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Notes: Chapter 5

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Notes for Chapter 5. Scipio, Massilia, 218 B.C.

1. Gallic attack on Roman colonies in Italian Gaul, 218 B.C.E. As the attack on Placentia and Cremona is (probably) peripheral to the Hannibal story (unless Hannibal did help foment it), I’ve abbreviated it here, but the story is a good one, and you can read what I wrote about it initially.
2. Household duties. As a high-born, wealthy Roman matron, Scipio’s mother, Pomponia, would have charge of running the household. Supervising the kitchen staff, the cleaning staff, and so on. Planning meals and parties. Supervising the slaves or freedmen and -women who cared for her children. Keeping household books.
3. Domina, Domine. Titles of address used by slaves or freedmen for their masters/patrons. Roughly equivalent to Sir and Madam. The title for an unmarried girl was Dominilla. See Glossary.
4. Loyalty of slaves. Undoubtedly the majority of slaves in ancient Rome hated their station and, probably, their masters. But many, particularly those in lifelong servitude with no prior experience of freedom, were often also quite loyal and loving and were frequently treated well, almost as members of the family.
5. Taking slaves along on a military campaign. Low-born, relatively poor men served in the army as rank-and-file soldiers or noncommissioned officers (centurions, decurions), but their social betters, wealthier and high born, served as officers: tribunes, legates (in the later Republic), and legion commanders. These privileged men may often have taken one or a few personal slaves along on campaign to tend to their tents, meals, personal effects, and persons.
6. Wooden sword. Boys taking military training on the Campus Martius used wooden swords for practice, as did actual legionaries during training.
7. Crucify. Crucifixion was widely practiced in the ancient world—by modern standards a barbaric place even in its most civilized centers—especially in Rome and Carthage. The cross was a pair of beams arranged in an X shape, not a T.
8. Carthaginian Senate. While the government of Carthage evolved like most governing systems, and while our knowledge of it is limited due to the loss of most Carthaginian records, in Hannibal’s time the government consisted of elected magistrates as in Rome. These were elected for short terms, probably one to five years and controlled by checks and balances in other bodies, including a Senate (though it was no doubt called something different) and a council of 104 judges called “The One Hundred.” The magistrates consisted of two Suffetes or Shofets, equivalent to Roman consuls, plus other, lesser magistrates. The Suffetes were elected annually (but apparently could serve multiple terms, since Hannibal is known to have been Suffete for five years after his defeat), the requirements being wealth, birth, and a strong political following. Generals and other officials were also elected. Elected officials were supervised primarily by The One Hundred. The Senate consisted of several hundred life members, chosen from the wealthy aristocratic class. Many military officers were trained in an elite organization called the Sacred Band. Due to its small population, Carthage had no obligatory military service. Instead, they used mercenaries commanded by Carthaginian officers.
9. “Usually with the shore in sight.” Ancient sailors lacked means other than sun and stars for navigation, and they sailed mostly in rather frail ships. Because of the great danger of sudden storms (they had no modern weather gear or satellite weather reports) and the difficulty of navigation (no compasses or sextants), they often hugged coastlines rather than venturing out over the deeps away from land.
10. Marcus Livius’s father, Marcus Livius Salinator senior, served as consul in 219 B.C.E. and then as ambassador to Carthage. Shortly after, one of his tribunes, Gaius Claudius Nero, accused Livius of embezzlement while distributing the spoils he had won in Illyria. Although not convicted, Livius fled to his Campanian estates, where he sulked over the way he had been treated. I have young Marcus Livius develop a deep hatred of Gaius Claudius Nero, which will later play into his friend Scipio’s career in Spain.
11. “Not to partake of fire or water.” Republican Rome did not execute her citizens—except for extreme offenses, such as murder or treason, in which case they could be thrown from the Tarpeian Rock. Instead, the most extreme punishment in normal circumstances was exile some certain distance from Rome. Thus the punished could not partake of fire or water within that distance. Exiles often went to Greece, Egypt, or Massilia.
12. “Good Roman steadfastness.” Romans, and especially Roman women of the Republican period, are known for their great practicality and steadfastness. Roman mothers, in particular, had the reputation for wishing their sons to “return victorious or return on your shield.” [find source] Colleen McCullough’s Aurelia, mother of Caesar, and Robert Graves’ Livia, wife of Augustus, are good examples. The quintessential example was Cornelia, “mother of the Gracchi” (Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus). Cornelia was Scipio Africanus’s younger daughter, who married Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and bore him twelve children, only three of whom survived to adulthood. Her fortitude and rectitude were held up as exemplary in later centuries.
13. “A weepy slave needs a good flogging.” Romans could and did flog and otherwise punish their slaves, even to crucifying them in the garden. Most Romans were probably much less extreme, but some were notorious. Colleen McCullough paints Servilia, mother of Brutus and mistress of Caesar, as one who occasionally flogged or crucified her slaves. A few Romans were known to enjoy torturing their slaves. But many Romans were kind and decent to their slaves—though they were still slaves. Masters often manumitted slaves for good and long service, and such freedmen usually continued in their former master’s service, with pay. Some masters even paid their slaves a small wage.
14. Description of ancient Massilia (modern Marseilles, France). Most of this comes from Gallia Narbonensis: Southern France in Roman Times, by A.L.F. Rivet. In particular, I found Rivet’s map of the ancient city on page 221, based on archaeology, very useful. It shows the locations of the docks, the temple of Artemis, and the Greek theater where I have Scipio and Aphrodite meet. The map shows the city’s orientation to the Lacydon harbor and the Mediterranean. You can also see where the Romans probably camped, as the map shows a possible location for Gaius Trebonius’s camp over a hundred years later.
15. Rhodanus River. The ancient name of the modern Rhône River, whose headwaters are in the mountains of Switzerland and which runs down into central France, then down the middle of southern France to spill into the Mediterranean Sea through numerous mouths west of Marseilles (Massilia).
16. Oratory. Public speeches—in the Forum, the law courts, the Senate House, at funerals, and so forth—was probably to the Romans what TV is to us. Information, entertainment, and one of the routes to power and prominence, as witness the career of Cicero. My information on ancient rhetoric in this passage comes from my own background as a modern rhetorician (I spent twelve years teaching college composition and took my training under W. Ross Winterowd at the University of Southern California in the late 1970s) and from Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Cicero’s De Oratore. Callisthenes is based partly on Ross Winterowd and partly on a late uncle of mine, Guy Allmon.
17. Field of Mars. English translation of Campus Martius.
18. Twelve Tables. See Glossary.
19. Description of the docks in Massilia. This is mostly my imagination of what such a place would probably look and smell like.
20. The picture of ancient commerce—what products were shipped around. ……
21. Structure of the Greek theater in which Scipio meets Aphrodite. Many such theaters still exist all over the Mediterranean world. Among the examples I’ve seen are the large and small theaters in Pompeii. A theater of this sort does show up on the map of Massilia in Gallia Narbonensis….
22. Black-figure vase. Aphrodite’s vase is very old, perhaps four hundred years. Black-figure was an old style of Greek pottery, dating from the 6^th century B.C. Black-figure pots, according to Adkins & Adkins, Handbook to Life in Ancient Greece, had a light background of red or cream with black decorations, though these included a few other colors, such as red for men’s beards. Early black-figure pots pictured human figures and animals, often with themes of gods and heroes. Midway in the 6^th century, they started including everyday scenes, such as athletes and women at fountains. Late in the 6^th century, red-figure vases began to supersede black-figure. These reversed black-figure, with a black background and red figures.
23. Strawberry tree.