leading, shorthand as the aristocratic funeral. I am not here referring to
particular overlaps in ritual. Certainly, some elements of triumphal prac-
tice have been found in funeral processions. Dionysius of Halicarnassus
himself observed, in his account of the pompa circensis, that a strand of
ribaldry and satire was shared by all three of the circus, funeral, and tri-
umphal parades: men dressed as satyrs or Sileni, dancing and jesting, in
both circus procession and funeral, the satiric songs of the soldiers in the
triumph.81 Some have tried to argue from this for a common ancestry
for all three pompae: Greek roots, as Dionysius himself would predict-
ably have it, or an Etruscan inheritance, as some of his modern succes-
sors would prefer?82
What makes one ritual seem similar to another is just as complicated
as what makes them different. And the significance of similarities is of-
ten hard to see. Or more precisely, in this case, it has proved difficult to
decide which of the many perceived similarities (the use of torches, the
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285
final banquet) might be important indicators for the history of the ritu-
als.83 At the same time it has proved all too tempting to discover ritual
borrowings where none exist. Recently, for example, it has been con-
fidently asserted that the floats, painting, and spoils displayed in trium-
phal processions were “re-used at funeral processions.” If so, this would
make a compelling visual link between the two occasions. But in fact
there is no clear evidence for this practice at all.84
My concern is not so much with these overlaps between the two pro-
cessions but with their interrelationship at a broader cultural and ideo-
logical level. We have already noted the links between imperial triumph
and apotheosis, monumentalized in the Arch of Titus with its echoes be-
tween the more-than-human status of the triumphing general and the
deification of the emperor on his death. The logic of that connection
had an even bigger impact on early imperial ritual culture. This is strik-
ingly evident not only in the strange story of Trajan’s posthumous tri-
umph (when an effigy of the already deified emperor was said to have
processed in the triumphal chariot) but also in the arrangements made
for the funeral of Augustus.
On that occasion, one proposal was that the cortège should pass
through the porta triumphalis; another, that the statue of Victory from
the senate house should be carried at the head of the procession; an-
other, that placards blazoning the titles of laws Augustus had sponsored
and peoples he had conquered should be paraded, too. Dio, reflecting
the logic even if not the more sober facts, claims that the cortège did in-
deed pass through the triumphal gate, that the emperor was laid out on
his bier in triumphal costume, and that elsewhere in the procession
there was an image of him in a triumphal chariot.85 The triumph here
was providing a language for representing (even if not performing) an
imperial funeral and the apotheosis that the funeral might simulta-
neously entail.86
There was, however, a bleaker side to this—and one that chimes in
with the theme of the ambivalence and fragility of triumphal glory.
True, the funeral may have been an occasion in which triumphal splen-
dor could be called to mind and, in part, recreated long after the day of
the triumph itself had passed, as with the impersonation of the ancestors
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of the dead man—dressed, if appropriate, in their triumphal robes. But
at the same time the funeral might point to the final destruction of tri-
umphal glory: Pompey’s triumphal toga was consigned to what passed
for his funeral pyre; and at the culmination of Caesar’s funeral the “mu-
sicians and actors took off the clothes that they taken from the equip-
ment (instrumentum) of his triumphs and put on for the occasion, tore
them to shreds and threw them into the blaze.”87
The triumph was repeatedly linked with death in other ways, too.
Aemilius Paullus famously starred in his triumphal procession amidst
the funerals of his sons. But on the most poignant occasions the two
rituals could be presented as almost interchangeable: if death in battle
robbed the victor of the triumphal ceremony he deserved, then the
funeral might have to substitute. This is a theme eloquently developed
by Seneca in an essay on grief, mourning, and the acceptance of the ne-
cessity of death, Ad Marciam, de consolatione (To Marcia, On Consola-
tion). One of the examples he takes is the death in 9 bce of Drusus, Au-
gustus’ stepson, during successful campaigns in Germany. His body was
brought back home in a procession through Italy; and crowds poured
out from towns along the route to escort it to the city: “a funeral proces-
sion very like a triumph.”88
The cultural resonance of this connection is nicely illustrated by Plu-
tarch, when he projects a similar idea onto the Greek world in his de-
scription of the death of the Achaean general Philopoemen in 182 bce.
After he had been poisoned by the Messenians, his compatriots in Meg-
alopolis launched an expedition to recover his body, cremate it, and
bring it home. It was, Plutarch explains, an impressive and orderly pro-
cession that returned to Megalopolis, “combining a triumphal proces-
sion and a funeral.”89
These connections—with their reminder that, for better or worse,
death always courted glory—give an added point to the story of Domitian’s
strange banquet with which I started this chapter. It was in Roman
terms magnificently appropriate that when the emperor was looking
for a theme for his triumphal dinner party, he should take such a funer-
ary turn.
c h a p t e r
IX
The Triumph of History
IMPERIAL LAURELS
Toward the end of his long account of laurel and its various uses, Pliny
tells the story of an unusual laurel grove at the imperial villa known as
“The Hennery” (Ad Gallinas), just outside Rome. It had been planted
from the sprig of laurel held in the beak of a white hen that had been
dropped by an eagle into the lap of the unsuspecting Livia, just after her
betrothal to Octavian. It was obviously an omen of their future great-
ness. So the soothsayers (haruspices) ordered that the bird and any future brood should be carefully preserved—hence the name of the villa—and
that the laurel should be planted. It successfully took root, and when
Octavian triumphed in 29 bce he wore a wreath and carried in his hand
a branch, both taken from that burgeoning tree. “And all the ruling
Caesars (imperatores Caesares) did likewise.” In fact, the custom grew up
of them planting the branch after the triumphal ceremony and calling
the resulting trees by the name of the emperor or prince concerned. A
veritable Julio-Claudian memorial grove.1
Suetonius reports a rather more sinister version. At the beginning of
his Life of Galba, Nero’s successor, he explains that as the death of each emperor approached, his own particular tree withered. At the end of
Nero’s reign, “the whole grove died from the root up” (as well as all the
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hens that were the descendants of that original laurel bringer). This her-