Draft of an article published in the 100th issue of Ancient Warfare magazine.
Of the long catalogue of historic single combats fought and won by Roman champions, the duel of Marcus Valerius and a Gallic warrior in 349 BC stands out. The fight is most famous as example of apparent divine intervention, but is actually more notable for the involvement of an interpreter.
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The Other Flamininus
History remembers Titus Quinctius Flamininus as the brilliant victor of the battle of Cynoscephalae (197 BC) and the liberator of Greece from Macedonian domination. The reputation of his brother, however, was ruined when he murdered a Gallic chief.
Lucius Quinctius Flamininus was consul in 192 BC and campaigned against the Ligures and the Boii. A chieftain of the Boii deserted, presented himself at consul’s camp and asked for protection. Drunk and seeking to impress the young scortum he had hired for the duration of the war, Lucius enquired if the prostitute would like to see the Gaul die? The boy, aggrieved at having been taken from Rome and missing a great gladiatorial spectacle, assented. The Gaul was still making his speech when Lucius grabbed his gladius and struck him on the head. The wounded chieftain attempted to escape, calling on the fides (faithfulness) of the Roman people and imploring those present in the tent to save him, but the consul pursued and stabbed him to death. Justice, of a sort, caught up with Lucius Flamininus in 184 BC when, for this and other crimes, he was expelled from the Senate by Cato the Censor (Livy 39.42.5-12).
Lurid as this tale is, it contains an important detail: the appeal of the unfortunate Gallic noble was delivered per interpretem – through an interpreter. The Romans had been fighting the Gauls for two centuries, so it should come as no surprise that a campaigning consul was accompanied by a Celtic interpreter, but notices of interpreters are surprisingly rare in the ancient sources.
Lucius Flamininus presumably also had a Ligurian interpreter. In fact, the murderous consul probably had a small corps of translators for treating with and imposing terms on opponents, gathering intelligence, communicating with allies and elements of his own army. The consul led legions of Latin-speaking Roman citizens, but Latin would not have been the first language for many other soldiers under his command. Some of the cohorts that fought alongside the legions were levied from Latin-speaking colonies and allies, and others from allies that spoke an array of Italian languages and dialects - Etruscan, Osco-Umbrian, Oscan, Picene, et cetera.
Hannibal used interpreters to communicate with his Gallic and Italic allies (Polybius 3.44.5; Livy 21.42.1, 22.13.6). At the battle of Raphia (217 BC), the exhortations of Ptolemy IV and Antiochus III to polyglot armies were delivered by interpreters (Polybius 5.83.7). The Persian prince Cyrus used a translator to transmit his orders to Greek mercenaries (Xenophon, Anabasis 1.2.17). Caesar utilized translators in the field and the role of the interpres/interprex was fundamental to the operations of the Roman Imperial army (Gallic War 1.19, 47; Campbell 2021).
In the Roman Republican army, officers of allied cohorts might be expected to be bilingual, or even multilingual. Consider Ennius, who served as a centurion in an allied cohort on Sardinia in 204 BC. Ennius was fluent in Oscan, Greek and Latin (Aulus Gellius 17.17.1), and, as a native of Rudiae, he was presumably familiar with Messapian. Like his philhellene brother, Lucius Flamininus was probably an accomplished Greek speaker. This was perhaps of limited use in Liguria and Cisalpine Gaul but Greek may have served as something of a lingua franca in the Mediterranean for traders, mercenaries and, in the Archaic and early Classical periods, facilitated the international ‘horizontal mobility’ of nobles from one elite society to another.
Etruscan and Oscan Speakers
Gnaeus Mucius Scaevola, the famed Roman hero, learned Etruscan from his nanny and was able pass as a native and infiltrate the camp of Lars Porsenna on the Janiculum in 508/7 BC (Dionysius of Halicarnassus 5.28.1). It was customary for noble Roman youths of the early Republic to be schooled in Etruscan (Livy 9.36.3) and when Caeso Quinctius, the patrician bully boy, went into exile in Etruria we can probably assume he could speak the language (461 BC).
While in exile, Caeso was suspected of plotting against Rome with the Volsci and Aequi (Livy 3.13.8; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 10.9.6). It may be that Caeso had acquired some facility with the Osco-Umbrian language of the Volsci. The Volsci had been present in Latium for decades and were not always at war with Rome. The man responsible for Caeso’s exile was Lucius Volscius Fictor, a former plebeian tribune. His family name indicates descent from Volscian migrants. As for Marcius Coiriolanus, could he personally speak Volscian when he defected from Rome in 491 BC? Perhaps, perhaps not. Caeso’s exile coincided with Appius Herdonius’ assault on Rome. The Sabine warlord seized the Capitol and Arx in a daring night-time raid. The Sabine territory and northern Latium shared a frontier. It might be wondered, then, if Herdonius or Attus Clausus, the Sabine leader who migrated to Rome with his followers in 504 BC, had some capacity with Latin? Maybe. Another solution is that Caeso’s possible intrigues, Coriolanus’ defection and the activities of Herdonius and Clausus were facilitated by interpreters.
