Several times during Rome's history the Samnites inflicted hideous defeats upon Roman armies; no Roman general thought of them lightly. Whenever there seemed a chance that some insurgent movement might overthrow Rome, the Samnites enlisted in its ranks.
Sarmatians A people, probably of Germanic stock, the Sarmatians occupied the steppelands on the northwestern side of the Euxine Sea-the modern Ukraine-though originally they had lived to the east of the Tanais (the Don). They were nomadic in habit and all rode horses. The tribal culture permitted a rare equality of women with men; the women attended councils and fought as warriors. By the last century b.c. they had lost several subgroups which became nations in themselves, principally the Roxolani (q.v.) and the Iazyges, who settled further south. Mithridates used Sarmatae as cavalry troops in his armies.
satrap The title given by the Kings of Persia to their provincial or territorial governors. Alexander the Great seized upon the term and employed it, as did the later Arsacid Kings of the Parthians and the Kings of Armenia. The region administered by a satrap was called a satrapy.
Saturninus Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, tribune of the plebs in 103, 100 and 99 b.c. His early career was marred by an alleged grain swindle while he was quaestor of the grain supply at Ostia, and the slur remained with him throughout the rest of his life. During his first term as a tribune of the plebs he allied himself with Gaius Marius and succeeded in securing lands in Africa for resettlement of Marius's veteran troops. He also defined a new kind of treason, "maiestas minuta" or "little treason," and set up a special court to try cases of it. His second term as a tribune of the plebs in 100 b.c. was also in alliance with Marius, for whom he obtained more land for veterans from the German campaign. But eventually Saturninus became more of an embarrassment to Marius than a help, so Marius repudiated him publicly; Saturninus then turned against Marius.
Toward the end of 100 b.c., Saturninus began to woo the Head Count, as there was a famine at the time, and the Head Count was restless. He passed a grain law which he could not implement, as there was no grain to be had. When the elections were held for the tribunate of the plebs for 99 b.c., Saturninus ran again, only to be defeated. His boon companion, Gaius Servilius Glaucia, arranged the murder of one of the lucky candidates, and Saturninus took the dead man's place. He was tribune of the plebs for the third time. Stirred by the famine and Saturninus's oratory, the Forum crowds became dangerous enough to force Marius and Scaurus Princeps Senatus into an alliance which resulted in the passing of the Senate's Ultimate Decree. Apprehended after the water supply to the Capitol was cut off, Saturninus and his friends were imprisoned in the Senate House until they could be tried. But before the trials could take place, they were killed by a rain of tiles from the Senate House roof. All of Saturninus's laws were then annulled. It was said ever after that Saturninus had aimed at becoming King of Rome. His daughter, Appuleia, was married to the patrician Marcus Aemilius Lepidus.
For a fuller narration of the career of Saturninus, see the entry in the glossary of The Grass Crown.
Scipio Africanus Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus was born in 236 b.c. and died around the end of 184 B.C. A patrician of august family, he distinguished himself as a very young man in battle, then at the age of twenty-six, still a private citizen, he was invested with a proconsular imperium by the People rather than the Senate, and dispatched to fight the Carthaginians in Spain. Here for five years he did brilliantly, winning for Rome her two Spanish provinces. Consul at the early age of thirty-one, he ignored senatorial opposition and invaded Africa via Sicily. Both Sicily and Africa eventually fell, and Scipio was invited to assume the cognomen Africanus. He was elected censor and appointed Princeps Senatus in 199 b.c., and was consul again in 194 b.c. As farsighted as he was brilliant, Scipio Africanus warned Rome that Antiochus the Great of Syria would invade Greece; when it happened he went as his brother Lucius's legate to fight the invader. But Cato the Censor, a rigid moralist, had always condemned the Scipiones for running a morally loose army, and embarked upon a persecution of Africanus and his brother which seems to have caused Africanus's early death. Scipio Africanus was married to Aemilia Paulla, the sister of the conqueror of Macedonia. One of his two daughters was Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi. His two sons failed to prosper.
