more than remain loyal during Rome’s war in North Africa, are con-
trasted with the emperor’s refusal (reported just a few lines earlier) to
grant triumphal insignia to Publius Cornelius Dolabella, who had ac-
tually secured the Roman victory.48
These insignia or ornamenta were all that was awarded to successful generals in the Principate, once the ceremony of triumph itself had been
monopolized by the imperial family. Tacitus’ hint of an equivalence be-
tween them and the package of honors offered to foreign kings explains
some of the disproportionate modern interest in these diplomatic pres-
ents. For one seductive idea is that they offered a model and an origin
for the triumphal ornaments of the later period.49 In fact, that connec-
tion is very fragile. In part this is because the accounts we have of explic-
itly triumphal gifts to friendly kings may themselves be based on the im-
perial custom; Livy, in other words, may have concocted the award to
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275
Massinissa out of the later practice of bestowing triumphal insignia
(rather than vice versa).50 But even more to the point, it is very uncertain
what the ornaments themselves consisted in, beyond the fact that their
grant was commemorated with a statue in the Forum of Augustus. They
did not even necessarily, or regularly, include the toga picta and tunica palmata. 51
What is clear is that, in glaring contrast to the republican pattern, as-
pects of triumphal dress in the Principate did regularly appear outside
the context of the triumphal procession. The prime example of this is in
the dress of the emperor himself. For not only was the ceremony of tri-
umph monopolized by the imperial family, but its conventions and sym-
bols were deployed as ways of marking, defining, and conceptualizing
the emperor’s power. The imperial title imperator echoed the acclama-
tion that had often in the late Republic preceded the grant of a tri-
umph.52 And significant elements of the emperor’s costume, on certain
ceremonial occasions at least, were identical to those of the triumphing
general (or they were presented as such by Roman writers).53 In other
words, the blazoning of power implied by the more-than-temporary
adoption of triumphal dress that was so unacceptable to the political
culture of republican Rome found its inverse correlate in the Empire.
One-man rule could be expressed as a more or less permanent triumphal
status.
The stages in this transition are now practically irrecoverable. True,
Roman writers note a perplexing series of individual grants awarding
Caesar and Octavian the right to specific elements of triumphal dress on
particular occasions. In his account of 45, for example, Dio records that
“by decree Caesar wore triumphal dress at all festivals and dressed up
with a laurel wreath wherever and whenever” (though, implying that re-
publican anxieties were still a factor, he goes on to explain that Caesar’s
excuse was that it covered up his baldness); and he adds (in his account
of 44) that he was given the right “always to ride around in the city itself
dressed in triumphal garb.” Appian meanwhile notes that he was given
the right to wear triumphal dress when he sacrificed.54 And similar de-
crees are recorded for Octavian (later Augustus). Separate grants re-
Th e
R o m a n Tr i u m p h
2 7 6
corded on 40, 36, and 29 gave him the right to wear laurel wreaths or a
crown of victory. In 25 he was awarded both crown and triumphal dress
on the first day of the year—which means that, had he himself been in
Rome when Tiberius triumphed on January 1, 7 bce, there would have
been the bizarre coincidence of both emperor and general in traditional
triumphal costume.55
Yet a host of problems arises in trying to understand what is going on
in any detail. Were the honors granted really so minutely calibrated? Or
have the later historians on whom we must rely introduced some of
these repetitions and complexities? When Dio, for example, refers to the
decision in 44 that Caesar should have the right to ride around the city
in “triumphal dress,” is that significantly separate from the grant he re-
cords in the same year of “the costume used by the kings”? Or has Dio
been confused by differently worded accounts of the same decree?56 It is,
in fact, in that particular distinction between “triumphal” and “regal”
costume that the most intense confusion lies—and where we seem to
find the most flagrant conflicts in ancient accounts. So, for example, in
describing the famous incident at which Antony offered Caesar a crown
during the festival of the Lupercalia, Plutarch has Caesar sitting on a
dais “dressed in triumphal clothes”; Dio has him “in regal costume.”57
Modern scholars have made ingenious attempts to sort out these dif-
ferent strands and to determine what kind of outfit was being worn
when: “Plutarch’s ‘triumphal costume’ seems a mistake,” as one recent
commentator corrects him, “Caesar was wearing . . . ‘regal’, rather than
triumphal, dress.”58 This is to miss the point. At this early period of the
new Roman autocracy, precedents were sought and invented in a variety
of different registers of power: triumphal, regal, divine. No one in the
first century bce (still less in the third century ce when Dio was writing)
had any accurate knowledge about what the early Roman kings had ac-
tually worn. Instead, power brokers, observers, and critics were appeal-
ing to different reconstructions of that in their various analyses of the
autocracy and its symbols, and in their various attempts to find ways of
presenting (and dressing up—literally) one-man rule. And, of course,
soon enough the circular nature of this process would have meant that
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277
the costume of Caesar and his successors helped to legitimate particular
reconstructions of primitive Roman dress. This nexus of first-century
debate no doubt lies behind many of the “confusions” about triumphal
and regal outfits, as well as behind the conflicting attempts to relate the
triumphing general to (or to distinguish him from) the early monarchs.
That said, the key fact is that triumphal dress did become a significant
element in the symbolic armory of the Roman emperor. Suetonius refers
to Caligula “frequently” wearing the garb of a triumphing general, as
does Dio, who contrasts this (favorably, by implication) with his more
explicitly divine attire.59 Republican anxieties were not entirely lost. The
right given Domitian to wear triumphal dress whenever he entered the
senate house is listed by Dio among that emperor’s excesses. And Clau-
dius is praised for not wearing it throughout a whole celebration but
only when he was actually sacrificing; the rest of the occasion (after what
must have been a nifty costume change) he directed in a toga praetexta. 60
But the equivalence between emperor and triumphing general—in title
as much as dress—was firmly established. If the triumphal procession
through the streets of Rome became a rarer event when the ceremony
was restricted to the imperial family itself, the same could not be said for
the image of the triumphing general—or at least his double.
THE TRIUMPH OF THE CONSULSHIP
This symbolic language of triumphal power extended further than the