The First Man in Rome

  Malaca Modern Malaga, in Spain.

  Mamilian Commission The special court set up by the tribune of the plebs Gaius Mamilius Limetanus in 109 B.C. It was empowered to inquire into the dealings between Jugurtha of Numidia and certain Romans, particularly magistrates.

  maniple The old tactical maneuvering unit of the Roman legion. It contained only two centuries of troops, and by the time of Gaius Marius had proven too small to contend with the armies Rome was now called upon to face. Marius eliminated it as a tactical unit.

  manumission, manumit Manumission was the act of freeing a slave. It literally means “sending from the hand.” When the slave’s master was a Roman citizen, manumission automatically endowed the slave with the Roman citizenship, and he took the name of his old master as his new name, adding to it his original slave name as a cognomen. A slave could be manumitted in any one of several ways: by buying his freedom out of his earnings, as a special gesture of the master’s on some great occasion like a coming-of-age birthday, after an agreed number of years of service, in a will. Though technically the slave was then the equal of his master, in actual fact he was obliged to remain in his old master’s clientship, unless this was formally dispensed with. He had little opportunity to exercise his franchise, for under the law he became a member of one of two of the four urban tribes—Esquilina or Suburana—and therefore found his vote worthless in tribal elections; his economic lowliness in almost all cases meant he was not made a member of one of the Five Classes, so he could not vote in Centuriate matters either. However, most slaves found the Roman citizenship highly desirable, not so much for themselves as for their descendants. Once a slave was manumitted, he was called a freedman, and was required for the rest of his life to wear a slightly conical skullcap on the back of his head; this was the Cap of Liberty.

  Marcomanni One of the three peoples who tacked themselves on to the German migration of 120 B.C. The Marcomanni were Celts closely allied to the Boii of Boiohaemum, and originally lived around the headwaters of the river Albis (modern Czechoslovakia). They joined the Cimbri and Teutones in about the seventh year of the trek, 113 B.C.

  Marsi One of the most important Italian peoples. The Marsi lived surrounding the Fucine Lake, which belonged to them; they extended into the mountains of the high Apennines, and controlled the passes on the western—that is, the Roman—side. Their history indicates that they were always loyal to. Rome, and did not side either with the Samnites or with Hannibal. They were extremely martial, affluent, and populous, and adopted Latin as their language fairly early. Their chief town was Marruvium; Alba Fucens, a larger and more important town, was a Latin Rights colony seeded on Marsic territory by Rome. The Marsi worshiped snakes, and were famous snake charmers.

  Martha The Syrian prophetess who predicted that Gaius Marius would be consul of Rome seven times before he had been consul once. She extracted a promise from Marius that he would bring her to Rome, where she lived as his guest in his house until she died, and regularly scandalized the city’s inhabitants by appearing in a purple litter. It is my own novelist’s license which added the second part of her prophecy, to the effect that a nephew of Marius’s wife Julia would be a greater Roman than he; I needed to do this to make events in a later book more logical and reasonable.

  Massilia Modern Marseilles. This superb seaport in southern Gaul-across-the-Alps not far from the mouth of the Rhodanus River was founded as a Greek colony in about 600 B.C. The Massiliotes, as its inhabitants were called, soon made cultural and trading inroads into Gaul, and were influential in Hellenizing those Gallic tribes which lived along their trade routes; this was especially true of the Volcae Tectosages of Tolosa, the Ligures of Nicaea and Portus Herculis Monoeci (modern Nice and Monaco), and some of the peoples who lived along the lower Rhodanus River. Massiliotes introduced the grapevine and the olive tree to Gaul. The city’s inhabitants were quick to see the potential of Rome, and allied Massilia to Rome during the Second Punic War. It was Massiliote complaints about the depredations of the headhunting Salluvii of western Liguria which led to the famous Gallic expedition of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus in 122 B.C., and the founding of Transalpine Gaul (Gaul-across-the-Alps).

  Mauretania Modern Morocco. In Gaius Marius’s day, far western North Africa. The boundary between Numidia and Mauretania was the Muluchath River, about 600 miles (960 km) west of Cirta. The inhabitants of Mauretania were called Moors; they were Berbers racially. The capital was Tingis (modern Tangier). There were kings; during the time of Gaius Marius’s war against Jugurtha, the King’s name was Bocchus.

