imperial house. In particular, triumphal dress was associated with what
came to be known as the processus consularis, the “consular procession”—
the ceremony held at the inauguration of new consuls. The best known
literary representations of this are found in works of the fourth century
ce and later: Panegyrics of the poet Claudian, celebrating consulships of
the emperor Honorius in 398 in Milan, and in 404 in Rome; and the
fourth book of Corippus’ In Laudem Iustini Minoris (Panegyric of Justin
II), which hypes that emperor’s entry into the consulship in 566, in the
Christian city of Constantinople, or “New Rome.”61
How far either of these accounts can be taken as a reasonably faith-
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ful description of the ceremony is a moot point. (One of Corippus’ re-
cent commentators tends to understate the problem when she observes:
“The exercise of the imagination in such descriptive passages is not
ruled out.”)62 But both evoke its triumphal aspects, Corippus especially
strongly: he describes the decorations of “triumphal laurel,” the emperor
being carried along shoulder-high “for his great triumph” (in magnum
triumphum), while also echoing the traditional vocabulary of the occa-
sion (Justin is described as ovans). What is more, some ceremonial im-
ages of consuls from this period depict them wearing what has been
taken to be a version of the toga picta. 63
Of course, these texts are much later in date than most of what we
have been concerned with so far; they have as their subject the emperor
himself as consul, which might explain some of the triumphal imagery;
and in the case of Honorius’ sixth consulship the ceremony was also cel-
ebrating his military victory over the Goths.64 Yet we have evidence of a
procession to the Capitoline at the inauguration of consuls at least as far
back as the first century bce.65 By the end of the first century ce there
are signs that this was—or at least could be—invested with triumphal
character, even for consuls who were not part of the imperial family.
Martial writing in the 90s hints at the connection of (triumphal) laurel
and the beginning of a consul’s office.66
But the most aggressive statement of these links is to be found slightly
later and in visual form on the Monument of Philopappos, still a well-
known landmark in Athens (Fig. 34). This is the tomb of Caius Julius
Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappos, descendant of the royal house of
Commagene (in Syria), honorary citizen of Athens and Roman consul
in 109 ce. Part of its sculptural decoration appears to show Philopappos
in triumph, in a scene that is closely modeled on the famous panel from
the Arch of Titus. Philopappos certainly never celebrated a triumph. As-
suming that this is not a dangerous fantasy, depicting its honorand
usurping the triumphal privileges of the imperial house, then it must be
a visual reference to one of the highlights of his career: his consulship at
Rome. Whether it is to be seen as a documentary depiction of his inau-
gural procession or as a bold “literalization” of the symbolic triumphal
The Boundaries of the Ritual
279
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
Figure 34:
The façade of the Monument of Philopappos, Athens, 114–116 ce, as restored
in the third volume of Stuart and Revett’s Antiquities of Athens (1794). Beneath the central seated portrait of Philopappos is the triumphal scene of his inauguration as consul in 109 ce.
aspects of the inauguration has been much debated. But whichever ap-
proach we take, Philopappos’ monument casts the consular ceremony in
a form almost indistinguishable from a triumph “proper.”67
This representation—and the idea of the processus consularis in gen-
eral—raises sharply again the question of the boundaries between trium-
phal ceremony and its imitators, parodies, and look-alikes. Scholars have
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2 8 0
struggled in trying to define the relationship between the consular inau-
guration and the traditional triumphal procession. They have written
vaguely about the “increasing coalescence” between such ceremonies to-
ward the late Empire and the “merging of the associations” of consulship
and triumph. “Any imperial ceremony,” it has been said, “could take on
the overtones of a triumph.”68 This gives the impression of some kind of
ritual melting pot, in which traditional distinctions gradually broke
down and everything seeped together into some undifferentiated late
antique ceremonial. Better, in general, to think of triumphal symbolism
as providing a way of conceptualizing other forms of Roman political
and social power, and being used selectively to that end.
In this case, it is important in particular to be alert to a longstanding
convergence between triumph and consulship that is often overlooked.
For in the late Republic we know of a series of generals who, in a strik-
ing union of different forms of glory, celebrated their triumph on the
very day of their entry into the consulship, or immediately before:
Marius in 104 bce, probably Pompey in 71 (the day before his consul-
ship started in 70), and a decided clutch in the Caesarian and triumviral
periods, including Marcus Aemilius Lepidus in 43 (the eve of his consul-
ship in 42), Lucius Antonius in 41, Lucius Marcius Censorinus in 39,
and possibly Quintus Fabius Maximus in 45.69 What this suggests is that
something more than a merging of different forms of ceremonial is at
stake in the imperial processus consularis. The connection—however it
was originally formed—between the triumph and the consulship went
back into the Republic. It points to the Januslike face of the ceremony,
not only a backward-looking commemoration of past success but an in-
augural moment in the political order. In the next chapter we shall see
the most extreme (mythical) example of this, when the triumph of
Romulus coincided with the first day of the Roman state itself.
THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH
The most notorious instance of the use of triumphal costume and sym-
bolism outside the procession is also one of the most alluring cul de sacs
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281
in modern scholarship on the triumph. In his tenth Satire (adapted by
Samuel Johnson as The Vanity of Human Wishes), Juvenal mocks the
pomposity of the magistrate who presides over the games (ludi)—that
characteristic Roman combination of religious ritual and popular enter-
tainment that involved a variety of spectacles from horse or chariot rac-
ing in the Circus Maximus to theatrical performances (ludi scaenici).
The president is dressed up, writes Juvenal, “in the tunic of Jupiter, car-
rying the purple swathes of his embroidered toga on his shoulders and a
vast crown so huge that no neck could bear the weight.” It would be an
extraordinary ego trip for this Roman bigwig, but for the fact that, as the
satirist gleefully points out, he must share the ride with a sweaty slave
who stands with him in the chariot to take the weight of the crown.70
Again, this is a more complicated passage than it at first seems. There