Roman Games (24 page)

Appendix

The Roman Calendar

In the Roman calendar, each month contained three “signpost” days: the Kalends (the first day of the month), the Nones (either the fifth or the seventh), and the Ides (the thirteenth or fifteenth). After the Kalends was past, the days were counted as so-and-so many days before the Nones, then before the Ides, and then before the Kalends of the following month.

The story takes place during the first part of September (which Domitian had renamed
Germanicus
in honor of his victories in Germany.) The modern dates with their Roman equivalents are as follows:

The Kalends of Germanicus September 1

The 4th day before the Nones September 2

The 3rd day before the Nones September 3

The day before the Nones September 4

The Nones of Germanicus September 5

The 8th day before the Ides September 6

The 7th day before the Ides September 7

The 6th day before the Ides September 8

The 5th day before the Ides September 9

The 4th day before the Ides September 10

The 3rd day before the Ides September 11

The day before the Ides September 12

The Ides of Germanicus September 13

The 18th day before the Kalends of Domitian September 14

The 17th day before the Kalends September 15

The 16th day before the Kalends September 16

The 15th day before the Kalends September 17

The 14th day before the Kalends September 18

Roman Time-Keeping

Romans divided the day, from sunup to sundown, and the night from sundown to dawn into twelve
horae.
As the length of the day and night varied throughout the year, one of these “hours” could be as short as forty-five minutes or as long as seventy-five. In September, when the days and nights are of about equal length, the hora came closest to our standard sixty-minute hour. The first hour of the day in September was about 6:00 a.m. The sixth hour was noon; the twelfth hour, sundown. And similarly, the first hour of the night was about 6:00 p.m., the sixth hour was midnight, and the twelfth hour was the hour just before dawn.

Emperors from Augustus to Trajan

The Julio-Claudian Dynasty

Augustus, 27 B.C. – 14 A.D.
Tiberius, 14 – 37
Caligula, 37 – 41
Claudius, 41 – 54
Nero, 54 – 68

The Year of Three Emperors

Galba, Otho, Vitellius, 69

The Flavian Dynasty

Vespasian, 69 – 79
Titus, 79 – 81
Domitian, 81 – 96

The Adoptive Emperors

Nerva, 96 – 98
Trajan, 98 – 117

Glossary

Atrium:
The central room in a Roman house, lying on an axis between the vestibule and the
tablinum

Caldarium:
The hot water pool in a Roman bathhouse

Capitolium:
The Capitoline Hill; site of the temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva

Cinaedus:
A lewd male dancer in the pantomime

Clemens:
Merciful

Concubina:
A concubine. Unlike a casual sex-slave, the concubine had certain legally defined rights. Senators were not permitted to form legal marriages with women from degrading occupations such as actresses, prostitutes, or circus performers and so took them as concubines.

Culus:
Asshole

Cunnus:
Cunt

Denarius:
A Roman silver coin equal to four sesterces (See below.)

Digitus infamis:
The extended middle finger

Dignitas:
Status, standing

Domus Augustana:
The private apartments of Domitian’s palace

Domus Flavia:
The portion of Domitian’s palace reserved for public business and state banquets

Familia:
Not only ‘family’ in our sense but the slaves and freedmen of a household. Freed slaves continued to maintain close ties with their former master, who became their patron.

Fasces:
Bundles of rods and axes, representing the magistrate’s power to punish and execute.

Fellator:
Cocksucker

Filius familias:
The son and heir

Frigidarium:
The cold water pool in a Roman bath

Fututor:
Fucker

Gravitas:
Authority, serious demeanor

Honoris causa:
Honorary

Impluvium:
The shallow catch-pool in the center of the atrium beneath the open roof

Insula:
A multistory apartment building, often in ruinous condition

Lares
and
Penates:
The household gods

Lictor:
An attendant of a senior magistrate or the emperor

Lupa:
Prostitute (literally, she-wolf)

Maenad:
A frenzied female devotee of the god Bacchus

Mehercule
(may-HAIR-coo-lay): So help me Hercules!

Mentula:
Prick

Merda:
Shit

Mos maiorum:
The way of the ancestors, tradition

Palla:
A woman’s cloak

Paterfamilias:
The oldest living male in a family, even if unmarried or childless (He had
patria potestas
over his
familia
, and only he could legally own anything.)

