Roman Republican Triumph: Beyond the Spectacle

Roman Republican Triumph: Beyond the Spectacle
A workshop funded by The Carlsberg Foundation,
hosted by The Danish Institute in Rome,
Monday the 28 th till Wednesday the 30 th of January 2013
This workshop will explore the Roman triumph, focusing mainly on the ways in which it evolved
during the Republican period (including Augustus) in response to changing circumstances in
Roman society, a society almost constantly engaged in warfare. As is often the case in ancient
history, continuity and change and the problematic nature of sources are at the centre of these
investigations. The aim is to look at the triumph and its relation to Roman warfare, bringing
together various approaches and specialisms. Notwithstanding the current tendency to see Sparta,
Rome and Athens as typical rather than exceptional, even when it comes to military matters
(Eckstein on Rome, Hodkinson on Sparta and Pritchard on Athens), the triumph remains a specific
Roman war ritual, seemingly confirming a Republican culture obsessed with war (what might be
described as a militaristic culture).
The workshop wishes to revisit the emerging orthodoxy of asking questions about the ritual in its
contemporary context, while at the same time being sceptical about the value of searching for
'origins'. This has led to a focus on procession and spectacles, and on the ideology of the Roman
triumph (‘cultural history’). This approach has added much valuable knowledge, but the tendency
to ask questions about the war ritual mainly in its contemporary context, which naturally tends to
focus almost exclusively on periods for which we have contemporary evidence, has unintentionally
narrowed the scope of the subject. As a result, a study of the context and development of the
Roman Republican triumph is still missing. Imperial writers certainly used republican sources in
their writing about the past, and thus rather than simply deconstructing the sources by thorough
analysis, we should determine how the evidence can be used, not if it can be used.
Even though resent trends have been most visible perhaps in the study of the Roman triumph, this
workshop does not wish to ignore other aspects of war rituals, especially in their relation with the
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triumph. In view of the huge prominence of warfare in Rome, it is hardly a surprise that rituals
related to warfare should play an important part in the religious and political life at Rome.
Due to the prominence of warfare in Roman life, it would be promising to ask how the triumph
related to practical conditions of the Roman state and its continuous state of warfare, and how
this imposed on the interactions between the Res Publica and the commanders in the field. This
may help to shed new light on and reconstruct Roman attitudes to war. One central aim of the
workshop is thus to bring back Roman military history to the forefront of the study of the Roman
triumph.
A question that has attracted much recent attention is whether there were any rules for obtaining
a triumph. Some scholars have been overly sceptical about the possibility of reconstructing
customary practises. There is no doubt that there was a fair amount of flexibility and changes over
time. In the Middle Republic it was not uncommon for a victory/triumph not to bring an end to the
war, which can be observed in the Samnite Wars and the First Punic War. The question remains
whether this is true for later periods. Of similar interest is the question as to when the pacification
of conquered areas became relevant for the obtaining of a triumph. Roman perceptions of victory
should not be isolated from the peace following on from it. Even the Roman triumph, at least in
principle, marked the end of a military conflict and the soldiers were brought back to Rome as a
symbol of this Roman peace/victory, albeit a Roman peace: peace through war (cf. Res Gestae 13).
The emergence of requirements other than winning a victory, however, remains a much neglected
part of the study of the development of the Republican triumph.
This issue of rules for obtaining a triumph should also be related to the issue of how a victory, and
indeed a defeat (defeated commanders do not seem to have had particular disadvantages
compared to their victorious peers. Cf. M. Waller, Latomus 70, 2011), was accounted for; how was
the number of casualties on the battlefield calculated and by whom. Rome’s relative carelessness
towards its own dead certainly suggests that this may often have been impossible to judge. It does
seem unfeasible to suggest that a commander underestimated his own victory, or it may just be
that usually a significant victory, with substantial enemy losses, was required to obtain a triumph.
Many triumphs led to the erection of monuments of one kind or another, first and foremost in
Rome. Most commonly these were temples, formally dedicated following battle vows, and with
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perhaps just one exception (Ap. Claudius Caecus' temple of Bellona) all the vowing generals also
celebrated triumphs. There were of course also other monuments, like columnae rostratae,
triumphal arches (and later triumphal columns). Some triumphators held post-triumphal games,
either instead of or in addition to the monuments. But some did none of these things (and indeed
votive temples became less common after ordinary triumphs by the First Century BC). The
question remains why some felt it necessary to monumentalize their successes when others did
not, seen in the light of a current emphasis on monuments and memory. This is hardly only a
question of surpassing the glory of earlier triumphators.
Trends are manifold, but it is the aim of this workshop to collate papers on a variety of different
periods of Roman history and by using an interdisciplinary approach, to stress the necessity of
using both material culture and written evidence in order to answer the questions we pose.
The workshop wishes to address the following and similar questions related to the Roman
triumph:
• continuity and change
• problematic evidence
• the search for ‘origins’
• rules for obtaining a triumph/Conventions
• requirements other than winning a victory
• relation to victories in the field and to the victorious and defeated commanders
• Roman attitudes to war
• battle vows and commemorations in Rome
• triumph in relation to other war rituals
Speakers and titles:
Keynote speaker: Professor John W. Rich, University of Nottingham: 'Towards a History of the
Triumph'
Head of Department Jesper Carlsen, University of Southern Denmark, Odense: ‘De perfidia Gn.
Domitius Ahenobarbus' Victory and Triumph over the Alloborges’
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Dr Matteo Cadario, Università degli Studi di Milano: ‘Preparing for Triumph: Graecae artes as
Roman Booty’
Professor Timothy J. Cornell, University of Manchester: 'The Fasti Triumphales and the Historical
Tradition'
Director Patrick Kragelund, Danmarks Kunstbibliotek: ‘Triumph in the Roman Praetextae, from
Naevius to the Octavia’
Assistant Professor Troels Myrup Kristensen, University of Aarhus: ‘Triumph, Trophy Heads, and
the Semantics of Violence’
Carlsberg Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow Carsten H. Lange, The Danish Institute in
Rome: ‘The Triumph Outside the City: Voices of Protest in the Middle Republic’
Akademischer Assistent Christoph Lundgreen, TU Dresden: ‘Rules for Obtaining a Triumph’
Associate Professor Jesper M. Madsen, University of Southern Denmark, Odense: 'The Losers
Prize: Triumphs in the Mithridatic Wars'
Dr Ian Macgregor Morris: ‘The Roman Triumph in the Long Eighteenth Century’
Professor Josiah Osgood, Georgetown University: ‘Julius Caesar and Spanish "triumph-hunting”’
Associate Professor Ida Östenberg, University of Gothenburg: ‘Triumph and Spectacle. Victory
Celebrations in the Late Republican Civil Wars’
Professor Marianne Pade, Director, The Danish Institute in Rome: ‘The Neapolitan Triumph of
Alfonso d’Aragona’
Professor Christopher J. Smith, Director, The British School at Rome: ‘falsi triumphi’
Lecturer Frederik J. Vervaet, University of Melbourne: ‘Beyond the Spectacle: The Dubious
Triumphs of Pompeius Magnus’
Assistant Professor Richard Westall, Pontificia Università Gregoriana, Rome: ‘Triumph and Closure:
Between History and Literature’
Organiser: Carlsberg Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow Carsten H. Lange, The Danish
Institute in Rome: hjort.lange@acdan.it
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