A little while ago I went over the concept
of the pomerium, which was the invisible line that legally separated the city of Rome from
the rest of the world. I mentioned how any unauthorized crossing
of the pomerium was a death penalty offense, and how even authorized crossings through
one of the city's designated gates automatically transformed soldiers and generals back into
private citizens. This legal mechanism basically made it impossible
for Roman armies to enter the city with any legitimacy whatsoever. That is, save for one enormous exception. Today we're going to talk about that exception. The Roman Triumph. The triumph was Rome's highest honour, and
to a society absolutely obsessed with honour and dignity and authority, that's saying a
lot. The triumph represented the apex of a person's
career, and a grand public acknowledgement that they were one of Rome's most powerful
politicians. So what was the Roman triumph? Put quite simply, it was a big ol' parade. More specifically, a big ol' parade in which
a victorious general and those under his command were granted special permission to cross the
pomerium and enter the city of Rome for one day. This was a singular honour. There were a specific set of conditions that
had to be met before a triumph was even on the table. First, a general had to conquer new territory
for Rome. Second, that general had to be acclaimed "Imperator"
by his soldiers, which was just an honourific title that means "one who commands." This acclamation meant that the victorious
general was allowed to add the word "Imperator" to their name until a triumph was held in
their honour. By the way, this is the root of the word "Emperor." Third, the victorious general who had been
honoured with the title of Imperator had to return to Rome and ask the Senate to meet
with him outside the pomerium. Remember, a general's command authority evaporated
whenever they crossed the pomerium, and this rule also applied to the title of Imperator. Fourth, if the Senate agreed to exit the pomerium
and meet with the general, he would run down a detailed list of his conquests and accomplishments,
and he would end by formally asking the Senate's permission to cross the pomerium under triumph. Note the wording here. The Romans considered the pomerium central
to the concept of the triumph. Fifth, the Senate would vote. Sixth, if the Senate approved, the general's
request would be kicked down to the Plebeian Assembly, and if they approved, that was pretty
much it. For exactly one day, the general would be
authorized to retain his command while he lead his army across the pomerium and into
the city of Rome. As you would imagine, this approval process
could break down at any one of these steps. Plenty of generals conquered territory but
were never acclaimed "Imperator." Plenty of "Imperators" never got to make their
case before the Senate. Such was the case in the year 60 B.C.E., when
Julius Caesar, after conquering some territory in Spain and being being hailed as Imperator,
returned to Rome and asked the Senate to meet outside of the pomerium. The Senate, lead by the arch-conservative
Cato, responded to this by strategically dragging their feet until after that year's elections,
hoping that the promise of a triumph would stop Caesar from running for consul that year. Caesar famously confounded expectations by
crossing the pomerium just in time for the elections, forfeiting his command and his
title of Imperator. He would go on to decisively win his election,
although I don't think he ever forgave Cato for denying him his triumph. He made up for it later though, it's cool. With that, let's get into the actual mechanics
of the triumph. The ritual was quite complicated, so we're
gonna come at this from two directions. First, we're going to get our bearings by
seeing what the triumph would have looked like to the average Roman. Then, we're going to go back and follow the
triumphal general from the beginning to the end of the triumph. On the big day, the entire city basically
shut down, and residents gathered along the pre-established triumphal route to watch the
day's celebrations. The procession was split up into three distinct
stages. The first stage kicked off the triumph with
a long line of wagons. The first of these wagons carried a bunch
of three-dimensional models and billboard-sized paintings showing off Rome's newly conquered
territory. The average Roman would have been largely
ignorant of the outside world, and so before the triumph got into full swing the public
had to be taught what they were triumphing for. If possible, these wagons were usually accompanied
by every exotic animal from the conquered territory that the triumphal general could
get their hands on. The weirder, the better. Elephants and giraffes were always a big hit,
which makes sense because they are objectively the weirdest animals. This was followed by even more wagons carrying
paintings and models depicting key battles or events from the triumphal general's campaign. This was equal part education and propaganda,
as you would imagine. Well, maybe a touch more propaganda. This indoctrination was followed by another
series of wagons that proudly displayed the spoils of war to the public. Coins, precious metals, expensive clothing,
religious artifacts, whatever. You can kinda piece together the narrative
that the Romans were trying to tell themselves here. Show an exotic place, then show the Romans
conquering that exotic place, then show the treasure from that exotic place flowing into
the city. It was a very simple piece of propaganda,
but people loved it. Also, not to be a downer, but history is often
a downer, the spoils of war portion of the triumph included human beings. It was considered a real feather in one's
cap to have a foreign monarch dressed in their full regalia march in one's triumph. We're not going to linger here, but hold these
