Dressed as Alexander or not, Pompey chose to display his power by
a show of clemency rather than cruelty. “He put none of the prisoners
to death as he arrived at the Capitol . . . instead he sent them back
home at public expense—except those of royal blood. Of these, only
Aristoboulus [of Judaea] was put to death at once, and Tigranes [junior]
later.” Pompey’s blaze of restraint served, of course, to hint just how
deathly a ceremony a triumph might be. Other victorious generals were
reputed to have taken the crueler course. The idea was that for the
most powerful, news-worthy, or dangerous of the captives the proces-
sion might culminate in execution, rather than in feasting.21
TRIPLE TRIUMPH
The ceremony of 61 bce was not Pompey’s first triumph. After a trium-
phal celebration for victories in North Africa in probably 81 or 80, and
another for victories in Spain in 71, he now belonged to that select group
Pompey’s Finest Hour?
15
of Roman generals—including Romulus himself and a clutch of less
mythical republican heroes—who had triumphed three times. It was an
achievement that quickly became his crowning glory, his identifying
device, almost his nickname: he was the man who, in the words of the
poet Lucan, “thrice had mounted the Capitol in his chariot”—“three-
triumph-Pompey,” as we might put it.22 In fact, his own signet ring
made exactly that point: according to Dio, Pompey sealed his letters
with a design that blazoned three trophies of victory, presumably in the
traditional form of a suit of enemy armor pinned to a tree trunk or stake
(see Fig. 4).23
True, other Romans celebrated even more triumphs than Pompey:
Julius Caesar, for example, was to notch up five; and Camillus, who
saved Rome from the Gauls, is supposed to have had no fewer than four
in the early fourth century bce. But Pompey, in a sense, could outbid
even these. As Plutarch put it, “The greatest factor in his glory, and
something that had never happened to any Roman before, was that he
celebrated his third triumph over the third continent. For others before
him had triumphed three times. But he held his first triumph over Af-
rica, his second over Europe, and this final one over Asia, and so in a
way he seemed to have brought the whole world under his power in his
three triumphs.” Pompey’s three triumphs marked out the planet as his,
and as Rome’s, domain.24
Glory, however, courts controversy; the proudest and richest of cere-
monies are also those most liable to backfire. Pompey’s first triumph, in
particular, became renowned as much for its own-goals as for its glorious
celebration of victory. Pompey was at that time still in his twenties, his
career launched and accelerated in the blood-thirsty campaigns of Ro-
man civil war between the rival factions of Marius and Sulla. Too young
ever to have held an elected office, he was already a terrifyingly success-
ful and ruthless general in Sulla’s camp and was instrumental in Sulla’s
rise to “dictatorship” in the city. “Murderous teenager” was the famous
taunt thrown at him in a courtroom altercation by an elderly adversary.
(This ageist banter had, in fact, been started by Pompey, who asked his
opponent whether he had been sent back from the underworld to make
Th e
R o m a n Tr i u m p h
1 6
his charge.)25 In North Africa, he managed to destroy the remaining
Marian forces who did not immediately desert to his side, and to oust
their African ally, King Iarbas of Numidia, from his throne—before, ac-
cording to Plutarch, going on a hunting expedition to round up some
exotic African animals, against whom, as much as against the human in-
habitants, he apparently wanted to display the overwhelming strength of
Rome.26
Returning home, he was greeted warmly by Sulla who, according to
one version, hailed him for the first time as “Magnus,” “the Great.”
Pompey also asked to celebrate a triumph. It would have been unprece-
dented, in Roman memory at least, for a man so young who had as yet
held no magistracy to be granted such an honor, and, whether for this or
other reasons, the dictator at first refused. The story goes that his change
of heart was brought about by a bold and prescient quip of Pompey.
“You should bear in mind,” he is reported to have said, “that more
people worship the rising than the setting sun.” As Plutarch explains,
the implication that Pompey’s power was on the rise, while his own was
on the wane, was not lost on Sulla: “Let him triumph,” he finally con-
ceded.27
The exact date of the celebration is not known. Pompey’s age on the
occasion is given variously as “in his twenty-fourth year,” twenty-four,
twenty-five, and twenty-six. But if they differ on the precise chronology,
ancient writers agree in identifying Pompey’s extreme youth and lack of
formal status—he was not yet a member of the senate—as the triumph’s
most memorable feature. As Plutarch put it, vividly if inaccurately, “He
got a triumph before he grew a beard.” To some, this seemed a dazzling
honor, proof of Pompey’s precocious military genius, and a blow for
youth and talent against the conservative closed-shop of senatorial tradi-
tion; and it is said to have increased his popularity among the common
people. To others, such flouting of precedent and traditional hierarchy
represented another step in the dissolution of republican politics. “It
goes absolutely against our custom that a mere youth, far too young for
senatorial rank, should be given a military command . . . It is quite un-
heard of that a Roman equestrian should hold a triumph,” as Cicero had
caricatured the huffing and puffing of Pompey’s opponents.28
Pompey’s Finest Hour?
17
The controversies of this triumph did not stop there. One picturesque
detail concerns a team of African elephants. Pompey had brought these
back to Rome, caught perhaps on his own hunting expedition. His plan
was to hitch his triumphal chariot not to the customary horses but to
four of these lumbering beasts. It was a dramatic gesture which would
serve to emphasize Pompey’s far-flung conquests of exotic foreign terri-
tory, and at the same time cast a divine light over the conqueror himself.
For, in Greco-Roman myth, the victorious return of the god Bacchus
from his conquest of India was often staged in a wagon drawn by ele-
phants.29
How Pompey’s aides succeeded in training these animals and yoking
them to the chariot is a matter of guesswork. But the project came to a
premature end at one of the gates through which he was to pass on his
way up to the Capitol. The elephants were too big to go through.
Pompey apparently tried a second time, again unsuccessfully, and then
replaced them with horses. This too-tight squeeze may possibly have
been stage-managed to emphasize the idea that Pompey had literally
grown too big for the constraints of the city. More likely, it was an em-
barrassing impasse, followed by an awkward hiatus while the outsized
animals were removed and the replacements yoked in their place, to the
horror (and glee) of the more conservative senators. As the story was
later told, at any rate, the moral was not far below the surface: even the
most successful of triumphing generals should take care not to get above
themselves.30
Some of Pompey’s own troops might also have taken pleasure in his
discomfiture. For in the run-up to the celebration, relations between the