Scanned text contains errors.

On this page: Triumph

TRIUMPH.

655

Triumph. The Roman festal procession at the head of a victorious host through the city to the Capitol, the highest distinction which could be accorded to a victorious commander. Only the regular holder of the highest command (impenum), a dictator, consul, or praetor, was entitled to this honour, and that too even when the decisive victory had not been fought under his immediate direction. It was also essential that the victory should be an important one gained in a regular war; i.e. not against citizens or rebellious slaves. Permission to cele­brate a triumph was granted, with the necessary expenses, by the Senate. Up to the day of the triumph, the general was obliged to remain before the city, because his command expired at the moment he entered it. Accordingly it was outside the

conquered country, models of the captured fortresses, ships, etc., either carried on men’s shoulders or placed in chariots; then the crowns of honour dedicated to the triumphant general by the towns of the province, originally of bay leaves, later of gold. Then the white bulls intended for sacrifice on the Capitol, with gilded horns, decorated with ribands and garlands, and accompanied by youths and boys in holiday attire, carrying gold and silver chalices. Then followed in chains the distinguished captives who had been spared for the triumph, and whose fate it was, when the triumphal car reached the slope of the Capitol, to be dragged off to prison, there almost invariably to meet with immediate execution. Behind these followed the lictors of the general in purple tunics, with their

(1) TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION.

Relief from the Arch of Titus, representing the spoils from the temple at Jerusalem, including the seven-branched candlestick, the I/able for shewbread, and the golden trumpets.)

city, generally in the temple of Bellona, that the Senate assembled to receive his report.

On the day of the triumph, the procession, starting from the Campus Martius, pro­ceeded through the Porta Triumphalis into the Circus Fl&mintus ; then, after entering the city through the Porta Carmentalis, it marched on into the Circus Maximus, and thence to the Via Sacra, and up this across the Forum to the Capitol (see plan under fordm). The streets were adorned with garlands, the temples opened, and, as the procession passed by, the spectators greeted it with the acclamation, lo triumph^ f The procession was headed by the State officials and the Senate. Then followed trumpeters, and after them the captured spoils (sue fig. 1); next came painted representations of the

fascls wreathed in bay leaves; then a body of musicians playing on the lyre, and priests with censers; and lastly the triumphal car, gilded, and garlanded with bay leaves, and drawn by four white horses, which were also wreathed with garlands. On it stood the general; in earlier times his body was dyed with vermilion [Pliny, N. .ff.xxxiii 111]. His head was wreathed with bay, and he wore the garb of the Capitoline Jupiter, furnished him from the treasury of the Capitoline temple; viz. a purple tunic em­broidered with golden palm-shoots (tunica palmatd}, a toga decorated with golden stars on a purple ground (tSga pictd), gilded shoes, and an ivory sceptre in his left hand, with an eagle on the top ; in hia right he carried a branch of bay. Over his head a public slave, standing behind