scribed the documents themselves, or took them from earlier literary ac-
Pompey’s Finest Hour?
39
counts, reliable or not. And we cannot always work out what the origi-
nal document was.
For example, a copy of one inscription, listing Pompey’s conquests in
detail and noting his generous offering to “the goddess,” was included in
a (now lost) book of the Bibliotheca Historia (Library of History) by the
Greek historian Diodorus—and is known to us only because of its curi-
ous preservation in a tenth-century Byzantine anthology. Some scholars
take it to be a Greek translation of the original dedicatory inscription of
Pompey’s Temple of Venus Victrix (or of Minerva). Others argue that it
is not from Rome at all but the original Greek record of some dedication
by Pompey in the East, perhaps at the famous Temple of Artemis at
Ephesus. Others imagine that it is not a single text, but a composite of a
number of documents translated by Diodorus then sewn together prob-
ably by his Byzantine anthologizer. Which of these solutions is correct is
an entirely open question.80
The numbers given for cash or captives, for spoils or ships taken, re-
main the most tendentious area of all. Ancient records of figures such as
these are almost always controversiaclass="underline" not only were they easily suscepti-
ble to exaggeration (more euphemistically, “rounding up”) in antiquity
itself, but in the process of transmission by later scribes, who most likely
had very little idea of the significance or plausibility of these numbers,
they were very easily corrupted. The question is which ones have been
corrupted, by how much, and on what principle they can be corrected.81
Various suggestions have been made for regularizing some of the figures
cited for Pompey’s triumphs. For example, Pliny’s impossible 12,183,000
for the number of enemy prisoners and casualties has been ingeniously
reduced to 121,083 and in the process brought into line with the sum to-
tal of enemy troops said to have been killed, imprisoned, or put to flight
at different stages of the campaign in Plutarch’s account: an aggregate
(though Plutarch does not do the calculation himself ) of 121,000.82
In general, however, modern historians have been more inclined than
we might expect to give some credence to the raw numbers cited for the
profits of the campaigns and the cash distributed to the soldiers. This is
partly because, for all their problems, these figures have proved too
Th e
R o m a n Tr i u m p h
4 0
tempting a historical source to discard: it is only from the total amount
said to be distributed to the soldiers, combined with the level of individ-
ual donatives, that any estimate has been possible of the number of
troops under Pompey’s command; and it is from Plutarch’s claims about
the annual tax revenue of the Roman Empire and Pompey’s additions to
it that many an ambitious theory on Roman economic history has been
launched.83 This has meant turning a relatively blind eye to inconve-
nient contradictions between different figures in different ancient writ-
ers. Pliny, for example, claims that from his booty Pompey paid 50 mil-
lion denarii into the treasury, while Plutarch gives a figure more than
twice as much: 120 million denarii.84 It has also meant not giving weight
to other, conflicting indications. It seems implausible—even if not im-
possible—that Pompey should have made distributions to his troops on
the scale reported without some noticeable impact on the quantity of
Roman coins minted. But in so far as we can reconstruct the pattern of
Roman minting and coin circulation through this period, Pompey’s
donatives and the influx of booty into Rome and subsequent public ex-
penditure seem to have made (suspiciously) no impact at all.85
So where does this leave our understanding of Pompey’s triumph? We
are confronted with what is a common dilemma in studying the ancient
world. Some of the information transmitted to us must be inaccurate,
even flagrantly so; some of it may well be broadly reliable. But we have
few clear criteria (beyond hunch and frankly a priori notions of plausi-
bility, compatibility, and coherence) that enable us to distinguish what is
“accurate” from what is not. How, for example, do we evaluate the ob-
jects said to have been displayed in the procession? Reject the eight-cu-
bit solid gold statue because it is simply too big to be true? Accept the
wagonloads of precious vessels because we have a specimen that seems
to match up, and the pearl head because Pliny is so insistent about it?
Suspect some exaggeration (but not perhaps outright invention) when
it comes to the golden mountain with the vine or that extraordinary
sundial?
Yet to think about this triumph principally in terms of the “accuracy”
of our sources—and so how best we might reconstruct the events as they
Pompey’s Finest Hour?
41
happened on the day—is in many important ways to miss the point. It
is, of course, right and proper to recognize that the surviving written ac-
counts do not offer a direct window onto the ceremonies; not even eye-
witness narratives do that (as we know from our own experience, as well
as from the study of numerous Renaissance and early modern rituals,
where an abundance of primary documentation in fact proliferates the
problems of reading and reconstructing).86 But the point is that “the
events as they happened on the day” are only one part of the story of
this, or any, triumph.
The triumph of Pompey is not simply, or even primarily, about what
happened on September 28 and 29, 61 bce. It is also about the ways
in which it was subsequently remembered, embellished, argued over,
decried, and incorporated into the wider mythology of the Roman tri-
umph as a historical institution and cultural category. Like all cere-
monies—from coronations to funerals, graduation to mardi gras—its
meaning must lie as much in the recollection and re-presentation of the
proceedings as in the transient proceedings themselves. Its story is al-
ways in the telling. The exaggerations, the distortions, the selective am-
nesia are all part of the plot—as this book will show.
c h a p t e r
II
The Impact of the Triumph
ROMAN TRIUMPHAL CULTURE
The triumph left a vivid mark on Roman life, history, and culture.
At some periods the ceremony was more or less an annual event in the
city. In the ten years between 260 and 251 bce, for example, twelve tri-
umphs are recorded, thanks to successful Roman campaigns against the
Carthaginians. Pompey’s triumph in 71 was the last in a bumper year
that had already seen three triumphal processions. Many of these occa-
sions were memorialized by Roman writers who recounted—and, no
doubt, embroidered—the controversies and disputes that sometimes
preceded them, as well as the character of the processions themselves,
with their placards and paintings, captives, precious booty, and occa-
sionally unexpected stunts. Some were more unexpected than others. In
117–118 ce a triumph celebrated the emperor Trajan’s victory over the
Parthians. But Trajan himself was, in fact, already dead; his place in the
triumphal chariot was taken by a dummy.1
Triumphs offered a suitable climax to poems celebrating Roman
achievement. Silius Italicus, writing in the first century ce, made the
triumph of Scipio Africanus the culmination of his verse account of