soldiers and their general had become, at the very least, strained. The
enthusiastic participation of the troops in a triumph could usually be
guaranteed by a generous hand-out from the spoils. On this occasion,
Pompey’s golden touch failed him, and the men complained about the
meanness of what they received: the story was that they not only threat-
ened to mutiny but to give in to the obvious temptation and loot the
cash on display in the procession itself. Pompey’s reaction was to stand
firm and—in what was to become another famous slogan—to say that
he would rather have no triumph at all, indeed he would rather die, than
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1 8
give in to his soldiers’ insubordination. This went down predictably well
in some quarters. According to Plutarch, one of the leading opponents
of his triumph changed his mind after this display of old-fashioned dis-
cipline; and the anecdote is recounted elsewhere as an example of proper
determination on the part of a general.31 It can hardly, however, have en-
deared him to the rank and file.
He did not make the same mistake after the Mithradatic war, when
the size of the donative distributed before the triumph (in fact, while
the troops were still out in the East) reached legendary proportions.
One hundred million sesterces are said to have been shared out between
his “legates and quaestors,” Pompey’s immediate subordinates, probably
about twenty in all. These men must have been wealthy already, but an
extra 5 million sesterces each would have been the equivalent of a sub-
stantial inheritance, and on its own a sizeable aristocratic fortune. For
Pompey, it was a good investment in political loyalty.
The lowest ranking soldiers received 6,000 sesterces each—a tiny pro-
portion of what was given to the commanders, but at roughly six times a
soldier’s annual pay it must, even so, have seemed a major windfall.32
Certainly this triumph was remembered centuries later, long after the
end of antiquity, for its lavish generosity—as an early sixteenth-century
document from the archives of Florence vividly brings home. This was
written by an adviser to the Medici, suggesting a detailed programme
for celebrating the feast of John the Baptist. To fill one afternoon,
this anonymous apparatchik proposed the recreation of four particular
ancient triumphs, giving in each case the reasons for his choice. One
of them is the (third) triumph of Pompey; the reason is Pompey’s liberal-
ity and his generosity to friends and enemies alike. A good model for
the Medici.33
THE ART OF MEMORY
Public spectacles are usually ephemeral events. At the end of the day,
when the participants have gone home, when the props, the rubbish,
the barricades, and the extra seating have all been cleared away, the
Pompey’s Finest Hour?
19
show lives on only in memory. It is, of course, in the interests of the
sponsors to ensure that the memory lasts, to give the fleeting spectacle
a more permanent form, to spread the experience beyond the lucky
few who were present on the day itself. That is one function, in modern
ceremonial, of souvenir programmes, commemorative mugs, postage
stamps, and tea towels. In the case of Pompey’s triumphs, the written
accounts of the events offered by ancient historians, antiquarians, and
poets are crucial in the whole process of its memorialization; and we
shall return to these later in this chapter. But art and architecture also
played an important part in fixing the occasions in public consciousness
and memory.34
Coins, for example, replicated Pompey’s great day in miniature and
distributed it into the pockets of those who could never have witnessed
the ceremony. A striking gold coin or aureus (Fig. 3) depicts the head of
Africa (wearing a tell-tale elephant’s skin) with a border in the form of
a laurel wreath, one of the distinctive accessories of the general and his
soldiers at a triumph; the clear link with Pompey is made by the title
MAGNUS running behind Africa’s head, and more allusively by the jug
and lituus (a curved staff ) which were the symbols of the augurate, the
priesthood he held. It can only be Pompey then in the triumphal chariot
[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
Figure 3:
Gold coin ( aureus) minted to celebrate one of Pompey’s triumphs, c. 80, 71, or 61 bce. On the reverse (right), a miniature scene of triumph. On the obverse (left), a laurel wreath encircles the name “Magnus,” a head of Africa, and the symbols of Pompey’s priesthood.
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R o m a n Tr i u m p h
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[To view this image, refer to
the print version of this title.]
Figure 4:
Reverse designs of two silver denarii commemorating Pompey’s victories, minted 56 bce. The three trophies (left) call to mind Pompey’s three triumphs. The globe surrounded by wreaths (right) hints at worldwide conquest—and at the globe carried in the triumphal procession of 61.
on the reverse of the coin, being crowned by a flying figure of Victory.
The rider of the nearest horse in the team is presumably Pompey’s son,
for the children of the triumphant general regularly seem to have shared
his chariot or to have ridden next to him on trace-horses. PRO·COS, for
pro consule, written beneath, is the formal title of Pompey’s military
command. Whether it is linked to his first, second, or third triumphs
(it has been variously dated to c. 80, 71, and 61 bce) or even seen as a
later issue celebrating all three, the image acted as a visual reminder of
Pompey’s triumphal career.35 Alongside their obvious economic func-
tions, these coins would have been a prompt to reimagining the specta-
cle maybe years after, or miles distant from, its original performance.
Another set of coins, silver denarii issued in 56 bce by Pompey’s son-
in-law, Faustus Sulla (the dictator’s son), recall Pompey’s triumphs us-
ing different visual clues.36 These fall into two main types (Fig. 4). The
first depicts on its reverse three trophies of victory, plus the symbols
of Pompey’s priesthood. The other features a globe surrounded by three
small wreaths, with a larger wreath above; below are an ear of corn
and what is usually—and over-confidently, I suspect—identified as the
stern-post of a ship (together perhaps a reference to Pompey’s naval
Pompey’s Finest Hour?
21
command against the pirates and his control of Rome’s corn supply in
57). The three trophies must call to mind Dio’s description of Pompey’s
signet ring. The globe evokes not only his world-wide conquests but
also, more specifically, that “huge and expensively decorated . . . trophy
of the whole world” carried in the procession of 61, while the laurel
wreaths signal the triumphal context.37
The appeal of these designs lies partly in their sheer bravura in reduc-
ing the vastness of the ceremony and the victories lying behind it to a
space no larger than a postage stamp. But, predictably enough, triumphs
had their colossal memorials too. Part of the profits of Roman warfare in
the Republic regularly went into the construction of public buildings,
for the most part temples. (The tradition of “triumphal arches,” as we
call them, became fully established only later, and even then were not
exclusively connected with triumphs.) These temples simultaneously