Mantegna’s image is a memorable aggregate of the most flamboyant de-
scriptions of just a handful of the most notoriously extravagant displays
of booty, wealth, and artifice in the whole history of the triumph. We
should do well to try to call to mind also those occasions where, at most,
a few wagonloads of coin and bullion, plus some rather battered cap-
tured weapons, were trooped up to the Capitol. We should not allow, in
other words, the modest and orderly procession of Trajan’s Arch at
Beneventum to be entirely swamped by the grandiloquent Renaissance
version that plays so powerfully to (and is in part responsible for) our
larger-than-life picture of the ceremony.
PROCESSIONAL THEMES
Mantegna’s image of the triumphal procession and its riches cannot, of
course, be dismissed so easily. When Romans conjured the triumph in
their imaginations, one important image in their repertoire was indeed
larger than life. It is a fair guess that, by the second century bce at least,
even the most down-beat triumphal ceremony could be reinvented as a
blockbuster in the fantasies of the victorious general. Nonetheless, the
preoccupations of these ancient literary recreations of the triumph do
not match up entirely with the preoccupations of modern historians.
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Modern accounts have made much of the individual works of art that
flowed into Rome through the triumphal procession: masterpieces by
Praxiteles, Pheidias, and other renowned Greek artists that were to revo-
lutionize the visual environment of the city. In fact, there is hardly a sur-
viving ancient account of a triumphal procession that identifies any such
work of art. All kinds of precious or curious objects are singled out, and
occasionally special mention is made of particularly extravagant statues
of notable victims or victors (such as the “six foot” solid gold statue of
Mithradates carried in Lucullus’ triumph of 63 bce, overshadowed by
the “eight cubit” version paraded by Pompey).69 In one instance Livy
notes that a statue of Jupiter was part of the triumphal booty from the
Italian city of Praeneste.70 But nothing is ever said about any individual
masterpiece from the hand of a famous Greek artist. Their presence in
the procession we infer by putting together references to wagonloads of
statues with notices of particular gifts or dedications of sculpture by fa-
mous generals.
It is hard to imagine, for example, that the Athena by Pheidias, which
was dedicated according to Pliny by Aemilius Paullus at the Temple of
“Today’s Good Fortune,” was not one of the “captive figures, paintings
and colossal statues” that Plutarch imagines “carried along in 250 carts”
at Paullus’ triumph.71 But no ancient author actually says so. The main
stress in their accounts is on volume and value, not on artistic distinc-
tion. This is a very different set of priorities from those of the trium-
phant procession into Paris in 1798 of Napoleon’s haul of masterpieces
from Italy, where each of the major works (including such renowned
classical pieces as the Laocoön and the Apollo Belvedere) were individu-
ally identified, sitting inside their “grandiloquently inscribed packing
cases.”72 If Napoleon paraded particularly renowned chefs d’oeuvre as the
reward of military victory, ancient triumphal culture put the accent on
wealth and quantity. This chimes well with repeated stress on monetary
value in, for example, Livy’s brief notices of triumphs. However accurate
they are, these delineate each ceremony, in its essentials, in financial
terms: the amount of coin and bullion on display (or transferred to the
treasury), the amount of cash given as a donative to the soldiers.73
The Art of Representation
175
Also prominently in view in ancient triumphal accounts are the dis-
plays of weapons and other military equipment captured from the en-
emy. Of course, not all the detritus of arms and armor from the bat-
tlefield arrived in Rome. In fact, we have a series of references to the
ceremonial burning of enemy equipment in the war zone.74 But those
that were selected for the parade are often given star billing. This could
be as objects of luxury and wonderment in their own right. Lucullus’ tri-
umph in 63 bce apparently featured a marvelous shield “studded with
jewels.” And among the lists of precious metals in other triumphs we
find shields of silver and even gold (parade armor presumably, else the
Romans would have had easy victories) rubbing shoulders with the pre-
cious drinking cups and dinner plates.75 At the same time, the distinctive
foreign weapons, sometimes explicitly given a national identity (“Cretan
shields, Thracian body armor”) might serve to highlight—no less than
the exotically clad prisoners—the Otherness of Rome’s enemies. But
such objects evoked the realities of conflict, the bottom line of victory
and defeat, too.
In his account of Paullus’ triumph, Plutarch lingers for several lines
on the display of arms, picking out the various types of equipment,
while passing over most of the precious booty in a brisk list. The armory
was, he insists, enough to inspire terror—or at least that frisson that
comes from looking at the firepower of those whom you have just de-
feated. Such was the impact surely of the siege engines, ballistas, fighting
ships (or their bronze rams), and enemy chariots trundling through the
streets of the city. It was the closest you could get to the experience of
battle without actually being there—hearing, as Plutarch imagined it,
the eerie clanking, or seeing, with Propertius, “the prows of Actium
speeding along the Sacred Way” (presumably on wheels, though this is
another case where the practical technology of the triumph leaves us
guessing).76 On the other hand, the conversion of the enemy weapons
into an object of spectacle on Rome’s home territory drew the sting of
that fear, as well as adding to the humiliation of the defeated. From mili-
tary standards to state-of-the-art artillery, their arsenals were now open
to the gaze of the conquerors, while—as more than one Roman sculp-
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ture portrays it—captives might be made to perch on fercula under care-
ful arrangements of their native armor now reappropriated as a trophy
of Roman victory (see Figs. 23 and 26).77
It is also these weapons, rather than masterpieces of art, whose his-
tory, after the triumph itself, ancient writers chose to highlight. In sev-
eral instances triumphal narratives explicitly give the arms and armor a
story that continues after the parade has reached the Capitol. Some are
said to have ended up on show in temples and public buildings, both in-
side and outside Rome.78 Others, like the rams from ships captured by
Pompey, are reported to have adorned the private house of the general
himself.79 In other locations the message must have been rather differ-
ent. The arms hanging in the Temple of Olympian Zeus in Syracuse,
which, according to Livy, were presented to King Hiero by the Roman
people, must have been a double-edged gift. They were spoils from Ro-
man conquests in Greece and Illyria, captured from the enemy and pre-
sumably (though the connection is not spelled out) paraded in triumph,
before being passed to the Syracusans. As such, they both shared with a
loyal ally the symbols of Roman victory and offered a warning of what