The sons of the patrician Fabii were sent from Rome to be educated in Caere in southern Etruria. Well-versed in Etruscan language and manners, Marcus Fabius Maximus could pose as a local shepherd during a reconnaissance of the Ciminian Forest (309 BC), but knowledge Etruscan was not a given for elite Romans of this era. In the fighting around Rusellae (302 BC), the legate Gnaeus Fulvius Maximus had to call on bilingual soldiers from Caere to translate the Etruscan spoken by the enemy into Latin (Livy 9.36; 10.4.9).
A painting from a tomb on the Esquiline in Rome shows a Roman magistrate identified as Quintus Fabius parleying with an enemy commander named Marcus Fannius. A small fragment of a once extensive narrative frieze, the painting probably depicts episodes in the life of Quintus Fabius Rullianus, victor of Sentinum (295 BC) and brother of the explorer of the Ciminus. Dating to the first half of the third century BC, the tomb may be that of Rullianus himself or his son, Fabius Gurges (d. 265 BC).
The name Fannius suggests the enemy commander was a Samnite. Again, the simplest explanation is that interpreters were on hand at such parleys, but it is possible that Rullianus and Fannius spoke in Oscan. After all, the Romans had been fighting, negotiating and forming alliances with the Samnites and other Oscan speaking peoples since the mid-fourth century BC.
They might have conversed in Greek. Herennius Pontius, father of the Samnite general who humiliated the Romans at the Caudine Forks, famously discoursed with Plato and Archytas at Tarentum (Cicero, De Senectute 41). Considering their frequent interactions with the colonies of Magna Graecia, competence in Greek, or having a reliable interpreter, was likely a requisite for Samnite, Lucanian and Bruttian nobles.
Lucius Postumius Megellus, the contemporary of Rullianus, certainly spoke Greek. Note his Greek-derived cognomen; the proper Latin name would be Magnus, ‘the great’, and it was indicative of his ambitious, proud and overbearing character. As the Roman Senate’s envoy to Tarentum in 282 BC, the citizens mocked Megellus for his imperfect command of Greek. It is reported that his toga was shat on by a drunkard (Appian, Samnite Wars 2.16). This disgusting insult to a man of consular rank led to the outbreak of the Pyrrhic War.
On different sides in the Hannibalic War, the Roman Quinctius Crispinus and the Campanian Badius were fated to meet in single combat; Badius lost. Prior to the war, Badius was Crispinus’ hospes (guest friend). As a member of Capua’s cavalry, Badius was born into an Oscan-speaking aristocracy but, like all Capuans of his class, he held the full Roman citizenship and exercised his rights in Rome. During a period of illness, Badius was nursed in the house of his hospes in Rome. We can imagine the friends conversing in Latin and, following the fracture of their friendship, Badius delivering his challenge to single combat in the same language (Livy 25.18). However, it is probably going too far to assume that Italian aristocrats were habitually bilingual or multilingual.
It has been noted that Livy, like other ancient historians, ‘normally ignores the language barrier’ but ‘interpreters must in fact have been everywhere in the ancient world’ (Briscoe & Hornblower 2020, 197). Which brings us back to Marcus Valerius and the Gallic warrior who provocat per interpretem – challenged him to single combat through an interpreter (Livy 7.26.1). But first, some background.
Hand Gestures
In 367 BC, some 23 years after the disaster at the Allia and the capture of Rome, an army of Gauls returned to Latium. The Gallic plunders, operating out of Apulia, were seen off by the aged Roman hero Camillus, who had been appointed dictator for the emergency. Another Gallic army appeared in 361 BC, probably in the employ of Tibur and Praeneste, the principal rivals of Rome in Latium. The Gauls advanced down the Via Salaria and established a camp only a short distance from Rome where the road crossed the River Anio. The Romans marched out to oppose the Gauls. In the midst of the fighting for the bridge over the Anio, a Gallic warrior challenged the bravest of the Romans to meet him in single combat.
