Sosius A name associated with the book trade in Rome. Two brothers named Sosius published during the principate of Augustus. I have taken the name and extrapolated it backward in time; Roman businesses were very often family businesses, and the book trade in Rome was already flourishing in Marius’s day. Therefore, why not a Sosius in Marius’s day?
spelt A kind of flour, very fine and soft and white, not suitable for making bread, but excellent for making cakes. It was ground from the variety of wheat now known as Triticum spelta.
steel The term “Iron Age” is rather misleading, for iron in itself is not a very usable metal. It only replaced bronze when ancient smiths discovered ways of steeling it; from then on, it was the metal of choice for tools, weapons, and other apparatus requiring a combination of hardness, durability, and capacity to take an edge or a point. Aristotle and Theophrastus, both living in the Greece of the fourth century B.C., talk about “steel,” not “iron.” However, the whole process of working iron into a usable metal evolved in total ignorance of the chemistry and metallurgy underlying it. The main ore utilized to extract iron was haematite; pyrites was little used because of the extreme toxicity of its sulphuric by-products. Strabo and Pliny the Elder both describe the method of roasting (oxidation) the ore in a hearth-type furnace; but the shaft furnace (reduction) was more efficient, could smelt larger quantities of ore, and was the method of choice. Most smelting yards used both hearth and shaft furnaces, and produced slag-contaminated “blooms” which were called sows. These sows were then reheated to above melting point, and compelled to take up additional carbon from the charcoal by hammering (forging); this also drove out much of the contaminating slag, though ancient steels were never entirely free of it. Roman smiths were fully conversant with the techniques of annealing, quenching, tempering, and cementation (this last forced more carbon into the iron). Each of these procedures changed the characteristics of the basic carbon steel in a different way, so that steels suitable for various purposes were made—razors, sword blades, knives, axes, saws, wood chisels, cold chisels, nails, spikes, etc. So precious were the steels suitable for cutting edges that a thin piece of edge steel was welded (the Romans knew two methods of welding: pressure welding and fusion welding) onto a cheaper base. However, the Roman sword blade was made entirely of steel, taking a cruelly sharp edge; it was produced by tempering at about 280°C. (Those readers who are old enough may remember carving knives or machetes made of nonstainless carbon steel, and remember with longing in our stainless-steel age how viciously sharp they were, and how easy they were to keep viciously sharp—these blades were very similar indeed to Roman ones.) Tongs, anvils, hammers, bellows, crucibles, fire bricks, and the other tools in trade of a smith were known and universally used. Many of the ancient theories were quite wrong: it was thought, for instance, that the nature of the liquid used in quenching affected the quenching; and no one understood that the real reason why the iron mined in Noricum produced such superb steel lay in the fact that it contained a small amount of manganese uncontaminated by phosphorus, arsenic, or sulphur, and so was the raw material of manganese steel.
stibium A black antimony-based powder, soluble in water, used to paint or dye eyebrows and eyelashes, and to draw a line around the eyes.
Stoic An adherent of the school of philosophy founded by the Phoenician Cypriot Zeno, in the third century B.C. Stoicism as a philosophical system of thought particularly appealed to the Romans. The basic tenet was concerned with nothing beyond virtue (strength of character) and its opposite, weakness of character. Virtue was the only good, weakness of character the only evil. Money, pain, death, and the other things which plague Man were not considered important, for the virtuous man is an essentially good man, and therefore by definition must be a happy and contented man, even if impoverished, in perpetual pain, and under sentence of death. As with everything Greek they espoused, the Romans did not so much modify this philosophy as evade its unpalatable concomitants by some very nice—if specious—reasoning. Brutus is an example.
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 very long main street had three different names: at the bottom, where it became contiguous with the Argiletum, it was the Fauces Suburae; the next section was the Subura Major; and the final section, which scrambled up the steep flank of the Esquiline proper, was the Clivus Suburanus. The Subura Minor and the Vicus Patricii branched off the Subura Major in the direction of the Viminal Hill. The Subura was an area composed entirely of insulae, and contained only one prominent landmark, the Turris Mamilia, apparently some kind of tower. Its people were notoriously polyglot and independent of mind; many Jews lived in the Subura, for instance.
