lanista The proprietor of a gladiatorial school, though not necessarily its actual owner. It was the lanista who saw to the overall running of the school; he may sometimes have supervised the training of the men, but that was more properly the duty of the men called doctores.
Lar, Lares These were among the most Roman of all gods, having no form, shape, sex, number, or mythology. They were numina. There were many different kinds of Lares, who might function as the protective spirits or forces of a locality (as with crossroads and boundaries), a social group (as with the family's private Lar, the Lar Familiaris), sea voyages (the Lares Permarini), or a whole nation (Rome had public Lares, the Lares Praestites). By the late Republic, however, people had come to think of the Lares as two young men accompanied by a dog; they were depicted in this way in statues. It is doubtful, however, whether a Roman actually believed that there were only two of them, or that they owned this form and sex; more perhaps that the increasing complexity of life made it convenient to tag them.
latifundia Large tracts of public land leased by one person and run as a single unit in the manner of a modern ranch. The activity was pastoral rather than agricultural. Latifundia were usually staffed by slaves who tended to be chained up in gangs and locked at night into barracks called ergastula. Latium That region of Italy in which Rome was situated; it received its name from the original inhabitants, the Latini. Its northern boundary was the Tiber River, its southern a point extending inland from the seaport of Circeii; on the east it bordered the more mountainous lands of the Sabines and the Marsi. When the Romans completed the conquest of the Volsci and the Aequi around 300 b.c., Latium became purely Roman.
lectus funebris The imposing couch upon which the corpse of a man or woman of family rich enough to afford a proper funeral was arranged after the undertakers had dressed and improved the looks of the corpse. It possessed legs, was painted black or made of ebony, trimmed with gilt, and covered in black quilts and cushions.
legate A legatus. The most senior members of a Roman general's staff were his legates. All men classified as legates were members of the Senate; they answered only to the general, and were senior to all types of military tribune. Not every legate was a young man, however. Some were consulars who apparently volunteered for some interesting war because they hankered after a spell of army life, or were friends of the general.
legion Legio. The legion was the smallest Roman military unit capable of fighting a war on its own, though it was rarely called upon to do so. It was complete within itself in terms of manpower, equipment, facilities to make war. Between two and six legions clubbed together constituted an army; the times when an army contained more than six legions were unusual. The total number of men in a full-strength legion was about six thousand, of whom perhaps five thousand were actually soldiers, and the rest were classified as noncombatants. The internal organization of a legion consisted of ten cohorts of six centuries each; under normal circumstances there was a modest cavalry unit attached to each legion, though from the time of Sulla downward the cavalry tended more to be grouped together as a whole body separate from the infantry. Each legion was in charge of some pieces of artillery, though artillery was not employed on the field of battle; its use was limited to siege operations. If a legion was one of the consuls' legions it was commanded by up to six elected tribunes of the soldiers, who spelled each other. If a legion belonged to a general not currently a consul, it was commanded by one of the general's legates, or else by the general himself. Its regular officers were the centurions, of whom it possessed some sixty. Though the troops belonging to a legion camped together, they did not live together en masse; they were divided into units of eight men who tented and messed together. See also cohort, legionary This is the correct English word to describe an ordinary soldier (miles gregarius) in a Roman legion. "Legionnaire," which I have sometimes seen used, is more properly applied to a soldier in the French Foreign Legion, or to a member of the American Legion.
lex, leges A law or laws. The word lex also came to be applied to the plebiscite (plebiscitum), passed by the Plebeian Assembly. A lex was not considered valid until it had been inscribed on bronze or stone and deposited in the vaults below the temple of Saturn. However, residence therein must have been brief, as space was limited and the temple of Saturn also housed the Treasury. After Sulla's new Tabularium was finished, laws were deposited there instead of (probably) all over the city. A law was named after the man or men who promulgated it and then succeeded in having it ratified, but always (since lex is feminine gender) with the feminine ending to his name or their names. This was then followed by a general description of what the law was about. Laws could be-and sometimes were-subject to repeal at a later date.