In the accounts of Quadrigarius and Livy, the Gaul delivered his challenge in Latin, but words were not really necessary to convey his meaning:
At the very height of the battle, when the two armies were fighting most fiercely, he began to make signs with his hand to both sides, to cease fighting. The combat ceased. As soon as silence was secured, he called out in a mighty voice that if anyone wished to engage him in single combat, he should come forward. This no one dared do, because of his huge size and savage appearance. Then the Gaul began to laugh at them and to stick out his tongue. (Quadrigarius fr. 10b (Peter) quoted by Aulus Gellius 9.13.8-12)
Livy also emphasises the Gaul sticking out his tongue, clearly an offensive and provocative gesture. Titus Manlius, a young military tribune accepted the challenge, but only after gaining the permission of his commander. Killing Gauls was in Manlius’ blood: he was the great-nephew of Capitolinus and the giant Gaul was duly dispatched. Manlius hacked the warrior’s head off (probably as a trophy) and proceeded to put on the blood-covered gold torque that had adorned the Gaul’s neck. The Roman army sang ribald songs of triumph and bestowed on the tribune the honorific name Torquatus (Aulus Gellius 9.13; Livy 7.9-11).
The shocked Gallic army slunk off to Tibur, where it was reprovisioned, and then headed for Campania. Tibur recalled the Gauls in 360 BC. They ravaged the territory of Rome’s Latin allies and again targeted Rome, but were defeated outside the Colline Gate.
Tibur and Praeneste continued to fight with Rome until 354 BC, but Gallic mercenaries or allies do not feature in accounts of the war. In 350 BC, however, the Gauls did return to Latium. They were defeated by Popillius Laenas, but it was no easy victory. The consul was severely wounded by a Gallic javelin (mataris) and the Gauls retreated into the Alban hills rather than evacuate Latium. The Gauls came down from Alba early in 349 BC and plundered settlements on the Latin plain and coast. At the same time, a fleet of Greek raiders ravaged the coast from Antium to the mouth of the Tiber. This may have been coincidental but it is suspected that the Gauls were in the employ of Syracause and being used to draw Roman forces inland. However, the Greeks and Gauls ended up fighting an inclusive battle somewhere on the coast.
The Romans raised yet more legions to face the dual threat. A praetor confronted the Greeks and the younger Camillus took the field against the Gauls, who had established a new camp on the Pomptine plain. Camillus did not wish to engage the Gauls in open battle but to frustrate their pillaging, and built his own camp in the vicinity of the Gallic headquarters.
The Raven
A Gallic warrior approached the Roman fortification and challenged any who dared to single combat. The challenge was accepted by Marcus Valerius, a military tribune aged 23. His duel with the Gaul entered into Roman legend.
It was believed that a corvus (raven), sent by a god or goddess to whom Marcus had uttered a hasty prayer, alighted first on the tribune’s helmet and then flew directly at the Gaul and clawed at his eyes. Tormented by the raven, the mighty Gaul was easily killed by the young tribune, the bird then returned to its perch on Marcus’ helmet. Thereafter Marcus wore a helmet with a decorated with a raven. The more prosaic explanation is that the Gaul sported a helmet surmounted with a model of a raven (like the example from Ciumești) or actual raven’s wings. As with the bloody torque taken by Titus Manlius, such a splendid helmet would form a key part of the spoils, and by wearing it Marcus Valerius could have acquired the famous cognomen Corvus.
The Roman army was elated by Marcus’ success, the Gauls were enraged, and a fight broke out over possession of the Gallic champion’s corpse. This developed into a general engagement in which the Gauls were defeated. The barbarians retreated into Campania and then headed for Apulia, clearly a base for Gallic mercenaries in south Italy. Camillus allowed the Gauls free passage out of Latium, preferring not to risk another battle with desperate warriors (Livy 7.26.1-10; Dionysius of Halicarnassus 15.1; Aulus Gellius 9.11).
As noted above, the Gaul made his challenge through an interpreter, perhaps a Latin renegade or a Gaul who acquired the language during service with the Tiburtes. The champion was accompanied by a translator because he was the dux, the commander of the Gallic force. And, if the dux was in the employ of Syracuse, and operating out of Oscan, Messapian and Greek-speaking Apulia, one suspects that he had other interpreters in his retinue.
References and Further Reading
J. Briscoe & S. Hornblower (eds), Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, Book XXII (Cambridge 2020)
R. Cowan, For the Glory of Rome (rev. ed. Barnsley 2017). See pages 10-11 and 102-183 for single combat and battles of champions in the Roman world.
D.B. Campbell, ‘The Roman Army in Detail: Fluent in Both Languages – Interpreters in the Roman Army’, Ancient Warfare XV-3 (2021), 52-55