wearing his triumphalis vestis (triumphal clothes) in the senate; and, as
we shall see, there are several references to specific elements of this
constume such as the toga picta. 27 But how far there was ever a fixed triumphal uniform, let alone how it changed over time, is a much more
debatable point. As with our own wedding dress, a basic template can al-
low, and even encourage, significant variations. Pompey, after all, was re-
puted to have worn the cloak of Alexander the Great at his triumph in
61—which can hardly have been part of the traditional garb.
The truth is that, despite our own fascination with the topic, ancient
writers do not often pay more than passing attention to what the general
wore, and we have no detailed description (reliable or not) of any indi-
vidual general’s outfit as a whole, still less of any regular, prescribed
costume; and the surviving images are for the most part as unspecific as
the Aurelian panel.28 The modern textbook reconstruction of the gen-
eral’s ceremonial kit— toga picta and tunica palmata (“a tunic embroidered with palms”), the variety of wreaths, the amulet round his neck,
plus iron ring, red face, eagle-topped scepter, armlets, laurel, and palm
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branches—is another of those optimistic compilations.29 Take a more
careful look and you find glaring contradictions or, at the very least, a
suspiciously overdressed general.
So, for example, the only way to come close to deriving a coherent
picture out of the different crowns and wreaths associated with the tri-
umph is to have the general wear not one but two: a heavy gold crown
held above his head by the slave and a laurel wreath worn directly on
his head beneath it (although this is certainly not how visual images
normally depict him, and even in this reconstruction the term corona
triumphalis, “triumphal crown,” must refer on different occasions to dif-
ferent types of headgear).30
Similar problems arise with the ceremonial toga. Leaving aside Festus’
brave attempt to trace a historical development from a plain purple gar-
ment to an embroidered (picta) one, the regular modern pairing of a
tunica palmata under a toga picta is not quite as regular in ancient writing as we might be tempted to assume. Both Martial and Apuleius, for
example, refer to a toga (not a tunica) palmata. Was it simply, as one careful modern critic is driven to conclude, that “in the principate the
terminology became less precise”?31 And what did these “palmed” gar-
ments look like anyway? Festus does not make it any easier when he as-
serts that “the tunica palmata used to be so termed from the breadth of
the stripes [presumably a palm’s breadth], but is now called after the
type of decoration [palms].”32
The exact nature of his divine costume also proves puzzling. It is true
that Livy refers to “the clothes of Jupiter Optimus Maximus,” and a few
other writers, albeit less directly, appear to chime in.33 But what would
this mean? Clothes like those worn by Jupiter? Clothes kept in the Tem-
ple of Jupiter? Or the very clothes worn by (the statue of ) Jupiter in his
temple on the Capitoline? This most extreme option appears to be sup-
ported by one piece of evidence: a very puzzling passage in a tract of
Tertullian that briefly discusses “Etruscan crowns,” the name Pliny gave
to the gold wreath held over the triumphing general’s head. The text of
the original Latin is far from certain, but it is often taken to mean some-
thing like: “This is the name given to those famous crowns, made with
Th e
R o m a n Tr i u m p h
2 3 0
precious stones and golden oak leaves, which they take from Jupiter, along with togas embroidered with palms, for conducting the procession to
the games.” Tertullian is not talking about a triumph here, but on the
assumption that the practice at the games was more or less the same as at
the triumph, this might confirm the view that the general’s crown and
toga were taken directly from (the statue of ) Jupiter—that, in other
words, the general literally dressed up in the god’s clothes.34
It does nothing of the sort. Even supposing that Tertullian knew what
he was talking about, he was almost certainly not intending to suggest
that the costume was lifted from Jupiter’s statue; his Latin much more
plausibly means that the crowns were “famous because of their connec-
tion with Jupiter.” In any case, the idea that the general donned Jupiter’s
kit causes far more practical difficulties than it solves. Never mind the
one-size-fits-all model of triumphal outfitting, or the problems that
would have been caused by two generals (such as Titus and Vespasian in
71) triumphing simultaneously. Even harder to accept is the unlikely
idea, which direct borrowing from the statue necessarily implies, that all
the various cult images of Jupiter that replaced one another over the
long and eventful history of the Capitoline temple were constructed on
a human scale.35
There is also the problem of the wider use of triumphal dress. If the
general’s costume was properly returned to the god’s statue at the end of
the parade, then what did Marius wear to give offense in the senate?
What was it that was worn by those who impersonated their triumphal
ancestors in funeral parades? What were the triumphal togas that Lucan
imagined were consumed on Pompey’s funeral pyre?36 Perhaps these
were all “copies” of the original garments (as some have been forced to
argue); but that itself would dilute the idea of a single set of triumphal
clothes and insignia belonging to Jupiter’s statue, or even lodged in his
temple. Precise questions of how the general’s costume was commis-
sioned, chosen, made, stored, handed down, or reused are now impossi-
ble to answer. But there is certainly no good reason to think of it as liter-
ally borrowed from Jupiter—nor any evidence that Livy’s phrase ornatus
Iovis or “clothes of Jupiter” (though widely used as a technical term in
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modern studies of the triumph) was ever regularly used for triumphal
costume in Latin.37
The same is true of other features that are taken to link the general’s
appearance to the gods. One particularly seductive false lead is the gen-
eral’s red-painted face. Our main information on this custom comes, as
so often, from the elder Pliny, apparently backed up by a handful of late
antique writers—who might all, in fact, be directly or indirectly depen-
dent on Pliny himself. The passage in question is at the start of his dis-
cussion of the uses of red lead or cinnabar, and he offers an unusually
guarded, self-confessedly third-hand account, explicitly derived from re-
ports in an earlier first-century antiquarian writer, Verrius Flaccus:
Verrius gives a list of authorities—and trust them we must—who state
that on festival days it used to be the custom for the face of the statue of
Jupiter to be coated with cinnabar, so too the bodies of those in triumph.
They also state that Camillus triumphed in this way, and that it was ac-
cording to the same observance that even in their day it was added to the
unguents at a triumphal banquet and that one of the first responsibilities