  Mediolanum Modern Milan.

  mentula, mentulae (pl.) The great Latin obscenity for the penis.

  mentulam caco “I shit on your prick!”

  merda A Latin obscenity referring more to the droppings of animals than to human excrement.

  Metella Calva The sister of Lucius Caecilius Metellus Dalmaticus Pontifex Maximus and Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus. She was married to Lucius Licinius Lucullus, and was the mother of the Brothers Luculli. She was one of the very few women of her time to earn a mention in the ancient sources; she had a lifelong penchant for choosing low-class lovers, and pursued her affairs in scandalous manner.

  Middle Sea My name for the Mediterranean Sea, which in the time of Gaius Marius had not yet acquired its later Latin name—”Our Sea.” Properly, it was called Mare Internum.

  Military Man The vir militaris. He was a man whose whole career revolved around the army, and who continued to serve as a senior officer in the army beyond his obligatory number of campaigns. Such men entered the political arena relying upon their military history to recommend them to the electors; many of them never bothered to embark upon a political career at all, but if a vir militaris aspired to command an army, he had to attain the rank of praetor. Gaius Marius, Quintus Sertorius, Titus Didius, Gaius Pomptinus, and Publius Ventidius were all Military Men; but Gaius Julius Caesar the Dictator, the greatest military man of them all, was never a Military Man.

  mime, Mimus First a Greek theatrical form, the mime gathered its most enthusiastic followers in Rome, and kept increasing in popularity from the third century B.C. Where the actors in comedy and tragedy wore masks, and adhered to the strictly accented and metered script of the playwright, the actors in mime wore no masks, and evolved a technique closer to what we today might call ad-libbing. The repertoire of plots and situations was a stock one, but the individual performances did not contain formal memorized dialogue. Mime was considered vulgar, bawdy, poor theater, and much else by those who loved the proper theater of tragedy and comedy, but its snowballing popularity at the Roman games slowly banished formal drama to a poor second place. There can be no doubt that mime was very funny indeed. It seems to have survived in the stock characters of the commedia dell’arte—Harlequin’s costume of patches and the jester’s costume of patches closely resemble the centunculus of the mimetic fool, for example.

  minim A bright earth-red pigment with which the triumphing general painted his face, it would seem so that he looked like the terracotta-faced statue of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.

  Minoan Not a word the Romans would have used! It is the modern term (possibly coined by Sir Arthur Evans) to describe the civilization of Crete and Greece which existed during the second millennium B.C. I placed the term in Sulla’s mouth during a conversation for the sake of clarity and convenience; for while the Romans knew of the civilization, what they called it, we do not know. Mithridates The traditional name of the kings of Pontus. There were six kings of Pontus surnamed Mithridates, the last of whom was by far the greatest. The royal house of the Mithridatidae (to give it its proper name) claimed descent from the old Iranian kings, particularly from Darius the Great, but the features of the men displayed on truly wonderful coins of Pontus are Germano-Thracian.

  modius, modii (pl.) The measure of grain in Rome. One modius weighed 13 pounds (6 kg). Moor The word for a Berber of Mauretania.

  Mons Genava Pass What name the Romans
actually gave to the modern Montgenevre Pass through the Alps from the headwaters of the Dora Riparia in Italy to the headwaters of the Durance in France, I do not know. For the sake of a tag in the reader’s mind, I Latinized the modern French name. This was the most consistently used of all the alpine passes, for it lay on the Via AemiliaIVia Domitia.

  Mosa River The modern Meuse (in Dutch, Maas).

  Mosella River The modern Moselle.

  Muluchath River The modern Moulouya.

  Muthul River A river in central Numidia. There is still great debate about the identity of the stream. I have made it a tributary of the river Bagradas, after the Atlas of Classical History (edited by Richard J. A. Talbert).

  Mutina Modern Modena, in Italy.

  Narbo Modern Narbonne, in France.

  Neapolis Modern Naples. It was one of the largest and most successful of the Greek colonies planted in southern Italy, though it fell under Roman domination by the end of the fourth century B.C. In the Hannibalic troubles, Neapolis was wise enough to remain loyal to Rome, and so lost none of its lands to Rome. During the Republic, it was distinctly less important as a port than Puteoli, but it thrived nonetheless.