Scythians A nomadic, horse-mounted people of probable Germanic stock who lived in the Asian steppelands to the east of the Tanais River (the Don), and extended as far south as the Caucasus. They were socially well organized enough to have kings, and were famous goldsmiths.
secret name of Rome Rome, presumably in the guise of goddess Roma, had a secret name. This secret name was apparently guarded by a special goddess, Diva Angerona, whose statue (located on the altar in the shrine of Volupia) had a bandage across its mouth. There were arcane rites celebrated in which the name was uttered, but the taboo was strictly enforced and the danger of uttering the secret name was believed in even by the most sophisticated people. It seems most thought the secret name was Amor, which is Roma spelled backward. Amor means "love."
sedan chair An open chair on a frame designed to be carried by two to four men. A sedan chair could probably be hired like a taxi.
Seleucid The adjective of lineage attached to the royal house of Syria, whose sovereigns were descended from Seleucus Nicator, one of Alexander the Great's companions, though not one of his known generals. After Alexander's death he cemented a kingdom which eventually extended from Syria and Cilicia to Media and Babylonia, and had two capitals, Antioch and Seleuceia-on-Tigris, and two wives, the Macedonian Stratonice and the Bactrian Apama. By the last century b.c. the Kingdom of the Parthians had usurped the eastern lands, and Rome most of Cilicia; the kingdom of the Seleucids was then purely Syria.
Senate Properly, senatus. This was originally a patricians-only body which first contained one hundred members and then three hundred. Because of its antiquity the legal definitions of its rights, powers and duties were mostly nonexistent. Membership in the Senate was for life (unless a man was expelled by the censors for inappropriate behavior or impoverishment), which predisposed it to the oligarchical form it acquired. Throughout its history, its members fought strenuously to preserve their pre-eminence in government. Until Sulla prevented access to the Senate save by the quaestorship, appointment was in the purlieus of the censors, though from the middle Republic down the quaestorship if held before admission to the Senate was soon followed by admission to the Senate; the lex Atinia provided that tribunes of the plebs should automatically enter the Senate upon election. There was a means test of entirely unofficial nature; a senator was supposed to enjoy an income of a million sesterces.
Senators alone were entitled to wear the latus clavus on their tunics; this was a broad purple stripe down the right shoulder. They wore closed shoes of maroon leather, and a ring which had originally been made of iron, but later came to be gold. Senatorial mourning consisted of wearing the knight's narrow stripe on the tunic. Only men who had held a curule magistracy wore a purple-bordered toga; ordinary senators wore plain white.
Meetings of the Senate had to be held in properly inaugurated premises; the Senate had its own curia or meetinghouse, the Curia Hostilia, but was prone also to meet elsewhere at the whim of the man convening the meeting- presumably he always had well-founded reasons for choosing a venue other than the Senate House, like a necessity to meet outside the pomerium. The ceremonies and meeting and feast on New Year's Day were always held in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Sessions could go on only between sunrise and sunset, and could not take place on days when any of the Assemblies met, though were permissible on comitial days if no Assembly did meet.
Until Sulla reorganized this as he did so much else, the rigid hierarchy of who spoke in what turn had always placed the Princeps Senatus and consulars ahead of men already elected to office but not yet in office, whereas after Sulla consuls-elect and praetors-elect spoke ahead of these men; under both systems a patrician always preceded a plebeian of exa
ctly equal rank in the speaking hierarchy. Not all members of the house were accorded the privilege of speaking. The senatores pedarii (I have used a British parliamentary term, backbenchers, to describe them, as they sat behind the men allowed to speak) could vote, but were not called upon in debate. No restrictions were placed upon the time limit or content of a man's speech, so filibustering was common. If an issue was unimportant or everyone was obviously in favor of it, voting might be by voice or a show of hands, but a formal vote took place by the 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. Always an advisory rather than a true legislating body, the Senate issued its consulta or decrees as requests to the various Assemblies. If the issue was serious, a quorum had to be present before a vote could be taken, though we do not know what precise number constituted a quorum. Certainly most meetings were not heavily attended, as there was no rule which said a man appointed to the Senate had to attend meetings, even on an irregular basis.
