Any particular reason for them being called Agrippa? (;
I really like the wip and I also appreciate it’s set in a sort of Late Roman Empire scenario.
Now I want to ask something if you don’t mind: ‘Will the Callous/Empathetic, Pious/Skeptical and Ambitious/Dutiful traits actually be required to take certain decisions, or will they be there just for unique dialogue and flavour text? Or will they have no role at all?’
Thank you for the answer. That’s frankly very refreshing to hear.
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Nothing particularly special, unfortunately. I went through a list of names and liked it the most.
Thank you! Only flavor text, I’m not a fan of locking options behind personality stats in IF, it’s a little limiting and restricts the player if they want their character to change over the course of the story.
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I gonna be honest, I thought there was more to the choice of name since Marcus Agrippa was Augustus’ (Octavian or Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus or another name that this bitch called himself, since Romans thought that name and title were the same damn thing) right-hand man
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Good reference, maybe it was something I remembered a bit while I was starting to write this story.
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Which fits oh so very well for the Prefect, since they are basically Julia’s problem-solver, just as Marcus was for Octavian.
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Yes, that’s why I thought there was something more and it wasn’t because “I like it”, which have nothing wrong, but normally when the name can be anything, most people let us choose or write it, so I found it curious.
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It makes my writing simpler, but would people like me to make the Prefect’s family name customizable? It’d take me a bit to go back through but I can do it.
EDIT: I’m going to just do it, I’d like to give people the chance to change it if they want.
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I just came across this recently-published book on the Roman Imperial Court and the transition from principate to late antiquity — several of the chapters feel particularly relevant. I’m giving it a read through now. Pretty good list of scholars contributing to this volume.
It’s not that the Romans thought name and title were the same thing, but rather that Octavian was an innovator in making the title for a victorious general into his very praenomen. Instead of “hello I’m Gaius,” he decided “Hello I’m Triumphing General.”
A dorky thing to do, but I guess when you’re in charge who’s going to say no? A pity we don’t have any writings from contemporaries to showcase what they thought about it.
The family name Caesar and the honorary name Augustus being turned into titles is also deeply weird from a traditional (that is, pre-principate) Roman perspective. But that was a slower process, only really fused into place when the competitions successors to the Julio-Claudians took the names without any family connection.
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This looks like an excellent resource, thank you for sharing it!
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I’m not going to pretend and say I’m a pro at Roman history or culture, but how would that explain Africanus, Britanicus, Germanicus, etc? These names were given after great conquest or something like that.
My layman’s knowledge has me believe those were cognomen (nicknames or third names, if you will), given to individuals based on achievements, physical traits or something that that was peculiar to them. You point out well that Africanus, Germanicus and the like were given based on military accomplishments — famous Scipio Africanus comes to mind.
Eventually, the cognomen bestowed upon an individual would be passed down the family over generations. Caesar is a fun such example. I believe it was first recorded during the 3rd century BCE and one of the most probable origins (there are others) of it is basically that somenone of the Julia family had really nice hair.
caesaries, caesariei [f.] E Noun
- hair
- long/flowing/luxuriant hair
- dark/beautiful hair
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Yup, but those aren’t titles, they’re adjectives. Africanus, Britannicus, Germanicus literally mean “The African,” “The Briton,” and “The German” respectively. We might call them victorious epithets – they’re certainly significant, but they’re different from Imperator (which was a title bestowed upon a victorious general who held imperium).
They definitely became part of Roman names and were inherited by children, they’re just not strictly speaking “titles.” Think of them more like honorifics. What Octavian did with Imperator was new – Africanus would be added to the end of your name, so Publius Cornelius Scipio got to add “Africanus” to the end of that. Octavian just replaced his praenomen Gaius with Imperator.
Augustus is complicated because it is an adjective too (the August One) but it was also used because Augustus wanted something unique to him as a name. We’re told by later writers such as Dio that he debated using the name Romulus too, but Augustus won out for being fresh and without overtly monarchical. And as I mentioned above, it later sort of morphed into a title (uniquely among all the names shared by emperors and princes, Augustus is ONLY ever given to the reigning emperor(s), to the point that Diocletian used it in his imperial college as the term for the two senior emperors).
And of course as the empire went on, the emperors did in fact plaster a bunch of different titles into their names. But it’s a weird emperor thing, rather than a typical Roman thing, is mostly what I wanted to get across.
Mostly right! You’re correct about cognomina being used for physical traits, achievements, etc. (as well as nicknames) but strictly speaking the victorious epithets like Africanus etc. are usually called agnomina. Essentially it’s added to your name, but a free-born Roman citizen male (especially an aristocrat) should already have the typical trinomina (three names).
Cognomina could be used to designate family branches, whereas agnomina were not (but they did still show descent – the children of those victorious generals would carry those names too, most famously Cornelia Africana the famous mother of the Gracchi brothers).
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I don’t know if it’s my bad english or not, but I found the way the sentence was written strange. Could anyone tell me if this is correct or not?
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It’s a typo from an earlier draft, thanks for pointing it out!
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That dinner scene was goated
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@Azan Really enjoy the demo so far, a well balance of story and gameplay with some fairly flashed out characters introduced, and am a fan for the third century crisis theme.
Have you considered an easy/cheat mode for the starting skill stats of the MC?
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Thank you!
When everything is done and dusted, I’ll consider the possibility, but right now my writing focus is going to be on new content, I think.
Brilliant. Only missing Augusta in the corner wishing she was anywhere but here.
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