The First Man in Rome (136 page)
lex Appuleia agraria
The first of Lucius Appuleius Saturninus's two land bills, which were aimed at giving land on the Roman public domain to the veterans of the Marian army. This first bill concerned lands in Greece, Macedonia, Sicily, and Africa. It would seem logical to assume that these lands had all been in the possession of Rome for some considerable time, and were not regarded as important.
lex Appuleia agraria
(
secunda
)
I have tagged this law as
secunda
purely as a matter of convenience, to distinguish it from Saturninus's first land bill without giving it its full Latin title, only an additional confusion for the nonscholarly reader. This second bill is the one containing the oath of loyalty, the one which provoked such extremely bitter opposition in the Senate. The reasons behind the opposition are still hotly debated in academic circles. I have chosen to assume that the reasons lay in the newness of the land concerned—Transalpine Gaul and Nearer Spain. There must have been many companies and large-scale pastoralists intriguing to have this very rich land given to them, especially considering that they probably hoped there was mineral wealth involved too; the West was traditionally rich in undiscovered mineral lodes. To see the lands go to soldier veterans of the Head Count must have been quite intolerable.
lex Appuleia de maiestate
The treason law which Saturninus introduced during his first tribunate of the plebs. It removed control of the treason court from the Centuriate Assembly, in which body it was virtually impossible to secure a conviction unless the culprit confessed out of his own mouth that he had gone to war against Rome. This law concerned itself with degrees of treason, and provided for convictions in what might be called "minor treason." A special
quaestio
(court), hearing matters to do only with treason, was given to the knights, who were both jury and presidents.
lex Appuleia frumentaria
Saturninus's grain law, which I have chosen to assume belonged to his second tribunate of the plebs rather than to his first. As the Second Sicilian Slave War had been by then going on for nearly four years, it is possible that the grain shortage in Rome was growing ever more acute. The law is also better situated in the second tribunate of the plebs because by then Saturninus was actively wooing the lowly.
lex Domitia de sacerdotiis
The law passed in 104 B.C. by Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus during his tribunate of the plebs. It took control of membership in the priestly colleges of pontifices and augurs away from the incumbent members, who had traditionally co-opted new members. The new law required that future members of both colleges be elected in a special tribal assembly composed of seventeen tribes chosen by lot.
lex Liclnia sumptuaria
The luxury law passed by an unknown Licinius Crassus somewhere after 143 B.C. It forbade the serving of certain foods at banquets, including the famous licker-fish of the Tiber, oysters, and freshwater eels. It also forbade the excessive use of purple.
lex Villia annalis
Passed in 180 B.C. by the tribune of the plebs Lucius Villius. It stipulated certain minimum ages at which the curule magistracies could be held (presumably thirty-nine years for praetor and forty-two years for consul), and apparently also stipulated that two years at least had to elapse between the praetorship and the consulship, as well as that ten years must elapse between two consulships held by the same man.
lex Voconia de mulierum hereditatibus
Passed in 169 B.C. , this law severely curtailed the right of women to inherit from wills. Under no circumstances could she be designated the main heir, even if the only child of her father; his nearest agnate relatives (that is, on the father's side) superseded her. Cicero cites a case where it was argued that the
lex Voconia
did not apply because the dead man's property had not been assessed at a census; but the praetor (Gaius Verres) overruled this, and refused to allow the girl in question to inherit. Presumably the law was got around, for we know of several great heiresses (among them, Antony's third wife, Fulvia). In this book, I have had Cornelia the Mother of the Gracchi succeed in obtaining a senatorial waiver; another ploy possible if there were no agnate heirs was to die intestate, in which case the old law prevailed, and children inherited irrespective of sex. It would seem too that the
praetor urbanus
had considerable latitude in interpreting the laws governing inheritance; there was apparently no court to hear testamentary litigation, which meant the
praetor urbanus
was the final arbiter.
Libya
That part of North Africa between Egypt and Cyrenaica.
lictor
One of the few genuine public servants in the employ of the Senate and People of Rome. There was a College of Lictors—the number of members is uncertain, but enough certainly to provide the traditional single-file escort for all holders of imperium, both within and outside Rome, and to perform other duties as well. Two or three hundred may not be unlikely. A lictor had to be a full Roman citizen, but that he was lowly was fairly sure, as the official wage was apparently minimal; the lictor was obliged to rely heavily upon gratuities from those he escorted. Within the college, the lictors were divided into groups of ten (decuries), each headed by a prefect, and there were several presidents of the college senior to the prefects. Inside Rome the lictor wore a plain white toga; outside Rome he wore a crimson tunic with a wide black belt ornamented with brass; a black toga was worn at funerals. For the sake of convenience, I have located the College of Lictors behind the temple of the Lares Praestites on the eastern side of the Forum Romanum, but there is no factual evidence of this at all.
Liger River
The modern Loire, in France.
Liguria
The mountainous region lying between the Arnus and Varus rivers, extending inland from the sea as far as the crest of the Alpes Maritimae and the Ligurian Apennines. The chief port was Genua, the largest inland town Dertona. Since its arable land was scant, Liguria was a poor area; it was chiefly famous for its greasy wool, which made up into waterproof capes and cloaks, including the military
sagum.
The other local industry was piracy.
Lilybaeum
The chief town at the western end of the island of Sicily.
Liris River
The modern Garigliano, in Italy.
litter
A covered cubicle equipped with legs upon which it rested when lowered. It also had a horizontal pole along either side, projecting in front of and behind the cubicle. Between four and eight men could carry it by picking it up along the poles. It was a slow form of transport, but the most comfortable one known in the ancient world.
