“in the horse-racing stadia, which Romans call ‘circuses.’” These are usu-
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ally taken to be the Circus Flaminius at the start of the procession,
though it is not mentioned by Josephus, and the Circus Maximus,
which is what Josephus may have meant by the “theaters” that gave the
crowds “a better view.”64 Add to these locations the references to trium-
phal processions on the Sacra Via (or “sacred way”), which led some-
how—its exact path and extent is disputed—between the lower slopes of
the Palatine into and perhaps through the Forum; the story of Julius
Caesar’s anger when one of the tribunes did not rise to his feet when his
procession passed the “tribunes’” benches (near the senate house); and
the need sometimes to drop off prisoners for execution at the carcer at
the foot of the Capitoline.65 Join all these points together and it is easy
enough to trace a route round the city and up to the Temple of Jupiter
on the Capitol, such as the one marked out on our Plan (see p. 335).
The result is by no means implausible as a ceremonial route, though
several scholars have felt that at something less than 4 kilometers it
would have been hardly long enough for the number of participants and
the quantity of booty that is sometimes reported. Ernst Künzl, for exam-
ple, compares it with the Rose-Monday procession in Mainz—where,
in the year in which he observed it, some six thousand participants,
one hundred tractors and other motor vehicles, and almost four hun-
dred horses occupied a good 7 kilometers. By contrast, just one day of
Aemilius Paullus’ extravaganza in 167 bce is said in one report to have
included 2,700 wagonloads of captured weapons alone, never mind the
soldiers and captives and booty on display.66 But beyond such practical
difficulties (which might always be taken as a further hint that the fig-
ures reported are wildly exaggerated), one final puzzling reference to the
triumphal route shines a terrifyingly clear light onto modern assump-
tions, and modern disputes, about the ceremony as a whole.
According to Suetonius, “As Caesar rode through the Velabrum on
the day of his Gallic triumph [46 bce], the axle of his chariot broke and
he was all but thrown out.” This story appears to be matched in the
account of Dio, who refers to the incident taking place “in front of the
Temple of Fortune [or Felicitas] built by Lucullus.”67 The location of
that temple is not otherwise known, and no archaeological traces have
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103
been identified; but the combination of these references appears to lo-
cate it in “the Velabrum,” the valley between the Capitoline and the Pal-
atine that joins the Forum to the Forum Boarium. So far, so good. But
what was Caesar doing riding through the Velabrum? It is at first sight
a puzzling detour from the generally accepted route I have sketched
out. Two main solutions have been proposed. The first is that Caesar’s
triumph was taking a shorter route into the Forum. This involves imag-
ining that there were at least two possible triumphal itineraries: a long
version that went through the Circus Maximus then circled the Palatine
and made its way back to the Forum by the Sacra Via; and a much
shorter version that went directly down through the Velabrum into the
Forum. On this occasion, with a show of uncharacteristic modesty and
restraint, Caesar was taking the abbreviated path.68
The other argues precisely the reverse: namely, that all triumphs must
have gone this way. The standard route, instead of making its way di-
rectly from the Porta Carmentalis to the Circus Maximus through the
Forum Boarium, must have turned left down the street known as the
Vicus Iugarius as far as the Forum, then retraced its steps back up the
street on the other side of the Velabrum (the Vicus Tuscus) and then on
to the Circus Maximus. The presence of an Arch of Tiberius at the point
(probably) where the Vicus Iugarius meets the Forum is taken to sup-
port this version of the route.69
This second solution invests heavily in the idea of the conservatism of
Roman ritual. According to this line, it is inconceivable that any proces-
sional route in a religious system “as rigid and conservative as the Ro-
man state religion” could ever have varied: if Caesar took this path, then
so must have all triumphing generals from time immemorial.70 But more
than that, the very peculiarity of this detour down the Velabrum is itself
taken as proof of just how fossilized Roman ritual was. By the late Re-
public the Velabrum was a bustling commercial and residential zone,
but in the days of the early city it was believed to have been an un-
drained marsh. Any triumphing general wanting to complete a circuit of
the city before the sixth century bce (when the area was supposed to
have been drained) would have been prevented from proceeding straight
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across the marsh in this part of the city and would have been forced to
take a detour that clung to the sides of the valley. Caesar’s route then, so
the argument goes, shows us just how obsessively the topography of
early Rome was preserved in the ritual practice of later periods.71
The paradox of this apparently precious piece of evidence about Caesar’s
accident as he was riding through the Velabrum is that it is used to jus-
tify two completely contradictory claims about “the triumphal route”—
first, that the route could vary, with more than one possible itinerary
through the city, and second, that it was rigidly fixed, reflecting even in
the historical period the topographical constraints of the archaic city.
But this story has an even more surprising sting in the tail than that.
Never mind the problem that recent geological analysis suggests that the
Velabrum had not actually been a permanent bog since the neolithic pe-
riod.72 In our scholarly eagerness to follow Caesar down the Velabrum,
we have generally failed to ask if that is exactly where Suetonius claims
that he went. In fact, Suetonius’ Latin almost certainly means nothing of
the sort.
The phrase in question, Velabrum praetervehens, is usually translated
as “riding through” the Velabrum. This is not an impossible translation,
but all the same the verb praetervehor would be an odd choice to indicate
a route down through the Velabrum. The word is commonly used for
riding or sailing past something, even skirting or avoiding it.73 In this
case, a glance at the map would suggest that Caesar was not going
through or down the Velabrum at all but skirting or going past it—keeping it on his left, in other words—as he made straight (let’s suppose)
from the Campus Martius across the Forum Boarium to the Circus
Maximus. In which case, we are dealing neither with an alternative tri-
umphal route here nor with a curious detour fossilized in the itinerary
from the remote Roman past. Much more plausibly, the “Velabrum
loop” is the product of some loose reading of the Latin, over-enthusiasti-
cally interpreted.74
The fact is that we cannot map with certainty the route of any indi-
vidual triumphal procession; still less can we reconstruct “the” triumphal