alded the advent of a new dynasty.2
Unsurprisingly perhaps, these stories do not quite add up. How do
we reconcile the thriving grove described by Pliny with Suetonius’ pic-
ture of blight at the end of Rome’s first imperial dynasty? Either Pliny
was writing this part of his great encyclopedia before 68 ce, or—more
likely—reliable information about the state of the trees at “The
Hennery” was limited. Besides, we find a troubling inconsistency even
within Suetonius’ account. If all the imperial laurels died out at the
death of their own particular emperor, what exactly was left to wither
and so make way for Galba?
But the importance of the story does not lie in those practical details.
For it offers a political genealogy—literally, a family tree—of the new-
style imperial triumph. It provides a founding myth for a ceremony that
since the reign of Augustus had been restricted to the ruling house itself.
Dio’s narrative makes this very nearly explicit. His version of the tale is
not told with quite the verve of Pliny or Suetonius (though his interpre-
tation of the original omen as partly a dreadful presage of the future
power of Livia over Augustus is a nice touch). But, unlike them, he lo-
cates the story at a precise moment in the unfolding historical narrative.
Pinpointing it to 37 bce, Dio makes it follow shortly after his account of
the refusal of a triumph by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Octavian’s aide
and at that time consul.
According to Dio, Octavian had not had such military success, and
Agrippa was unwilling to “puff himself up” with the honor in case (so
the implication is) he thereby showed up Octavian in contrast. This is
the first of a series of triumphal refusals by Agrippa, which lead in Dio’s
narrative to the development of triumphal insignia, rather than the full
triumph, as the standard reward for successful generals outside the im-
perial family. The close link here between Agrippa’s declining a triumph
and the depositing of the laurel in the imperial lap points strongly to the
importance of the story as the charter myth of the restricted triumph
and as a marker of historical change.3
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289
HISTORY AND RITUAL
This chapter is concerned with the ways in which we, as well as the an-
cients themselves, identify, describe, and explain this and other develop-
ments in the ceremony of triumph. I emphasized at the start of this
book that the triumph was one of the few Roman rituals with a “his-
tory.” By that, I meant that—notwithstanding all the uncertainties I
have repeatedly pointed to—we could trace a series of individual tri-
umphs, their dates, their cast of characters, and sometimes their particu-
lar circumstances across a millennium or so of Roman time. To move
from there to “history” in the stronger sense, delineating and accounting
for change in the ritual as it was performed, is a much more difficult is-
sue. Ancients and moderns alike have tended to resort to big assertions.
Some of these are true but self-evident; others are based on little more
than conjecture. Often they are tinged with that nostalgia for the noble
simplicity of early Rome that modern historiography shares with (or
borrows from) its ancient counterpart.
One theme has been the increasing “hellenization” of the original cer-
emony.4 But this apparently technical term does not necessarily deliver
more than the obviously correct observation that Rome’s growing con-
tact with cultures of the Eastern Mediterranean catalyzed new forms
of triumphal display—while at the same time the lucrative process of
conquest provided the wherewithal with which to sponsor ever more
lavish spectacle. Other themes headline various forms of deterioration or
corruption in the ceremony. Modern writers echo Dionysius’ lament
that by his day (the reign of Augustus) triumphs had become a “histri-
onic show,” far removed from “the ancient tradition of frugality,” or
Dio’s view that “cliques and factions” had “changed” the ceremony for
the worse. It is commonly now claimed that, at the very least, a shift of
emphasis can be traced over the ritual’s history from a primitive reli-
gious significance to political power-play and self-advertising spectacular
display.5
This again may be partly true. Certainly the terms in which the tri-
Th e
R o m a n Tr i u m p h
2 9 0
umph was discussed and debated must have changed radically over the
centuries. The sometimes cynical quips or philosophical bons mots from
Seneca and his like about its functions and ambiguities are inconceivable
in the early city. But it would be romantic nostalgia to imagine that the
Romans of, say, the fifth or fourth centuries bce, whose words are lost to
us, were unfailingly pious; that they never quarreled about the cere-
mony, never saw it as an opportunity for self advancement; or, for that
matter, that they never wrote the whole thing off as a waste of time. It is
always an easy way out to project innocent simplicity onto periods for
which we have no evidence. But we should remember that the very earli-
est extended meditation on triumphal culture that we do have, Plautus’
Amphitruo of the early second century bce, is already highly sophisti-
cated and ironizing about the ritual and its participants. As for later Ro-
man commentators themselves, if one of their gambits was to proclaim
the increasing politicization of the triumph over time, another (as we
have seen) was to retroject many of the later disputes and in-fighting
back into its earliest phases.
On a smaller scale, the triumphal chronology does reveal some strik-
ing changes in the pattern of celebration. The triumph on the Alban
Mount, for example, is first attested in 231 bce, is celebrated four times
over the next sixty years, and is not heard of again after 172. The pattern
of the twenty-one known ovations, between the first in 503 bce and the
dictatorship of Caesar, is even more complicated: there is a clutch in the
early years of the Republic, then a long gap (none, or perhaps one, cele-
brated between 360 and Marcellus’ ovation in 211), followed by a rash of
seven between 200 and 174, then a lull again until three were celebrated
in the late second and early first centuries bce—each for victories in
slave wars.
Even in the Empire, when the absence of any systematic record, such
as the Forum inscription, means that we are much less certain of dates
and type of celebration (and indeed when a number of triumphal cere-
monies may be entirely lost to us), some patterns are clear. Ovations are
not heard of after 47 ce, when—in a gesture of no doubt self-conscious
archaism on the emperor’s part—Aulus Plautius was given the honor for
The Triumph of History
291
his achievements in Britain by Claudius. The award of triumphal insig-
nia, by contrast, was a relatively regular event in the early Empire. In
fact, it became rather too regular in the eyes of some historians, who
sneered at its award to the undeserving, even on occasion to children.
But it too seems to have fallen into abeyance after the reign of Hadrian,
in the mid-second century.6
Something more than the changing patterns of Roman military suc-
cess must surely underlie these changes in the pattern of celebration. But
exactly what more remains a matter of inference or guesswork. One