Long-haired Gaul
See Gallia Comata.
Lucius Tiddlypuss
See Tiddlypuss, Lucius.
Lugdunum
Modern Lyon, in France.
Lugdunum Pass
The name I have used to indicate the modern Little St. Bernard Pass between Italian Gaul and Gaul-across-the-Alps. It lay at a high altitude, but it was known and had been occasionally used before the time of Gaius Marius. The Great St. Bernard Pass was also known, but was not used. Both passes were guarded in Italian Gaul by a tribe of Celts called the Salassi, who occupied the modern Val d'Aosta.
lustrum
The Latin word which came to mean both the entire five-year term of the censors, and the ceremony with which the censors concluded the census of the ordinary Roman People on the Campus Marti us.
lychnites
A term used by Pliny the Elder to describe a precious stone found in western Numidia. It is now thought to have been tourmaline.
Macedonia
To a Republican Roman, a much larger region than the Macedonia of today. It commenced on the east coast of the Adriatic Sea below Dalmatian Illyricum, at a point about where the town of Lissus was; its southern boundary on this western extremity lay against Epirus; and its two major ports receiving Adriatic traffic from Italy were Dyrrachium and Apollonia. Bordering Moesia in the north, Macedonia then continued east across the great highlands in which rose the Morava, the Axius, the Strymon, and the Nestus; in the south it bordered Greek Thessaly. Beyond the Nestus it bordered Thrace, and continued as a narrow coastal strip along the Aegean all the way to the Hellespont. Access to and from Macedonia was limited to the river valleys; through the Morava, Axius, Strymon, and Nestus the barbarian tribes of Moesia and Thrace could—and often did—invade, chiefly the Scordisci and the Bessi in the time of Gaius Marius. To the south, the only comfortable access between Macedonia and Thessaly was the pass at the Vale of Tempe. The original inhabitants of Macedonia were probably Germano-Celtic; successive invasions over the centuries mingled this original people with others of Dorian Greek, Thracian, and Illyrian origins. Long divided by natural topographical barriers into small nations tending to war with each other, a united Macedonia came into being under the kings prior to Philip II; but it was Philip II and his son Alexander the Great who thrust Macedonia into world prominence. Following the death of Alexander, Macedonia was first exhausted by a struggle between rivals for the throne, then ran afoul of Rome; its last king, Perseus, lost to Aemilius Paullus in 167 B.C. Roman attempts to convert Macedonia into a self-governing republic failed, so in 146 B.C. Macedonia was reluctantly incorporated into the expanding Roman empire as a province.
macellum
An open-air market of booths and stalls.
magistrates
The elected executives of the Senate and People of Rome. By the middle Republic, all the men who held magistracies were members of the Senate (elected quaestors were normally approved as senators by the next censors); this gave the Senate a distinct advantage over the People, until the People (in the person of the Plebs) took over the lawmaking.
The magistrates represented the executive arm of government. In order of seniority, the most junior of all magistrates was the tribune of the soldiers, who was not old enough to be admitted to the Senate, but was nonetheless a true magistrate. Then came the quaestor; the tribune of the plebs and the plebeian aedile were next; the curule aedile was the most junior magistrate holding imperium; next was the praetor; and at the top was the consul.
The censor occupied a special position, for though this magistracy owned no imperium, it could not be held by a man who had not been consul. In times of emergency, the Senate was empowered to create an extraordinary magistrate, the dictator, who served for six months only, and was indemnified against answering for his dictatorial actions after his term as dictator was over. The dictator himself appointed a master of the horse to function as his war leader and second-in-command.
maiestas minuta
Literally, "little treason," so called to distinguish it from the kind of treason where a man abrogated his citizenship by going to war against Rome. Lucius Appuleius Saturninus first put
maiestas minuta
on the law tablets as a criminal charge, and set up a special
quaestio
or court to hear it during his first tribunate of the plebs in 103 B.C. The court was staffed entirely by knights, but the men tried in it were senators. After Saturninus's act, the old-style treason charge—called
perduellio
—heard in the Centuriate Assembly was virtually abandoned.
Malaca
Modern Malaga, in Spain.
Mamilian Commission
The special court set up by the tribune of the plebs Gaius Mamilius Limetanus in 109 B.C. It was empowered to inquire into the dealings between Jugurtha of Numidia and certain Romans, particularly magistrates.
maniple
The old tactical maneuvering unit of the Roman legion. It contained only two centuries of troops, and by the time of Gaius Marius had proven too small to contend with the armies Rome was now called upon to face. Marius eliminated it as a tactical unit.
manumission, manumit
Manumission was the act of freeing a slave. It literally means "sending from the hand." When the slave's master was a Roman citizen, manumission automatically endowed the slave with the Roman citizenship, and he took the name of his old master as his new name, adding to it his original slave name as a
cognomen.
A slave could be manumitted in any one of several ways: by buying his freedom out of his earnings, as a special gesture of the master's on some great occasion like a coming-of-age birthday, after an agreed number of years of service, in a will. Though technically the slave was then the equal of his master, in actual fact he was obliged to remain in his old master's clientship, unless this was formally dispensed with. He had little opportunity to exercise his franchise, for under the law he became a member of one of two of the four urban tribes—Esquilina or Suburana—and therefore found his vote worthless in tribal elections; his economic lowliness in almost all cases meant he was not made a member of one of the Five Classes, so he could not vote in Centuriate matters either. However, most slaves found the Roman citizenship highly desirable, not so much for themselves as for their descendants. Once a slave was manumitted, he was called a freedman, and was required for the rest of his life to wear a slightly conical skullcap on the back of his head; this was the Cap of Liberty.