went, to the accompaniment of the triumphal chant; and the usual rib-
ald songs followed the chariot like revelers.”5
These are more complex stories than at first they may appear, with an
interlocking set of historical explanations and originary myths at play.
On the one hand, the triumph is being used as an imaginary frame for a
distinctively primitive form of banqueting: what is being conjured here
is the “degree zero” of Roman dining, unencumbered by the rules and
rituals of commensality, something as close to just eating as you can get
within organized society. On the other hand, this practice of eating on
the part of the soldiers—retrojected by Dionysius to the very first tri-
umph of all and to the first triumph of the Republic—is itself being
used, mythically, as a way of recreating and explaining the origins of
the ceremony of triumph. Livy’s language points clearly in that direc-
tion. When he writes that the soldiers were “like revelers,” the Latin
word he uses is comisor (modo comisantium), which echoes, even if it
does not directly derive from, the Greek word kÇmos—the procession of
drunken revelers associated, for example, with marriages, some religious
rituals, or with the celebrations for victorious athletes. Livy is asking his
readers to imagine the early triumph on the model of a Greek kÇmos, a
soldiers’ kÇmos.
Most ancient writers, however, are not particularly concerned with
the soldiers’ fare but focus on the post-triumphal festivities for the other
participants and spectators, both people and elite. The classic case is the
banqueting provided by Julius Caesar after his triumphs in 46 and 45
bce. The general impression of lavishness is backed up by some ostensi-
bly specific detail. Plutarch, for example, claims that in 46 the people
feasted at 22,000 triclinia—which, according to the usual understanding
that a triclinium comprises three couches with three diners each, means
a grand total of 198,000 diners. The elder Pliny fills in some of the culi-
nary information. In discussing different varieties of wine, he notes that
Caesar provided Chian and Falernian for his triumphal guests. Else-
where, in the context of lamprey ponds, he notes that Gaius Lucilius
Hirrus—second-rate politician, erstwhile ally of Pompey, and highly
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successful fish breeder—gave Caesar 6,000 lampreys “as a loan” for one
of his triumphal banquets. It was a generous and politically expedient
gesture, no doubt, though, as the largest lamprey hardly exceeds a meter
in length, if divided equally they would have provided a meager helping
for 198,000 diners.6
This mass public dining has captured the scholarly imagination.
Modern historians of ancient food and foodways have seen in such tri-
umphal banquets the “greatest occasions” of public feasting at Rome.
More than that, they have made the feast—rather than the sacrifice on
the Capitol, or the dedication of the laurel or palm—the culminating
moment of the whole triumphal ceremony. The public feast, as one his-
torian recently suggested, was “ritually the capstone of triumphs.”7 Even
poor Aemilius Paullus has been wheeled out to support such claims.
“The organization of a feast and the giving of games is the business of a
man who knows how to win wars,” he is supposed to have once re-
marked—as if to imply that, as soon as the war was won, the general had
to devote himself to organizing a (triumphal) banquet for the people
and laying on games. But it is an over-optimistic translation. The sense
is more correctly: “It takes the same talent to organize a feast, to give
games, and to marshal troops like a general to face the enemy.”8 A sig-
nificantly different observation.
In fact, the idea that mass eating, on the Caesarian model, was the
regular culmination of the triumph is a typical example of the kind
of generalization we have repeatedly seen in modern reconstructions
of the ceremony. It is not that we have no further evidence for it at
all. Athenaeus, for example, in his second-century ce compendium
Deipnosophistae (Sophists at Dinner) refers to skins of “gorgons,” sheep-
like creatures with deadly eyes sent from Africa by Marius to hang “in
the Temple of Hercules where commanders celebrating their triumphs
give a banquet to the citizens.” And elsewhere he quotes the early first-
century bce Stoic philosopher Poseidonius, who wrote of the banquets
held “in the precinct of Hercules, when a man who at that time is cele-
brating a triumph is giving dinner.”9 There are also the observations of
Varro on the agricultural profits to be made from supplying “a triumph
The Boundaries of the Ritual
261
and a banquet.”10 Yet it is hard to pin down precise occasions of any such
mass feasting.
The only case mentioned before Caesar is that of Lucullus’ triumph
in 63 bce, when according to Plutarch a banquet was given both in the
city and in surrounding villages.11 Otherwise, the few examples of large-
scale dining are all of early imperial date: a banquet to celebrate
Tiberius’ ovation in 9 bce (dinner for “some” on the Capitol, for others
“all over the place,” while Livia and Julia entertained the women); the
entertainment following the triumph of Vespasian and Titus (“some”
eating at the imperial table, others in their own homes); and Domitian’s
dinners in 89 ce.12 Nowhere in Livy’s notices of republican triumphs do
we find any reference to any form of post-triumphal entertainment on a
large scale.
Equally hard to pin down are the practical details of such occasions.
Athenaeus does not specify which “precinct of Hercules” he means, but
there was none in Rome that could possibly hold 198,000 diners. The
most likely location for Caesar’s banquet would be the Forum itself; and
precedents do indeed exist for its transformation into an open-air dining
area. Livy, for example, tells a vivid story of a funeral feast taking place
there in 183 bce, when it was so windy that the diners were forced to
erect little tents or windbreaks around their tables.13 But the accounts we
have hint that formal communal banquets may regularly have been of-
fered to the elite alone, the mass of the people having food (or even cash
equivalent) provided for private or local consumption—on the model of
the “take-away” mentioned by Josephus at the triumph of 71 ce, or the
widely dispersed dining (“all over the place”) following Tiberius’ ova-
tion.14 As for the menu, much of the information we have may well re-
fer, again, to the elite rather than the popular version of the feast. Those
6,000 lampreys, or Varro’s aunt’s 5,000 thrushes, would have made a
handsome contribution to the “top-table” party of perhaps senators and
knights.
Unlike the mass dining of the people, there is considerable evidence
for triumphal feasting by the elite (still, to be sure, on a large scale), as
well as for ancient scholarly interest in the particular customs and social
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oddities that characterized it. In addition to the occasions we have just
noted (where the “some” dining on the Capitol or at the imperial table
almost certainly indicates the upper echelons of Roman society), Appian
refers to Scipio entertaining his friends “at the temple, as was custom-