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Notes: Chapter 2

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Notes for Chapter 2. Scipio, Rome, 219 – 218 B.C.

1. New wooden bridge to Tiber Island from the east bank of the Tiber River (near the Forum Holitorium). I’ve invented this bridge, which I imagine to be about where the Pons Fabricius, dating to the first century B.C.E. (before the Christian era), still is today. There would certainly have been such a bridge because the Temple of Aesculapius on Tiber Island dates from the third century B.C.E. and a means of reaching it from the city would have been needed. I call it new because my story commences in the late third century.
2. Consul. See consul in the Glossary.
3. Roman names, forms of. See Names, Roman in the Glossary.
4. Manly toga. Boys went through a ceremony around 14 – 16 years old in which they gave up the toga of a boy (white, with a purple border, just as the magistrates wore) and donned the toga virilis or manly toga (a pure white toga alba or pura). They also gave up their bulla, a little amulet worn on a thong around the neck to protect the boy from the evil eye and other threats.
5. Personal servants. As the sons of very wealthy men of the senatorial class, Scipio, Lucius, and Marcus Livius would be accompanied in their free-time wanderings (when not at studies) by personal slaves. While slavery was a much smaller institution in Rome in the third century B.C.E. than it would later become in the first centuries B.C.E. and A.C.E., wealthy families would have a fair number of slaves in their kitchens and gardens, doing housekeeping, tending to children, and working their rural estates. The great latifundia—huge farms owned by wealthy men who worked them with gangs of slaves only—were still a century or so off.
6. Wolf. One of two major emblematic animals sacred to Rome (the other was the eagle). Romulus and Remus, founders of the city, were supposed to have been suckled by a she-wolf.
7. Sacred chickens. See Chickens, sacred in the Glossary.
8. Wool. Romans used wool a great deal for clothing, even in summer. Most women could spin and weave, and some of their woolen cloth was very finely woven, in a variety of colors.
9.  “Another war with Carthage.” Spoken in 219 B.C.E., this refers to the First Punic War, 164 – 141 B.C.E., and the coming Second Punic War, 218 – 201 B.C.E. I have characters refer to the first war as “the Punic war over Sicily.” The Romans might have called that war “Punic” because it was against the Carthaginians (who spoke a language the Romans called “Punic,” based on the Roman word for Phoenician, from which city Carthaginians came originally) or called it “Sicilian” because the war was over possession of the island. (No doubt the Carthaginians called it “Roman” or “Sicilian,” but almost no records survive from Carthage, which Rome razed to the ground in 146 B.C.E., effectively obliterating Carthaginian civilization forever—though no doubt some Punic people survived) The Roman name for the war stuck because they won. It wouldn’t yet be called the First war, since the Second Punic War had not at this point begun yet.
10.  “The triumph that Uncle Gnaeus didn’t get.” Scipio’s uncle, Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio Calvus, was consul with Marcus Claudius Marcellus in 222 B.C.E. Marcellus was awarded a triumph for his actions in Italian Gaul, but Gnaeus Scipio was denied a triumph for his. See Livy and Polybius, also Scullard, History 753 – 146, 191.
