The Roman Triumph by Mary Beard

The Roman Triumph Reviews

• 
  Bettie

  Description: It followed every major military victory in ancient Rome: the successful general drove through the streets to the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill; behind him streamed his raucous soldiers; in front were his most glamorous prisoners, as well as the booty he'd captured, from enemy ships and precious statues to plants and animals from the conquered territory. Occasionally there was so much on display that the show lasted two or three days.
  A radical reexamination of this most extraordinary of ancient ceremonies, this book explores the magnificence of the Roman triumph--but also its darker side. What did it mean when the axle broke under Julius Caesar's chariot? Or when Pompey's elephants got stuck trying to squeeze through an arch? Or when exotic or pathetic prisoners stole the general's show? And what are the implications of the Roman triumph, as a celebration of imperialism and military might, for questions about military power and "victory" in our own day? The triumph, Mary Beard contends, prompted the Romans to question as well as celebrate military glory.
  Her richly illustrated work is a testament to the profound importance of the triumph in Roman culture--and for monarchs, dynasts and generals ever since. But how can we re-create the ceremony as it was celebrated in Rome? How can we piece together its elusive traces in art and literature? Beard addresses these questions, opening a window on the intriguing process of sifting through and making sense of what constitutes "history."
  
  Opening: Pompey’s Finest Hour? BIRTHDAY PARADE September 29, 61 bce, was the forty-fifth birthday of Pompey the Great. It was also—and this can hardly have been mere coincidence—the second and final day of his mammoth triumphal procession through the streets of Rome. It was a ceremony that put on show at the heart of the metropolis the wonders of the East and the profits of empire: from cartloads of bullion and colossal golden statues to precious specimens of exotic plants and other curious bric-à-brac of conquest.
  
  
  
  
  See also, the lovely Mary Beard doing good work for her
  online attacker.
  
  
  Caligula with Mary Beard BBC Documentary 2013
• 
  Erik Graff

  This book is at once a study of the Roman triumph and a critical examination of the evidences for that phenomenon--and, by implication, much of what passes for historical 'fact'. The result is inconclusive to the extreme: there were 'triumphs', a thousand years' worth of them, but we aren't very clear as to how exactly they developed. The sources are almost, but not entirely, at a remove from the events described--often at a remove of centuries--and they are not in agreement as regards details. Often, in fact, our 'evidence' consists of a single source and that transmitted to us through generations of copyists.
• 
  Inés Chamarro

  I read a review somewhere complaining that this is not a book on Roman History. Well, no. If anyone had any doubts, this is a book on the Roman triumph, which was a very specific type of ceremonial parade carried out after a great victory on the field of battle. How specific, how ceremonial, how much of a parade, what the intention was, who could celebrate one and where, what kind of victory should have been obtained to merit it and how the whole thing started are some of the subjects examined throughout the book (also discussed, if more incidentally, are the origins of Roman realism in art, the advantages of having friends in high places such as the Senate, why you should not hitch elephants to your chariot, and why the first task of the censors was to renew the contract for the supply of cinabrium to the City). Meticulously researched, at some points extremely funny, and I won't say it reads like a novel but the style is much easier than a lot of other technical literature on classical antiquity that you will find out there.
  
  In terms of critical content, this book constitutes a stake through the heart of the sheer concept and previously accepted history of the Roman triumph. I can't help thinking maybe the book (and definitely myself) would have benefited of a more complete exposition of the theories it is trying to debunk. The bibliography and notes are so thorough I don't anticipate trouble in finding the opposing views, but the work as a whole would have been more balanced. As it stands, it sweeps down to slaughter any other opinion to affirm the utter ignorance we have on any number of points regarding this most Roman of ceremonies (or not, as the case may be).
  
  
• 
  saïd

  My favourite fact regarding the triumphus is the fact that the celebrated general's triumphal chariot would be "bedecked with charms against the possible envy [...] and malice of onlookers," and one of those just so happened to be the Roman equivalent of protection against the evil eye: the fascina. Those would be... hung... on the underside of the chariot, making them the Ancient Roman equivalent of truck nuts. This has nothing to do with the quality of the book itself (which is excellent), I just thought it's important that as many people as possible are aware of this fact.
• 
  Kara

  
  Beard begins by discussing how other historians have examined the Roman Triumph's misty origins, the careers before and after of generals who had a Triumph, the effect the Triumph had Renaissance art, how it was copied by 19th and 20th century politicians, and other parts surrounding the Triumph.
  
