I

iambic - the meter of the spoken parts in tragedy and old comedy; an iamb consists of two syllables, a short syllable followed by a long syllable.

Iamblichus - Greek novelist of the 2nd century CE; his most famous work was entitled The Babylonian History, which supposedly told stories told to the novel’s author by a Babylonian captive.

Iapetus - a Titan, son of Gaia and Uranus; father of Atlas, Epimetheus, and Prometheus by his sister Clymene, though other myths maintain that he married Asia or Asopis; helped Zeus overthrow Cronus.

ibex - a wild goat; for an example, see Harvard 1925.30.12 (image).

ibidem - (Latin) literally “in the same place”; abbreviated in books and journals as “ibid.”; used in scholarly citation to indicate another citation from a directly previously cited source.

iconographical subjects - symbolic situations.

idcirco - (Latin) for that purpose, on that account.

ideo - (Latin) for that reason.

Ides - in the Roman calendar the Ides fell on the following days: January 13, February 13, March 15, April 13, May 15, June 13, July 15, August 13, September 13, October 15, November 13, December 13; often interest, debts, and tuition were paid on the Ides.

ideoneus - (Latin) efficient ; in the Annales 1.58, Tacitus recounts a speech by Segestes in which he describes himself as an idoneus conciliator between the Romans and the Germans.

ientaculum - (Latin) for the average Roman, a light breakfast of bread and fresh fruit, which would sustain him/her until prandium, lunch.

imagery - the employment of images in a given passage of a literary work, a whole work or a group of works.

immemor - (Latin) unmindful, forgetful; Virgil uses this term to describe Ascanius in Book 9 of the Aeneid, saying that Ascanius would never be unmindful of the sacrifices made on the battlefield; he also describes the Trojans of being immemores, or unmindful, of the destruction that bringing the Trojan Horse inside the city walls would bring in Book 2.

immunes - (Latin) the skilled craftsmen in a legionary camp who were, as the Latin translate, "the exempt;" these men did not perform such routine tasks as ditch-digging and patrolling the ramparts because they posessed some specialised skill or trade which qualified them for special duties. The immunes may have included engineers, carpenters, masons, wagon-makers, blacksmiths, painters, farriers, surveyors, shipwrights, glaziers, fletchers, armourers, hunters, butchers, grooms, plumbers, bronze-smiths, lime and charcoal burners, and keepers of sacrificial animals.

imperial cults - worship of a Roman emperor as a god; Julius Caesar first proclaimed himself god-like on a statue in 44 BCE and Augustus, his adopted heir, built a temple to Divus Julius in Rome; other emperors were made gods after their deaths; during Hadrian’s time and after, the emperors had so much power that they also could proclaim themselves to be gods during their lifetimes; after the emperor Constantine I, however, imperial cults were no longer celebrated.

imperial province - territory that was under the power of the emperor; imperial provinces included Syria, Cappadocia and Germany.

• Teacher's Companion: Colonization

imperium -(Latin) “power”; in Rome, power over a community was signified by the term “imperium” and was visually indicated by the fasces and the presence of lictors.

imperium maius - (Latin) "the greatest power"; having imperius maius meant that the person holding the power was more powerful than all others; Augustus was given imperius maius proconsulare in 23 BCE.

impius - (Latin) without respect, irreverent.

impluvium - (Latin) in a Roman house, a basin built into the floor of the atrium that collected rain from the compluvium, or quadrangular skylight towards which the roof sloped that served as a source of light and air.

• Roman Living

impunitas - (Latin) this word means impunity or that one can avoid being punished for an action.

in exergue - (Latin) in reference to coins, it is the position of a being or thing below the main subject of the coin imprint.

inclinio - (Latin) to bend, to change, to waver.

incuse - in reference to coins, the action of stamping or hammering a figure on a coin; it is the impression made by the stamping of a coin.

industria - (Latin) hard-work, a Roman virtue.

ineptio - (Latin) to act like a fool.

infans - (Latin) literally means unable to speak; the word comes to mean child or infant.

iniuria - (Latin) injury, injustice, wrong.

insula - (Latin) Roman apartment complexes; an insula might have included up to eight apartment blocks built around an open courtyard, which provided much needed light; the complexes were three to five stories tall and could easily block the light for neighboring buildings; the first floor often housed merchants' shops, or tabernae; during the rise of the Roman empire, the majority of the Roman population was housed in rooms rented in insulae; these tenements became overcrowded and vulnerable to fire built with timber and mud bricks; thin walls were made out of opus craticum, which was a woven mixture of cane and mortar; the walls were neither waterproof nor fireproof; eventually emperors, such as Nero, imposed fire regulations; as a result of the upper stories lacked running water sanitation suffered; by the end of the fourth century BCE, insulae outnumbered domi twenty-six to one.

• Roman Living

integritas - (Latin) wholeness, integrity, health.

intelligentia - (Latin) intelligence.

investigo - (Latin) To investigate.

Ionia - a central portion of the coast of Asia Minor along with the islands off the coast which were inhabited by Greeks; in 499 BCE, the Ionians revolted against their Persian rulers, bringing about war between the Persians and the Greeks.

ira - (Latin) Anger.

irascor - (Latin) to be angry.

iratus - (Latin) angry, wrathful.

Iris - goddess of the rainbow, daughter of Thaumas and Electra, sister of the harpies; messenger of the gods.

Ismene - daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta, sister of the heroine in the Antigone.

Isis - an ancient Egyptian goddess, Isis was the daughter of Nut and Geb and the sister and wife of Osiris; in myth, Isis aided her husband during his reign as the king of Egypt and searched madly for his body after his death so that he might be given a proper burial.; Isis conceived her son Horus either through magic or by resurrecting Osiris.

Ancient Egyptian Gods - Isis

ithyphallic - an attribute referring to scenes of Bacchic festivals at which phalli were carried; for an example of an ithyphallic scene, see Boston 69.1052 (image).

iugerium - (Latin) Roman measurement of land, equal to 28,800 square feet or ~ 5/8 acre; in 367 BCE, the Lex Licinia Sextia limited how much public land a single person could have to 500 iugera.

Iulus - see Ascanius.

iuniperus - (Latin) juniper tree.

ius - (Latin) oath, right, justice.

ius Latii - (Latin) “Latin status”; to areas that the Roman Empire did not deem “Romanized” enough, they applied the idea of ius Latii; these communities were treated in the same way as the older communities in Latium; the magistrates of the land were given full Roman citizenship and the area became a municipium.

iustum - (Latin) what is right.

iuvenis - (Latin) Young; as a noun, this word means a young man.