  Nearer Spain The Roman province. In Latin, it was called Hispania Citerior. The territory embraced the Mediterranean coastal plain and mountainous foothills behind, from just south of New Carthage all the way north to the Pyrenees. The southern boundary between the two provinces was fairly tenuous, but seems to have run between the range of mountains called the Orospeda and the taller range behind Abdera called the Solorius. In Gaius Marius’s day, the largest settlement was New Carthage (now known as Cartagena), because the Orospeda range behind it was honeycombed with productive silver mines the Romans had taken over when Carthage fell. Only one other part of the province was of much interest to its Roman governors: the valley of the Iberus River (the modern Ebro) and its tributaries, this area being very rich. The governor had two seats: New Carthage in the south, and Tarraco in the north. The nearer Spanish province was never as important to Rome as Further Spain.

  nectar The drink of the gods. Apparently its base was honey.

  nefas The Latin word for sacrilege.

  Nemausus Modern Nîmes, in France. It lay on the western side of the salt marshes of the Rhodanus delta, and from the time of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus (ca. 120 B.C.), it was connected by a long causeway to the town of Arelate on the eastern side of the delta. Gaius Marius did much needed repairs to this causeway while waiting for the Germans in 104 B.C.

  nemo The Latin for nobody or no one.

  Nicomedes A name belonging to the kings of Bithynia. There were either three or four kings called Nicomedes; modern scholars differ about the number.

  noble, Nobilis. The word used to describe a man and his descendants once the consulship had been achieved; it was an artificial aristocracy invented by the plebeians in order to further reduce the distinction of being patrician, since more plebeians reached the consulship during the last half of the Republic than did patricians. By the time of Gaius Marius, nobility mattered greatly. Some modern authorities extend the term nobilis to cover those men who reached the status of praetor without achieving the consulship. However, my feeling is that this would have demeaned its exclusivity too much, so I have reserved nobility for those of proven consular family.

  nomen, nomina (pl.) The family or gentilicial name— the name of the gens. Cornelius, Julius, Domitius, Livius, Marius, Marcius, Sulpicius, etc., were gentilicial names. I have not used gens very much in this book, as it takes a feminine ending; thus, it was not the gens Julius, but the gens Julia. Too confusing for non-Latin readers, English being a neutral language. Thus I have preferred to say “family Julius,” and keep things simple.

  Noricum What might today be called the eastern Tyrol and the Yugoslavian Alps. Its people were called the Taurisci, and were Celts. The main settlement was Noreia.

  Numantia A small town of some four thousand Celtiberians, on the upper Durius River in Nearer Spain. It had successfully resisted a whole series of Roman armies and generals, starting with Cato the Censor, in 195 B.C., and ending with Hostilius Mancinus in 137 B.C. Then in 135 B.C., Scipio Aemilianus was given the job of reducing it, and did so after a siege which lasted eight months. Jugurtha of Numidia, Gaius Marius, Publius Rutilius Rufus, and Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus were all on Scipio Aemilianus’s staff. When the town finally surrendered, Scipio Aemilianus literally tore it apart, dismantled it, executed or deported its people, and used it as an object lesson to the Celtiberians to show them that they couldn’t win against Rome.

  numen, numina (pl.) Literally, “divinity” (but also “a nodding of the head”). Numen is a word used by modern scholars, rather than the Romans, to describe the peculiarly disembodied nature of the original Italian and Roman gods, if indeed they could be called gods. Spiritual forces might be a better description. These old gods were the forces which governed everything from rain and wind to the function of a doorway, to the proper siting of boundary stones or the element we call luck. They were faceless, sexless, and without a mythology. The word mostly used to describe them nowadays is the Anglicized adjective “numinous.” As time wore on through the years of the Republic, and it became the mark of culture to subscribe to things Greek, many of the original numinous gods acquired a name, a sex, and even occasionally a face, but to call Roman religion a hybrid bastardization of the Greeks is to underestimate Rome grievously. Unlike the Greeks, Roman religion was so intimately tied to all the strata of government that one could not survive without the other; this dated back to before the kings of Rome, when all the gods were numinous, and it remained very much a fact until Christianization of the Emperors and their courts undermined the old religion of the Roman State. In the days of Gaius Marius, long before this State religion began to lose its hold, even the most brilliant and iconoclastic among the Romans subscribed scrupulously to religious matters, including men like Gaius Marius and Gaius Julius Caesar the Dictator. It was probably that numinous element in the religion which riddled even the most brilliant and iconoclastic Romans with superstitions.

