Dacia A large area of land consisting of Hungary east of the Tisa River, western Rumania and Transylvania. The racial origins of the earliest peoples are cloudy, but by the time Rome of the last century b.c. came to know anything about Dacia its peoples were Celtic, at least in culture and skill in mining and refining metals. Dacians were organized into tribes, lived in a settled way, and practised agriculture. After the rise of King Burebistas during the 60s b.c., Dacian tribes began incursions into Roman-dominated areas of northern Macedonia and Illyricum, and became something of a concern to Rome.
DAMNO The word employed by a comitial Assembly to indicate a verdict of "guilty." It was not used in the courts.
Danubius River Also called the Danuvius by the Romans; to the Greeks it was the Ister, though the Greeks never knew its sources or course until the river approached its outflow into the Euxine (Black) Sea. Romans of Caesar's time knew vaguely that it was a very great and very long river, and that it flowed through Pannonia, the south of Dacia and the north of Moesia. It is variously known today as the Danube, Donau, Duna, Dunav, Dunarea and Dunay.
demagogue Originally a Greek concept, the demagogue was a politician whose chief appeal was to the crowds. The Roman demagogue (almost inevitably a tribune of the plebs) preferred the arena of the Comitia well to the Senate House, but it was no part of his policy to "liberate the masses," nor on the whole were those who flocked to listen to him composed of the very lowly. The term simply indicated a crowd-pleaser.
denarius Plural, denarii. Save for a very rare issue or two of gold coins, the denarius was the largest denomination of coin under the Republic. Of pure silver, it contained about 3.5 grams of the metal, and was about the size of a dime—very small. There were 6,250 denarii to 1 silver talent. Of actual coins in circulation, the majority were probably denarii.
diadem This was not a crown or a tiara, but simply a thick white ribbon about 1 inch (25 millimeters) wide, each end embroidered and often finished with a fringe. It was the symbol of the Hellenic sovereign; only the King and/or Queen could wear it. The coins show that it was worn either across the forehead or behind the hairline, and was knotted at the back below the occiput; the two ends trailed down onto the shoulders. Didian Law See lex Caecilia Didia.
dies agonales There were four dies agonales in the Republican calendar: January 9, March 17, May 21 and December 11. The exact meaning of agonalis (plural, agonales) is disputed, but what can be established is that on all four dies agonales the Rex Sacrorum sacrificed a ram in the Regia. The gods involved seem to have been Jupiter, Janus, Mars, Vediovis and Sol Indiges.
dies nefasti Some fifty-eight days of the Republican calendar were marked nefasti. On them, citizens could not initiate a lawsuit in the urban praetor's court or jurisdiction, nor could voting meetings of the comitia be held. However, the Senate could meet on dies nefasti, lawsuits in the standing courts could proceed, and contiones could take place in the comitia.
dies religiosi Unlucky and ill-omened days. There were several kinds, which included the three days of the year on which the mundus (q.v.) was opened to allow the dead to wander; the days when Vesta's shrine was open in June; and the rites of the Salii (q.v.), priests of Mars. On dies religiosi it was wrong or unlucky to do anything deemed unnecessary, from beginning a marriage or a journey to recruiting soldiers or holding meetings of the comitia. Three of these days each month (the days after the Kalends, the Nones and the Ides) were considered so ill-omened they had a special name, dies atri, or black days.
dignitas Like auctoritas (q.v.), the Latin dignitas has connotations not conveyed by the English word derived from it, "dignity." It was a man's personal clout in the Roman world rather than his public standing, though his public standing was enormously enhanced by great dignitas. It gave the sum total of his integrity, pride, family and ancestors, word, intelligence, deeds, ability, knowledge, and worth as a man. Of all the assets a Roman nobleman possessed, dignitas was likely to be the one he was most touchy about and protective of. I have elected to leave the term untranslated in my text.
dolabra Plural, dolabrae. This was the legionary's digging tool, a composite instrument which looked a little like a pick at one end and a mattock at the other. Unless deputed to carry some other kind of tool, each soldier carried one in his pack.
Doric One of the three Greek architectural orders. The capital of a Doric column (which might be plain or fluted) was the plainest, and looked a little like the underside of a saucer.
drachma The name I have elected to use when speaking of Hellenic currency rather than Roman, because the drachma most closely approximated the denarius in weight at around 4 grams. Rome, however, was winning the currency race because of the central and uniform nature of Roman coins; during the late Republic, the world was beginning to prefer to use Roman coins rather than Hellenic.
duumviri Literally, "two men." It usually referred to two men of equal magisterial rank who were deputed as judges or elected as the senior magistrates of a municipium (q.v.).