  So, she tells us, this begs the question - has anyone bothered to examine the actual Triumph itself? Anyone? Anyone? No? OK, guess I will. And she does.
  
  She examines what went into the Triumphs, the length, the routes, the people who marched in them, how the seating might have been arranged, if food and drink was involved, the people and treasure on display, the construction of the wagons, the animals pulling the wagons, the clothes worn - all of the brass tracks, practical considerations involved when throwing the parade of the decade.
  
  Beard also gets into how little we actually know about the Triumphs, but does an excellent job dissecting the evidence to see what they may have been like.
• 
  Antoine

  The subject of the Roman Triumph is probably a little recherche for some, and if it doesn't grab you, then this probably isn't quite the book for you. But Mary Beard's book works on a completely different level as well, exploring the intense problems of epistemology in the study of ancient history. Beard promises us, at the start that, like a good math student, she will "show her work," and she does, quietly exposing a lot of what goes on in classical history in the process. Much of what we "know" or suppose about the Triumph rests on extremely shaky evidence, and even raw conjecture. I emerged from reading this book knowing less about the Roman triumph than I thought I did going in, but much more about the nuts and bolts of how classical historians work. To put it another way, this book weakens false knowledge, but promotes deeper understanding.
• 
  Rebecca

  "I have come to read the Roman Triumph in a sense that goes far beyond its role as a procession through the streets. Of course it was that. But it was also a cultural idea, a "ritual in ink", a trope of power, a metaphor of love, a thorn in the side, a world view, a dangerous hyperbole, a marker of time, of change, and continuity. "Why?" questions do not reach the heart of those issues. It is more pressing to understand how those meanings, connections, and reformulations are generated and sustained." (p. 333)
  
  This is very much a 'how'-book, more than a 'why'-book, and even the 'how' is far from always answered, because a lot of time is spent on deconstructing what we might think we know. Because what we have are snippets (in writing and art), how these reflect the reality must be examined and re-examined - but also if that reality always looked the same.
• 
  Tyler Williams

  Fundamentally altered my perception of Roman historiography, and in particular the interpretation of primary sources. Wholeheartedly recommended to any students of Classical history and archaeology.
• 
  Victor Volpe

  I expected to have a much more enjoyable time reading this book than I actually did. After being delighted by SPQR I thought other Roman books from Mary Beard would have the same simplicity, but this wasn’t the case.
  
  This is a very dense and over-detailed book that didn’t keep me hooked. Although it is about an interesting topic I felt the text loses too much time trying to break Triumph myths and extends too much into points that are already clear.
  
  Overall, I felt this could be very useful for an history student that wants to understand all the details from the tradition. Not at all for a reader like me that just wanted to know more about it on a light way.
• 
  Alberto

  Leer a Mary Beard siempre es un placer.
• 
  Katharine Holden

  I found this one hard going. Whew! Interesting, but what a lot of detail. Basically, everything I was taught in school about Roman triumphs is more debatable than my teachers implied.
• 
  T. Rhodes

  Brilliant historian!
• 
  Lance Schonberg

  Be careful, this isn’t pop-history and it isn’t a quick and dirty examination of a Roman tradition lasting hundreds of years, it’s a scholarly work. There’s a lot of text here and some of it is very dense. And by a lot, I mean three hundred plus pages of scholarly examination of the Triumph backed up with a hundred more of footnotes, sources, and bibliography.
  
  I remember thinking of the Roman Triumph as an honour given to conquering generals to celebrate victories and show off the plunder of foreign nations. Well yes, but also no. That brief description entirely misses the point, if we can know what the point actually is or was.
  
  Professor Beard undertakes an examination of the Triumph at a level of detail that most of us wouldn’t think possible fifteen hundred years or so after the fact. Not just celebrants and contents and routes, but seating arrangements, food, parallel and associated activities, the actual treasure involved (and what the Romans considered treasure that we might not today), the vehicles involved, animals, logistics, and on and on.
  
  She also spends a great deal of time demonstrating just how little we actually “know” and that most of what we do know sits on a fairly shaky foundation of assumptions and guesses. With every kick at the foundation of some part of the common triumphal knowledge, she then gives us a great deal of actual historical source material and evidence and tries to synthesize what it may really mean or be.
  
  Fundamentally, she shatters the previous concept of the Triumph and builds the pieces back into a somewhat different shape that admits to how much we don’t really know and how much of what we do is still shaped by assumptions and the lens of history we look through.
  
