The Roman Triumph
By Mary Beard (2007)
1. The greatest glory for a general in ancient Rome was a triumph, a street party celebrating his greatest victories or, as Mary Beard puts it, his “biggest massacres, depending on whose side you were on.” Ms. Beard’s aim in this classic piece of cultural history is to show how self-doubt was central to the triumph, how narrow was the difference between a seat in a jeweled chariot and a place trudging behind it in chains—and to reveal how Romans knew this frailty well. To put on a gaudy pageant of Agamemnon returning from Troy was flattering to the man in the chariot, but also a reminder of what happened next—Agamemnon’s “murder immediately after that triumphant arrival home at the hands of his wife.” Ms. Beard argues that warrior states often “produce the most sophisticated critique of the militaristic values they uphold.” Rome was such a culture. Later celebrants of triumphs—including one for Adm. George Dewey in 1899 under Madison Square’s wooden triumphal arch in New York—liked to accentuate the positive. But doubts were deeply embedded in the original ritual, despite “the constructive blindness, revolutionary reinterpretation and wilful misinterpretation” that historians long preferred.
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