Ecastor! Edepol! The most genteel and inoffensive of Roman exclamations of surprise or amazement, roughly akin to "Gee!" or "Wow!" Women used "Ecastor!" and men "Edepol!" The roots suggest they invoked Castor and Pollux.
edicta Singular, edictum. These were the rules whereby an elected magistrate outlined the way in which he was going to go about and discharge his magisterial duties. They were published by each magistrate at the beginning of his tenure of office, and he was supposed to abide by them throughout his term. That he often did not led to legislation compelling him to do so.
Eighteen In this book, used to refer to the eighteen senior Centuries of the First Class. See also knights. Elymais A very fertile, large tract of land to the east of the lower Tigris River. It extended from the Mare Erythraeum (q.v.) to the hills around Susa, and lay in the domains of the King of the Parthians. Epicurean Pertaining to the philosophical system of the Greek Epicurus. Originally Epicurus had advocated a kind of hedonism so exquisitely refined that it approached asceticism on its left hand, so to speak: a man's pleasures were best sampled one at a time, and strung out with such relish that any excess defeated the exercise. Public life or any other stressful work was forbidden. These tenets underwent considerable modification in Rome, so that a Roman nobleman could call himself an Epicurean yet still espouse his public career. By the late Republic, the chief pleasures of an Epicurean were food and wine. epitome A synopsis or abridgment of a longer work which concentrated more on packing a maximum amount of information into a minimum wordage than on literary style or literary excellence. The object of the epitome was to enable an individual to gather encyclopaedic knowledge without needing to plough through an entire work. Brutus was very well known as an epitomizer.
equestrian Pertaining to the knights.
ethnarch The general Greek word for a city or town magistrate. There were other and more specific names in use, but I do not think it necessary to compound confusion in readers by employing a more varied terminology.
Euxine Sea The modern Black Sea. Because of the enormous number of major rivers which flowed into it (especially in times before water volume was regulated by dams), the Euxine Sea contained less salt than other seas; the current through the Thracian Bosporus and Hellespont always flowed from the Euxine toward the Mediterranean (the Aegean)—which made it easy to quit the Euxine, but hard to enter it.
faction The following of a Roman politician is best described as a faction; in no way could a man's followers be described as a political party in the modern sense. A faction formed around a man owning auctoritas and dignitas, and was purely evidence of that individual's ability to attract and hold followers. Political ideologies did not exist, nor did party lines.
fasces The fasces were bundles of thirty (one rod for each curia) birch rods ritually tied together in a crisscross pattern by red leather thongs. Originally an emblem of the Etruscan kings, they passed into the customs of the emerging Rome, persisted in Roman life throughout the Republic, a
nd on into the Empire. Carried by men called lictors, the fasces preceded the curule magistrate (and the propraetor and proconsul as well) as the outward symbol of his imperium. Within the pomerium only the rods went into the bundles, to signify that the curule magistrate had the power to chastise, but not to execute; outside the pomerium axes were inserted into the bundles, to signify that the curule magistrate or promagistrate did have the power to execute. The only man permitted to insert the axes into the midst of the rods inside the pomerium was the Dictator. The number of fasces indicated the degree of imperium: a Dictator had twenty-four; a consul or proconsul twelve; a master of the horse, praetor or propraetor six; and the curule aediles two. Sulla, incidentally, was the first Dictator to be preceded by twenty-four lictors bearing twenty-four fasces; until then, dictators had used the same number as consuls, twelve. See also lictor.
fasti The fasti were originally days on which business could be transacted, but the term came to mean other things as well: the calendar, lists relating to holidays and festivals, and the list of consuls (this last probably because Romans preferred to reckon up their years by remembering who had been the consuls in any given year). The entry in the glossary to The First Man in Rome contains a fuller explanation of the calendar than space permits me here— under fasti, of course.
fellator Plural, fellatores. The person sucking the penis.
ferine Holidays. Though attendance at public ceremonies on such holidays was not obligatory, feriae traditionally demanded that business, labor and lawsuits not be pursued, and that quarrels, even private ones, should be avoided. The rest from normal labors on feriae extended to slaves and also some animals, including oxen but excluding equines of all varieties.
