they reached the Capitol).45 Modern interest has concentrated, however,
on the four white horses which, according to Dio, were decreed to
Caesar for his triumphal celebrations of 46 bce.46 The fact that chariots
drawn by white horses were regularly associated with Jupiter or Sol (the
divine Sun) has strongly suggested that Caesar was attempting to claim
some such divine status for himself.
Dio does not offer an explanation, nor does he record any reactions to
Caesar’s team. But there is a striking parallel in accounts of the triumph
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of Camillus over the Gauls in 396 bce, where Livy claims that the gen-
eral aroused considerable popular indignation: “He himself was the
most conspicuous object in the procession riding through the city on a
chariot harnessed with white horses—an act that seemed not only too
autocratic, but also inappropriate for any mortal man. For they took it
as sacrilege that the horses put the dictator on a level with Jupiter and
Sol, and it was really for this single reason that his triumph was more fa-
mous than it was popular.” This sentiment is echoed by Plutarch, who
asserts (with constructive amnesia, apparently, of Caesar’s triumph) that
“he harnessed a team of four white horses, mounted the chariot and
drove through the city, a thing which no commander has ever done be-
fore or since.” This story may or may not contain a germ of a “genuine”
tradition about Camillus. Who knows? But it is usually assumed that
Livy’s version was elaborated, if not invented, to provide a precedent for
Caesar’s actions.47
Picking up the cue from Livy and Plutarch, modern writers have
tended confidently to assume that “the horses used [in the triumph]
were usually dark” and that white animals were therefore a daring inno-
vation. Yet it is not quite so straightforward. For, we have no ancient
evidence at all to suggest that a dark color was ever the norm.48 The only
color ever explicitly ascribed to the triumphal horses is white. Pro-
pertius, for example, retrojected “four white horses” onto the triumph of
Romulus, and Ovid did the same for the triumph of Aulus Postumius
Tubertus in 431 bce. Tibullus too seems to have envisaged his patron
Messalla’s triumphal chariot in 27 bce being drawn by “dazzling white
horses” (though “sleek” would also be a possible translation), while the
younger Pliny implies that white horses were part of the ceremony’s
standard repertoire.49 At the same time, these animals clearly did have
powerful divine associations—dramatically evidenced when, according to
Suetonius, the father of the future emperor Augustus dreamt of his son
carried in a triumphal chariot drawn by twelve white horses, wielding
the thunderbolt of Jupiter.50 It is clear too that, as in the stories of
Camillus, they could offer a pointed hint of the unacceptable face of (ex-
cessive) triumphal glory.
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These contradictory indications fit together in a more interesting way
than is often recognized. Whatever happened in the early days of trium-
phal history (and we shall, of course, never know what kind of animals
pulled Camillus’ chariot, let alone how or why he selected them), from
the end of the first century bce Roman imagination envisaged the gen-
eral’s chariot pulled by white horses. Writers interpreted this both as an
embedded part of triumphal tradition stretching back as far as the cere-
mony itself and as a radical innovation reeking of divine power. By the
first century bce at least the triumph was an institution in which break-
ing the normal rules of human moderation (and mortal status) could be
cast simultaneously as dangerous and traditional.
A similar argument may apply to the association of elephants with the
general’s chariot.51 We have already reflected on the moral of Pompey’s
reported failure to squeeze his elephants through one of the gates along
his route; it was a piquant warning of the dangers of divine self-aggran-
dizement. Yet a triumphal chariot pulled by elephants is attested as the
theme of the statuary perched on the top of more than one imperial
commemorative arch in Rome. The Arch of Titus, for example, appears
to have supported one such group (to judge from the bronze elephants
apparently found nearby, and restored, in the sixth century ce); the Arch
of Domitian celebrated by Martial was capped by another two (“twin
chariots numbering many an elephant,” as Martial put it); and elephant
chariots almost certainly adorned some arches erected in the reign of
Augustus (see Fig. 18).52
Maybe Roman culture became increasingly tolerant of the blatant use
of such extravagant honors; so that what was unacceptable for Pompey
was a perfectly acceptable element of display in public monuments less
than a century later. But, awkwardly for that view, it is imperial authors,
writing more than a century after Pompey’s triumph, who transmit to us
the carping tales of his ignominy.53 Much more likely, we are glimpsing
again the ambivalence of triumphal glory, which—in the imagination at
least—always threatened to undermine the general through the very
honors that celebrated him. To contemplate a triumphal chariot drawn
by elephants was simultaneously an idea legitimated by the public state
monuments of the city of Rome and a step too far.
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237
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
Figure 32:
Sculptured panel from vault of the Arch of Titus, early 80s ce, showing the
emperor transported to heaven on the back of an eagle. Walking through the arch and looking up, the viewer saw this image of the underbelly of the bird and of Titus, its passenger, peering down to earth. A hint of the association of the triumph with death and deification.
The most astonishing link between the triumph and deification has
nothing to do with the costume of the general. It is a rarely noticed
sculpture in the vault of the passageway of the Arch of Titus, visible to
a spectator who stops between the famous scenes of the triumph over
the Jews (see Figs. 8 and 9) and looks up. There you can still just make
out from the ground a very strange image (Fig. 32). The eagle of Jupiter
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2 3 8
is seen as from below, tummy facing us; and peeping over the bird’s
“shoulders,” looking down to earth, is the distinctive face of its passen-
ger. That passenger is Titus himself, whom we must imagine being lifted
to heaven after death by the eagle, soaring to join the ranks of the gods.
It is, in other words, an image of the process of deification itself. There
have been all kinds of interpretations of this: one ingenious (if incorrect)
idea was that Titus’ cremated remains were in fact laid to rest in the
arch’s attic, directly above. But most striking of all is the proximity of
this image of deification and the triumphal panels themselves; it cannot
help but underline the structural connection between the ceremony of
triumph and the divine status of the general.54
The key fact here is the powerful connection in the late Republic and
early Empire between triumphal and divine glory. In various forms and
media, the extraordinary public honor granted to the general in a tri-
umph—like other honors at this period—was represented, contested,
and debated in divine terms. It may have been, in the case of the tri-
umph, that this exploited and reinterpreted an association between gen-