prisoners in the back of your mind, because they're going to come up again. That was it for stage one of the triumph,
which, if we want to generalize, was basically the education/propaganda portion of the day's
celebrations. Stage two was the main event. This was where the triumphal general, also
known as the triumphator - there's your 10 dollar word for the day - made his grand entrance. The triumphator appeared to the public in
a special triumphal chariot, pulled by four white horses. This chariot was decorated in gold and purple,
and affixed with charms to resist magical spells. The triumphator wore a very strange attire. His toga, which normally would have been white,
had for this occasion been dyed completely purple. This might not seem that weird to us, but
it was to the Romans. Purple was and is the colour of royalty, and
because of this, Rome's highest elected officials were allowed to wear a little purple stripe
on their togas while they were in office, but any more purple than this was considered
gauche and offensively anti-Republican. And yet, during the triumph the triumphator
was permitted to make his grand entrance dressed head to toe in purple. The royal symbolism was unmistakable. And the symbolism didn't stop there. The triumphator's face would have been painted
red, which was a reference to the red statue of the god Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. Jupiter was the king of the gods, and the
unofficial patron to the city of Rome. It was said that only the gods could violate
Rome's pomerium, which I think explains this bit of role-playing. If the triumph was ever considered religiously
problematic, it seems that dressing up like Jupiter solved that problem. To cap things off, the triumphator also wore
a crown made of leaves from a laurel tree. This was a thing that was loosely associated
with the god Apollo, but the Greeks also tradition of giving these crowns to winners of competitions,
so it was also generally associated with the concept of victory. In his hands, the triumphator carried a branch
from a laurel tree and an ivory sceptre. Taken as a whole, the triumphator appeared
before the public as an almost-king and an almost-god. It was quite a thing to see. Behind the triumphal chariot, men and women
from the triumphator's extended family had their moment in the sun. The triumph was considered so prestigious
that even this brief appearance was usually enough to kick-start some of the younger male
relatives' political careers. This option was not available to the women,
and so if they were introduced to the public it was usually in the context of them being
a virtuous wife or mother. The third and final stage of the triumph belonged
solely to the triumphator's army. When the Senate and People of Rome gave a
general permission to cross the pomerium and enter the city, they implicitly gave the same
permission to the army that had hailed him Imperator in the first place. After years on campaign, this army would have
been pretty happy to be back in Rome, and discipline would have been virtually nonexistent. One fun detail from this stage of the triumph
is that as the soldiers marched, they sang rude or bawdy songs for the crowd. In an incredible stroke of luck, we actually
have the text to one of the songs from Julius Caesar's triumph in 46 B.C.E. Every translation of this song is wildly different,
but it basically went a something like this: "Romans, watch your wives, here's the bald
adulterous whore / We pissed away your gold in Gaul and come to borrow more." Caesar, of course, was the "bald adulterous
whore." Some translations use a different word in
the "pissed away your gold" line, implying that the gold was spent prostitutes, if you
know what I mean. As you can see, the songs were extremely disrespectful
to both the triumphator and to the people of Rome. But they were also funny, and this kind of
open rudeness was tolerated and even expected when an army returned to Rome under triumph. So that's the three stages of the triumph
as seen by the average person. Now let's rewind and follow the triumphator
step-by-step through their day. In the early morning, everybody participating
in the triumph met outside the pomerium on the Campus Martius, on a tiny, conveniently
located racetrack called the Circus Flaminius. When the wagons and the animals and the soldiers
were all in the right order and ready to go, the triumphator mounted his gold and purple
chariot, and they were off. There's some fragmentary evidence that suggests
that a slave may have rode behind the triumphator on his chariot for the duration of the triumph. If this was in fact the case, they may have
been responsible for holding a golden crown above the triumphator's head while they whispered
a phrase into their ear. There are a bunch of different versions of
what this phrase may have been, but it would have been something like "remember, you are
human." The reason I didn't mention this before is
because if this was a thing that happened at all, it was probably a later invention
that only existed for like 10% of Rome's triumphs, and even that evidence is inconclusive. The triumphal procession exited the Circus
Flaminius and made their way onto a street that was lined with spectators. From here, the procession headed towards something
called the Triumphal Gate, which we think was located near the southern tip of the Capitoline
Hill. This gate would have been uniquely decorated
for the triumph, and it was here, as I've mentioned before, that Pompey tried and failed
to squeeze through the gate in a chariot pulled by elephants. This was probably rather embarrassing, and
four white horses had to be substituted in before they could continue. Inside the pomerium, the triumphal procession
slowly snaked its way through the streets, towards Rome's most famous race track, the