feriae Latinae The annual festival on the Alban Mount, the Latin Festival. It was a movable feast, the date of which was fixed by the incoming consuls of New Year's Day during the meeting of the Senate called in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. The god was Jupiter Latiarus.
filibuster A modern word for a political activity at least as old as the Senate of Rome. It consisted, then as now, of "talking a motion out": the filibusterer droned on and on about everything from his childhood to his funeral plans, thus preventing other men from speaking until the political danger had passed. And preventing the taking of a vote!
flamen Plural, famines. These men were probably the oldest of Rome's priests in time, dating back at least as far as the kings. There were fifteen flamines, three major and twelve minor. The three major flaminates were Dialis (Jupiter Optimus Maximus), Martialis (Mars), and Quirinalis (Quirinus). Save for the poor flamen Dialis, none of the flamines seemed terribly hedged about with prohibitions or taboos, but all three major flamines qualified for a public salary, a State house, and membership in the Senate. The wife of the flamen was known as the flaminica. The flamen and flaminica Dialis had to be patrician in status, though I have not yet discovered whether this was true of the other flamines, major or minor. To be on the safe side, I have elected to stay with patrician appointments. The flamen was appointed for life.
Fortuna One of Rome's most worshiped and important deities. Generally thought to be a female force, Fortuna had many different guises; Roman godhead was usually highly specific. Fortuna Primigenia was Jupiter's firstborn, Fors Fortuna was of particular importance to the lowly, Fortuna Virilis helped women conceal their physical imperfections from men, Fortuna Virgo was worshiped by brides, Fortuna Equestris looked after the knights, and Fortuna Huiusque Diei ("the fortune of the present day") was the special object of worship by military commanders and prominent politicians having military backgrounds. There were yet other Fortunae. The Romans believed implicitly in luck, though they did not regard luck quite as we do; a man made his luck, but was—even in the case of men as formidably intelligent as Sulla and Caesar—very careful about offending Fortuna, not to mention superstitious. To be favored by Fortuna was considered a vindication of all a man stood for.
forum The Roman meeting place, an open area surrounded by buildings, many of which were of a public nature.
Forum Romanum This long open space was the center of Roman public life, and was largely devoted, as were the buildings around it, to politics, the law, business, and religion. I do not believe that the free space of the Forum Romanum was choked with a permanent array of booths, stalls and barrows; the many descriptions of constant legal and political business in the lower half of the Forum would leave little room for such apparatus. There were two very large market areas on the Esquiline side of the Forum Romanum, just removed from the Forum itself by one barrier of buildings, and in these, no doubt, most freestanding stalls and booths were situated. Lower than the surrounding districts, the Forum was rather damp, cold, sunless— but very much alive in terms of public human activity. See map on page 37.
freedman A manumitted slave. Though technically a free man (and, if his former master was a Roman citizen, himself a Roman citizen), the freedman remained in the patronage of his former master, who had first call on his time and services. He had little chance to exercise his vote in either of the two tribal Assemblies, as he was invariably placed into one of the two vast urban tribes, Suburana or Esquilina. Some slaves of surpassing ability or ruthless-ness, however, did amass great fortunes and power as freedmen, and could therefore be sure of a vote in the Centuriate Assembly; such freedmen usually managed to have themselves transferred into rural tribes as well, and thus exercised the complete franchise.
free man A man born free and never sold into outright slavery, though he could be sold as a nexus or debt slave. The latter was rare, however, inside Italy during the late Republic.
games In Latin, ludi. Games were a Roman institution and pastime which went back at least as far as the early Republic, and probably a lot further. At first they were celebrated only when a general triumphed, but in 336 b.c. the ludi Romani became an annual event, and were joined later by an ever-increasing number of other games throughout the year. All games tended to become longer in duration as well. At first games consisted mostly of chariot races, then gradually came to incorporate animal hunts, and plays performed in specially erected temporary theaters. Every set of games commenced on the first day with a solemn but spectacular religious procession through the Circus, after which came a chariot race or two, and then some boxing and wrestling, limited to this first day. The succeeding days were taken up with theatricals; comedy was more popular than tragedy, and eventually the freewheeling Atellan mimes and farces most popular of all. As the games drew to a close, chariot racing reigned supreme, with animal hunts to vary the program. Gladiatorial combats did not form a part of Republican games (they were put on by private individuals, usually in connection with a dead relative, in the Forum Romanum rather than in the Circus). Games were put on at the expense of the State, though men ambitious to make a name for themselves dug deeply into their private purses while serving as aediles to make "their" games more spectacular than the State-allocated funds permitted. Most of the big games were held in the Circus Maximus, some of the smaller ones in the Circus Flaminius. Free Roman citizen men and women were permitted to attend (there was no admission charge), with women segregated in the theater but not in the Circus; neither slaves nor freedmen were allowed admission, no doubt because even the Circus Maximus, which held at least 150,000 people, was not large enough to contain freedmen as well as free men.
