The lesson of this one small part of triumphal tradition is not that
there is no “history” here, but that it is not the linear narrative of change
and development we so often try to reconstruct. The “history” of the
spolia opima is embedded in invention and reinvention, and in compet-
ing (and often loaded) ancient narratives, explanations, and reconstruc-
tions. Much the same goes for the triumph itself. But here the stark
chronological disjunction between triumphal practice and its written
traces even more strongly challenges the simplicity of a linear chronol-
ogy and pushes issues of discourse to center stage.
Most of the detailed surviving accounts of the triumph and its cus-
toms were written in the imperial period. The issue is not simply that
these were sometimes composed centuries after the ceremonial they pur-
port to describe, and that the earliest triumphs are always therefore seen
through the filter of later interests and prejudices. This is the case for ev-
ery aspect of early Rome; and it is now a truism that the history of the
early kings of the city was indelibly marked by the concerns and preoc-
cupations of the age of the emperors. The extra issue with the triumph is
that most accounts come from that period when the ritual itself had
been dramatically restricted to relatively rare celebrations by the impe-
rial family. By the first century ce, in other words, the triumph in writ-
ing, in images, and in cultural memory largely replaced the triumph in
the sense of a victory parade through the streets.
This fact throws into particularly high relief the competing chronolo-
gies that to some extent underlie all history. If one chronology of this rit-
ual is the familiar chronology of performance (ordering triumphs, as in
the Forum inscription, by date of celebration), another is the chronol-
The Triumph of History
295
ogy of writing (based on the order in which they were described, not
performed). To put this at its simplest, Ovid’s imagined triumphs of the
early Empire are both later and earlier than the celebration of Aemilius
Paullus in 167 bce as told by Plutarch in the late first or early second
century ce.
The rest of this chapter explores these competing chronologies and
complex histories of the triumph by focusing on the narratives (ancient
and modern) of three key moments in the triumphal story. First, it looks
at the changes in triumphal symbol and practice under Augustus. Then
it turns to the beginning and end of the history of the triumph, with
an eye not only on the various narratives used to open or close the story
of the ritual but also on the bigger question of what we mean by the ori-
gin or end of a ceremony such as this. My aim is to celebrate, rather than
to straighten out or compress, the historical intricacies and the sheer
“thickness” of the triumph’s history.
THE AUGUSTAN REVOLUTION
The reign of the first Roman emperor was a pivotal moment in trium-
phal history, and the bare bones of the story are worth repeating. Trium-
phal symbolism appears to have been given more emphasis at this period
than ever before, setting the style for later imperial image-making. The
Forum of Augustus, in many ways the programmatic monument of the
whole regime, celebrated the triumph at every turn—from the assem-
bled statues of the great men of the Republic, each one, according to
Suetonius, “in triumphal dress,” through the four-horse chariot in the
center of the piazza, to that famous painting featuring Alexander “in his
triumphal chariot” (later cannily retouched on Claudius’ instructions to
depict Augustus himself ).
Coins across the Empire featured miniature images of distinctive
chariots, figures of Victory, and laurels. Commemorative arches in Rome
and elsewhere were topped by bronze sculptures of the emperor in his
triumphal quadriga. And of course, in the Forum itself stood the in-
scribed list of triumphs—perhaps displayed on an arch surmounted by
Th e
R o m a n Tr i u m p h
2 9 6
the triumphant emperor, in what would be a powerful juxtaposition.
The symbols and ritual of the imperial house also exploited the trium-
phal theme. Augustus was almost certainly the first Roman to use imper-
ator, with all its triumphal associations, as a regular part of his title (“Imperator Caesar Augustus”), almost as if it were a first name, while in
addition accumulating—exactly when, how, and for what reason we do
not know—no fewer than twenty-one separate acclamations as imper-
ator on more or less the republican model.
Many of the new public and dynastic rituals of the period also drew
on triumphal customs. Dio, for example, records the occasion in 13 bce
when Augustus returned to the city from Germany, went up to the
Capitol, and, with a clear triumphal resonance, laid the laurel from
around his fasces “on the knees of Jupiter” (this was, so Dio says, before
giving the people free baths and barbers for a day). Five years later, no
doubt with the spolia opima in mind, he deposited his laurel in the Tem-
ple of Jupiter Feretrius. Augustan poets chimed in too. Reflecting (and
reinforcing) the topicality of the triumph, they treated it to praise and
irony, hype and subversion in almost equal measure—while exploiting
its metaphorical power in writing of love and longing, power and poetry
itself. This was the age of the triumph.18
Or so it was, in all senses but one. For, on the other hand, the reign of
Augustus is well known to mark a dramatic limitation in the actual per-
formance of the ritual—as the story of the laurel grove that opened this
chapter illustrated. Not in the early years of the reign: the emperor’s own
extravagant triple triumph of 29 bce (which was certainly the inspira-
tion behind some of the triumphal poetry and visual images) was fol-
lowed through the 20s by a number of more “ordinary” triumphs, six in
all, for victories in Spain, Gaul, Africa, and Thrace. But after the tri-
umph of Cornelius Balbus in 19, for the rest of Roman history there was
no further celebration except by the emperor and his immediate family,
unless we count the isolated ovation for Aulus Plautius.
In practice, triumphs were now dynastic events, seemingly used either
to showcase chosen heirs (as in the triumph of Tiberius in 12 ce) or to
celebrate the beginning of reigns, almost as a coronation ritual. In a
The Triumph of History
297
sense, that was already one function of the triple triumph of 29; and the
triumph over the Jews in 71 marked the start of the reign of Vespasian
and the new Flavian dynasty, while the posthumous triumph of Trajan
opened the reign of his successor, Hadrian, in 118. Those outside the im-
perial family (and sometimes those within it) had to be content with tri-
umphal insignia.
The change is nicely encapsulated in the poetry books of the Augus-
tan poet Tibullus. The focal poem of his first book celebrates the tri-
umph in 27 of his patron Marcus Valerius Messalla Corvinus for a vic-
tory over the Aquitanians. In the second book, he predicts a future
triumph for Messalla’s son, Marcus Valerius Messalla Messalinus. This
triumph never took place. Instead, decades later and long after the
death of Tibullus himself, Messalinus was awarded triumphal insignia