---
author: Big Think
date: '2026-04-14'
guest: ''
layout: post.njk
source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOBMNl3fPfw
speaker: Big Think
tags:
- roman-triumph
- ancient-rome
- imperialism
- power-display
- cultural-history
title: 罗马的荣耀与恐惧：图里亚斯大巡游的深层解析
summary: 本文深入剖析了古罗马的凯旋仪式（Triumph），探讨其作为一种集军事炫耀、政治宣传、文化展示和道德反思于一体的宏大庆典。从将军的华丽装扮、战俘与战利品的展示，到其意识形态功能——强化罗马身份认同并震慑敌国——无不体现了罗马帝国权力的张扬。文章还追溯了凯旋仪式的演变，从共和时期开放给杰出将领，到帝国时期成为皇室专属的皇家仪式。通过分析庞培的奢华庆典及其引发的道德争议，以及塞内加的哲学解读，揭示了罗马社会对权力、财富与征服的复杂态度，并指出凯旋仪式对欧洲后世军事庆典的深远影响。
insight: ''
draft: true
series: ''
category: culture-history
area: society-thinking
project: []
people: []
companies_orgs: []
products_models: []
media_books: []
status: evergreen
---
### 罗马凯旋：权力、荣耀与恐惧的盛大叙事
古罗马的凯旋仪式（Triumph）是一场规模宏大、场面壮观的庆典，其奢华程度随罗马征服的地域拓展和财富增长而日益提升。它不仅是向罗马民众展示军事成就的舞台，更是强化罗马人身份认同、震慑潜在敌人的重要手段。历史学家玛丽·比尔德（Mary Beard）指出，凯旋仪式在某种程度上是罗马人反思自身身份的仪式。与此同时，它也向敌人灌输恐惧，并为欧洲后世的君主或军事庆典提供了庆祝权力的方式。
Original English
Triumphs differed hugely in scale and spectacle.
Gradually, it seems they got more and more lavish
as Roman conquest reached into places that were
really rich and in Roman terms really exotic. I
think the main function of the triumph is for
Romans to think about what it is to be Roman.
But it has another side to it which is it puts
fear into the enemy. It certainly provided the
model in Europe for uh celebrations of royal
or military power ever after. I'm Mary Beard
and I've worked on the ancient Romans for 50 years
and I've written quite a lot of books about them.
I've just started a new podcast called Instant
Classics, which is about Greece and Rome.
### 仪式构成：将军、战俘与战利品的盛宴
罗马凯旋仪式是授予超级成功罗马将军的最高荣誉。虽然具体的规则模糊不清，例如是否有杀死 5000 名敌人的硬性要求尚不确定，但其核心是一个浩大的游行队伍，穿过罗马街道，最终抵达卡皮托林山上的朱庇特神庙进行祭祀。游行的核心是胜利的将军，他身着华丽的仪式性战车，披着模仿朱庇特神像的紫色服饰和银星斗篷，以纪念其胜利。
游行队伍的前方是将军在战争中俘虏的敌人，以及战利品。这些俘虏的地位越高、着装越奇特，就越能彰显罗马的胜利。一位将军最希望看到的是一位国王被镣铐锁住，在他的战车前行走，以示罗马的统治力量。部分俘虏被雕塑描绘，有些甚至被放置在平台上游行，供民众观赏。
战利品不仅仅是贵重物品，如雕塑、艺术品或钱币，还包括被征服地区的特产，例如曾有一次凯旋仪式展示了来自犹太的美丽香膏树。这些丰富的展品，加上将军征服的地点、发生的战役以及被摧毁的敌人堡垒等信息的宣传牌，共同描绘了罗马征服的广度和深度。
游行队伍的后方是胜利的士兵。有趣的是，据说他们会唱一些略带贬低将军的粗俗歌曲，以防止将军因过度的荣耀而自视过高。甚至有传言说，在将军战车上会有一名奴隶不断提醒他：“你是个凡人。” 尽管如此，这整个仪式都充满了戏剧性，让身处其中的罗马人感受到征服的现实和力量。
Original English
The Roman triumph, the greatest celebration of all
time. A Roman triumph or a triumphal procession
was awarded to a super successful Roman general.