Patria potestas:
The father’s power of life and death over his children and slaves

Pica:
In ancient medicine, a morbid condition thought to accompany pregnancy

Pontifex maximus:
The chief priest of Rome. (In the imperial age this post was always held by the emperor.)

Popina:
A fast-food restaurant

Praetor:
A Roman magistrate with judicial functions

Quirites:
A ritual term for Roman citizens

Salutatio:
The morning ceremony in which clients paid court to their patron in return for a handout of food or money

Salve:
“Greetings”

Sestertius
(in English, sesterce): A silver coin equal to a quarter of a
denarius
used to count small or large sums of money.

Sica:
A curved dagger

Sistrum:
A rattle made of bronze or other metal used in ritual performances by priests and priestesses of Isis

Stola:
A woman’s dress

Tablinum:
The master’s office in a Roman house

Tepidarium:
The warm water pool in a Roman bath

Thermae:
Large public baths

Triclinium:
The dining room (specifically, the dining table with couches on three sides, each couch holding three diners)

Tullianum:
Rome’s prison. Located in the Forum, it was quite small and used as a holding cell for political prisoners, generally of high status, awaiting trial or execution.

Vale:
‘Goodbye’

Vestis:
Clothing

Victimarius:
An attendant at a sacrifice who slaughters the animal

Author’s Note

The Roman historian Dio Cassius writes: At this time [the 90s A.D.] some people made a practice of smearing needles with poison and pricking with them whomever they pleased. From this sprang the idea for my story. From Dio also comes the description of the bizarre “black banquet” that the emperor hosted, although I have put my own interpretation on his motive.

Sextus Ingentius Verpa and his family are fictitious. However, the conspiracy to assassinate Domitian is historical and well documented by both Dio and by Suetonius, in his biography of the emperor.

The most valuable source for the social background of the period are the letters of my protagonist, Pliny the Younger (as he is called in English to distinguish him from his uncle, the author of the
Natural History
)
.
I have made use of numerous events described in the
Letters
(though without regard to their chronology). Perhaps most curious to the reader will be Pliny’s observation of the floating islands (actually dense mats of reeds) in Lake Vadimon. I have followed his description exactly. He himself could offer no explanation for this startling
trompe-l’oeil
.

A different slant on the mores of the age is provided by the poet Martial, whose
Epigrams
can be read in countless English translations—some bawdier than others. The translations in the novel (plus one poem that Martial never wrote) are my own.

Martial had several literary patrons, but Pliny is not known to have been one of them. Nevertheless, the two men did know each other and Pliny did, in fact, pay Martial’s passage back to Spain and see him off. Based on this I have ventured to imagine a patron-client bond between them.

This is a work of fiction and I have taken a few liberties with history. I have coined the title “Purissima” for the vestalis maxima. Pliny never held the office of vice-prefect of Rome and is not known to have investigated a murder. I have predated his marriage to Calpurnia by several years. But, of his three wives, she was the last and the only one that he ever mentions. She was, in fact, less than half his age when they married and, she did suffer a miscarriage. They never succeeded in having children.

Concerning the religion of Clemens and Domitilla, there continues to be debate as to whether their “atheism” took the form of Judaism or Christianity—they are claimed as martyrs by both faiths. I have chosen to follow Dio, who says they were accused of “atheism and Jewish practices.” The so-called God-fearers (Romans and Greeks who were attracted to Jewish monotheism and morality) are authentic. Christianity was still in its infancy, especially in the Latin-speaking half of the Empire. (Some years after the date of our story, Pliny, as governor of Bithynia, had occasion to investigate accusations of Christianity.) Isis worship, on the other hand, was enormously popular.

The gouty old senator, Corellius Rufus (of whose death Pliny writes a moving account in the
Letters),
was a fierce critic of Domitian, but there is no evidence that he participated in the conspiracy to assassinate him. Soranus of Ephesus is not known to have been Pliny’s physician, but he was beginning his career in Rome at about this time. His
Gynecology
makes fascinating reading.

Finally, the execution of the Chief Vestal Cornelia by suffocation in an underground chamber actually happened and is described in detail in our sources.

Bibliography

For readers interested in learning more about Pliny’s Rome and the background to this story, I suggest the following as a good starting point: