Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic (65 page)

BOOK: Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic
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Updike, John,
xx
-
xxi

Utica,
335
,
336
,
340
,
342

Varro, Marcus Terentius,
2
n,
331
n

Velleius, Paterculus,
xxv

Venetians,
272

3
,
275

Venus,
22
,
70
,
72
,
114
,
116
,
321
,
343

Vercingetorix,
277

81

Verres, Gaius,
132

4
,
361

Vestal Virgins,
139

40
,
374

Vesuvius, Mount,
47
,
49
,
53
,
145

veterans: resettlement of,
108
,
227
,
364
,
381

2
,
384

via Egnatia,
10

via Nova,
15

via Sacra,
15
,
72
,
199

vici
,
18

Villa Publica,
95

7
,
99
,
224

villas,
48

9
,
61

3
,
185

6
,
216

Virgil,
367
,
382
,
383

4

weddings,
114

weights,
80

wine trade,
246

7

women: attitudes to,
192

3
,
211
; and goddess rites,
210

12
; and marriage,
118
; and sexuality,
192

3

*
Usually quoted in Latin – ‘
alea iacta est
’ – but in fact lifted from the Athenian playwright Menander, and spoken by Caesar in Greek. See Plutarch,
Pompey
, 60 and
Caesar
, 32.

*
Although, according to Varro, the great polymath of the late Republic, the Tarquin visited by the Sibyl was Tarquinius Priscus, the
fifth
king of Rome.

 

 


Consuls were in fact originally called praetors. The murk of early Roman history is dense with such confusions.

 

 

*
Judging from funerary inscriptions — the only written evidence that has survived.

 

 

*
Piso and Livy disagreed over the destination of the plebeians’ first walk-out, Piso claiming that it had been on the Aventine, Livy at the nearby Sacred Mount.

 

 

*
Almost certainly – although explicit proof is lacking – there was a property qualification for public office.

*
The oft-repeated story that the Romans drove a plough over the foundations of Carthage and sowed them with salt appears to be just that – a story. Certainly, no ancient source refers to it.

 

 

*
According to the poet Catullus, anyway (37 and 39). It was probably a joke, but one that must have played on Roman prejudices about Spanish standards of personal hygiene.

 

 


The Iberian peninsula was not brought entirely under Roman control until 23
BC
.

 

 

*
The exact nature of Orata’s ‘hanging baths’ has provoked much speculation. Some have argued that they constituted a hot shower, others that Orata had invented the
hypocaust
, the under-floor central heating system built in to luxury villas. But if a shower, why describe it as a bath? And if a
hypocaust
, why invent a new phrase? For the best analysis of the various alternatives, see Fagan, ‘Sergius Orata’.

*
A claim that could have been made at any point in the Republic’s long history. In fact it was made when the free state had only months to live, by Cicero in the sixth
Philippic
(19).

*
Almost certainly. The evidence is not entirely conclusive.

*
To be specific, Cicero, sixteen years later, in the
Philippics.
Truth was rarely allowed to stand in the way of Cicero’s talent for invective. All the same, it does appear at least possible that Antony’s relationship with Curio had been sufficiently intimate to justify a whiff of scandal.

*
Or destroyed it, the evidence is unclear.

 

 

*
The cephos is generally assumed to have been a species of baboon. Pliny the Elder, 8.28.

*
This celebrated phrase is found only in much later sources, but even if it is apocryphal, it is entirely true to the spirit and the values of the Republic.

 

 

*
At least according to the testimony of Diodorus Siculus (17.52), who had visited both Alexandria and Rome: ‘The population of Alexandria outstrips that of all other cities.’

 

 

*
Or possibly the entire Library of Alexandria, a disaster for which Christians and Muslims have also been blamed.

 

 

*
Varro, yet another of Posidonius’ pupils. He was a Pompeian, one of the three generals defeated by Caesar during his first Spanish campaign. He was widely held to be Rome’s greatest polymath. The quotation is from his treatise ‘On Customs’, and is cited by Macrobius, 3.8.9.

 

 

*
The sources nowhere state it specifically, but the circumstances make it almost certain.

 

 

*
Sometime between 9 and 15 February 44
BC
.

*
Since the man born Gaius Octavius changed his name at regular intervals throughout the early years of his career, he is generally called Octavian by historians in order to avoid confusion.

BOOK: Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic
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