Suburana The name of one of the four urban tribes, and one of the two into which newly enfranchised freedmen were placed (the other was the tribus Esquilina). In Republican times, this made Suburana one of the two largest in number of members of all the thirty-five tribes.
suffect consul Consul suffectus. When an elected consul died in office, or was otherwise rendered incapable of conducting his duties, the Senate appointed a substitute called a suffectus. The suffectus was not elected. Sometimes the Senate would appoint a suffectus even when the consular year was almost over; at other times no substitute would be appointed even when the consular year was far from over. These discrepancies reflected the mood within the House at the particular time. The name of the suffectus was engraved upon the list of Rome’s consuls, and he was afterward entitled to call himself a consular.
sumptuary law A lex sumptuaria. This was a law which sought to regulate the amount of luxurious (that is, expensive) goods andIor foodstuffs a Roman might buy or have in his house, no matter how wealthy he was. During the Republic, sumptuary laws were often leveled at women, forbidding them to wear more than a specified amount of jewelry, or ride in litters or carriages within the Servian Walls; as several censors found out, women so legislated against were inclined to be a nasty force to be reckoned with.
suovetaurilia This was a special sacrifice consisting of a pig (su), a sheep (ove), and an ox or bull (taur). It was offered on critical occasions to certain gods: Jupiter Optimus Maximus was one, Mars another, and others whose identities are not known. The ceremony surrounding the suovetaurilia called for the sacrificial victims to be led in a solemn procession before being killed. Besides the special occasions, there were two regular occasions on which a suovetaurilia was offered: the first occurred in late May, when the land was purified by the twelve minor priests called the Arval Brethren; the second occurred every five years, when the censors set up their booth on the Campus Martius and prepared to take the full census of every Roman citizen.
Syracuse The capital and largest city of Sicily.
tablinum The Latin term for the room kept as the exclusive domain of the paterfamilias; quite often his sleeping cubicle and a smaller cubicle used as a wardrobe or storage area opened off it. I have called it the study.
talent A unit of weight defined as the load a man could carry. Bullion and very large sums of money were expressed in talents, but the term was not confined to money and precious metals. In modern terms the talent weighed about 50 to 55 pounds (25 kg). There is an imperial measure of our time called the quarter; it weighs 56 pounds.
Tanais River The modern Don, in the USSR.
Taprobane Modern Sri Lanka (Ceylon). The ancients knew it was a pear-shaped, very large island mass off the southeastern tip of India. It was a source of valuable spices like pepper, and of ocean pearls.
Tarentum Modern Taranto. It lies on the Italian foot, and was founded as a Greek colony by the Spartans, about 700 B.C. The original terminus of the Via Appia, it lost importance once the road was extended to Brundisium, though it was always the port of choice for travelers to Patrae and southern Greece.
Tarpeian Rock Its precise location is still debated, but it is known
to have been quite visible from the lower Forum Romanum, and presumably was an overhang at the top of the Capitoline cliffs. Since the drop was not much more than eighty feet, the rock itself must have been located directly above some sort of jagged outcrop. It was the traditional place of execution for Roman citizen traitors and murderers, who were thrown from it, or perhaps forced to jump off it. I have located it on a line from the temple of Ops.
Tarquinius Priscus Tarquinius the Old, the fifth King of Rome. Reputedly a Greek who fetched up in Caere, he became an Etruscan, and then emigrated to Rome. He is said to have drained the Forum Romanum, built many of the sewers, commenced building the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, and built the Circus Maximus. He was murdered by the two sons of Ancus Marcius when they plotted to usurp the throne; Priscus’s wife foiled the coup, though she could not avert the murder, and secured the throne for the sixth king, Servius Tullius or Tullus.
Tarquinius Superbus Tarquin the Proud, the seventh and last King of Rome. He finished and dedicated the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, but had more of a reputation as a warmaker than a builder. His accession to the throne was a lurid tale of murder and a woman (Tullia, daughter of King Servius Tullius), and his deposition was much the same kind of tale. An uprising of patricians led by Lucius Junius Brutus led to his flight from Rome, and the establishment of the Republic. Tarquin the Proud sought refuge with several local anti-Roman leaders in turn, and eventually died at Cumae. A curious story is told, of how Tarquin the Proud finished his war against the city of Gabii: when asked what he wanted done with Gabii’s prominent men, he said not a word; instead, he went into his garden, drew his sword, and lopped the head off every poppy taller than the rest; his son in Gabii interpreted the message correctly, and beheaded every Gabian man of outstanding merit. Few people today know the origins of the so-called Tall Poppy Syndrome, though the phrase is used metaphorically to describe the Character assassination of men and women of superior ability or prominence.
