triumphal glory but also of the risks that might lurk in the permanent
memorialization of such a dynastic triumph. In this image, the awk-
wardly vacant chariot acts as a continuing reminder of the figure which
had been obliterated.
DRESSED DIVINE?
The triumphant emperor here cuts a sober figure. He looks studiously
ahead, dressed, so far as we can see, in a simple toga. Though a military
ceremony in many respects, there is no sign that the general ever ap-
peared in military garb. Quite the reverse: his war was over. What
Marcus Aurelius originally held in his hands on this panel we cannot
know. The right hand with its short staff is a much later restoration, and
the left has lost whatever it once contained—so giving perhaps a mis-
leadingly plain, uncluttered impression of his accessories. More sig-
nificantly, however, there is no indication whatsoever of the flamboyant
colors and idiosyncrasies of the general’s clothes and “make-up” that
were noted by ancient writers and have been the subject of intense mod-
ern interest.
Of course, the plain marble of the sculpture would not have been the
best medium to capture any gaudy display. Paint might have compen-
sated; but if it was ever applied to this stone, no trace of it remains. In
fact, this is another case where we find a striking disjunction between vi-
sual and literary evidence for the ceremony. In no surviving image of a
triumphal procession (unless we fancy that some barely detectable pat-
terning on Tiberius’ toga on the Boscoreale cup is meant to indicate the
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elaborate toga picta) do we see anything like the fancy dress that the gen-
eral is supposed to have sported.20
We would certainly never guess from this particular sculpture that the
general’s costume had been the crucial factor in launching certainly the
most dramatic and probably the most influential theory in the whole of
modern triumphal scholarship: namely, that the victorious commander
impersonated the god Jupiter Optimus Maximus himself, and that for
his triumph he became (or at least was dressed as) “god for a day.” We
have already noted the implications of divinity in the words whispered
by the slave. Even clearer signs of super-human status have been de-
tected in the general’s outfit. The red-painted face, mentioned by Pliny,
is supposed to have echoed the face of the terracotta cult statue of Jupi-
ter in his Capitoline temple (which was periodically coated with red cin-
nabar). What is more, Livy on one occasion expressly states that the tri-
umphing general ascended to the Capitol “adorned in the clothes of
Jupiter Optimus Maximus.”21
Unsurprisingly, this view was enthusiastically promoted by the found-
ing father of anthropology, J. G. Frazer, who saw in the figure of the
general welcome confirmation of his own theory of primitive divine
kingship. Once you have recognized that the general was the direct de-
scendant of the early Italic kings, he argued, then it was obvious (to
Frazer, at least) that those kings had been in Frazerian terms “gods.”22
But radical recent theorists of religious representation have also stressed
the godlike aspects of the costume and have seen in the general a charac-
teristically Roman attempt to conceptualize the divine. As one argu-
ment runs, the general oscillated between divine and human status
through the course of the procession; he constituted both a living image
of the god himself and, simultaneously, a negation of the divine presence
(hence the slave’s words).23
These arguments have not been without their critics. The early years
of the twentieth century saw some fierce (even if not entirely persuasive)
challenges to the whole idea of the divine general. Sheer absurdity was
one objection—even though absurdity in not necessarily a significant
Playing God
227
stumbling block in matters of religious truth. If the general was really
seen as the god Jupiter, it was argued, why on earth would he ride in
procession to his own temple to make offerings to himself? Another was
a perceived discrepancy between the general’s attributes and the god’s.
Why, in particular, did he have no thunderbolt, when that was the de-
fining symbol of Jupiter? One partisan even went so far as to throw
down a challenge: “If anyone can produce a coin or other work of art on
which he [the general] is represented as holding the thunderbolt, I
should at once reconsider the whole question.” No one could. And there
was also a rival explanation for the costume waiting in the wings—the
symbolism and dress associated with early Etruscan kings of Rome.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, for example, refers to the marks of sover-
eignty said to have been offered by ambassadors from Etruria to King
Tarquin: “a gold crown . . . an eagle-topped scepter, a purple tunic sewn
with gold, an embroidered purple robe.” These not only include several
elements with an obvious triumphal resonance; but he goes on explicitly
to note the continued use of such objects by those “deemed worthy of a
triumph.”24
The current orthodoxy has been reached by combining these two po-
sitions. In his 1970 study, Triumphus, H. S. Versnel, by an elegant theo-
retical maneuver (or clever sleight of hand, depending on your point of
view), argued that the general represented both god and king. In any case, as he pointed out, the iconography of Jupiter was inextricable from
(and partly derived from) the insignia of the early Etruscan monarchy,
and vice versa. Versnel was drawing on the then fashionable scholarly
ideas of “ambivalence” and “interstitiality” and, partly for that reason,
found a ready and appreciative audience among specialists. At almost
exactly the same moment, L. Bonfante Warren reached a not wholly dis-
similar conclusion by a different route. She too accepted that the figure
of the general showed characteristics both of the Etruscan kings and of
super-human divinity (after the model of Jupiter himself ). But she ex-
plained these different aspects by the historical development of the cere-
mony itself. The insignia of the Etruscan kings could be traced back to
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2 2 8
the Etruscan period of the triumph’s history; the idea of divinity, she ar-
gued, entered under Greek influence at a later period, perhaps around
the third century bce. Thereafter they coexisted.25
Most modern studies, whatever other influences or historical develop-
ments they detect and whatever explanation they offer, have supported
the basic idea that the triumphing general shared divine characteristics. I
too shall be returning to the links between the general and the gods, but
not before taking a harder look at the evidence for this famous costume.
For its character and appearance, never mind its interpretation, turn out
to be more elusive than is usually supposed.
For Romans, triumphal costume certainly conjured up an image in
purple and gold. These colors are consistently stressed in ancient ac-
counts of the ceremony and are so closely linked with the figure of
the general that writers can describe him simply as “purple,” “golden,”
or “purple-and-gold.”26 We also find a clear assumption in ancient au-
thors that the general’s ceremonial dress did represent a distinctive, spe-
cial, and recognizable ensemble. Marius, for example, caused offense by