In some areas the Senate reigned supreme, despite its lack of legislating power: the fiscus was controlled by the Senate, as it controlled the Treasury; foreign affairs were left to the Senate; and the appointment of provincial governors, the regulation of provincial affairs, and the conduct of wars were left for the sole attention of the Senate.
senatus consultant de re publica defendenda The Senate's Ultimate Decree, so known because Cicero shortened its proper title to senatus consultum ultimum. Dating from 121 b.c., when Gaius Gracchus resorted to violence to prevent the overthrow of his laws, in civil emergencies the Senate overrode all other governmental bodies by passing the senatus consultum de re publica defendenda. This Ultimate Decree proclaimed the Senate's sovereignty and established what was, in effect, martial law. It was really a way to sidestep appointing a dictator.
Servian Walls Mums Servii Tullii. Republican Romans believed that the formidable walls enclosing the city of Rome had been erected in the time of King Servius Tullius. However, evidence suggests that they were not built until after Rome was sacked by the Gauls in 390 b.c. Down to the time of Caesar the Dictator they were scrupulously kept up. sesterces The Latin singular is sestertius, the Latin plural is sestertii. Roman accounting practices were established in sesterces, though the denarius seems to have been a more common coin. In Latin writing, sesterces were abbreviated as HS. A small silver coin, the sestertius was worth a quarter of a denarius. Sextilis Originally the sixth month when the Roman New
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Year had begun in March, it kept its name after January New Year made it the eighth month. We know it, of course, as August; so too did the Romans-but not until the reign of Augustus.
Sibylline Books The Roman State possessed a series of prophecies written in Greek and called the Sibylline Books. Legend had it that the famous Sibyl at Cumae offered to sell the books to King Tarquinius Priscus of Rome, and he refused. So she burned one of the books (they were written on palm leaves). He refused again, she burned another book. Eventually he bought the remainder, which were placed in the care of a special college of minor priests, and only consulted when Senate or People commanded it, usually in the face of some major crisis. Sulla raised the number of priests in the college from ten to fifteen; they were thereafter known as the quindecimviri sacris faciundis. The books, however, were lost in the fire which destroyed Jupiter's temple on July 6 of 83 b.c. Sulla ordered that a search of the world's sibyls be made and the books reassembled. This was done.
sive Either, or.
sixteener With the sixteener we enter the world of the ancient dreadnoughts, the supergalleys. That there were more than three banks of oars is now not believed possible: two arrangements were feasible, namely a bireme of two banks and eight men per oar, or a trireme of three banks with six men to each of the upper banks of oars and four men on the lowest bank. One bank of oars is equally as impossible as four because the sweep and angle of an oar prevents its being operated by more than eight men. If the oar were designed to be operated by eight men, it would have been about 57 feet long; a six-man oar measured about 45 feet long. With a length growing close to 200 feet, the beam of a sixteener was probably about 25 to 28 feet, which enabled the deck to accommodate a large body of marines and several pieces of artillery, as well as several tall towers. There seems evidence to suggest that the sixteener owned fewer oars than a smaller galley, number of oars being compensated for by the increased power of each oar. The number of oarsmen probably lay in the vicinity of 500 to 800, and the sixteener may have been able to accommodate 400 marines.
The supergalley was not of any use in genuine naval warfare; her size and unseaworthiness made her useful only for boarding or for firing missiles, though even the vastest galleys were equipped with rams. King Mithridates VI was enormously fond of sixteeners, as is recounted in The First Man in Rome.
For those perusers of the glossary whose curiosity is piqued as to how big the ancient naval architects and shipwrights could make galleys, wait for later books in this series! I might have Cleopatra dig Ptolemy IV s "forty" river barge out of mothballs.
socius, socii A socius was a man of a citizenship having allied status with Rome.
