one woman carries a baby, another has a child at her side; in front a plac-
ard presumably proclaimed their identity. Others travel in carts and
chariots of different designs: one distinctive pair make their way in a
covered wagon, pulled by oxen; other couples sit chained in horse-
drawn chariots (Fig. 22). All are, in a general sense, “in front of the char-
iot” (everything in this procession is). But they are not clustered to-
gether almost at the victor’s feet, as is so often assumed. In fact, in that
position of greatest honor, or humiliation, we find here some rather un-
distinguished attendants carrying booty and what is thought to be one
of the golden crowns often presented to the general.45
This is another case of the complex interrelationship between visual
imagery, literary representations, and the procession as it took place on
the streets—just as we saw with the puzzling figure of the slave in the
general’s chariot. The temptation to trust its documentary style (Could,
for example, those different types of prisoners’ wagons be tied in to
Porphyrio’s classification of them?) must always be balanced by the sense
that the sculptors were in the business of recreating a moving, perhaps
messy and disorganized procession as a work of art—and one that was to
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[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
evoke the ceremony around four sides of a monument, in miniature and
12 meters above the ground. In that process, there would have been
strong reasons for constructively rearranging any “regular order” that
guided the procession and redistributing the prisoners throughout its
length.46
On the other hand, in literary representations, there were strong im-
peratives to link closely the general and his chief captive and, in focusing
on the relations of the victor and the prisoners “in front of his chariot,”
Captives on Parade
127
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
Figure 21:
The small triumphal frieze of the Arch of Trajan at Beneventum (Fig. 10). The
procession runs all around the arch, leading from the group around the general in his chariot (bottom left, the northwest corner of the monument) to the Temple of Jupiter (top right). Approaching the temple is a series of animals for sacrifice, with their semiclad attendants ( victimarii). Through the rest of the procession the spoils of victory, carried shoulder-high, on fercula, and placards are interspersed with prisoners, some riding in carts (detail, Fig. 22), others walking.
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[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
Figure 22:
A pair of prisoners in an ox-drawn cart, from the small frieze of the Arch of
Trajan at Beneventum (Fig. 21, center of second register). Both are dressed in barbarian style, with cloaks and hats. One is chained, the other stretches out his hand in supplication—or horror.
to be blind to the diversity of the parade. The bottom line is that differ-
ent ways of seeing the procession conjured different processional orders.
EXECUTION
We seem to be on much firmer ground with the fate of the captives in
the procession. As the triumphal parade was reaching its last lap, pass-
ing through the Forum and about to ascend the Capitoline hill, the pris-
oners—or at least the most prominent, famous, or dastardly among
them—were hauled off for execution and worse, probably in the nearby
prison (carcer). So Josephus describes the closing stages of the triumph
of Vespasian and Titus: “Once they had reached the Temple of Jupiter
Captives on Parade
129
Capitolinus, they stopped. For it was ancestral custom to wait at that
point for the announcement of the death of the enemy commander.
This was Simon, son of Gioras. He had been led in the procession
amongst the prisoners of war; then, a noose round his neck, scourged by
his guards, he had been taken to that place next to the Forum where Ro-
man law prescribes that condemned criminals be executed. After the an-
nouncement came that he had met his end and the universal cheering
that followed it, Vespasian and Titus began the sacrifice.”47
Much the same procedure was mentioned briefly by Dio (to judge
at least from a Byzantine paraphrase) in his account of regular tri-
umphal procedure attached to the notice of Camillus’ triumph in 396;
and more emphatically by Cicero in one of his “speeches for the prose-
cution” (though never actually delivered in court) against Verres, one-
time governor of Sicily. After a flamboyant and implausibly complicated
attack on his opponent for having preserved the life of a pirate chief
against the interests of the state, Cicero offers a thundering contrast—
between Verres’ behavior and that of a triumphing generaclass="underline" “Why even
those who celebrate a triumph and keep the enemy leaders alive for
some time so that the Roman people can enjoy the glorious sight of
them being paraded in the triumphal procession and reap the reward of
victory—even they, when they start to steer their chariots out of the Fo-
rum and up onto the Capitoline, bid their prisoners be taken off to the
prison. And the day that ends the authority (imperium) of the conqueror
also ends the life of the conquered.”48
This practice of executing the leading captives as the triumphal pro-
cession neared its conclusion has launched all kinds of modern theo-
ries. Some scholars have seen it as a quasi-judicial punishment. Others
have taken it as ritual killing or human sacrifice—and have claimed,
through this lens, to glimpse the violent and murky origins of the cele-
bration (perhaps going back to the violent and murky Etruscans).49 But
it will presumably come as no surprise at this point in my account that
the “facts” are a much more fragile construction than they are usually
made to appear. In this case, we find strikingly few examples of captives
(more or less) unequivocally claimed to have been executed during the
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triumphal procession: apart from Simon in Vespasian and Titus’ tri-
umph, the list at its most generous comprises only Caius Pontius, leader
of the Samnites in 291 bce, pirate chiefs in 74, Vercingetorix in Caesar’s
triumph of 46, and Adiatorix and Alexander in Octavian’s celebration
of 29.50
By and large the more evidence we have on the fate of individual pris-
oners, the less certain what we might call the “Josephan model” of exe-
cution appears to be. Aristoboulus of Judaea, for example, was—accord-
ing to Appian’s confident assertion—the only prisoner put to death in
Pompey’s triumph of 61, “as had been done at other triumphs.” But
other writers have him escaping from Rome, making more trouble in
the East, being brought back to Rome once more—only to be sent back
to the East by Caesar in the civil war to raise support for the Caesarian
cause, before being poisoned by Pompeian allies (Pompey may have
wished he had put him to death in 61).51 Livy seems to have claimed that
Jugurtha also was killed in this way at Marius’ triumph in 104 bce; but
Plutarch has him imprisoned after the trial and dying of starvation sev-
eral days later.52
In fact, more often than not, even the most illustrious captives are
said to have escaped death. Some were imprisoned, apparently on a