11. Triumphal parade, or Triumph. See Triumph in the Glossary.
12. Spolia opima.  See Glossary.
13. Campus Martius. See Glossary.
14. Triumphal route. On one of my research trips to Italy, my wife and I walked the approximate triumphal route several times. The procession would have begun at the Villa Publica, an area on the Campus Martius used by bivouacking soldiers while the consul awaited his triumph. From there, it marched towards the west side of the Capitoline Hill, then down its flank and around its foot. From there, the parade went up into the streets of the Velabrum before descending to the Forum Boarium past the shrine of Janus. Then through the Forum Boarium into the Circus Maximus and straight through, in two columns, one on each side of the central spina. From the Circus, it wound through streets east of the Palatine Hill before turning back onto the Via Sacra, the street going west into the Forum Romanum. The Carcer and Tullianum are at the northeast flank of the Capitoline Hill still today. After sending the prisoners off to be strangled, the parade went up the Clivus Capitolinus, which slants southwestward up onto the Capitol, and ended at the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus (aka Capitolinus). Some parts of the route still exist: the Capitoline Hill, the streets of the Velabrum, the shrine of Janus (though it’s no doubt much larger now than in Scipio’s day), the area that held the Forum Boarium, the Circus Maximus (though now it’s a dirt track used as a park), much of the Forum, the Carcer and Tullianum, the Clivus Capitolinus, and even a corner of the Temple of Jupiter. Keep in mind that most of these places underwent a good seven hundred years of Roman history after Scipio’s time, not to mention another 1,500 years since the fall of the Empire. To imagine it as it was in Scipio’s day requires stripping away many layers of accumulated glory to see the much simpler, more homely version of Rome in 222 B.C.E. Walking the route brought the place to life for me. If you’re ever in Rome—
15. Capacity of the Circus Maximus in the third century B.C.E. The great Circus’s seating capacity grew over the life of Rome, but in the Third Century B.C.E., Scipio’s day, the capacity is not clearly known. But I conjecture that it must have accommodated a hundred thousand people or so by that date. Certainly the capacity was considerable. See Richardson, 84, and Staccioli, 63.
16. Scipio’s Home. The home of Scipio Africanus is known to have lain just southeast of the Forum Romanum, about a block off, under what later became the Basilica Sempronia and then the Basilica Julia. I site Scipio’s boyhood home there, though it’s possible he lived there only in later life.
17. The sacrifice of two oxen during a triumph. I borrowed this description from a number of sources, including McCullough, 24, but especially Hornblower and Spawforth, 629. The sacrifice transferred ownership of the animal to the god. Participants were first purified ritualistically, then went to the sacrificial site accompanying the sacrificial animals, then performed the praefatio with an offering of incense and wine to “open a ritual space” and declare the gods’ superiority. In the immolatio, the presiding person poured wine and flour on the beast and passed a knife along its spine. This transferred possession to the god. Next the sacrificers stunned the beast with a hammer, butchered it, and opened it to inspect its organs for signs. If the organs were acceptable, this signified the god’s acceptance of the offering. If any part of this ceremony went wrong—even a misspoken word—the participants had to begin again from the start, with fresh animals if necessary. Afterwards, they held a banquet at which they ate some parts of the sacrificial animals after burning other parts for the gods. Roman sacrifices were done in a legalistic spirit, as a contract between man and the gods. Man offered the sacrifice and the proper prayers, and the gods were expected to live up to their end by providing peace, prosperity, fertility, or whatever the men were sacrificing for. If they did not, then somehow the Romans had gotten their part of it wrong and must try again.
18. Kingless Rome. In her early days, from the city’s founding to 509 B.C.E., Rome was ruled by kings. But Marcus Brutus overthrew the kings in 509 and established the Republic, which transferred kingly powers to various magistrates such as the Consuls and to several colleges of priests. This system wisely divided power among officials who could check each others’ abuses. (It also led to many conflicts among competing officials.) Rome was a Republic until Gaius Julius Caesar and other generals undermined her institutions with standing armies loyal to their generals, who were unafraid to march upon Rome herself if necessary to defend their prerogatives. The Empire proper began under Caesar’s adopted heir, Gaius Octavius, later known as Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus and still later as the first actual emperor, Augustus. Octavian ruled from the defeat of Antony at Actium in 31 B.C.E. Republican Romans abhorred the idea of being ruled by a king, and it was a great insult to accuse a man of wanting to be King of Rome.
19. Forum prostitute. Among the many denizens of the Forum Romanum were prostitutes—and merchants, thieves, politicians (if that is not redundant), pedagogues, priests, and more.
20. Tufa. See the Glossary.
21. Greek phalanx. A fighting formation used by the Greeks and Macedonians. By Scipio’s day it was pretty much obsolete, at least in the face of Roman tactics. The phalanx was a solid body of fighting men armed with spears. They lined up tightly, with those behind pushing forward and those in front protected by a wall of interlocked shields. Very effective in its day—the winning formula for Sparta.