Tarracina Modern Terracina, in Italy.
Tarsus The largest and most important city in Cilicia, in southeastern Anatolia.
Tartarus That part of the underworld reserved for the punishment of the great sinners of the ancient mortal world: Sisyphus perpetually rolled his boulder uphill, Ixion wobbled around tied to his wheel, and Tantalus stretched in vain for food and drink. However, these were all men who for one reason or another had acquired immortality from the gods, and so could not be punished in the normal way, by death. Despite the deep discussions of men like Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, the Greeks and Romans did not have a true concept of the immortal soul. Death meant the extinction of the vital principle; all which survived death was a shade, a mindless and insubstantial replica of the dead person. And to the great philosophers, the soul was—female! A butterflyish creature.
tata The affectionate Latin diminutive of “father”—akin to our “daddy.”
Taurasia Modern Turin. The name seen on maps of ancient Italy is Augusta Taurinorum, but clearly this is the name bestowed on the city during the principate of Augustus. After considerable research, I came upon the name Taurasia, apparently the pre-Augustan city.
Taurisci The Celtic confederation of tribes which inhabited Noricum, the mountainous regions of the modern eastern Tyrol and the Yugoslavian Alps.
Tergeste Modern Trieste.
Teutones The confederation of Germanic peoples who had originally lived at the base of the peninsula called the Cimbrian Chersonnese, and who embarked upon a long migratory trek about 120 B.C. together with the Cimbri. The Teutones as a people perished at Aquae Sextiae in 102 B.C.
theaters In Republican Rome, theaters were forbidden as permanent fixtures. So they were made out of wood, and erected before each set of games incorporating theatrical performances. During the early years of the Republic, theater was felt to be morally degrading, a corrupting force, and this attitude persisted with only slight relaxation until the time of Pompey. Women were forbidden to sit with men. Public pressure, particularly from the lowly (who adored farces and mimes), had obliged the magistrates and Senate to condone theatrical performances; that the theaters were temporary was their protest. These wooden theaters were amphitheatrical in construction, and had proper stages and scenae, including wings, and concealed entrances and exits for the actors; the scenae (backdrops) were as high as the top tier of the cavea (auditorium). At the end of each set of games, the theaters were dismantled. Presumably the materials from which they had been made were auctioned off, and the money received put into a permanent theater-building fund (like other ancient cities, Rome was not well equipped with buildings large enough to store such items as dismantled wooden theaters holding up to ten thousand people).
Thermopylae The coastal pass between Thessaly and central Greece. The road was flanked by the Aegean Sea on one side, and cliffs on the other. However, it was by no means an ideal spot to defend, for the mountains above it contained routes whereby an army holding it could be outflanked. The most famous of these routes was the path called Anopaea, and the most famous defense of the pass was that of Leonidas of Sparta.
Thessaly Northern Greece; on the west it was bordered by the rugged mountains of Epirus, and on the east by the Aegean Sea. In the days of Gaius Marius, it was administered as a part of the Roman province of Macedonia.
Thrace Thracia. Loosely, that part of Balkan Europe between the west side of the Hellespont and a line just east of Philippi; it had coasts on both the Aegean Sea and the Euxine Sea, and extended north into Sarmatia. The Romans considered its western boundary as the river Nestus. Thrace never really got itself organized, and remained until Roman occupation a place of partially allied Germano-Illyrian-Celtic tribes long enough settled in the area to warrant the name Thracian. Both the Greeks and the Romans considered the Thracians utterly barbaric. After the wars of the Attalid succession in Asia Minor were settled about 129 B.C., the Aegean strip of Thrace was governed as a part of Macedonia. For Rome had built the Via Egnatia, the great highway between the Adriatic and the Hellespont, and needed to protect this vital land route, the quickest way to get an army from Italy to Asia Minor. Aenus (a port city at the mouth of the river Hebrus) and Abdera (a port city to the east of the river Nestus) were the two most important settlements on the Aegean; however, Thrace’s largest city by far was the old Greek colony of Byzantium, on the Thracian Bosporus.