Gaul, Gauls A Roman rarely if ever referred to a Celt as a Celt; he called a Celt a Gaul. Those parts of the world wherein Gauls lived were known as some kind of Gaul, even when the land was in Anatolia (Galatia). Before Caesar's conquests, Further Gaul—that is, Gaul on the western, French side of the Alps—was roughly divided into Gallia Comata or Long-haired Gaul (neither Hellenized nor Romanized), a Mediterranean coastal strip with a bulging extension up the valley of the Rhodanus River (both Hellenized and Romanized) called The Province, and an area around the port city of Narbo called Narbonese Gaul (though it was not so officially called until the Principate of A
ugustus). I refer to Further Gaul as Further Gaul or Gaul-across-the-Alps, but it was more properly Transalpine Gaul. The Gaul more properly known as Cisalpine Gaul because it lay on the Italian side of the Alps I have elected to call Italian Gaul. Italian Gaul was divided into two parts by the Padus River (the Po). There is no doubt that the Gauls were closely akin to the Romans racially, for their languages were of similar kind and so were many of their technologies, particularly in metalworking. What had enriched the Roman at the ultimate expense of the Gaul was his centuries-long exposure to other Mediterranean cultures.
gens A man's clan or extended family. It was indicated by his nomen, such as Cornelius or Julius, but was feminine in gender, hence they were the gens Cornelia and the gens Iulia.
gladiator A soldier of the sawdust, a professional military athlete who fought in a ring before an audience to celebrate funeral games in honor of the dead. During Republican times there were only two kinds of gladiator, the Gaul and the Thracian; these were styles of combat, not nationalities. Under the Republic, gladiatorial bouts were not fought to the death. Gladiators then were not State owned; few of them were slaves. They were owned by private investors, and cost a great deal of money to acquire, train and maintain—far too much money, indeed, to want to see them dead. The thumbs-up, thumbs-down brutality of the Empire did not exist. A gladiator was recruited young, and fought between five and six bouts a year to a total of thirty bouts maximum. After this he was free to retire (though not automatically endowed with the Roman citizenship) and usually drifted to a big city, where he hired himself out as a bouncer, a bodyguard or a bully-boy. During the Republic almost all gladiators were racially Roman, mostly deserters or mutineers from the legions; occasionally a free man took up the profession for the sheer pleasure of it (he was not compelled to give up his citizenship if he did).
Gold of Tolosa Perhaps several years after 278 b.c., a segment of the tribe Volcae Tectosages returned from Macedonia to their homeland around Aquitanian Tolosa (modern Toulouse) bearing the accumulated spoils from many sacked temples. These were melted down and stored in the artificial lakes which dotted the precincts of Tolosa's temples; the gold was left lying undisturbed beneath the water, whereas the silver was regularly hauled out—it had been formed into gigantic millstones which were used to grind the wheat. In 106 b.c. the consul Quintus Servilius Caepio was ordered during his consulship to make war against migrating Germans who had taken up residence around Tolosa. When he arrived in the area he found the Germans gone, for they had quarreled with their hosts, the Volcae Tectosages, and been ordered away. Instead of fighting a battle, Caepio the Consul found a vast amount of gold and silver in the sacred lakes of Tolosa. The silver amounted to 10,000 talents (250 imperial tons) including the millstones, and the gold to 15,000 talents (370 imperial tons). The silver was transported to the port of Narbo and shipped to Rome, whereupon the wagons returned to Tolosa and were loaded with the gold; the wagon train was escorted by one cohort of Roman legionaries, some 520 men. Near the fortress of Carcasso the wagon train of gold was attacked by brigands, the soldier escort was slaughtered, and the wagon train disappeared, together with its precious cargo. It was never seen again.