eral and Jupiter that stretched back centuries. Yet it is crucial to remem-
ber (as we shall see at the end of this chapter) that the earliest evidence
to suggest an identification between general and god is an early second-
century bce play of Plautus; and that even those few antiquarian details
that survive about his traditional costume and various accoutrements are
mediated through—and necessarily to some extent reinterpreted by—
the concerns of the late Republic and early Empire. Whatever his primi-
tive origins may have been, the divine general we can still glimpse is es-
sentially a late republican creation.
THE WIDER PICTURE
The general was not on his own among the prisoners and the booty—
however splendid his isolation in so many triumphal images. Even in a
procession that featured a most impressive array of the conquered en-
emy, the home team always far outnumbered their adversaries. The
triumph was overwhelmingly a Roman show, of Romans to Romans.
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239
We have already glimpsed some of the porters, attendants, musicians,
guards, and other officials who carried the spoils, led the animals, played
the trumpets, or conducted the prisoners.55 Around and behind the tri-
umphal chariot (at least as the choreography of the procession is conven-
tionally imagined) were many more, perhaps thousands. In the group
most closely linked to the general, ancient writers mention lictors (car-
rying the fasces), military officers, magistrates, even “the whole senate,”
as well as Roman citizens freed from slavery by whatever successful cam-
paign was being celebrated. On one occasion we read of an adult woman
(not merely the young daughters of the general) taking a prominent
place in this company: according to Suetonius, at the triumph of the
emperor Claudius over Britain in 44 ce, his wife Messalina followed his
chariot, riding in a carpentum (a covered carriage).56
As usual, modern scholars have tended to systematize and to impose
a regular pattern onto this group. But there is even less sign here of
any rigid template, either of personnel or order, than elsewhere in the
procession. A group of Roman citizens rescued from slavery might
have been the star feature, in Plutarch’s view, of the triumph of Titus
Quinctius Flamininus in 194 bce; but a commander could only rarely
have produced such specimens. (Even Flamininus had at first decided
not to upset the property rights of their owners, until the Greeks offered
to ransom them for a good price.)57
There are also awkward contradictions in our evidence. Those, for ex-
ample, who would infer from some accounts that by the late Republic
the city’s magistrates or the senate as a group were a standard element in
the general’s immediate entourage need to explain how this fits with an
incident reported for one of Julius Caesar’s triumphs: when he was rid-
ing past the tribunes’ benches, one of them—Pontius Aquila—did not
get to his feet; Caesar took it as an insult and is supposed to have
shouted “Take the Republic back from me then, Aquila, you tribune!”58
Tribunes could not have been both sitting on their benches in the Fo-
rum and accompanying the procession. Either they were not included in
that regular group of magistrates who went with the general or, more
likely, they sometimes accompanied the general, sometimes watched the
Th e
R o m a n Tr i u m p h
2 4 0
proceedings from their official seats—and sometimes (to be realistic)
some of them would have had nothing to do with the show at all. An ap-
propriate entourage for the triumphant commander was most likely as-
sembled on each occasion, as the particular combination of circum-
stances and tradition demanded.
As the story of the tribune hints, many of these accounts share a con-
cern with the complexities and antagonism of calibrating honor and rel-
ative superiority, and with the ambiguities of status and glory between
the general and those most closely accompanying him. Sometimes the
message is clear, as when Dio emphasizes the crowd’s displeasure at the
number of lictors attending Caesar in his triumph of 46, and (presum-
ably) at the implications of that for Caesar’s position in the state. In
Dio’s reconstruction at least, Caesar overstepped the mark by parading
too many of these human symbols of authority. “On account of their
numbers the lictors made an offensive crowd, since never before had
they seen so many altogether.” It was, he suggests, a triumphal faux pas
that ranked with Caesar’s display of poor Arsinoe, which prompted such
lamentation among the Roman spectators.59
But sometimes the signals are, for us, much harder to read. Dio again
highlights an innovation in the triumph of Octavian (Augustus) in 29
bce: although, he writes, magistrates usually walked in front of the tri-
umphal chariot, while those senators who had participated in the victory
walked behind, Octavian “allowed his fellow consul and the other mag-
istrates to follow him.” Modern commentators, predictably enough, see
this as a reflection of Octavian’s dominance: “The deference to Octavian
is patent.” In fact, in saying that he allowed them to follow, Dio more
obviously implies the reverse—that it was an honor to walk behind,
rather than in front of, the chariot. Whether Dio understood what he
was talking about is a moot point. But if he was correct about traditional
practice, the space ante currum would sometimes have held an interest-
ing, if not uncomfortable, melée of consuls and barbarian queens. Nev-
ertheless, we are probably catching a glimpse here of the loaded etiquette
of “who walked where” and of the significance that an avid scrutineer, if
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241
not the more casual observer, might detect (or invent) in the different
placements around the triumphal chariot.60
Other stories focus on the rivalry, implicit or explicit, between the
general and different members of his group. One famous occasion
was the celebration in 207 bce of Marcus Livius Salinator and Caius
Claudius Nero, who were both granted a triumph for victory over
Hasdrubal. They shared the same procession, but only Salinator rode in
the chariot (the battle had been fought in his province, Livy explains,
and he had held the auspices on the crucial day); Nero accompanied
him on horseback. In fact, the victory was well known to have been
much more Nero’s doing, and the reaction of the spectators was to over-
turn the hierarchy implied in the difference between horse and chariot:
“The real triumphal procession was the one conducted on a single
horse,” and the modesty of Nero in settling for that added to his glory;
as Valerius Maximus put it, “In the case of Salinator, victory alone was
being celebrated; in Nero’s case, moderation too.”61
A variation on this theme is found in the story of Lucius Siccius
Dentatus in the fifth century bce. A hugely successful and much deco-
rated soldier of almost mythic (not to say parodic) renown, “he fought
in 120 battles, blazoning 45 scars on his front and none on his back,” and
he walked behind the triumphal chariot in no fewer than nine triumphs.
With his dazzling array of military awards, from the eight gold crowns
to the 160 armlets, “enough for a legion,” “he turned the eyes of the