long-term basis. King Gentius and his family were put into custody after
the triumph of Anicius Gallus in 167. (Livy’s story of the senate’s deci-
sion to have them imprisoned at Spoletum, the objections of the local
residents, and their final transfer to Iguvium raises key—if unanswer-
able—questions about how the practicalities of all this were managed.)
Others lived, if not (like Aristoboulus) “to fight another day,” then at
least to start a new Roman life. One version of Zenobia’s story was that
she was established—quite the Roman matrona, we may perhaps imag-
ine—in a comfortable villa near Tibur.53
These uncertainties and contradictions offer a sharp focus on some
important aspects of the culture of the Roman triumph; they are not
merely regrettable indications of how little we really know. The repeated
stories in ancient writers of violence not being wreaked on the poor tri-
umphal victims, and their generalizations about normal practice or ref-
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131
erences to the executions that took place “on other occasions,” undoubt-
edly served to keep the idea of the death of the captive high on the
cultural agenda of the Roman triumph. But that does not necessarily in-
dicate that celebrity executions toward the end of the procession were a
regular feature of the ceremony. Far from it. The economy of violence
and power is extremely complex, and it operated in Rome, as elsewhere,
by fantasy, report, threat, and denial as much as it did by the sword or
noose itself.
Modern historians, who often have a great deal invested in an image
of ancient Rome as an almost uniquely cruel and bloodthirsty society,
have generally been reluctant to read the myths of Roman violence
(whether in the arena, on the battlefield, or in the triumphal procession)
as anything other than a direct reflection of the acts of violence at which they appear to hint. But often, as here, there is a good case for seeing the
bloodshed more as part of a pattern of menacing discourse than of regu-
lar practice.
On the evidence we have, the killing of the leading captives was
not “ancestral custom” at all. Nor, by and large, was it treated as such by
ancient writers. Significantly, in fact, they never appear to give this
deathly practice an origin in the distant Roman past, in the triumphs of
Romulus and the other legendary heroes of the Republic. That is not to
say that victims were never put to death in the course of the proces-
sion. It would require some very special pleading to deny that. More
likely, a small number of executions, carried out for whatever reason
(in the Flavian case perhaps the parade of “tradition” by the new dy-
nasty), lay somewhere behind a custom that flourished most of all in
the telling and in the retelling—and in the opportunities that it offered
for denial and clemency. The clever cultural paradox is that Pompey
could become renowned for mercy by not doing something that was
rarely done anyway.
The exemplary, mythic quality of these executions can be seen in dif-
ferent ways in Cicero’s reference to the execution of the prisoners “on the
day which ends the authority of the conqueror.” Pulling this out of con-
text, as so often happens, and treating it as a general rule of triumphal
Th e
R o m a n Tr i u m p h
1 3 2
practice is to miss the loaded argument that lies behind it—and to fall
into the trap that Cicero has set. For Cicero is attempting to make the
practice of killing the enemy captives seem universal, and thereby turn it into a stick with which to beat Verres for not killing his own pirate prisoner.
But this passage also exposes very clearly how the literary image of the
triumph increasingly does duty for the ceremony itself. In a speech in
praise of Constantine, dated to 310 ce, the emperor is congratulated for,
among other things, his decisive execution of a couple of rebellious
Frankish kings. This was heralded as a return to traditional ways: “Em-
peror (imperator), you have renewed that old confidence of the Roman
Empire, which used to impose the death penalty on captured enemy
leaders. For in those days captive kings added luster to the triumphal
chariots from the gates of the city as far as the Forum. Then, as soon as
the victorious general (imperator) started to steer his chariot up onto the Capitoline, they were taken off to the prison and slaughtered. Perseus
alone escaped such a harsh law, when Aemilius Paullus himself, who had
received his surrender, made a plea on his behalf.”54 The entirely errone-
ous claim here that Perseus was the only distinguished captive to be
spared the death penalty is striking. Striking too (and a hint at the modus
operandi of invented traditions) is the way that other forms of execution
merge into this particular form of triumphal slaughter. The death of the
Frankish kings was not a triumphal punishment in the traditional sense
at all; they were thrown to the beasts in the arena.55
Even more important is the literary reference. Whatever contact
the author of this Panegyric had with triumphal practice, the tradition
he refers to is drawn not from anything that happened on the streets
of Rome but straight from Cicero’s text—which is almost directly
quoted (cum de foro in Capitolium currus flectere incipiunt / simul atque
in Capitolium currum flectere coeperat). This is a clear instance of late Roman nostalgia for a “ritual in ink” as much as for the ceremony as per-
formed, and it is very little guide to the triumphal traditions of killing at
any period.
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133
VICTIMS AS VICTORS
The tales of prisoners’ suicide, true or not, imply that the triumphal pa-
rade was deemed to be an overwhelmingly humiliating experience for
the once proud kings and other noble captives. Ancient writers, how-
ever, lay little stress on the nature of that humiliation. We read in
Josephus of Simon being “scourged” before his execution, while the
late fourth-century Christian writer John Chrysostom referred (on the
basis of what information we do not know) to a triumphal victim as
“whipped, insulted and abused.” Other texts conjure up a picture of
captives as “chained,” “hands bound behind their backs,” “eyes cast on
the ground,” or “in tears,” and the repertoire of ancient images matches
up to these descriptions in some respects at least: chains are much in evi-
dence, faces stare at the ground, hands—not bound behind—stretch
out vividly in what is presumably sorrowful supplication (Figs. 23, 24;
see also Fig. 22). For the rest, it is not hard to imagine what the victim’s
experience might have amounted to, as the noisy crowd of spectators
took pleasure in feeling that they had at last the upper hand over (in
Cicero’s words) “those whom they had feared.”56 Jeers, taunts, and, one
might guess, the ancient equivalent of eggs and rotten tomatoes.
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
Figure 23:
Part of a triumphal frieze from the Temple of Apollo Sosianus in Rome, 34–25
bce. Two prisoners, hands bound behind their backs, sit on a ferculum underneath a trophy of victory, which the Roman attendants get ready to lift. This frieze is probably intended to represent the triple triumph of Augustus (Octavian) in 29 bce.