assuming them to be neutral documentary records, free from the in-
Th e
R o m a n Tr i u m p h
6 6
terests, prejudice, or priorities of any particular writer. In fact, some
individual or group must have been responsible for the choice of words
carved into the marble—whether that responsibility entailed merely
selecting an existing document to copy or adapt, or a much more active
process of research and composition, delving into archives, family rec-
ords, and earlier historical accounts to reconstruct a complete chro-
nology of the ceremony. There have been some imaginative theories.
Panvinio, following his misreading of Suetonius, deduced that the main
hand behind the compilation was the Augustan antiquarian Verrius
Flaccus (in fact, Flaccus had been responsible for the calendar, or fasti,
at Praenestae). Others have detected the influence of Cicero’s friend
Atticus, who is known to have compiled a chronology of Rome and its
magistrates. But this is little more than a guess, for there is no firm evi-
dence on the processes of composition.47
We shall return to some of the problems of the Fasti Capitolini in the
next chapter—not only how they were compiled but also the nagging
question of how accurate they are. For the moment the most important
point to stress is that the Romans themselves saw—and were confident
that they could reconstruct—a historical sequence of triumphal ceremo-
nies stretching back into the earliest phases of their city. This point is
confirmed by some, admittedly scanty, surviving fragments of two other
inscribed lists of triumphs.
First are a couple of scraps listing some late second-century bce tri-
umphs, rather grandly known as the Fasti Urbisalvienses, after the town
(modern Urbisaglia in north Italy) where the larger piece turned up;
these are so close to the Fasti Capitolini as to make it almost certain that they were a direct copy, intended to replicate the metropolitan text in
an Italian municipality. The second group is made up of five more
substantial fragments found somewhere in Rome during the Renais-
sance, listing triumphs between 43 and 21 bce and known as the Fasti
Barberiniani after the family who once owned them (see Fig. 37). These
not only fill in some of the gaps of the Fasti Capitolini, but their use of a distinctively different formula (“Appius Claudius Pulcher over Spain,
first of January, triumphed [and] dedicated his palm”) suggests an inde-
pendent tradition.48
The Impact of the Triumph
67
Nonetheless, the clear impression given by these documents is that,
by the end of the first century bce, a broad orthodoxy had become es-
tablished on the overall shape of triumphal history, even if, as we shall
see, particular details and individual triumphs could be matters of dis-
pute and disagreement.
THE LESSONS OF HISTORY
That historical sequence of individual celebrations was more than a mat-
ter of simple chronology. For it provided the basis on which Roman
writers theorized and sometimes puzzled over the development of the
triumph in a more general sense. In many ways the triumph came to be
seen as a marker of wider developments in Roman politics and society.
So, for example, the increasingly far-flung peoples and places over which
triumphs were celebrated represented a map of Roman imperial expan-
sion and of the changing geopolitical shape of the Roman world. This
aspect certainly struck Florus, when he reflected on Rome’s victory in
wars of the fifth century bce over two settlements that by his day had
long been as Roman as Rome itself (one not much more than a suburb
of the city): “Over Verulae and Bovillae, I am ashamed to say it—but we
triumphed.” It made the point, even if at the cost of some creative in-
vention; there is no other reference to a triumph over either of these
towns.49
Even more powerfully, though, triumphal history was conscripted
into moralizing accounts of the pernicious growth of luxury and corrup-
tion. The decline of the sturdy peasant virtues of early Rome could be
traced in the increased ostentation of the triumph. If Caius Atilius
Regulus (who triumphed in 257 bce) was supposed to have held the
reins of his triumphal chariot in calloused hands that only recently
“guided a pair of plough oxen” or if the Manius Curius could be said (in
Apuleius’ memorable phrase) to have “had more triumphs than slaves,”
the same was not true later.50 Dionysius of Halicarnassus concluded his
account of Romulus’ founding triumph in 753 bce with some uncom-
fortable thoughts on the changed character of the ceremony in his own
day: “In our life-time it has become extravagant and pretentious, mak-
Th e
R o m a n Tr i u m p h
6 8
ing a histrionic show more for the display of wealth than for the reputa-
tion of virtue; it has departed in every respect from the ancient tradition
of frugality.”51 Dio too seems to have echoed these sentiments, though
(so far as we can gauge from the Byzantine historian who is our main ac-
cess to the lost sections of his early books) he pinpointed the cause of de-
cline in the influence of “cliques and political factions” in the city.52
This moralizing was given a particular edge by the fact that triumphal
processions themselves were one of the main conduits through which
wealth and luxury were introduced to Rome. Triumphs did not simply
reflect the rise of extravagance. As they celebrated richer and richer con-
quests and displayed the costly booty through the streets, they were
partly responsible for it. So Livy emphasizes in his discussion of the vic-
tory of Cnaeus Manlius Vulso against the Galatians (in modern Turkey),
and of the subsequent triumph in 187. It was then, he writes, that Ro-
man banquets began to feature “lute-girls and harpists, and other seduc-
tive dinner-party amusements”; “it was then that the cook began to be a
valuable commodity, though for men of old he had been the most insig-
nificant of slaves, both in cash-value and the work he did, and then that
what had been servile labor began to be considered an art.” With no less
disapproval, both Livy and Pliny (who quotes a writer of late second
century bce as his authority) add “sideboards and one legged tables” to
the roster of deleterious novelties introduced by this triumph.53
The chronology of the triumph was, in other words, more than a
scholarly game for Roman antiquarians. The sequence of triumphal
celebrations from Romulus onward provided a framework onto which
other developments in Roman politics and society could be mapped.
THE AUGUSTAN NEW DEAL
The Fasti Capitolini themselves signal one of the most striking links be-
tween triumphal chronology and Roman history more generally. For
their layout of the complete sequence of triumphs on four pilasters,
starting with the victory celebration of Romulus, comes to an end with
that of Lucius Cornelius Balbus in 19 bce. Balbus’ triumph for victories
The Impact of the Triumph
69
in Africa (over a perhaps misleadingly impressive roster of towns and
tribes listed by Pliny) occupies the final centimeters at the bottom of the
fourth pilaster, leaving no space for any further celebrations to be re-
corded.54 This was not a matter of chance. It must have taken careful cal-