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the verse clearly paints him as the passive partner (“screwed” subegit is
literally “subjugated” or “subdued”). According to Dio, Caesar “tried to
defend himself and denied the affair on oath, and so brought more ridi-
cule on himself.”81
The other references to this tradition suggest that the singing, whether
ribald or eulogistic, often homed in on—and so marked out—the “real”
star of the show, which was not always the general himself. At the tri-
umph of Salinator and Nero in 207, the fact that more of the songs were
directed at Nero was one of the things, according to Livy, which indi-
cated that the greater honor was Nero’s (despite Salinator’s riding in the
triumphal chariot).82 In 295 bce one of the chief subjects of the verses
was in fact dead. Although Quintus Fabius Maximus was triumphing af-
ter the Roman victory at the battle of Sentinum, the success was thought
to be largely due to the self-sacrifice of his fellow consul Publius Decius
Mus—and this “glorious death” no less than the achievements of Fabius
was celebrated in the “rough and ready verses of the soldiers.” It was as if
the soldiers’ songs gave a presence in the triumph to the man truly re-
sponsible for the Roman victory despite (and because of ) his death.83
The standard modern view sees these verses as “apotropaic,” their ap-
parently insulting tone designed to protect the general and his moment
of overweening glory from the dangers of “the evil eye.”84 It cannot be as
simple as that. For a start, despite our own fascination with more ribald
variety of these verses, they were not all of that type; some are explicitly
said to have eulogistic.85 Nor, as we have seen, were they always directed
at the general. Besides, once again—as the very terms “apotropaic” and
“evil eye” indicate—the modern frame of analysis points us back to a
primitivizing form of explanation, with its seductive but often mislead-
ing gravitational pull toward the archaic. Yet we have repeatedly seen
how the triumph raises questions about the perilous status of the honor
it bestows. What risks are entailed in triumphal glory? What limits are
there to that glory? Where does the “real” honor of the ceremony lie?
There is no need to retreat to the obscure world of primitive Rome to
see that the soldiers’ songs—lauding the general, as well as taking him
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down a peg or two, while also bringing other objects or targets into their
frame—contribute to those questions, and to their answers.86
CLIMAX OR ANTICLIMAX?
The high point of any complicated ritual or ceremony depends on your
point of view: although the liturgical climax of a Christian wedding is
the moment when the couple exchange their vows, many spectators will
remember much more vividly the walk down the aisle or the showers of
confetti. In the case of the triumph, artists and writers dwelt on the pro-
cession as it made its way through the streets; they barely recorded in
any form, literary or visual, what happened when it reached its destina-
tion. The result is that we know very little about the final proceedings.
For some participants, these were perhaps the most impressive, moving,
or memorable part of the show. For others—whose position along the
route would have given them no chance to witness what went on at the
finale—these events may have been more of an anticlimax. That is cer-
tainly what the general silence would tentatively suggest.
The procession ended with the ascent of the Capitoline hill up to the
Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Julius Caesar is reputed to have
“climbed the stairs on the Capitol on his knees” in a gesture of humility
that was apparently later copied by the emperor Claudius. Although this
is sometimes imagined as a lengthy progress up the hill itself (with all
the complications of managing the elaborate toga in a kneeling crawl), it
presumably refers only to the steps of the temple itself. Once the general
had arrived at the temple, we assume that he presided over the sacrifice
of the animals that had been led in the parade.87 But was that all? The
notion that he ran around the building three times has proved so unpal-
atable to most modern critics that it has usually been ignored; primitiv-
ism is one thing, farce quite another. Yet the reference to climbing
the steps suggests that on some occasions at least the general went inside
the temple. This was not for the animal sacrifice, which would have
happened in the open air. It is usually assumed that he went to offer
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his “laurel” (wreath or branch?) to Jupiter, even to lay it on the lap of
the statue.88
A slightly different procedure is suggested by that second set of in-
scribed triumphal records, the Fasti Barberiniani: each entry concludes
with the words “he dedicated his palm.” Whether this was a synonym or
a substitute for the laurel, or whether we should imagine palm as well as
laurel regularly carried by the general we do not know. But the phrase
does give a glimpse of the different priorities that different sections of
the triumph’s audience or its participants might have had. Whoever
commissioned this record (and there has been some optimistic specula-
tion, partly on the basis of its possible findspot nearby, that it was con-
nected with the Temple of Jupiter itself ), they saw the defining event of
the triumph as this (to us mysterious) “dedication of the palm.”89
The choreography of this final stage of the procession is even more
baffling to us than the rest. How many of the parade’s participants made
the ascent to the Capitoline, how the prisoners and soldiers were de-
ployed while the sacrifice took place, whether there was a popular audi-
ence for this part of the show, and how all the people, the booty, and the
various models and paintings were safely dispersed afterward (the “exit
strategy,” in other words), we have no idea at all. It is easy enough per-
haps to visualize the scene for the majority of relatively modest celebra-
tions, but how the blockbuster shows were organized and controlled at
this point is quite another matter. It is even less clear with those proces-
sions that stretched over two or three days. The implication of some
of the surviving descriptions is that the general himself appeared only
on the last day.90 If so, on the previous days did the procession simply
go up to the Capitoline, unload, and disperse without any particu-
lar ceremony? How was all that precious loot kept safe from thieving
hands? True to type, no ancient writer is interested in the practical infra-
structure.
However anticlimactic the finale of the ceremony might seem to us or
to its original audience, most modern scholars have agreed that for the
general in the Roman Republic (the dynamics of the imperial celebra-
tion was, as we shall see in Chapter 9, rather different) the triumph as a
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whole represented the pinnacle of ambition achieved. It was both a
marker and guarantor of his success within the competitive culture of
the Roman elite; it was the ceremony that an ambitious young Roman
would dream of. That is certainly one side of the ancient story, as we
have already seen. The triumph and its trappings operated both symbol-
ically and practically to elevate the general, to secure his status, and to
transmit it down the generations.
Notable commemorative statues, such as that of Publius Scipio