22. Scipio’s impiousness and lack of superstition. Most sources tell of Scipio’s fame for praying to the gods, which gave his men confidence. Supposedly he invoked the aid of Neptune in his conquest of New Carthage in Spain. But I wanted to illustrate Scipio’s independent stance of mind, so I chose to make him largely irreligious (he may have believed in Rome’s gods, but I have him skeptical of the idea that the gods intervene directly in man’s affairs). To do this, I show him laughing at superstition and accused of impiety. Later, when he gains major command, I’ll show him somewhat duplicitously using religion to motivate his simple country legionaries. Of course, the main thrust of his independent mind is his original thinking about reforming Roman tactics—which is historically accurate whether the impiety I show is or not.
23. Tata. Roman children called their father’s Tata, a pet name similar to Daddy.
24. Regulus. In 255 B.C.E., M. Atilius Regulus invaded the promontory on which Carthage sat. His colleague L. Manlius Vulso returned to Rome for the winter, and Regulus made advances, capturing several towns. Carthage recruited more mercenaries, including a Spartan named Xanthippus, who took over command of Carthage’s troops and beat Regulus, who was captured. According to legend (probably not true), Regulus was sent with a Carthaginian delegation to Rome, on his promise to support the delegation. He reneged, refused to cooperate, and was taken back to Carthage, where he died under horrible torture. In ten years of war prior to this point, Rome had some success, winning several naval engagements, including one by Regulus and Vulso off Cape Ecnomus in Sicily. After the rescue of Regulus’s surviving soldiers, Rome went on to win the war by virtue of outdoing Carthage at sea. Rome imposed harsh indemnities on Carthage in a treaty negotiated on the Carthaginian side by Hannibal’s father, Hamilcar Barca.
25. Rome’s political factions. In Roman Politics, H.H. Scullard shows the shifting alliances that made up Rome’s political factions in Scipio’s day. These were not political parties in the modern sense, but groups aligned on strong individuals and family ties rather than on ideological issues—though the Aemilian-Scipionic faction was largely pro-war before and into the Second Punic War, while the Fabian faction was in opposition.
26. Hannibal’s war buildup. Hannibal’s recruiting, his intelligence network, his consolidation of Spain south of the Ebro, and his seeding of the tribes along his planned invasion route with gold are covered in all of the sources on Hannibal. See Bibliography under Hannibal.
27. Fabius Buteo as head of delegation to Carthage. The annalistic sources show some confusion over who led this delegation, but the consensus leans towards M. Fabius Buteo rather than Q. Fabius Maximus. See Magistrates for 218 B.C.E., Scullard’s Roman Politics, and his History 753-146.
28. Timing of the delegation to Carthage. This and many other specific dates for events throughout the novel are my own guesses, since in many cases there is little information on exactly when in a given year (or sometimes even in which year) an event took place. The historical record for this period of Rome’s history is much sparser than the record during the late Republic (Caesar’s day) and the Empire. Besides that sparseness, many of the sources that did exist—such as Livy and Polybius—are full of gaps due to lost portions of their books. This means the level of invention in my story is considerably higher than, say, Colleen McCullough’s.
29. Children of L. Aemilius Paullus, the consul of 219 and 216 B.C.E. His son Lucius was later to conquer Macedonia in 168 B.C.E. It’s known that young Lucius’s sister Aemilia grew up to marry P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus (my story’s “Scipio”). But I’ve invented two older sisters for that Aemilia, making her Aemilia Tertia.
30. The garden of the L. Aemilius Paullus home. I mention this garden for 218 B.C.E., a time when the formal peristyle gardens so prominent in Imperial Rome and the late Republic had not yet become known in Rome. This is a simpler garden for a simpler era—when much in Rome was still conservative and traditional, long before events overthrew the staid old Republic.
31. Recipe for the dinner at L. Aemilius Paullus’s home. This and other recipes I’ve borrowed mainly from Maria Cozzini Giacosa’s wonderful book, A Taste of Ancient Rome. Some other recipes are from Jane Renfrew’s Food and Cooking in Roman Britain: History and Recipes.
32. Drawing of the lots for consular postings. The urn and the wooden balls are described in Greek and Roman Elections, Appendix II (p. 230).