on foot. The red paint used to assimilate the triumphator to a motionless statue would have further highlighted the difference. Subordinating warfare and its gains to the control of the senatorial nobility at large was important because the successful conclusion of warfare brought enormous material benefits to the victorious general and opened many opportunities for prestigious ritual activity.63 The range of ritual alternatives to the triumph just delineated, the amount of private statuary in public spaces, and the frequent granting of dubious triumphs give an indication of the stakes in this arena, as well as of the Senate’s success in channeling private ambition into approved forms.64
So understood, the new processional ritual conforms to the growing importance of the publicity and visibility of Roman rituals as delineated in Chapter 3. It should be pointed out that another military procession, the so-called transvectio equitum, may have been invented only shortly afterward, supposedly in 304.65 The gods were honored by the display of booty, too. Other rituals of thanksgiving, called supplicationes, took place before the celebration of the triumph. And the general was expected to discharge his personal obligations to the divinities afterward, beyond the sacrifice to Iuppiter that concluded the triumph and corresponded to the vow taken at the general’s departure.
Finally, the name of the new ritual offers the best indicator of its import: triumphus and triumphator derive from the exclamation triumphe, which must initially have been a cry of mockery, directed at the general forced to stand unmoving on his chariot, playing his own statue. We are dealing with a form of iambizein, which focused its satirizing thrust on the chief protagonist of the triumph, as it did in the pompa funebris with the important and rich deceased.66 The mockery of the soldiers was not apotropaic but rather formed a rite of reversal—and offered substantial public critique—in the presence of, and in respect to, a superior who had enjoyed power over the life and death of his inferiors and was now confined to immobility by the rite.
Media of Representation
The triumph was a serious matter. Many members of Rome’s ruling elite vied for the honor. What is more, temporary appearance as a godlike statue endowed other, permanent media with greater symbolic value. To be permanently represented by a statue in a public place, a distinction previously by and large restricted to divinities, was as close to “immortality” as a Roman aristocrat could get.67 The prestige was immense, and the Romans devoted considerable ingenuity to enhancing the visual impact of individual statues even further. Some statues demanded attention by being put up next to monuments of colossal size, such as larger-than-life statues of Iuppiter and Hercules.68 Others stood out by being elevated on columns or arches.69 Dress was an index of difference as well: some chose representation in armor; others preferred the toga.70 The statue built or given on the basis of a triumph soon became the pinnacle and center of a much wider practice. If consuls leading a pompa triumphalis were honored with quadrigae, why not give chariots to praetors and aediles leading a pompa circensis? In any case, playing a role in a processional rite functioned as the criterion of legitimacy for the public display of a statue.71
Still, Roman culture was first and foremost theatrical.72 Frequently backed by additional public money, Roman generals of the middle and late Republic often used part of their military booty to build temples, but, as Eric Orlin has pointed out, nineteen out of twenty preferred to spend their booty on games. In contrast to temples, which were owned by deities, the generals themselves could preside over games.73 Likewise, it was the procession of the triumph, rather than the statue, that made the largest impression upon the Roman populace. Even the emperors, at a time when most generals could no longer hope to celebrate their own triumphal procession, did not object to a bronze statue at the center of the ornamenta triumphalia.74 By using the term ovans triumphavi in his Res gestae—“I triumphed in ovation”—Augustus employed another strategy to separate triumphal honors and the pompa proper.75
The triumph thus reconstructed also affords a new perspective on the history of art. The temporary work of art that consisted in the living statue of the triumphator stood at the apex of a growing number of forms and media of improvised “temporary images” such as paintings, soldiers, or captives.76 It is here that we have to look for the Roman origins of triumphal painting.77 Henner von Hesberg used the term “temporary images” (temporäre Bilder) to describe nearly contemporaneous practices at Hellenistic courts, such as is documented for us by Callixenus’s lengthy description of a festival arranged by Ptolemaios II.78 To judge from the lengthy descriptions that the extraordinary triumphs of Aemilius Paulus and Pompey received, it was this visual element out of the whole complex that drew public interest and afforded any particular celebration the best chances to enter into the literary tradition.79 The development of the triumph in the historical period can then be described in terms of increased theatralization: the ritual dress, originally simply denoting unsurpassable authority and hence designated ornatus Iovis,80 was gradually elaborated into a tunica palmata and toga picta,81 and was used on further occasions and in statuary representations. Ultimately the triumph became one among several occasions when military success received public commemoration in the iconography of rituals, victory celebrations, and the public conclusion of treaties.82 Ida Östenberg has rightly stressed the character of the triumph as a performance informing a worldview far beyond momentary political constellations.83
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