The First Man in Rome (143 page)
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 tribes 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.
toga alb
a
(or
pura)
The plain white toga. It was probably more cream than stark white.