lex Caecilia Didia There were actually two laws, but only one is of relevance to this volume. Passed by the consuls of 98 b.c., the relevant one stipulated that three nundinae or market days had to elapse between the first contio to discuss a law in any of the Assemblies and the day of its ratification by vote of the Assembly. There is some debate as to whether the period consisted of twenty-four or seventeen days; I have elected seventeen.
lex Domitia de sacerdotiis Passed in 104 b.c. by Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, later Pontifex Maximus. It specified that new pontifices and augurs must be elected by a tribal Assembly comprising seventeen of the thirty-five tribes chosen by lot. Until this law, pontifices and augurs were co-opted by the college members. Sulla once dictator repealed it.
lex frumentaria The general term for a grain law. There were many such, commencing with Gaius Gracchus. All grain laws pertained to the public grain supply-that is, the grain bought by the State and distributed by the aediles. Most such laws provided cheap grain, but some took cheap grain away.
lex Genucia Passed in 342 b.c. by the tribune of the plebs Lucius Genucius. It stipulated that a period of ten years must elapse between one man's holding the same office twice. There were two other leges Genuciae, not referred to in this book.
lex Minicia de liberis Passed about 91 b.c. There is some doubt as to whether its author was a Minicius or a Minucius. It laid down that the children of a marriage between a Roman citizen and a non-Roman citizen, irrespective of which parent was the Roman citizen, must take the citizen status of the non-Roman parent.
lex Plautia Papiria Passed in 89 b.c. as a supplementary measure to Lucius Caesar's law granting the Roman citizenship to Italian socii not directly embroiled in the war between Rome and the Italian Allies. This supplementary law laid down that an Italian resident within peninsular Italy but not in his original municipium who had not taken up arms against Rome could be granted the full citizenship if he applied to a praetor in Rome within sixty days of the law's ratification. Phew!
lex rogata A law promulgated in an Assembly by direct cooperation between the presiding magistrate and the members of the Assembly. In other words, the law was not presented to the Assembly in a cut-and-dried, fully drafted state, but was drafted during contio in the Assembly.
lex sumptuaria Any law regulating the purchase and consumption of luxuries. They were popular laws among magistrates who deplored luxury-loving tendencies, but rarely worked in practice. The most common articles legislated against were spices, peppers, perfumes, incenses, imported wines, and genuine Tyrian purple. Sulla's sumptuary law even stipulated how much a family could spend on a funeral or a banquet.
lex Villia annalis Passed in 180 b.c. by the tribune of the plebs Lucius Villius. It stipulated certain minimum ages at which the curule magistracies could be held (presumably thirty-nine for praetors and forty-two for consuls), and apparently also stipulated that two years must elapse between a man's holding the praetorship and the consulship.
LIBERO The word used in Assembly trials to register a verdict of acquittal.
Liber Pater The original Italian fertility god who looked after the sperm of men and the germination of crops. He became identified with wine and good times, with Bacchus and with Dionysos, but he does not appear
to have been held lightly. The Italian Allies when pursuing their war against Rome adopted Liber Pater as their tutelary god.
licker-fish A freshwater bass of the Tiber River. The creature was to be found only between the Wooden Bridge and the Pons Aemilius, where it lurked around the outflows of the great sewers and fed upon what they disgorged. Apparently it was so well fed that it was notoriously hard to catch. This may have been why it was so prized as a delicacy by Rome's Epicureans.
lictor The man who formally attended a curule magistrate as he went about his official business by preceding him in single file to clear a way, or by being on hand as he conducted his business in case he needed to employ restraint or chastise. The lictor had to be a Roman citizen and was a State employee, though he does not seem to have been of high social status, and was probably so poorly paid that he relied upon his magistrate's generosity with gratuities. On his left shoulder he bore the bundle of rods called fasces (q.v.). Within the city of Rome he wore a plain white toga, changing to a black toga for funerals; outside Rome he wore a scarlet tunic cinched by a broad black leather belt bossed in brass, and inserted the axes into the fasces.
