tion on returning to Rome from Campania, he robustly turned the sug-
gestion down. “He was not, he declared, so lacking in glory that, after
subduing the fiercest nations, and after receiving or declining so many
triumphs in his youth, he would now at his age seek an empty honor
conferred merely for a trip in the country.”35 Claudius, by contrast, was
reported to be happy to accept “triumphal insignia ” for a war that had
finished before he had even come to the throne.36
So Roman rhetorical skills came to be expertly deployed in coloring
different celebrations with subtly different triumphal nuances: from the
accounts of Caligula’s mad procession across a bridge over the sea near
Baiae (with the emperor in Alexander the Great’s breastplate, so it was
claimed, and some mock prisoners in tow), to Tacitus’ insinuation of a
triumphal style in Nero’s return to Rome after the murder of his mother
Agrippina (with the people watching from tiers of seats, “as they do at
triumphs,” and offerings on the Capitol by the “victor”).37
A particularly pointed example is the triumphal language used to
highlight the ambivalences of Rome’s so-called “victory” over the Parthians
under Nero and the installation of Tiridates, a Parthian prince, as king
of Armenia. Tiridates was in fact the Parthian nominee for the Arme-
nian throne. But after a disastrous Roman attempt to replace him with
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one of their own puppets, followed by some military successes in the re-
gion scored by Cnaeus Domitius Corbulo, a compromise was ham-
mered out: Tiridates would formally accept his crown from the
Romans.38 He deposited his diadem in front of a statue of the emperor
in a legionary camp on the eastern frontier, not to wear it again until he
had received it from Nero’s hands in Rome.
Tacitus clearly casts Tiridates as more or less a captive at this point (an
“object of spectacle,” as he insists). But Dio—at least in the words of his
excerptor—pointedly reverses the roles: for he hints at the awkward bal-
ance of power between Romans and Parthians (who had, after all, got
their own way) by presenting Tiridates’ journey to Rome from the Eu-
phrates as itself “like a triumphal procession.”39 Finally, once he reaches
the capital, a magnificent show is staged, out of all proportion to the
military victory secured: the emperor, we are told, was dressed in trium-
phal costume; celebrations were held in that most triumphal of monu-
ments, the theater of Pompey; and a laurel wreath was deposited in the
Temple of Jupiter.40 Triumph or triumphlike? For most modern observ-
ers, triumphlike. But, strikingly, both Pliny (who lived through it) and
Dio call it, straightforwardly, a “triumph.”41
These stories are a nice indication of the two faces of triumphal
ceremony and discourse. On the one hand, no doubt, it was a mark of
autocratic power that emperors could, and did, extend or subvert the
traditional norms of the triumph. On the other, writers exploited the
vocabulary of triumphal subversion to symbolize the emperor’s miscon-
duct or to calibrate his impropriety. Which face we are seeing on any in-
dividual occasion, or what combination of the two, is almost impossible
to determine.
DRESSING THE PART
One of the most powerful ways of extending the resonance of the tri-
umph outside the brief hours of the ceremony did not involve vast me-
morial building schemes nor the launching of look-alike processions
with their expensive chariots and stand-in prisoners or soldiers. Much
The Boundaries of the Ritual
273
more simply and economically, it involved the wider use of the costume
worn by triumphing generals. By adopting all or part of the characteris-
tic triumphal dress on certain occasions after his triumph, a man might
publicly call to mind past successes and prolong his triumphal glory.
Even for those who had themselves never celebrated a triumph, this
might offer a way of appropriating some of the power, glory, and status
associated with the ceremony.
From at least the mid-second century bce to the final years of the Re-
public, we find a handful of dramatic instances of triumphal dressing
outside the procession itself. These went far beyond the wearing of lau-
rel, which generals who had once triumphed may have been regularly al-
lowed to do on certain public occasions.42 According to one later Roman
biographer, after his procession in 167 bce Aemilius Paullus was given
the right “by the people and by the senate” to wear his triumphal cos-
tume at circus games. Pompey too is said to have been voted that honor,
while Marius—immediately following his first triumph in 104—reput-
edly called the senate into session, still dressed in his triumphal outfit.
Metellus Pius, on the other hand, a Roman commander in Spain in
the 70s bce, used the same technique to anticipate rather than to extend
triumphal honors: the story was that after a victory against the Roman
rebel Sertorius he was hailed imperator by his troops and took to wear-
ing triumphal garb (specifically palmata vestis, “palm-embroidered cos-
tume”) at dinners.43
Strikingly, almost every one of these incidents is recounted with more
or less explicit disapproval.44 In Metellus’ case, the triumphal aspect of
his dress is seen as part and parcel of his disgracefully extravagant behav-
ior in Spain. Pompey is said to have used his right to wear triumphal
dress only once, “and that was once too often.” Marius quickly saw the
unfavorable reaction of the other senators and went out to change.
These were, in other words, exemplary anecdotes, marking out this kind
of formal extension of triumphal glory beyond the procession itself as
unacceptable, at least in a republican context. In fact, if we follow
Polybius’ claim that the cortège of an aristocratic Roman funeral pa-
raded men impersonating the ancestors of the deceased, with costume to
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match (if they had celebrated a triumph, “a purple toga embroidered
with gold”), it was only the dead who could safely put on their trium-
phal robes again.45
The single possible exception is found in the “diplomatic presentation
sets” that were offered occasionally to friendly foreign kings in recogni-
tion of their services or loyalty to Rome. These are not, in fact, quite as
“triumphal” as modern scholars tend to make them out to be.46 In only
one of the four reported republican instances do the gifts include any-
thing undeniably reminiscent of the triumph or explicitly likened to it;
that occasion was in 203 bce, when the Numidian leader Massinissa was
said by Livy to have been presented with the distinctive combination of
toga picta and tunica palmata, as well as a gold crown, scepter, and official “curule” chair.47 Yet in the Empire, Tacitus looks back to republi-
can precedent when he refers to the “revival” of an ancient custom in 24
ce, with the presentation to King Ptolemy of “an ivory scepter and toga
picta, the traditional gifts offered by the senate.”
Tacitus’ interest is, of course, more than antiquarianism. Once again,
he is presenting the use and misuse of triumphal symbolism as a means
of measuring the use and misuse of imperial power more generally.
Here, the triumphal trappings given to Ptolemy, who had done nothing