It's not clear whether there were any exact rules
for this. Some ancient writers said, "Ah, you had
to have killed 5,000 of the enemy to be awarded
a triumph." We don't know if that's entirely
true. What it was was a vast procession through
the streets of Rome leading up to the temple of
Jupiter best and greatest on the capital line hill
with the general, the successful general standing
in a very elaborate ceremonial chariot dressed up
in an extraordinary purple outfit with a purple
cloak and silver stars which apparently mimicked
the statue of Jupiter, the god himself on the
capital line hill. He processed through the city
up to the temple to make a sacrifice to Jupiter
in honor really of his victory. But it wasn't
just that. In front of the general's chariot,
you find the captives that he'd taken in the
course of the war and the spoils of victory. Those
captives, we have some descriptions of them. Uh,
and they are seen to be most impressive
when they're of the highest rank and the
most exotically dressed. I mean, what a general
really wants is to have a king walking before
his chariot. A king in his regal outfit, but
shackled and captured by the power of Rome.
Some of them we can see from the sculptures
that we have depicting this procession. Some
of them seem to have been actually carried in this
procession. Not walking. Some certainly did walk,
but some were kind of put on on onto platforms and
bound hand and foot were carried along for people
to look at. And we know that that the audience
of the triumph were drawn to see what the people
were like. The Romans had now conquered. Now it it
could sometimes rebound. They sometimes felt very
sorry for them actually. But the general is really
parading his power over the the dynasts and the
ordinary soldiers uh that he had conquered. There
was the booty, some of the best bits of loot that
he'd taken in the course of his campaign. We often
think of the spoils of victory in a rather limited
way. Actually, we think of sculptures, precious
works of art, um coin coming in to Rome and being
on display to the people in the procession. And
there were certainly plenty of those. But it goes
much further than that. Um what they were wanting
to do was to as it were kind of exemplify what
the conquered territory was. Triumphs differed
hugely in scale and spectacle. Gradually it seems
they got more and more lavish as Roman conquest
reached into places that were really rich and
in Roman terms really exotic. And I think that
what you have to see the triumph as in part is
literally something that brings the Roman audience
who might have never been outside a radius of 30
miles of the city of Rome or certainly not Italy.
It brings them face to face with the kind of stuff
and creatures that they had never ever seen. I
mean, they've not got picture books of what it
looks like when you go abroad. There are some
representations of of the foreign places you
find in painting and mosaic. That's true. But
this is a literally bringing the Roman people
face to face with the world and I think slightly
uneasily from our point of view the world that
they believe they've conquered. So you could find
animals on display. You could find plants, trees
on display. In one triumph of 71 CE by the emperor
Vespasian and his son Titus, they had balsam trees
brought from Judea. So you're what you're seeing
is not just the elaborate brick and sometimes it
is very elaborate. this extraordinary stories of,
you know, seeing the king's throne encrusted with
jewels carried along in procession, but it's also
the flora and fauna of of the captured place. And
that combined sometimes in a strange way with
boasts on the part of the general. So that
you get placards carried along with that which
list the places that the general conquered the
individual town. Placards which depict the uh the
victories happening, the destroyed forts of the
enemy. And behind the general came at least some
of his victorious troops. They interestingly were
were said to um have sang lewd songs slightly
at the expense of the general so he didn't get
above himself and just in case he should get in
above himself. Um there he is dressed as Jupiter
Optimus Maximus you don't want him to think that
he really is a god. It said that there was a slave
in the chariot with him saying remember you're
a man. remember you're a man. Remember you're a
man the whole time. But they go through the city
like that. It it's now I think very hard to get
a a sense of the the size and the excitement of
it. We know they put up special stands so people
could get a good view. I suppose I tend to think
of this as a Brit as something like what you might
see in the um the coronation of a British monarch.
But I think the coronation of a British monarch
is is is a rather feeble comparison. You know, I
think people were coming to see what the general
had done. They were coming into the center of Rome
to see what Roman conquest meant. So it's hugely
impressive, but it's also very very ideologically
rooted. I think the main function of the triumph
is for the local Roman audience. It's for Romans
to think about what it is to be Roman. But it has
another side to it, which is it puts fear into the
enemy. It's a a ceremony news of which I suspect
travels that that enacts the humiliation of the
defeated. And we know that there are several uh
defeated monarchs and generals who kill themselves
rather than be displayed in the triumph. The most
famous of those, I think, is Queen Cleopatra, who
probably heard all about triumphs from her lovers
Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony. when Octavian the
future emperor Augustus wants to take her back to
parade as you know the key bit of booty in his
triumphal procession. She is said to have said
I will not be triumphed over and that accounts
for her suicide. And I think that you can see
that the eyes of the Roman people and your the
sheer humiliation of becoming a piece of spoil
is something that you might think and we know some
did. I am not going to do that. I am simply not.