There was a College of Lictors, though the site of lictorial headquarters is not known. I placed it behind the temple of the Lares Praestites on the eastern side of the Forum Romanum adjacent to the great inn on the corner of the Clivus Orbius, but there is no factual evidence of any kind to support this location. Within the college the lictors (there must have been at least three hundred of them) were organized into de-curies of ten men, each headed by a prefect, and the decuries were collectively supervised by several college presidents.
litter A covered cubicle equipped with legs upon which it rested when lowered to the ground. A horizontal pole on each corner projected forward and behind the conveyance; it was carried by four to eight men who picked it up by means of these poles. The litter was a slow form of transport, but it was by far the most comfortable known in the ancient world. I imagine it was considerably more comfortable than most modern transport!
ludi The games. See that entry.
Lusitani The peoples of far western and northwestern Spain. Less exposed to Hellenic and Roman culture than the Celtiberians, the Lusitani were probably somewhat less Celtic than Iberian in racial content, though the two strains were mixed in them. Their organization was tribal, and they seem to have farmed as well as grazed.
macellum A market.
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magistrates The elected representatives of the Senate and People of Rome. They embodied the executive arm of the government, and with the exception of the tribunes of the soldiers, they all belonged to the Senate automatically from the time of Sulla's dictatorship downward. The accompanying diagram most clearly shows the nature of each magistracy, its seniority, who did the electing, and whether a magistrate owned imperium. The cursus honorum, or Way of Honor, proceeded in a straight line from quaestor through praetor to consul; censor, both kinds of aedile and tribune of the plebs were ancillary to the cursus honorum. Save for the censor, all magistrates served for one year only. The dictator was a special case explained in this book.
Magna Mater The Great Mother. As Kubaba Cybele, the great earth goddess was imported from ancient Carchemish to Phrygia, where her chief sanctuary came into being at Pessinus. In 204 b.c., toward the end of the second Punic War, the navel stone of the Great Mother at Pessinus was brought to Rome, and the cult of the Great Mother was ever after an important one. Her temple was on the Palatine overlooking the Circus Maximus, her priests were eunuchs, and her rites were flagellatory.
maiestas Treason. The refinements of treason introduced by Saturninus (q.v.) in 103 b.c. were largely cancelled by the law Sulla put on the tablets when dictator; this spelled out with absolute clarity the offenses Rome would hitherto find to be treasonous. See also perduellio.
malaria This pestilential disease, caused by four varieties of Plasmodium and vectored by the female Anopheles mosquito, was endemic throughout Italy. The Romans knew that it occurred in different manifestations: quartan and tertian, and a more serious form having no regular rhythmic recurrence of the rigors. All were the ague. The Romans also knew that malaria was most common wherever there was swampy ground, hence their fear of the Pomptine Marshes and the Fucine Lake. What they did not realize was that infection took place through the bite of a mosquito.
manumission The act of freeing a slave. If the slave's master was a Roman citizen, this act automatically endowed the freed slave with the citizenship. His vote, however, tended to be worthless. The manumitted slave took the name of his old master as his own, adding to it as a cognomen his own name- hence Lucius Cornelius Chrysogonus, Sulla's infamous freed-man. A slave might be manumitted in one of several ways: by buying his freedom out of his earnings; as a special gesture of the master's on some great family occasion like a coming-of-age birthday; after an agreed number of years in service; and in a will. Most slaves found the Roman citizenship highly desirable despite its limitations, chiefly on behalf of their free-born descendants. It was not at all uncommon for men with skills to sell themselves into slavery, particularly among the Greeks. For the rest of his life the freed slave had to wear a slightly conical skullcap on the back of his head-the Cap of Liberty. See also freedman.