Circus Maximus. When they reached the racetrack, the entire
triumphal procession went inside and did a few laps before an overflowing crowd. Even the most conservative estimates say that
the building probably accommodated at least 150,000 spectators, which means that if the
Circus Maximus were still in use today, it would still be the highest capacity sports
arena in the world. When the triumphator made his entrance, the
roar from the crowd would have been audible throughout the entire city. From the Circus Maximus, the triumphal procession
followed the base of the Palatine Hill, deliberately tracing the path of Romulus's original pomerium
from when he founded the city. In time, the procession reached the Via Sacra,
or the Sacred Road. This was one of Rome's main arteries, and,
as the name implies, home its most significant religious buildings. Rome's richest citizens would have waited
to see the triumph on the Via Sacra just so they didn't have to rub elbows with the Plebs
down in the Circus Maximus. This road headed straight into downtown Rome,
which is where the procession finally came to a halt, right in front of a building called
the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, which means exactly what you think it means. Jupiter the Best and Greatest. I said earlier that those prisoners from stage
one of the triumph were going to come up again, and that time is now. When the triumphal procession stopped at the
Temple of Jupiter Optimux Maximus, most of the prisoners from earlier in the triumph
were pulled aside and ceremonially strangled in front of the crowd. Let's be real. This was a horrific tradition. By the standards of today it was a war crime,
performed as part of a religious ceremony, before cheering crowds. It's repulsive. Even back in those days, non-Romans considered
this aspect of the triumph unusually cruel. Many people opted to kill themselves just
so they wouldn't have to go through the humiliation of being ceremonially murdered in a Roman
triumph. I don't want to get totally sidetracked here,
but Romans usually took care not to execute people within the pomerium, so it's strange
that they didn't even blink an eye at mass executions during a triumph. Also, it's awfully suspicious that the executions
happened to take place at the foot of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. The Romans liked to say that they didn't believe
in human sacrifice, but I don't think it's going too far to say that this feels a little
human sacrifice-y. Once the senseless killing was over with,
the triumphator got down off the chariot and ascended the steps to the temple. There, with Rome's highest religious officials,
he sacrificed two white bulls to the god Jupiter. Again, noteworthy that this happened only
minutes after the execution of the prisoners outside. This animal sacrifice was the climax of the
Roman triumph. By now it would have been pretty late in the
day, and so Rome's bigwigs hosted a big formal feast for the triumphator, while the crowds
went home and had feasts of their own with friends and family. That night, after way too much eating and
drinking, lictors and musicians escorted the triumphator to his home. The moment the sun rose the next day, the
Senate's permission to cross the pomerium expired. Since the ex-triumphator probably lived within
the pomerium, that meant that their military command instantly evaporated, just like it
would have for any other general within the pomerium. The ex-triumphator was a private citizen again. But the festivities weren't over. There would be several more days of feasts,
and games, and horse racing, and all kinds of stuff. Literal bread and circuses. Most of this would have been at the ex-triumphator's
personal expense, which for this moment made him the most popular person in Rome. If we are to believe Rome's internal record-keeping,
over the course of 7 centuries, the city celebrated on average a triumph every 3 or 4 years. But with the ascension of Rome's first Emperors,
this ancient tradition faded away. It was gradual at first, but over time it
became less and less permissible for the most popular person in Rome to be anybody outside
of the Imperial royal family. This decline of the triumph coincided with
a general meritocratic decline, which was a trend that infected every aspect of public
life and lead to greater and greater political instability. In short, the triumph was a sign of healthy
political competition, and when the triumph started getting all funky, it was an early
indication that the funk was coming from inside the Republic.
On April 4 I was waiting for my daughter’s surgery to complete, and I had just started watching Historia Civilius’ videos, on that day a new video had just been released. Now 8 months later I’m waiting here for another surgery for her and there’s another video just got uploaded and I’ve got a good distraction again. Cool timing.
This is one of my favorite YouTube channels.
This is THE BEST HISTORY CHANNEL EVER. Go. look the whole channel up. "His year" is a great series to start with, it examines the best year in a given Caesar or Emperor's life. Go learn about battles, it's more interesting than you think. The Germanic hoards are the best ones. Watch him break down how the Roman government actually worked. It's AMAZING and he does it with MS Paint Legos.
I want that soundtrack to follow me around in life.
Great YouTube channel love this dudes work have watched them all who doesn’t love history from that time frame
We used to watch a ton of Historia Civilis videos for my old Latin class, especially when we were reading De Bello Gallico. This brings back good memories, nice to see he has a new video!
I use some of his videos when I cover the Romans. Always great stuff.
INCREDIBILES
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