You know Cleopatra is a refusnic. Mithridates is
another refusnic. It's a ceremony of celebration.
It's also a ceremony of humiliation. The triumph
must have been at its biggest, it must have been
quite extraordinary. It's hard to imagine that
there was any Roman celebration that was more,
you know, confident in some ways of um of its own
spectacle. And the root of a triumphal procession,
we don't exactly know where it goes, but it must
have been able to accommodate thousands, hundreds
of thousands. It is really, really big news.
Whether it's the biggest kind of procession of
its type in human history, it's impossible to say,
but it certainly provided the model in Europe for
uh celebrations of royal or military power ever
after. Um successful generals in the Renaissance
imitating um the Roman triumph to celebrate their
own kinds of victory. So I think in many ways it
provides a model for what it is like to celebrate
conquest. Uh it's a template for how the city puts
its might on display. We have a very good idea
of the number of triumphs that took place because
um Romans recorded it as accurately as possible.
to be fair, not entirely accurately because they
attribute one triumph to Romulus, the founder
of Rome, and he probably didn't exist. So,
there's some fuzzy edges, but basically, they've
got a list of triumphs, and they add up to more
than 200. What is interesting, there is a real big
break in the kind of triumphal procession that you
get in the reign of the first emperor Augustus in
19 B.CE. Because after 19 no one who is not either
the emperor himself or a prince of the royal
house, no ordinary general receives a triumph.
So up to 19 BC through the republic of Rome, it is
for ordinary or rather the extraordinary generals
to claim their triumph. Under Augustus, it becomes
a royal ritual. The logic is that all wars after
that point are fought as it were as if they were
the emperor's wars. So when a triumph comes,
it is the emperor who gets the honor of the
triumph. So they become very very monarchical
which they hadn't been up to that point. It's very
hard to say um which is which is the grandest or
the most extravagant over-the-top lavish or bad
taste of these ceremonies. But the the ceremony
that people pick out and that Romans picked out
was the two-day ceremony that Pompy the Great held
in 61 B.CE E for his conquest of the pirates and
also his conquest of the eastern king Mithrates.
Now this starts out by being extraordinary because
triumphs by and large are one-day affairs. You
know you load everything up, you process through
the city of Rome, you get to the temple of Jupiter
optim maximus, you do a sacrifice and you have a
great dinner and that's it. Now what Pompy does,
he says that he cannot squash all his stuff
into a procession that lasts just one day. So
it's a two-day procession. It is full of really
really extravagant spoils particularly from the
court of Mithrates. Actually, one of these we
have one bronze pot which almost certainly goes
back to Pompy's triumph and still survives. It's
in the capital museums at Rome and it's clearly
came from Mithrates's kingdom and it's very very
likely was one of the things that was actually
carried in the procession. It is not by any means
the grandest. It's a rather elegant plain bronze
picture about 70 cm high. But we read of most
fantastic ornamented sund dials. We read of
kind of barrels load of coin. We read even of an
image of Pompy himself presumably made out of the
spoils where his head carried in this procession
as as were as part of the fruits of conqueror. His
head is made entirely out of pearl. It must have
been a colossal head made of pearl. Um it has to
be said that this is one of the cases where in
a sense Pompy got it a bit wrong. I mean people
are always looking at the triumph both wanting
to admire it be impressed but also wanting to
say I think this is a bit over the top. I think
this is a bit vulgar actually. I think I think
this is too luxurious. So there's always that
counterpoint and the head of Pompium Pearl was
uh one of the objects that really captured that
critical tendency because people said two things
about it. They said um this is a very epheminizing
thing to do. Pearls in the Roman imagination were
very very much associated with women. So the
critics of Pompy said, "How could he have his
head represented in that female material?" But
there were also, I'm afraid, rather nastier
insinuations made later because Pompy in the end,
he's the the major adversary of Julius Caesar.
Julius Caesar and Pompy fight it out in the 40s BC
basically for who's going to run the Roman world.
Caesar wins. Pompy flees to Egypt. Uh when he gets
to Egypt, he thinks he's getting out of the boat
to safety actually. But the Egyptians on the shore
uh cut his head off and people looked back at this
head. is just the head of Pompy carried in the
procession and they wagged their fingers and said
that was an omen of what was going to happen to
him in the end. So there is always this sense that
huge luxury and Romans are very moralizing about
this huge luxury is always a bit dangerous. the
moment of the general's the acme of his career.
You know, the triumph is kind of thing. You'd say,
"What what do little Roman boys dream of?" uh as
being the biggest success they could ever achieve,
a triumphal procession. And yet, it's very
often slightly tainted with potential disaster,
potential overreach. any number of stories of
for example triumphing generals who very soon
after found that their sons died. You know that
it kind of the success of the triumph comes back
to haunt you. There was always a question of how
how far you really were as the triumphing general,
the star of the show. And it was obviously
extremely desirable if you're a general to
have a great king in front of you marching along
in front of you to show that you had conquered a
king. There was uncomfortably often a sense that
the crowd were actually more interested in the
king and the princesses and the sad captains than
they were in the general himself. So it's not all
win if you have a trial. There is a a wonderful
quote from the Roman philosopher Senica who was
also the tutor of the emperor Nero um thinking in
part about triumphs and it says petty sacrilege
gets punished sacrilege on a grand scale that is
what gets you a triumph it's a quote which Senica
is partly drawing and adapting from a famous
story about Alexander the eight who captures
a pirate and asks a pirate. This is in the 4th
century BC. He says to the pirate, "Why did you
take other people's property?" Right? Why did you
why did you steal things? And the pirate replies,
um, if you steal things and you've only got one
ship, you're called a pirate. If you steal things
and you've got a whole army and a navy, you're
called a king, right? Sunny in a way is adapting
that and having one eye on the triumph. And I I
think it's it's a quote I very much like because
it it shows the Romans really reflecting on reward
morality um on who makes it big, who doesn't,
who gets blamed. I mean we do have or much of the
modern world I think has a tendency to think of
Romans as if they had you know no problem about
any of this. They went off and they conquered
things and they came back with their booty and
their loot and they didn't bat an eyelid. They
thought it was holy to their good. They had no
moral scruple. What Zenica is saying is that you
know if you rip things off, you go to temple and
you take all the sacred objects from the temple
and you're just a single guy, you'll find yourself
punished. If you do that on a grand scale,
Rome honors you. And the question of course
is that he's raising about Roman imperialism
and the Roman Empire is is actually different you
know is is it just theft on a very big scale now
it's those kind of worries I think that the Romans
are are negotiating when they talk about triumph.
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### 罗马凯旋的演变与哲学反思
凯旋仪式的规模和性质随着时间推移而演变。在罗马共和国时期，凯旋是对杰出将领的普遍荣誉。然而，在公元前 19 年，随着奥古斯都成为第一位皇帝，凯旋仪式逐渐转变为一种皇家仪式，不再向普通将军开放。此后，所有战争都被视为皇帝的战争，凯旋的荣誉也归于皇帝，这使得凯旋仪式变得更加君主化。
