The First Man in Rome

by Colleen McCullough

  forum An open-air public meeting place for all kinds of business, public and private.

  Forum Boarium The meat markets, situated at the northern (Velabrum) end of the Circus Maximus. The word boarium meant “cattle,” but by Gaius Marius’s day, the meat markets vended all kinds of beasts and meats.

  forum castrum The meeting space inside a Roman military camp. It was located alongside the general’s command tent.

  Forum Frumentarium The grain markets. My map situation for them is purely hypothetical, but my reasons are as follows: I do not believe that the private grain vendors (and there were many) conducted their activities in the same area as the public grain issue. The public grain was concentrated in two areas—one in the Porticus Minucia on the Campus Martius, where the aediles had their booths and offices, and issued the grain chits; the other the public granaries, which were located under the cliffs of the Aventine adjacent to the Port of Rome. We know that there were granaries along the Vicus Tuscus below the cliffs of the Palatine, rebuilt by Agrippa during the principate, but probably privately owned during the Republic. Therefore I have located the Forum Frumentarium in the Velabrum, adjacent to the granaries of the Vicus Tuscus.

  Forum Holitorium The vegetable markets. They were situated right on the banks of the Tiber, half inside the Servian Walls, half outside, though they had probably originally lain entirely inside. This location favored those who grew on the Campus Martius and the Campus Vaticanus.

  Forum Piscinum The fish markets. Their location is a mystery, but we know from the grizzles of Cicero that the prevailing winds of Rome blew the smell of stinking fish into both the lower Forum Romanum and the Senate House. I have therefore located them just to the west of the Via Nova, in the Velabrum.

  Forum Romanum The center of Roman public life, a long open space devoted to politics, the law, business, and religion. By the time of Gaius Marius, I believe the Forum Romanum was free from stalls and booths unattached to the basilicae. The amount of political activity—not to mention legal activity—would surely have rendered free-standing structures in the middle of any concourse at peril, as well as most inconvenient. The close proximity of two big markets, the general Macellum on the far side of the Basilica Aemilia and the Macellum Cuppedenis beyond the Clivus Orbius, no doubt provided plenty of booth and stall space.

  freedman A manumitted slave. Though technically free (and, if his former master was a Roman citizen, a Roman citizen himself), he remained in the patronage of his former master, and had little chance to use his vote in the time of Gaius Marius, for he belonged to one of two urban tribes— the Suburana and the Esquilina. In some cases, freedmen of superior ability or ruthlessness managed to acquire great wealth and power, and so were able to vote in the classes.

  freeman A man born free and never sold into slavery (except as a nexus or debt slave—this was rare among Roman citizens during Gaius Marius’s time, though still prevalent among the Italian Allies, victims of Roman greed).

  Fregellae A Latin Rights community situated on the Via Latina and the river Liris, just over the border into Samnium. It was always very loyal to Rome until 125 B.C., when it revolted, and was crushed with singular cruelty by the praetor Lucius Opimius. Destroyed completely, the town never really flourished again. Rome replaced it with the town of Fabrateria Nova (“new made”) on the opposite bank of the Liris.

  Further Spain Hispania Ulterior, the further from Rome of Rome’s two Spanish provinces. In the time of Gaius Marius, the boundary between Nearer and Further Spain was somewhat tenuous, but by and large, the further province encompassed the entire basin of the Baetis River, the ore-bearing mountains in which the Baetis and the Anas rose, the Atlantic littoral from Olisippo at the mouth of the Tagus to the Pillars of Hercules, and the Mediterranean littoral from the Pillars to the port of Abdera. The largest city by far was Gades, now called Cadiz, but the seat of the governor was Corduba.

  Gaetuli A far-flung Berber people, nomadic in their way of life, who inhabited the regions behind the coast of North Africa, all the way from the Lesser Syrtis to Mauretania.

