This book is about the Roman triumphal procession in its capacity as spectacle and performance. It analyses the triumphs as visually emphatic events that both conveyed and constructed Roman views of the world. Aiming at approaching issues of identity, the book analyses how Rome presented and perceived the defeated on triumphal display. Spoils, captives, and representations are the objects, and the basic questions strive to establish both contents and context: What was displayed? How was it paraded? What was the response? Arms, ships and rams, coins and bullion, sculptures and paintings, art an ... More

This book is about the Roman triumphal procession in its capacity as spectacle and performance. It analyses the triumphs as visually emphatic events that both conveyed and constructed Roman views of the world. Aiming at approaching issues of identity, the book analyses how Rome presented and perceived the defeated on triumphal display. Spoils, captives, and representations are the objects, and the basic questions strive to establish both contents and context: What was displayed? How was it paraded? What was the response? Arms, ships and rams, coins and bullion, sculptures and paintings, art and valuables, golden crowns, prisoners, hostages, animals, and trees are all examined in separate chapters, as are the representations that were made specifically for the occasion: models and personifications of cities, peoples, rivers, and vivid tableaux staging scenes from the war. To be able to engage in issues of processional contents and sequence, acted roles, visual interplay, spectator participation, and emotional effect, the study embraces the complete corpus of ancient sources of the historical triumph, literary and pictorial. The approach includes discussions of the triumph as a religious rite and as a political act. But performance is the key word, and attention is in the first place paid to the visual expressions and schemes of the parade, and the interplay between these and the spectators.