要评判哪个凯旋仪式最为宏大或奢华极具挑战。然而，历史学家常提及由**庞培（Pompey the Great）**于公元前 61 年举行的为期两天的庆典，以纪念其征服海盗和米特拉达梯国王的胜利。这个仪式之长本身就非同寻常，因为大多数凯旋仪式仅持续一天。它展示了来自米特拉达梯宫廷的极其奢华的战利品，包括一件可能幸存至今的青铜罐。
庞培的凯旋仪式充斥着惊人的展品，如装饰华丽的日晷、堆积如山的钱币，甚至有一个用珍珠制成的庞培头像，极尽奢华。然而，这种极致的奢华也引发了争议。罗马人对此进行道德评判，认为它过于铺张、甚至是“女性化”（珍珠在罗马人的想象中常与女性相关），并可能是不祥的预兆。特别是庞培最终成为凯撒的对手并战败身亡，人们回看他头戴珍珠的凯旋仪式，认为这预示了他不幸的结局。这反映了罗马社会对奢华与潜在灾难之间关联的警惕，以及对权力顶峰可能潜藏的危险的思考。
古罗马哲学家**塞内加（Seneca）**曾对凯旋仪式的本质进行了深刻的哲学探讨。他借用亚历山大**大帝（Alexander the Great）**捕获海盗的故事，并将其改编应用于罗马的凯旋仪式。故事中，当亚历山大问海盗为何要抢劫时，海盗回答：“如果你只用一艘船抢劫，你就被称为海盗；如果你用一支军队和海军抢劫，你就被称为国王。” 塞内加以此说明，罗马人对“小规模的盗窃”施以惩罚，而“大规模的盗窃”——即帝国式的征服——却获得了荣耀。这引发了对罗马帝国主义本质的质疑：它是否仅仅是更大规模的盗窃？这种对权力、道德和征服的复杂反思，正是罗马人在谈论凯旋仪式时所反复协商和辩论的核心议题。
凯旋仪式不仅是庆典，也是一种对征服的模板，展示了罗马城的强大力量，并为欧洲后世的庆典树立了榜样。记录显示，罗马历史上至少发生了 200 多次凯旋仪式，尽管早期记录可能存在模糊之处。
Original English
The Roman triumph, the greatest celebration of all
time. A Roman triumph or a triumphal procession
was awarded to a super successful Roman general.
It's not clear whether there were any exact rules
for this. Some ancient writers said, "Ah, you had
to have killed 5,000 of the enemy to be awarded
a triumph." We don't know if that's entirely
true. What it was was a vast procession through
the streets of Rome leading up to the temple of
Jupiter best and greatest on the capital line hill
with the general, the successful general standing
in a very elaborate ceremonial chariot dressed up
in an extraordinary purple outfit with a purple
cloak and silver stars which apparently mimicked
the statue of Jupiter, the god himself on the
capital line hill. He processed through the city
up to the temple to make a sacrifice to Jupiter
in honor really of his victory. But it wasn't
just that. In front of the general's chariot,
you find the captives that he'd taken in the
course of the war and the spoils of victory. Those
captives, we have some descriptions of them. Uh,
and they are seen to be most impressive
when they're of the highest rank and the
most exotically dressed. I mean, what a general
really wants is to have a king walking before
his chariot. A king in his regal outfit, but
shackled and captured by the power of Rome.
Some of them we can see from the sculptures
that we have depicting this procession. Some
of them seem to have been actually carried in this
procession. Not walking. Some certainly did walk,
but some were kind of put on on onto platforms and
bound hand and foot were carried along for people
to look at. And we know that that the audience
of the triumph were drawn to see what the people
were like. The Romans had now conquered. Now it it
could sometimes rebound. They sometimes felt very
sorry for them actually. But the general is really
parading his power over the the dynasts and the
ordinary soldiers uh that he had conquered. There
was the booty, some of the best bits of loot that
he'd taken in the course of his campaign. We often
think of the spoils of victory in a rather limited
way. Actually, we think of sculptures, precious
works of art, um coin coming in to Rome and being
on display to the people in the procession. And
there were certainly plenty of those. But it goes
much further than that. Um what they were wanting
to do was to as it were kind of exemplify what
the conquered territory was. Triumphs differed
hugely in scale and spectacle. Gradually it seems
they got more and more lavish as Roman conquest
reached into places that were really rich and
in Roman terms really exotic. And I think that
what you have to see the triumph as in part is
literally something that brings the Roman audience
who might have never been outside a radius of 30
miles of the city of Rome or certainly not Italy.