  Gallia Comata Long-haired Gaul. Having subtracted the Roman province of Gaul-across-the-Alps, Gallia Comata incorporated modern France and Belgium, together with that part of Holland south of the Rhine. It was a huge, fairly low-lying, and heavily forested land of largely untapped agricultural richness, watered by many superb rivers, including the Liger (Loire), Sequana (Seine), Mosa (Meuse), Mosella (Moselle), Scaldis (Schelde), Samara (Somme), Matroma (Marne), Duranius (Dordogne), Oltis (Lot), and Garumna (Garonne). During the time of Gaius Marius, the bulk of Gallia Comata was hardly known, save for the campaigns of Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus in 122 and 121 B.C. The inhabitants were mostly Celtic, except where Germanic tribes had invaded from across the Rhenus and racially mixed, as was the case with the tribes collectively called Belgae. Though all of the Gauls who wore their hair long (hence the Latin name for the country) knew of the existence of Rome, they studiously avoided contact unless unlucky enough to live on the borders of the Roman province. The Gallic way of life was rural, as much pastoral as agricultural, and they spurned urbanization, preferring to cluster in farmsteads and villages. They did build what the Romans called oppida, these being strongholds designed to protect the tribal treasures, the person of the king, and their grain. Religiously they were under the sway of the Druids, save for the most Germanic among them. On the whole the long-haired Gauls were not warlike insofar as that they did not pursue war as an end in itself, but they were fierce warriors. They drank beer rather than wine, were flesh eaters more than bread eaters, drank milk, and used butter rather than olive oil. Physically they were tall and well built, and tended to be fair or red of hair, and blue or grey of eye.

  Gallia Transalpina Transalpine Gaul, the Roman province I have called Gaul-across-the-Alps. I did this to avoid the hideous confusions for nonclassicist readers that are involved in the minefield of Cis and Trans. Cisalpine Gaul, Transalpine Gaul, Cispadane Gaul, Transpadane Gaul—just too confusing for most people, so why get into it at all? Gaul-across-the-Alps was largely won for Rome by Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus just before 120 B.C., to ensure that Rome had a safe land route for her armies between Italy and Spain. The province consisted of a coastal strip all the way from Liguria to the Pyrenees, with two inland incursions: one to Tolosa, in Aquitania, the other up the Rhodanus (Rhone) Valley as far as the trading post of Lugdunum (Lyon).

  games A Roman institution and pastime which went back at least as far as the early Republic, and probably a lot further. At first games, or ludi, were celebrated only when a general triumphed, but in 366 B.C. the ludi Romani, as the first games were called, became an annual event held to honor Jupiter Optimus Maximus, whose feast day occurred on September 13. It was not long before the ludi Romani occupied more than just that day; by the time of Gaius Marius they went on for ten days, possibly beginning on the fifth. Though there were a few rather half-hearted boxing and wrestling bouts, Roman games never possessed the athletic, physical, sports nature of the Greek games (very different!). At first they consisted mostly of chariot races, then gradually came to incorporate animal hunts, and plays held in specially erected theaters. On the first day of the games, there was a spectacular yet ostensibly religious procession through the circus, after which came a chariot race or two, and then the boxing and wrestling, limited to this first day. The succeeding days were taken up with plays in the theaters; tragedies were not popular, comedies were, and as the Republic wore on, farces and mimes became more popular than old-fashioned comedy. Then, as the games drew to a close, the chariot races reigned supreme, together with wild-beast hunts to vary the program. Gladiatorial combats were not a part of any games held during the Republic; these were confined to funeral games, and generally held in the Forum Romanum rather than in the circuses. They were put on privately, not at the expense of the State, as were the games. However, men ambitious of making a name for themselves among the electors dug deep into their private purses w
hen aediles to make the games more spectacular than the allocation of funds from the State would permit. The first games of the year were the ludi Megalenses in early April, followed immediately by the ludi Cereri, and with the ludi Floriae at the end of April extending into May. Then in July came the ludi Apollinares, early in the month. Then nothing until the ludi Romani in early September. On the Ides of October came the single day of the ludi Capitolini, games put on by a private college. The last games of the year were the ludi Plebeii, which occurred in early November, and ran for many days. Free Roman citizen men and their women were allowed to attend (there was no admission charge), with Women segregated in the theaters but not in the circus; neither slaves nor freedmen were permitted.

  garum A highly esteemed and much loved flavoring essence made from fish by a process calculated to make a modern man or woman ill at the thought; apparently it stank, being extremely concentrated. However, the ancients adored it. There were many places around the Mediterranean and Euxine where garum was made, but the best garum was held to come from the fishing ports of Further Spain.