Marsi One of the most important Italian peoples. The Marsi lived around the shores of the Fucine Lake, which belonged to them, and their territory extended into the high Apennines. Their history indicates that until the time of the Italian War they had always been loyal to Rome. The Marsi worshipped snakes, and were famous as snake charmers.
measures and weights Most measurements were based upon body parts, hence the foot, the hand, the pace. The Roman foot at 296mm was just slightly short of 12 inches, and it was divided into 12 inches. 5 feet made up a pace, and the Roman mile at 1,000 paces was about 285 feet short of the English mile, thus there were 20 Roman miles for every 19 English-too small a difference to make it necessary in my text to specify miles (or feet) as Roman.
Area was measured in iugera (see that entry).
Grains such as wheat were dry-measured rather than weighed, as they poured like fluids; the dry measures were the medimnus and the modius (see those entries).
The bulk container was the amphora, which held about 25 liters (6 American gallons), and was the volume of a Roman cubic foot. Ships' cargoes were always expressed in amphorae.
The Roman pound, or libra, weighed about 7/10ths of an English pound at 327 grams, and was divided into 12 ounces (unciae). Heavy weights were measured in the talent (see that entry).
medimnus A dry measure for grains and other pourable solids. It equalled 5 modii and occupied a volume of 10 U.S. gallons, and weighed about 65 Roman pounds (47.5 English pounds). This provided sufficient grain for two one-Roman-pound loaves of bread per day for about 30 days, given that the waste husked off the grain in grinding was replaced by water and other ingredients. The ordinary Roman who lived in one or two rooms in an insula did not normally grind his flour and bake his bread at home; he came to an arrangement with his local baker (as indeed was done in many parts of Europe until relatively recently), who took a cut of the grain ration as his price. Perhaps the final result was that one medimnus of wheat provided the ordinary Roman with one large loaf per day for 30 days?
Mentula A choice Latin obscenity for the penis.
merchantman A cargo ship. Much shorter in length and broader in the beam than a war galley (the ratio was about 4:1), it was stoutly built of some pinus like fir, and was designed to be sailed more than rowed, though it was always equipped with a bank of oars for use when becalmed or being chased by pirates. The single sail was cross-rigged; sometimes a smaller sail was rigged forward of the mainsail on a foremast. Steerage was usually in the form of two large rudder oars, one on either side at the stern. High in the poop, it was decked to protect its cargo, and usually had a cabin amidships as well as a cabin aft. Cargo was loaded in amphorae if grain or wine; these large ear
thenware jars with pointed bottoms were stowed in the hold embedded in sawdust to prevent their shifting in heavy seas. The average merchantman seems to have carried about 100 tons of cargo. Though able to stay at sea night and day–and in the hands of a good captain able to sail across open sea–the merchantman when possible hugged the coast, and its captain was more likely to want to put into port at dusk than to sail on. Perhaps the only merchantmen which regularly stayed at sea and crossed open waters were the ships of large grain fleets. These often doubled as troop transports.
Middle Sea The name I have used for the Mediterranean Sea. My observant readers will notice a new term now creeping into the narrative: Our Sea. Mare nostrum (our sea) is what it came to be called as the Republic neared its end.
miles gloriosus Miles means soldier, and at first glance gloriosus might seem to mean glorious. But it commonly meant boastful or vainglorious, as it did in the hands of the playwright.
Military Man The vir militaris. What might be called a “career soldier." His whole life revolved around the army, and he continued to serve in the army after his obligatory number of years or campaigns had expired. If he entered the Roman political arena he relied upon his military reputation to catch votes, but many Military Men never bothered to enter the political arena at all. However, if a Military Man wanted to general an army, he had no choice but to attain the praetorship, which was the lowest magistracy carrying command of an army with it. Gaius Marius, Quintus Sertorius, Titus Didius, Gaius Pomptinus, Publius Ventidius were all Military Men;
but Caesar the Dictator, the greatest military man of them all, was never a Military Man.
minim A bright vermilion pigment made from cinnabar (mercuric sulphide) which the triumphing general painted on his face, apparently to ape the terracotta face of the statue of Jupiter Optimus Maximus in his temple on the Capitol.