It brings them face to face with the kind of stuff
and creatures that they had never ever seen. I
mean, they've not got picture books of what it
looks like when you go abroad. There are some
representations of of the foreign places you
find in painting and mosaic. That's true. But
this is a literally bringing the Roman people
face to face with the world and I think slightly
uneasily from our point of view the world that
they believe they've conquered. So you could find
animals on display. You could find plants, trees
on display. In one triumph of 71 CE by the emperor
Vespasian and his son Titus, they had balsam trees
brought from Judea. So you're what you're seeing
is not just the elaborate brick and sometimes it
is very elaborate. this extraordinary stories of,
you know, seeing the king's throne encrusted with
jewels carried along in procession, but it's also
the flora and fauna of of the captured place. And
that combined sometimes in a strange way with
boasts on the part of the general. So that
you get placards carried along with that which
list the places that the general conquered the
individual town. Placards which depict the uh the
victories happening, the destroyed forts of the
enemy. And behind the general came at least some
of his victorious troops. They interestingly were
were said to um have sang lewd songs slightly
at the expense of the general so he didn't get
above himself and just in case he should get in
above himself. Um there he is dressed as Jupiter
Optimus Maximus you don't want him to think that
he really is a god. It said that there was a slave
in the chariot with him saying remember you're
a man. remember you're a man. Remember you're a
man the whole time. But they go through the city
like that. It it's now I think very hard to get
a a sense of the the size and the excitement of
it. We know they put up special stands so people
could get a good view. I suppose I tend to think
of this as a Brit as something like what you might
see in the um the coronation of a British monarch.
But I think the coronation of a British monarch
is is is a rather feeble comparison. You know, I
think people were coming to see what the general
had done. They were coming into the center of Rome
to see what Roman conquest meant. So it's hugely
impressive, but it's also very very ideologically
rooted. I think the main function of the triumph
is for the local Roman audience. It's for Romans
to think about what it is to be Roman. But it has
another side to it, which is it puts fear into the
enemy. It's a a ceremony news of which I suspect
travels that that enacts the humiliation of the
defeated. And we know that there are several uh
defeated monarchs and generals who kill themselves
rather than be displayed in the triumph. The most
famous of those, I think, is Queen Cleopatra, who
probably heard all about triumphs from her lovers
Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony. when Octavian the
future emperor Augustus wants to take her back to
parade as you know the key bit of booty in his
triumphal procession. She is said to have said
I will not be triumphed over and that accounts
for her suicide. And I think that you can see
that the eyes of the Roman people and your the
sheer humiliation of becoming a piece of spoil
is something that you might think and we know some
did. I am not going to do that. I am simply not.
You know Cleopatra is a refusnic. Mithridates is
another refusnic. It's a ceremony of celebration.
It's also a ceremony of humiliation. The triumph
must have been at its biggest, it must have been
quite extraordinary. It's hard to imagine that
there was any Roman celebration that was more,
you know, confident in some ways of um of its own
spectacle. And the root of a triumphal procession,
we don't exactly know where it goes, but it must
have been able to accommodate thousands, hundreds
of thousands. It is really, really big news.
Whether it's the biggest kind of procession of
its type in human history, it's impossible to say,
but it certainly provided the model in Europe for
uh celebrations of royal or military power ever
after. Um successful generals in the Renaissance
imitating um the Roman triumph to celebrate their
own kinds of victory. So I think in many ways it
provides a model for what it is like to celebrate
conquest. Uh it's a template for how the city puts
its might on display. We have a very good idea
of the number of triumphs that took place because
um Romans recorded it as accurately as possible.
to be fair, not entirely accurately because they
attribute one triumph to Romulus, the founder
of Rome, and he probably didn't exist. So,
there's some fuzzy edges, but basically, they've
got a list of triumphs, and they add up to more
than 200. What is interesting, there is a real big
break in the kind of triumphal procession that you
get in the reign of the first emperor Augustus in
19 B.CE. Because after 19 no one who is not either
the emperor himself or a prince of the royal
house, no ordinary general receives a triumph.
So up to 19 BC through the republic of Rome, it is
for ordinary or rather the extraordinary generals
to claim their triumph. Under Augustus, it becomes
a royal ritual. The logic is that all wars after
that point are fought as it were as if they were
the emperor's wars. So when a triumph comes,
it is the emperor who gets the honor of the
triumph. So they become very very monarchical
which they hadn't been up to that point. It's very
hard to say um which is which is the grandest or
the most extravagant over-the-top lavish or bad
taste of these ceremonies. But the the ceremony
that people pick out and that Romans picked out
was the two-day ceremony that Pompy the Great held
in 61 B.CE E for his conquest of the pirates and
also his conquest of the eastern king Mithrates.