  Garumna River The modern Garonne, in France.

  Gaul See Gallia Comata, Gallia Transalpina, Italian Gaul.

  gens, gentes (pl.) A Roman family or clan owning the same name—Julius, Domitius, Cornelius, Aemilius, Fabius, Servilius, and Junius were all gentilicial names, for example. All the members of the same gens could ultimately trace their line back to a common ancestor. The term was feminine in gender, so in Latin it was gens Julia, gens Cornelia.

  Genua Modern Genoa or Genova.

  Germani The inhabitants of Germania, this being all the lands on the far side of the Rhenus River (the modern Rhine).

  Getorix A very Celtic name borne by several known Celtic kings. I have chosen it as the name of the unknown Celtic king who led the combined tribes of the Tigurini, Marcomanni, and Cherusci on the trek of the Germans. All we know of him historically is that he belonged to the tribe of the Tigurini, who were Celts.

  gig A two-wheeled vehicle drawn by either two or four animals, usually mules. It was very lightly and flexibly built within the limitations of ancient vehicles—springs and shock absorbers did not exist—and was the vehicle of choice for a Roman in a hurry because it was easy to draw, therefore speedy. However, it was open to the elements. Its Latin name was cisia. The two-wheeled closed-in carriage, a heavier and slower vehicle, was called the carpentum.

  gladiator A soldier of the sawdust, a professional warrior who performed his trade for an audience as an entertainment. An Etruscan inheritance, he always flourished throughout Italy, including Rome. His origins might be several: he might be a deserter from the legions, a condemned criminal, a slave, or a freeman who voluntarily signed himself up; but in all cases he had to have evinced an interest in becoming a gladiator, otherwise he was not worth the expense of training. He lived in a school (most of the Republican era schools were situated around Capua), was not locked up or locked in, nor ill-treated; the gladiator was a very profitable and attractive investment. His training was supervised by a doctor, the lanista was the head of the whole school. There were four ways he might fight—as a Mirmillo, a Samnite, a Retiarius, or a Thracian; the difference lay in the way he was armed. In Republican times he served for perhaps four to six years, and on an average fought perhaps five times in any one year; it was rare for him to die, and the Empire’s “thumbs-up, thumbs-down” verdict was still far in the future. When he retired, he was prone to hire himself out as a bodyguard or bouncer. The schools were owned by businessmen who made very fat profits from hiring out pairs of gladiators all over Italy, usually as the main feature of funeral games; many senators and knights owned gladiatorial schools, some of them large enough to contain over a thousand men, a few even more than that.

  Good Men See boni.

  governor A convenient English word to describe the consul or praetor, proconsul or propraetor, who—usually for the space of one year—ruled a Roman province in the name of the Senate and People of Rome. The degree of imperium the governor owned varied, as did the extent of his commission. However, no matter what his imperium, while in his province he was virtual king of it. He was responsible for its defense, administration, the gathering of its taxes and tithes, and many other things.