  Numidia The ancient kingdom of middle North Africa which always lay to the west, south, and east of Carthage, and later of the Roman African province. The original inhabitants were Berbers, and lived a seminomadic life. After the defeat of Carthage, Rome and the Scipios encouraged the establishment of a regal dynasty, the first member of which was King Masinissa. The capital of Numidia was Cirta.

  oakum A crudely tamped together collection of fibers, in ancient times gathered from woolly seeds, maple “cotton,” or the coarsest fibers of the flax plant. It was occasionally used for calking, but its main use was for lampwicks.

  Odysseus In Latin, Ulysses. King of Ithaca in days of legend. He was one of the main characters in Homer’s Iliad, and the hero of Homer’s Odyssey.

  Olympia The famous sanctuary of Zeus was not anywhere near Mount Olympus; this Olympia was in Elis, in the western Peloponnese.

  oppidum In the sense used in this book, a fortified settlement, usually atop a hill, and designed to protect the lower lands around it. I have confined the term to the strongholds of Gallia Comata—Long-haired Gaul.

  opus incertum The oldest of several ways in which the Romans built their walls. A facing of irregular small stones mortared together was built with a hollow interior; this hollow was filled with a mortar composed of black pozzolana and lime mixed through an aggregate of rubble and small stones (caementa). Evidence suggests that opus incertum walls date back at least to 200 B.C.; in the time of Gaius Marius, the two younger ways of building walls had not yet replaced the tried and true opus incertum.

  order, ordo In Roman terms, a social group having much the same family background and degree of wealth.

  Ordo Equester See knights.

  Oscan The language spoken by the Samnites, Lucani, Frentani, Apuli, Brutii, and Campani of peninsular Italy. It was allied to Latin, but very different. During the time of Gaius Mar
ius, Oscan was still a living, widely spoken tongue. True Romans tended to despise those whose first language was Oscan.

  Ostia Rome’s closest seaport, situated at the mouth of the Tiber River, and in Rome’s earliest days the location of the salt marshes which produced Italy’s best—perhaps only— salt. It was a fortified town during the Republic, and became Rome’s naval base during the Punic Wars. Bedeviled by silting-up and sandbars, Ostia was never a very satisfactory port, but its disadvantages did not prevent its being extremely busy. The swift and silt-dirty Tiber made it impossible for any but the smallest merchantmen to voyage up to the city of Rome; cargo was normally unloaded from large and medium ships in Ostia, and sent up to Rome by barge or lighter. Ostia contained granaries. It also had its own quaestor, who was responsible for overseeing the unloading and onward shipment of the grain supply, and responsible too for the levying of all customs and excise duties.

  Padus River The modern Po, in northern Italy.

  Paeligni One of the peoples of central peninsular Italy, allied to the Marsi and the Sabines.

  Pamphylia That part of the southern coast of Asia Minor lying between Lycia (opposite Rhodes) and Cilicia (opposite Cyprus). The extremely high Taurus Mountains plunged straight into the sea, giving Pamphylia a very rugged and inaccessible coastline. The interior was heavily forested with pines, but the whole region was rather poor in yielding a decent living for its people, who found that the most profitable enterprise—and the one to which their country was most suited by nature—was piracy.

  pantheon The word used in modern times to describe collectively the whole array of gods in a polytheistic system of religious belief.

  papyrus The pithy stalks of the Egyptian marsh papyrus were made into paper by a most painstaking and ingenious method; no species of papyrus other than Egyptian was ever successfully used to manufacture paper. The process whereby the plant was converted into a substance suitable for writing on is hard to date, but seems not to have been in general use prior to the first Ptolemy, about 322 B.C. There can be no doubt that the ever-widening availability of paper as a writing material from 300 B.C. onward was the single most significant contribution toward literacy in the ancient world. A process invented by a Roman Fannius (see Fannius paper) about 150 B.C., to convert poor paper into good, made writing paper even easier to get, as well as cheaper.