrhae.
Smyrna Modern Izmir, in Turkey.
socii Persons of non-Roman citizenship but allied to Rome.
Sol Indiges, Tellus and Liber Pater Three early, numinous gods of Rome whose names invoked a terrible oath, impossible to break. Sol Indiges was a sun-figure, Tellus an earth-figure, and Liber Pater a fertility-figure associated with the vine.
sortition The process of choosing people by casting lots.
sow A lump of smelted metal that must have reminded some early Roman smith of a female pig. Iron, copper, silver, gold, tin and metallic alloys were kept as sows of various weight.
Spes The Roman god of hope.
SPQRSenatus Populusque Romanus. The Senate and People of Rome.
stella critina A star trailing a mane of hair: a comet.
stibium A black, antimony-based powder, soluble in water, that was used to tint the eyebrows and lashes, or to draw a line around the eyes. The fact that even the lowliest Egyptian peasant used it to draw a line around the eyes suggests that it discouraged flies from roosting.
Stoic An adherent of the philosophy founded by the Phoenician Cypriot Zeno. The basic tenet concerned virtue and its opposite, weakness of character. Money, pain, death and the other things plaguing Man were not considered important.
Strymon River In Bulgaria, the modern Struma: in Greece, Strimon.
Subura The declivity between the Viminal and Esquiline Mounts of Rome, it was Rome’s most famous stew in Republican times, stuffed with the poor and polyglot. It contained Rome’s only synagogue. Suetonius says that Caesar lived in the Subura until he was elected Pontifex Maximus and moved into the Domus Publica.
suffect consul If a consul died in office, the Senate could choose a replacement, the suffect, without holding an election.
sui iuris In control of one’s own affairs and fate. Used of women who retained control of their own money.
Sulla Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix was born about 138 B.C. Of an old patrician family, he lived in abject poverty and was unable to enter the Senate due to that poverty. Plutarch says that in order to get the money to qualify, he murdered his mistress and his stepmother. His first wife was a Julia, possibly closely related to Gaius Marius’s wife, the aunt of the great Caesar, for Sulla allied himself with Marius for many years. They served together in the war against King Jugurtha of Numidia and Sulla was responsible for the capture of Jugurtha himself, though he deprecated this fact until he wrote his memoirs. He continued to serve Marius through the consulships that Marius held to defeat the Germans, and seems to have performed some kind of undercover work for Marius.
When the Senate swung against Marius, Sulla couldn’t get elected as praetor, and so came late to that office, in 97 B.C. As propraetor he governed Cilicia and led an army across the river Euphrates-a first-to conclude a treaty with the Parthians. During the war against the Italian Allies, he served brilliantly in the southern theater.
He became consul in 88 B.C., the year that Mithridates the Great invaded Asia Province, and sought the command in that war-as did the aged Marius. The Senate awarded him command, Sulpicius the tribune of the plebs took command off him and gave it to Marius, and Sulla, in Capua, marched on Rome. Marius fled into exile, Sulla went east to fight Mithridates.
After Marius died and Cinna took control of Rome, Sulla hurried his war and returned home in 83 B.C. Cinna had outlawed him, so he marched on Rome a second time, and had himself appointed dictator. He then proscribed ruthlessly, holding the dictatorship long enough to alter Rome’s constitution to something that would muzzle the tribunes of the plebs, whom he regarded as Rome’s worst enemies. He laid down the dictatorship in 79 B.C. and retired to a life of vice, dying in 78 B.C.
His life is detailed in the first three books: The First Man in Rome, The Grass Crown, and Fortune’s Favorites. tacete! Shut up! in the plural.
talent The load a man could carry. About 50 pounds (25 kilograms).
Taprobane Modern Sri Lanka; Ceylon.
Tarpeian Rock Its precise location is still debated, but it is known to have been quite visible from the lower Forum Romanum, and presumably was an overhang at the top of the Capitoline cliffs. The drop was about 80 feet (25 meters). To be thrown from it was the traditional mode of execution for Roman citizen traitors and murderers.
Tartarus A different place from Hades. To the Platonic Greeks, a place of eternal torment for wicked souls.
tata Latin for “daddy.”
Taurasia Modern Turin, in northern Italy.
Thessalonica Modern Thessaloniki, in Greece.
Thessaly Northern Greece between the Domokos and Tempe Passes.
Thrace Loosely, that part of Balkan Europe between the west side of the Dardanelles and the Struma River. In ancient times it had coasts on both the Aegean and the Euxine Seas, and extended north to Sarmatia (Ruma
Tibur Modern Tivoli, in Italy.
Tingis Modern Tangier, in Morocco.
Tingitanian ape The Barbary ape, a macaque, terrestrial and tailless.
toga The garment only a citizen of Rome was allowed to wear. In childhood both sexes wore the purple-bordered toga; once a child came of age, females abandoned it, males wore the plain white toga. Professional female whores wore a flame-colored toga.
Made of lightweight wool, the toga had a most peculiar shape, rather like a central rectangle with stumpy wings. To fit an average man, a toga was over 15 feet (5 meters) wide and almost 8 feet (2.5 meters) in height.
toga praetexta The purple-bordered toga of childhood and of the curule magistrate.
toga trabea The toga of a pontifex or augur, striped in purple and crimson.
toga virilis The plain white toga of manhood. Also toga alba.
togate The correct term to describe a man wearing a toga.
Tolosa Modern Toulouse, in France.
Transtiberim, Transtiberini Modern Trastevere, just across the Tiber from Rome. Its inhabitants were Transtiberini.
transport As used in this book, a ship for transporting troops. These vessels were designed for the purpose and were very large, far broader in the beam than war galleys. They had one or two banks of oars. It is never said whether they were rowed by professional oarsmen or whether the troops were put to rowing, but perhaps, if the troops did row, that was yet another reason why they hated sea voyages. Certainly the practical Romans would have objected to carrying a big number of additional men just to row, though perhaps if the transports were to be returned to a port empty rather than wait for more soldiers, they carried a skeleton crew of oarsmen. Roman soldiers were put to non-military work if there were no battles in the offing.