  Gracchi Also known as the Brothers Gracchi. Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africanus and Aemilia Paulla, was married when eighteen years old to the forty-five-year-old Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus; the year was about 172 B.C. , and Scipio Africanus had been dead for twelve years. Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus had been consul in 177 B.C., was censor in 169 B.C. and consul a second time in 163 B.C. When he died in 154 B.C., he was the father of twelve children, but they were universally a sickly brood, and only three of them did Cornelia manage to raise to adulthood, despite assiduous care. The oldest of these three was a girl, Sempronia, who was married as soon as she was of age to her cousin Scipio Aemilianus; the two younger were boys. Tiberius Gracchus was born in 163 B.C., and his brother, Gaius, not until the year of his father’s death, 154 B.C. Thus both boys owed their upbringing to their mother, who by all accounts did a superlative job. Both the Brothers Gracchi served under their mother’s first cousin Scipio Aemilianus, Tiberius in the Third Punic War, Gaius at Numantia; they were conspicuously brave. Tiberius was sent to Nearer Spain as quaestor in 137 B.C., and single-handedly negotiated a treaty which extricated the defeated Hostilius Mancinus from Numantia, and saved his army from annihilation; however, Scipio Aemilianus considered the action disgraceful, and managed to persuade the Senate not to ratify the treaty. Tiberius never forgave his cousin-cum-brother-in-law. In 133 B.C., Tiberius was elected a tribune of the plebs, and set out to right the wrongs the State was perpetrating in its leasing of the ager publicus. Against furious opposition, he passed an agrarian law which limited the amount of public land any one man might lease or own to 500 iugera (with an extra 250 iugera per son), and set up a commission to distribute the surplus of land this limit produced among the civilian poor of Rome. His aim was not only to relieve Rome of some of her less useful citizens, but also to ensure that future generations would be in a position to give Rome sons qualified to serve in the army. When the Senate chose to filibuster, Tiberius Gracchus took the bill straight to the Plebeian Assembly—and stirred up a hornets’ nest thereby, for this move ran counter to all accepted practice. One of his fellow tribunes of the plebs (and a relative), Marcus Octavius, vetoed the bill in the Plebeian Assembly, and was illegally deposed from office—yet another enormous offense against the mos maiorum (that is, established practice). The legality of these ploys mattered less to Tiberius Gracchus’s opponents than did the fact that they contravened established practice, however unwritten it was. When Attalus III of Pergamum died that same year and was discovered to have bequeathed his kingdom to Rome, Tiberius Gracchus ignored the Senate’s right to decide what was to be done with the bequest, and legislated to have the lands used to resettle more of Rome’s poor. Opposition in Senate and in Forum hardened day by day. Then, as 133 B.C. drew to a close without a successful conclusion to his entire program, Tiberius Gracchus flouted another established practice, the one which limited a man to serving as a tribune of the plebs only once. He ran for a second term. And, in a confrontation with the senatorial forces led by his cousin Scipio Nasica, Tiberius Gracchus was clubbed to death on the Capitol, together with some of his followers. His cousin Scipio Aemilianus—though not yet returned from Numantia when it happened—publicly condoned the murder, alleging that Tiberius Gracchus had aimed at making himself King of Rome. Turmoil died down until ten years later, when Tiberius Gracchus’s little brother, Gaius, was elected a tribune of the plebs in 123 B.C. Gaius Gracchus was the same kind of man as his elder brother, but he had learned from his brother’s mistakes, and was the more able of the two. His reforms were far wider, and embraced not only agrarian laws, but also laws to provide very cheap grain to the urban lowly, to regulate service in the army, to found Roman citizen colonies abroad
, to initiate public works throughout Italy, to remove the extortion court from the Senate and give it to the knights, to farm the taxes of Asia by public contracts let by the censors, and to give the full Roman citizenship to all those having the Latin Rights, and the Latin Rights to every Italian Ally. Of course this program was nowhere near completed when his year as a tribune of the plebs came to an end, so Gaius Gracchus did the impossible—he actually secured his re-election as a tribune of the plebs. In the face of mounting fury and obdurate enmity, he battled on to achieve his program of reform, which was still not completed at the end of 122 B.C. So he stood for the tribunate of the plebs a third time. However, he and his friend Marcus Fulvius Flaccus were defeated. When 121 B.C. saw his laws and policies attacked at once by the consul Lucius Opimius and the ex-tribune of the plebs Marcus Livius Drusus, Gaius Gracchus resorted to violence. The Senate responded by passing its first ever “ultimate decree” to contain the growing lawlessness, with the result that Fulvius Flaccus and two of his sons were murdered, and the fleeing Gaius Gracchus committed suicide in the Grove of Furrina on the flanks of the Janiculan Hill. Roman politics would never again be the same; the aged citadel of the mos maiorum had been breached. The personal lives of the Brothers Gracchi were dogged by the same thread of tragedy. Tiberius Gracchus went against his family’s custom (which was to marry Cornelias of the Scipios) and married Claudia, daughter of Appius Claudius Pulcher, the consul of 143 B.C., and an inveterate enemy of Scipio Aemilianus’s. They had three sons, none of whom lived to achieve public careers. Gaius Gracchus married Licinia, the daughter of his supporter Publius Licinius Crassus Mucianus; they had a daughter, Sempronia, who married Fulvius Flaccus Bambalio, and in turn produced a daughter, Fulvia, who became in turn the wife of Publius Clodius Pulcher, Gaius Scribonius Curio, and Mark Antony.