Now this starts out by being extraordinary because
triumphs by and large are one-day affairs. You
know you load everything up, you process through
the city of Rome, you get to the temple of Jupiter
optim maximus, you do a sacrifice and you have a
great dinner and that's it. Now what Pompy does,
he says that he cannot squash all his stuff
into a procession that lasts just one day. So
it's a two-day procession. It is full of really
really extravagant spoils particularly from the
court of Mithrates. Actually, one of these we
have one bronze pot which almost certainly goes
back to Pompy's triumph and still survives. It's
in the capital museums at Rome and it's clearly
came from Mithrates's kingdom and it's very very
likely was one of the things that was actually
carried in the procession. It is not by any means
the grandest. It's a rather elegant plain bronze
picture about 70 cm high. But we read of most
fantastic ornamented sund dials. We read of
kind of barrels load of coin. We read even of an
image of Pompy himself presumably made out of the
spoils where his head carried in this procession
as as were as part of the fruits of conqueror. His
head is made entirely out of pearl. It must have
been a colossal head made of pearl. Um it has to
be said that this is one of the cases where in
a sense Pompy got it a bit wrong. I mean people
are always looking at the triumph both wanting
to admire it be impressed but also wanting to
say I think this is a bit over the top. I think
this is a bit vulgar actually. I think I think
this is too luxurious. So there's always that
counterpoint and the head of Pompium Pearl was
uh one of the objects that really captured that
critical tendency because people said two things
about it. They said um this is a very epheminizing
thing to do. Pearls in the Roman imagination were
very very much associated with women. So the
critics of Pompy said, "How could he have his
head represented in that female material?" But
there were also, I'm afraid, rather nastier
insinuations made later because Pompy in the end,
he's the the major adversary of Julius Caesar.
Julius Caesar and Pompy fight it out in the 40s BC
basically for who's going to run the Roman world.
Caesar wins. Pompy flees to Egypt. Uh when he gets
to Egypt, he thinks he's getting out of the boat
to safety actually. But the Egyptians on the shore
uh cut his head off and people looked back at this
head. is just the head of Pompy carried in the
procession and they wagged their fingers and said
that was an omen of what was going to happen to
him in the end. So there is always this sense that
huge luxury and Romans are very moralizing about
this huge luxury is always a bit dangerous. the
moment of the general's the acme of his career.
You know, the triumph is kind of thing. You'd say,
"What what do little Roman boys dream of?" uh as
being the biggest success they could ever achieve,
a triumphal procession. And yet, it's very
often slightly tainted with potential disaster,
potential overreach. any number of stories of
for example triumphing generals who very soon
after found that their sons died. You know that
it kind of the success of the triumph comes back
to haunt you. There was always a question of how
how far you really were as the triumphing general,
the star of the show. And it was obviously
extremely desirable if you're a general to
have a great king in front of you marching along
in front of you to show that you had conquered a
king. There was uncomfortably often a sense that
the crowd were actually more interested in the
king and the princesses and the sad captains than
they were in the general himself. So it's not all
win if you have a trial. There is a a wonderful
quote from the Roman philosopher Senica who was
also the tutor of the emperor Nero um thinking in
part about triumphs and it says petty sacrilege
gets punished sacrilege on a grand scale that is
what gets you a triumph it's a quote which Senica
is partly drawing and adapting from a famous
story about Alexander the eight who captures
a pirate and asks a pirate. This is in the 4th
century BC. He says to the pirate, "Why did you
take other people's property?" Right? Why did you
why did you steal things? And the pirate replies,
um, if you steal things and you've only got one
ship, you're called a pirate. If you steal things
and you've got a whole army and a navy, you're
called a king, right? Sunny in a way is adapting
that and having one eye on the triumph. And I I
think it's it's a quote I very much like because
it it shows the Romans really reflecting on reward
morality um on who makes it big, who doesn't,
who gets blamed. I mean we do have or much of the
modern world I think has a tendency to think of
Romans as if they had you know no problem about
any of this. They went off and they conquered
things and they came back with their booty and
their loot and they didn't bat an eyelid. They
thought it was holy to their good. They had no
moral scruple. What Zenica is saying is that you
know if you rip things off, you go to temple and
you take all the sacred objects from the temple
and you're just a single guy, you'll find yourself
punished. If you do that on a grand scale,
Rome honors you. And the question of course
is that he's raising about Roman imperialism
and the Roman Empire is is actually different you
know is is it just theft on a very big scale now
it's those kind of worries I think that the Romans
are are negotiating when they talk about triumph.
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