Harry Sidebottom - Blood and Steel

Forum of Augustus : Monumental complex built by the Emperor Augustus to the north of the Forum Romanum , including colonnades decorated with statues of Rome’s heroes and founders, and a temple of Mars.

Forum Romanum : The Roman Forum; oldest and most important public square in Rome, littered with honorific statues and monuments going back to the early Republic. Surrounded by temples, court buildings, arches, and the Curia.

Forum : Central square of a Roman city, site of the market-place, and government, judicial and religious buildings.

Frumentarii (singular Frumentarius ): Military unit based on the Caelian Hill in Rome; the Emperor’s secret police; messengers, spies, and assassins.

Gallia Narbonensis : Roman province of southern Gaul, roughly the French region of Provence.

Ganymede : In Greek mythology, the hero Ganymede, the most beautiful man amongst mortals, attracted the erotic desires of Zeus, was abducted by the god and made immortal.

Garamantes : Berber tribe living in southwestern Libya.

Gemellae : Roman garrison town; modern M’lili in northeastern Algeria.

Gemonian Steps : Stairs leading down to the Forum Romanum ; in the imperial period, became notorious as a site of execution: prisoners (including disgraced Emperors and Senators) were strangled at the top and their bodies thrown down into the forum.

Genius : The divine part of a man; philosophically, there was ambiguity as to whether the genius was external (like a guardian angel) or internal (like a divine spark).

Germania Superior : More southerly of Rome’s two German provinces.

Germania : The Roman provinces of Germany, but also used of the lands where the German tribes lived, ‘free’ Germany beyond direct Roman control.

Gordian Knot : In the ancient kingdom of Phrygia in western Turkey, a supposedly untieable knot, which, if solved, granted the loosener the throne; Alexander the Great simply cut it apart with his sword.

Gordiani : The Gordianus family; in English, Gordian.

Goth : From the confederation of Germanic tribes.

Gothia : The lands of the Goths, northeast of the Black Sea.

Gracchi : Members of the Gracchus family; famously produced two brothers who were assassinated for attempting to reform the Republic in the late second century BC.

Graeculus : Latin, ‘Little Greek’; Greeks called themselves Hellenes, Romans tended not to extend that courtesy but called them Graeci ; with casual contempt, Romans often went further, to Graculi .

Groma : The centre of a Roman army camp, named from the surveyor’s pole by which it was laid out.

Gulf of Utica : Named from the ancient city of Utica, now abandoned; the modern Gulf of Tunis, northern Tunisia.

Hades : Greek underworld.

Hadrumetum : City on the eastern coast of Africa Proconsularis , modern Sousse in Tunisia.

Hatra : Independent city state in northern Iraq, fought over by the Romans, Parthians, and Sassanid Persians in the early third century.

Hatrene : Inhabitant of Hatra.

Hecatomb : In Greco-Roman religion, a sacrifice to the gods of 100 cattle; from the Greek for one hundred.

Hellene : The Greeks’ name for themselves; often used with connotations of cultural superiority.

Hellespont : Ancient name for the Dardanelles strait, linking the Mediterranean and the Sea of Marmara.

Hephaistos : Greek god of the forge.

Hercules : In Greek mythology, mortal famed for his strength who subsequently became a god.

Hermes : Greek messenger god.

Himation : A Greek item of clothing, similar to a toga but less voluminous.

Hippodrome : Greek, literally ‘horse race’; stadium for chariot racing.

Hipposandals : Metal plates secured under the hooves of horses by leather straps; used before the introduction of horse shoes in the fifth century AD.

Hispania Tarraconensis : One of the three provinces into which the Romans divided the Spanish peninsula, the northeast corner.

Hispania : Roman name for the Iberian peninsula, modern Spain and Portugal.

Horrea Caelia : Modern Hergla on the northeastern shore of Tunisia.

Hostes : Latin, ‘enemies’.

House of the Vestals : Home of the Vestal Virgins, priestesses who tended the sacred fire of the goddess Vesta; situated east of the Roman Forum and on the south side of the Sacred Way, opposite the Temple of Venus and Rome.

Hubris : From the Greek hybris , ‘pride’, which expresses itself in the demeaning of others, and taken to excess results in divine punishment.

Iatrosophist : Ancient title for a professor of medicine.

Iazyges : Nomadic Sarmatian tribe living on the steppes of the Great Hungarian plain beyond the Danube.

Iberus : Ancient name for the river Ebro in Spain, which flows along the southern flank of the Pyrenees and into the Mediterranean.

Ides : Thirteenth day of the month in short months, the fifteenth in long months.

Ilerda : Roman town in Hispania Tarraconensis ; modern Lerida in northeastern Spain.

Imperator : Originally an epithet bestowed by troops on victorious generals, became a standard title of the Princeps , and thus origin of the English word emperor.

Imperium : Power of the Romans, i.e. the Roman empire, often referred to in full as the imperium Romanorum .

In Absentia : Latin, ‘while absent’.

Infamia : Latin, ‘shame, disgrace’. Prostitutes suffered infamia , and lacked most basic rights and protections in Roman law.

Intempesta : ‘unwholesome, unhealthy’; name given to the dead of night by the Romans.

Iobacchi : Members of secretive drinking clubs dedicated to the worship of Bacchus.

Ionic : From the area of western Turkey bordering the Aegean, settled by Greeks.

Isles of the Blessed : In Greek mythology, the paradise reserved for the shades of heroes.

Iuvenes : Latin, ‘young men’; also voluntary youth associations of Roman cities dedicated to combat sports and socializing.

Ixion : In Greek mythology, murdered his father-in-law and, though pitied by Zeus, king of the gods, tried to seduce his wife Hera; in punishment, he was bound to a fiery wheel for eternity.

Jupiter Optimus Maximus : Roman king of the gods, ‘Jupiter, Greatest and Best’.

Juvenalia : Public games, by this period including chariot races and beast hunts; an elaborate show exhibited by the Emperors on 1st January every year.