The First Man in Rome (134 page)

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.

grammaticus
Not a teacher of grammar, but a teacher of the basic arts of rhetoric, or public speaking (see rhetoric).

greaves
Shin guards. Made of metal and strapped on behind the knees and ankles, they were not worn by Romans of any rank save the centurions, for whom greaves were a badge of office.

Hannibal
The most famous of the Punic princes who led the forces of Carthage in their wars against Rome. Born in 247 B.C., Hannibal was taught to soldier in Spain as a mere child, and spent his youth in Spain. In 218 B.C. he invaded Italy, a shock tactic which took Rome by surprise; his crossing of the Alps (with elephants) through the Montgenevre Pass was brilliant. For sixteen years he roamed at will through Italian Gaul and Italy, defeating Roman armies at Trebia, Trasimene, and finally Cannae. But Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosis Cunctator evolved a strategy which eventually wore Hannibal down: relentlessly, he shadowed the Carthaginian army with an army of his own, yet never offered battle or allowed his forces to be pushed into battle. Because Fabius Maximus was always in the vicinity, Hannibal never quite got up the confidence to attack the city of Rome herself. Then his allies among the Italians flagged, and Fabius's presence forced him further and further south after his hold on Campania was broken. He then lost Tarentum, while his brother Hasdrubal in the Umbrian north was defeated at the river Metaurus. Penned up in Bruttium, the very toe of Italy, he evacuated his undefeated army back to Carthage in 203 B.C. At Zama he was beaten by Scipio Africanus, after which, as the Punic head of state, he intrigued with Antiochus the Great of Syria against Rome. In the end he sought asylum with Antiochus, but after Rome subdued the King he fled again, seeking refuge with King Prusias in Bithynia. When in 182 B.C. Rome demanded that Prusias hand Hannibal over, he committed suicide. An unrepentant enemy of Rome, he was always admired and respected by Rome.

hasta
The old-fashioned, leaf-headed spear of the Roman infantry. After Gaius Marius modified the
pilum,
the
hasta
disappeared from the ranks.

"hay on his horn"
All ancient oxen were endowed with most formidable horns, and not all ancient oxen were placid, despite their castrated state. A beast which gored was tagged in warning; hay was wrapped around the horn he gored with, or around both horns if he gored with both. Pedestrians scattered on seeing an ox with hay wrapped round its horn, pulling a wagon through the streets of Rome. The saying "hay on his horn" came to be applied to a deceptively large and placid-seeming man after it was discovered he could turn and strike very suddenly and destructively.

Head Count
The term I have used throughout the book to describe the lowliest of Roman citizens, the
capite censi,
those who were too poor to belong to one of the five economic classes. All the censors did was take a "head count" of them. I have preferred "Head Count" to "the proletariat" or "the masses" because of our modem post-Marxist attitudes to these terms—attitudes entirely misleading in the ancient context (see also
capite censi, proletarii).

Hellenic
The term used to describe Greek culture after Alexander the Great expanded Greek influence so dramatically throughout the ancient world.

Hercules, Pillars of
The narrow passageway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea was known as the Pillars of Hercules because of the presence of two huge

rocky outcrops, one on the Spanish side called Calpe (modern Gibraltar), and one on the African side called Abydus.