oners kept before the triumph? This must have been an especially press-
ing question when, as often in the late Republic, a period of months or
even years elapsed between the victory and the parade itself.
A strategic selection of some of the most impressive captives is cer-
tainly the model suggested by Josephus, writing of the aftermath of Ti-
tus’ suppression of the Jewish revolt. He refers to “the tallest and most
beautiful” of the young prisoners being reserved for the triumph, while
the others (after the hard core or the particularly villainous had been put
to death) were sent to the mines and amphitheaters or sold into slavery.
Scipio Aemilianus, too, according to Appian, picked out fifty of the sur-
vivors of the siege of Numantia for his triumph of 132 bce (though these
could hardly have been fine specimens, given the terrible conditions of
the siege); the rest were sold.25
Other ancient writers, however, refer to the large-scale transport of
prisoners to Rome: Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus’ captive Sardinians in
175 bce, who were so numerous (and therefore cheap) that, according to
one ancient theory, they gave rise to the puzzling Roman catchphrase
“Sardi venales!” “Sardinians for sale!” Or the full complement of prison-
ers who, Polybius implies, were sent to Rome in 225 bce for Lucius
Aemilius Papus’ triumph over the Gauls.26 All kinds of circumstances
might have encouraged a mass display of prisoners; Gracchus, for exam-
ple, may have used the human profits, in the shape of slave captives, to
make up for the absence of rich booty from Sardinia.27
KINGS AND FOREIGNERS
This vagueness over the number of captives put on show—however
frustrating for us—is not a mere lapse on the part of the ancient writers
on whom we depend for our information. They were concerned with
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significantly different issues, in particular with the rank, status, and ex-
otic character of the headline captives. On these topics they offer de-
tailed and specific accounts, even if not always consistent and compati-
ble. Livy, for example, underlined his disagreement with Polybius on the
parade of the Numidian prince Syphax in Scipio Africanus’ triumph of
201 bce. Polybius had claimed that he was exhibited in the procession,
Livy at one point claimed to know better—that Syphax had actually
died at Tibur before the triumph took place.28 Likewise, as we have al-
ready seen, different traditions were handed down of Zenobia’s role in
Aurelian’s triumph: did she die en route to Rome or was she the chief
captive on parade?
What seems to have counted for most, in the written versions of the
Roman triumph at least, was the display of defeated monarchs and their
royal families. Augustus pares this down to its essentials, boasting in his
own account of his Res Gestae (Achievements): “In my triumphs nine
monarchs or children of monarchs were led before my chariot.”29 But
this emphasis on celebrity captives has a long history throughout trium-
phal narratives. In contrast to the austere anonymity of Augustus’ de-
scription (perhaps he was well advised to disguise the fact that two of the
“children of monarchs,” Alexander and Cleopatra [junior], were also
children of a leading Roman senator, Mark Antony), writers often lov-
ingly recorded the resonant names of these high-status prisoners. We
have already seen that the triumph of Pompey in 61 bce was adorned
with a royal family whose names prompted memories of famous past
conflicts between West and East. Livy makes just this point about the
family of King Perseus on display in Aemilius Paullus’ parade in 167 bce.
The two young princes were called, with an eye on the glorious Macedo-
nian past, Philip and Alexander, “tanta nomina” (“such great names”).30
The roll call of these monarchs, princes, princesses, and “chieftains”
(the belittling title we like to give to the proud kings of “barbarian
tribes”) is an evocative one; it includes Gentius, king of Illyricum, plus
his wife, children, and brother, in the triumph of Lucius Anicius Gallus
in 167 bce (only a few months after Aemilius Paullus’ extravaganza with
King Perseus); Bituitus, king of the Gallic Arverni, in the triumph of
Captives on Parade
121
Fabius Maximus in 120; Jugurtha, king of Numidia, and his two sons in
Marius’ triumph in 104; Arsinoe, Cleopatra’s elder sister, young prince
Juba of Mauretania, and the Gallic chieftain Vercingetorix in Caesar’s
triumphs in 46.31 And this is not to mention all the vaguer references,
projected as far back as the early Republic, to “the noble captives” in the
procession, “the enemy generals” or “the purple-clad” walking before
the triumphal chariot. “The royal generals, prefects, and nobles, thirty-
two of them, were paraded before the victor’s chariot,” as Livy typically
notes of the celebration of Scipio Asiaticus’ defeat of King Antiochus
in 189 bce. It was even something of a cliché of Roman word play that
triumphs involved the enemy duces (“leaders”) themselves being ducti
(“led” as prisoners) in the victory parade.32
The triumph, as it came to be written up at least, was a key context in
which Rome dramatized the conflict between its own political system—
whether the Republic or the autocratic Principate that officially dis-
avowed the name “monarchy”—and the kings and kingship which char-
acterized so much of the outside world. Of course, many Roman tri-
umphs did not actually celebrate victories over kings; still less did they
have a king on display in the parade. Nevertheless, kings were seen as the
ideal adversaries of Roman military might. They dominated the imagi-
native reconstructions of historical triumphs; and the inscribed trium-
phal Fasti in the Forum specified carefully when the celebration had
boasted a royal victim, by adding the king’s name to the usual formula
of defeat—“de Aetolis et rege Antiocho,” “over the Aetolians and King
Antiochus. ”33 No other category of enemy was picked out in the inscrip-
tion in this way.
Kings also provided an image of triumphal victims that was repeat-
edly reworked in Roman fantasy, humor, and satire. When the younger
Pliny, in the published (and no doubt much embellished) version of the
speech he delivered on taking up his consulship in 100 ce, projects an
image of the emperor Trajan’s future triumph, it is a triumph over
Dacian kings that he calls to mind, with a stress once more on the royal
names. “I can almost see the magnificent names of the enemy leaders—
and the physique which is a match for those names.” He goes on to
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imagine single combat between Trajan and the enemy king, “if any of
those kings would dare to engage with you hand to hand.” (Not so hon-
orable, the behavior of the later emperor Lucius Verus, who is said to
have “brought actors from Syria as if he were bringing a group of kings
to his triumph.”)34 This same focus on triumphal royalty underlies the
quip of Florus about the celebration in 146 bce which followed Metellus
Macedonicus’ victory over Andriscus, an implausible adventurer who
had claimed to be the son and heir of King Perseus of Macedon. The
joke was that he did achieve royal status in the end, for in his defeat “the