Tiber, Tiberis The city of Rome’s own river. It flowed from the high Apennines beyond Arretium down to the Tuscan (Tyrrhenian) Sea at Ostia. Rome was situated on the Tiber’s northeastern bank. The river was allegedly navigable as far up as Narnia, but in actual fact, its very swift current made upstream sailing difficult. Floods were frequent and sometimes disastrous, especially for Rome.
Tibur Modern Tivoli. In Republican times it was a small settlement on the Anio River where that stream tumbles abruptly from the mountains to the Tiber plains. In Gaius Marius’s day Tibur did not have the full Roman citizenship.
Tiddlypuss, Lucius I needed a joke name of the kind people in all places at all times have used when they wanted to refer to a faceless yet representative person. In the U.S.A. it would be “Joe Blow,” in the U.K. “Fred Bloggs,” in reference to an aristocrat “Lord Muck of Dunghill Hall,” and so forth. As I am writing in English for a largely non-Latin-reading audience, it was not possible to choose a properly Latin name to fill this function. I coined “Lucius Tiddlypuss” because it looks and sounds patently ridiculous, because it ends in “uss,” and because of a mountain. This mountain was named in a Latin distortion after a villa which lay on its flanks and belonged to Augustus’s infamous freed-man, Publius Vedius Pollio. The villa’s name, a Greek one, was Pausilypon, but the Latin name of the mountain was Pausilypus—a clear indication that Publius Vedius Pollio was loathed, for pus then meant exactly the same as English “pus” does now. Speakers of Latin punned constantly, we know. And that’s how Lucius Tiddlypuss came to be.
Tigurini A confederation of Celtic tribe
s which occupied lands in modern Switzerland adjacent to the confederation of tribes called the Helvetii. In about the eighth year of the migration of the German Cimbri and Teutones, the Tigurini tacked themselves on in last place, allying themselves with the two other confederations which had also tacked themselves on—the Marcomanni and the Cherusci. Deputed in 102 B.C. to invade northern Italy on the eastern front, from Noricum across to Aquileia, the Tigurini-Marcomanni-Cherusci changed their minds when they heard about the defeat of the Teutones at Aquae Sextiae. They all returned to their original homelands instead, and so escaped the extinction which became the fate of the Teutones and the Cimbri.
Tingis Modern Tangier. The capital and principal royal seat of the Kingdom of Mauretania. It lay on the Oceanus Atlanticus, beyond the Pillars of Hercules.
Tingitanian ape The Barbary ape, a macaque, terrestrial and tailless. Monkeys and primates were not common in the ancient Mediterranean, but the macaque still found on modern Gibraltar was always present in North Africa.
toga The garment only a full citizen of Rome was permitted to wear. Made of lightweight wool, it had a most peculiar shape (which is why the togate “Romans” in Hollywood movies never look right—Hollywood research, at least on ancient Rome, is poor). After exhaustive and brilliant experimentation, Dr. Lillian Wilson worked out a size and shape which produce a perfect-looking toga. A toga to fit a man 5 feet 9 inches (175 cm) tall and having a waist of 36 inches (89.5 cm) was about 15 feet (4.6 m) wide, and 7 feet 6 inches (2.25 m) long; the length measurement is draped on the height axis of the man, and the much larger width measurement is wrapped about him. However, the shape was not a simple rectangle. It looked like this:
Unless the shape is cut as illustrated, the toga will absolutely refuse to drape the way it does on the togate men of the ancient statues. The Republican toga of Gaius Marius’s day was very large (the toga varied considerably in size between the time of the kings of Rome and A.D. 500, a period of a thousand years). One final observation about the toga resulted from my own experimentation: I proved rather conclusively that the togate Republican Roman could not possibly have worn under-drawers or a loincloth. The toga itself completely disqualified the left hand and arm from performing any task at groin level, as to do so would have resulted in collapse of the multiple folds carried on the left arm, and necessitated the toga’s entire redraping. But when the toga is properly draped, the right hand can part it with astonishing ease, push up the hem of the tunic, and perform the act of urinating from a standing position— provided, that is, there are no under-drawers or loincloths to fiddle with! I mention this interesting fact only because it is still said in some modern textbooks that the Roman man did wear some sort of nether undergarment. Well, if he was wearing a toga, he couldn’t have; Republican Roman morality would never have condoned a slave’s being called upon to help in this extremely personal activity.
Masters of Rome Boxset: First Man in Rome, the Grass Crown, Fortune's Favourites, Caesar's Women, Caesar Page 115
