is well known; in this case we know next to nothing about it. What is
clear, though, is the extent to which any earlier version of the plot has
been thoroughly Romanized—so comprehensively, in fact, that much of
the story as we have it would make no sense outside Rome or Rome’s
cultural orbit. A good deal of this Roman flavor is provided by the char-
acter of Amphitruo himself and by the clear hints in the text that we
should see him not just as a returning victor but more specifically as a
triumphing general. We have already noted, for example, that (the real)
Sosia’s account of his master’s military successes almost certainly mimics
the official language of triumphal petitions, and includes characteristic
technical Roman rubric (suo auspicio, suo imperio). 97
These triumphal echoes have prompted critics to try to pinpoint
some particular celebration that Plautus had in mind. Is this supposed
to be a comic glance at the triumph of Marcus Fulvius Nobilior in 187
bce (and so was the play possibly first performed at the games celebrat-
ing his victory in 186)? Or perhaps rather the triumphant return of
Livius Salinator or of Lucius Scipio?98 This desperate search for a specific
historical referent for Amphitruo’s victory has tended to occlude other,
more important aspects of the play. A few critics have lifted their eyes
above the geopolitics of the early second century to discuss Amphitruo as
a play in which the representational games of the stage are themselves on
parade: the divine doubling, mistaken identities, and impersonations of-
Playing God
255
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
Figure 33:
The next episode in the story of Amphitruo, in a painting from the House of
the Vettii, Pompeii, 62–79 ce. Jupiter’s wife Hera, jealous of his affair, sends a pair of snakes to attack baby Hercules, but he proves his strength and gives a sign of his future prowess by strangling them. Here Alcmena backs away from the scene, while Amphitruo—
in a costume strikingly reminiscent of Jupiter—looks on thoughtfully. This hints at an alternative version of the story in which Amphitruo himself sends the snakes, to discover which son was really his.
fer reflections on the very nature of theater, and beyond that on human
subjectivity and the very idea of a unitary personality. One recent study
has also focused more directly on triumphal convention, seeing the play
as a whole in the tradition of the “apotropaic” songs sung by the soldiers
in procession.99
But even these approaches have by-passed what seems to me to be the
Th e
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central (Roman) joke around which the play is structured. If the trium-
phal celebration staged the general as—in some sense at least—a look-
alike god for the day, then Plautus cunningly reverses those mimetic
conventions: his play stages Jupiter as a look-alike general, acting human
for the day (or, more exactly, for the one night on which the play’s action
takes place).100
The question at stake here is one which, in different forms and with
different nuances, runs through much of the triumphal procession and
its images—and which must trump narrower questions of what the gen-
eral represented. How do you tell the difference between representation
and reality? What distinguishes the man who is “being,” “playing,” or
“acting” god?
c h a p t e r
VIII
The Boundaries of the Ritual
MAKING A MEAL OUT OF A VICTORY
In 89 ce the emperor Domitian hosted a particularly imaginative (or
menacing) dinner party for Roman senators and knights. The dining
room was entirely black, with black couches, crockery, and food; even
the naked serving-boys were painted in the same color. Each guest’s
name was inscribed on a slab shaped like a tombstone, while the em-
peror himself held forth on the topic of death to the silent and fearful
company, who were convinced that their last hour had come. In fact,
it was to be nothing of the sort. They were all sent home, and the omi-
nous knock at the door that followed shortly after their return heralded
not arrest and murder but a display of imperial generosity: Domitian
had sent each guest as a present their name-slab (made of silver), the
precious black dishes from which they had been served, and their indi-
vidual serving-boy, now well scrubbed and nicely dressed. Or so at least
Dio (as his Byzantine excerptors have preserved his text) tells the story.1
This has become a notorious and controversial incident in modern at-
tempts to configure the relations between the emperor and the Roman
elite. Some see it as a classic case of imperial sadism, showing that scare
tactics in the form of humiliation and terror were as effective a means of
control as violence itself. Others suspect that Dio, in his eagerness to
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2 5 8
cast Domitian as a full-blown tyrant, has missed the point of the dinner,
and missed the joke. For lurking under Dio’s outrage, they detect an ele-
gant parade of imperial wit (and expensive fancy dress), or alternatively a
philosophical fantasy in keeping with the other-worldly themes found
elsewhere in the dining culture of the early Empire.2
What no one has spotted, to my knowledge, is that this occasion was
not merely any banquet hosted by the emperor, but the banquet laid on
to follow the emperor’s triumph over the Germans and Dacians.3 Even
in its mangled state, Dio’s text makes it clear that we are dealing with the
triumphal celebrations of 89, which were followed both by a dinner at
public expense for the people at large “lasting all night” and by this ele-
gant, or somber, occasion for a more select group of the elite.
In fact, various forms of eating and drinking are referred to as an ac-
companiment to triumphs. We have already seen, in Josephus’ account,
that in 71 ce the soldiers were served with “the traditional breakfast” (or
“lunch,” depending on how we choose to translate the Greek ariston)
before the procession itself started out, while Vespasian and Titus had a
bite to eat, privately, elsewhere. In a triumph, no less than on campaign,
the army marched on its stomach. It also needed a drink. An aside in a
play of Plautus—that “the soldiers will be entertained with honeyed
wine,” even if there is no triumph—strongly hints (though we might
have guessed it anyway) that the celebrating troops did not necessarily
remain sober all day.4
More striking are the retrospective fictions that offer a different vision
of how the soldiers were plied with food in some of the earliest Roman
triumphs. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in his account of the founding
celebration of Romulus, imagines the ceremony consisting simply of the
homecoming of the victorious troops, met outside the town by their
wives and children and other citizens. As they enter this proto-Rome,
they find that outside the most distinguished houses tables have been
laid with food and wine from which, as they pass in procession, they can
eat their fill. The image is repeated in Dionysius’ account of Publicola’s
triumph in 509, the first year of the newly founded Republic, and in
Livy’s story of the triumph of Cincinnatus in 458 bce. Here, he pictures
The Boundaries of the Ritual
259
tables spread out before all the houses and “the soldiers, feasting as they