Sol Indiges One of the most ancient Italian gods, apparently (as the Sun) the husband of Tellus (the Earth). Though little is known of his cult, he was apparently enormously reverenced. Oaths sworn by him were very serious affairs.
spelt A very fine, soft white flour used for making cakes, never bread. It was ground from the variety of wheat now known as Triticum spelta.
sponsio In cases of civil litigation where judgement was arrived at by one man rather than by a jury, the urban or foreign praetor could only allow the case to be heard after a sum of money called sponsio was lodged with him before the hearing began. This was either the sum being asked for in damages, or the sum of money in dispute. In bankruptcy or nonpayment of debts cases, the sum owed became the sponsio. Until Sulla was dictator, if the sum concerned could not be found by either the plaintiff or the defendant, the praetor could not allow the case to be heard. This meant many cases which ought to have been heard were not. Sulla fixed this by allowing the urban or foreign praetor to waive the lodgement of sponsio. He had first done this, incidentally, in 88 b.c. when he tried to shore up the constitution before leaving for the war against Mithridates; but these laws were quickly repealed. The law he put on the tablets as dictator remained in effect.
stibium The ancient version of mascara. A black antimony-based powder soluble in water, stibium was used to darken the brows and/or lashes, or to draw a line around the perimeter of the eye. It would be interesting to know just how recently a more benign substance than stibium replaced it, but, alas, no work of reference tells me.
stimulus, stimuli To the Romans a stimulus was a sharpened wooden stake placed in the bottom of a trench or ditch as part of defense fortifications. It could also mean a sharp instrument used to goad an animal. And by extension, a stimulus was something causing acute mental pain or worry.
strategoi A Greek word in the plural. A military commander or general.
Subura The poorest and most densely populated part of the city of Rome. It lay to the east of the Forum Romanum in the declivity between the Oppian spur of the Esquiline Mount and the Viminal Hill. Its people were notoriously polyglot and independent of mind; many Jews lived in the Subura, which at the time of Sulla contained Rome's only synagogue. Suetonius says Caesar the Dictator lived in the Subura.
Sulpicius Publius Sulpicius Rufus had been a conservative and moderate sort of man throughout his time in the Senate, and including the first part of his tribunate of the plebs in 88 b.c. It would seem that the news that King Mithridates had not distinguished between Italians and Romans when he murdered 80,000 of them in Asia Province caused Sulpicius to change his views about many things, including the limitations conservative and anti-Italian elements in Rome were placing upon the admission
of the newly enfranchised Italians into the Roman rolls. Sulpicius turned militant radical, allying himself with Gaius Marius. He passed four laws, the most important of which stipulated that all the new Roman citizens must be distributed equally across the whole thirty-five tribes, but the most disturbing of which took the command of the war against Mithridates away from Sulla; he gave it to Marius instead. This provoked Sulla into marching on Rome that first time. Together with Marius, Old Brutus and some others, Sulpicius fled from the city after Sulla took it over. The rest of the refugees escaped overseas, probably because it was no part of Sulla's intentions to apprehend them, but Sulpicius was taken in the Latin port of Laurentum and killed on the spot. His head was sent to Rome; Sulla fixed it to the rostra in an attempt to cow the newly elected consul Cinna. All four of Sulpicius's laws were repealed by Sulla.
sumptuary law Any law attempting to regulate the purchase or consumption of luxuries.
tabled Of a law, and used in the British parliamentary sense. When a drafted proposed law or amendment or paper is tabled, it is “put on the table'' for inspection, discussion, and thought. It then remains tabled until passed or rejected.
talent This was the load a man could carry. Bullion and very large sums of money were expressed in talents, but the term was not confined to precious metals and money. In modern terms the talent weighed about 50 to 55 pounds (25 kilograms). A talent of gold weighed the same as a talent of silver, but was far more valuable, of course.