  Very gently, through the course of the book, the reader may start to realize that a lot of what we know about Roman history and culture sits on a similarly shaky foundation.
  
  Overall rating: 3.5 stars. There’s so much detail here that some of the chapters are easy to get lost in. It’s important for me to admit that my Roman history knowledge wasn’t nearly up to par to go into this with a real understanding of what I might be getting out with it. At the same time, that means I probably had a lot fewer preconceptions.
  
  It was tough for me to read at times, but I really enjoyed the attitude of healthy skepticism that permeates the book. We need to question what we know frequently. When we don’t, the result is something far less than the truth, and Professor Beard definitely shows that where the Romans are concerned.
• 
  M.J.

  Mary Beard’s “The Roman Triumph” plays to a very specific audience: it isn’t for newcomers to Roman history and culture, but it is definitely not a book directed (exclusively) at the academics. The book is reaching out to the hobbyist lover of antiquity and that audience will not be disappointed with this book.
  
  Interestingly enough, Beard is using this most famous and iconic Roman cultural tradition to make a point about our lack of knowledge about the Romans more generally and to suggest that the history is richer and more complicated than would be presented in a ‘definitive’ description of what the Triumph was based on a patchwork of contradicting and non-contemporary sources.
  
  Initially, for this reader (and a member of that middle ground audience she is seeking), it was a frustrating path for her to take and I met it with some concern. Why, I may have asked myself, am I reading a book with nothing but ambiguity and hesitation? Soon enough, however, she won me over. I began to slide comfortably into her world of doubt and skepticism, and intuit more about the period of the various classical historians from what they wrote about the triumph than about the ritual itself. There is a rich history, as complicated and ungeneralizable as our own, that Beard successfully leads the audience to see beneath the false veneer.
  
  Well-written, if a bit dry at times, this book is worth the time of the experienced casual Roman history fan looking to go a bit further.
• 
  Roman Clodia

  This is not a book which sets out to describe or explain the institution of the triumph, but rather to interrogate how we 'do' history, especially when all the sources that we rely upon have an agenda of their own. The triumph, then, is used here as an example of the slippery nature of reconstructing an alien culture, which can only be done through others' previous reconstructions.
  
  Beard can be quite eccentric but this is a fascinating book which follows up on some of the discussions she sketched out in her Classics: A Very Short Introduction. I wonder if the negative reviews on Amazon are the result of a mis-targeting of this books for a 'general' audience when it actually engages with, and is sited within, academic arguments that are of pressing interest to history and classics scholars?
  
  This does include a detailed description of Pompey's great triumph but then goes on to question all the things that we think we know, as much from Hollywood representations as from classical texts.
  
  In sum, then, this is an intelligent and enlightening engagement with the idea of the triumph and what it might mean, and be made to mean, at various points in history. But, as one would perhaps expect from a Classics professor, this is far more than a descriptive 'history' book. Excellent for older undergraduates and postgraduates or anyone interested in the construction of history. But perhaps a bit hollow for anyone looking for the 'reality' or unproblematic facts of the past.
• 
  Shane

  "The Roman Triumph" was good...but not as good as I'd thought it would be.
  The positives: Mary Beard is obviously a first-rate historian, and the depth of her research and analysis is quite astounding. She provides some very interesting insights, and a number of nice factoids; probably my favorite is the story of Publius Ventidius Bassus, who was both in another's triumphal parade as a captive as a child, then years later he celebrated his own triumphal parade as the conquering general.
  The negatives: I was not a fan of Beard's style. Basically, her whole emphasis was far less about saying what happened, but by picking apart the theories of other historians (including the ancient ones--it's a bit much when a modern historian spends so much time confidently asserting how little the actual Romans knew about themselves). Beard would spend about 2 pages describing some aspect as it is usually understood, and then 10 pages on why that may not be correct. Obviously it is good to get alternative theories, but I would have liked a little more information and a little less un-information. For example, I don't need to be "proven" over a dozen pages that the Romans didn't literally use the exact same route for every single triumph over a thousand years, I understand that by simple logic, spend some more time describing the route as it was probably or likely.
• 
  Dan Graser

  Having now read a good deal of her work, the word I keep coming back to when I describe Cambridge Professor Mary Beard and her work is, "indispensable." When you read her historical writings you are not only enjoying her lucid prose but also her keen eye for spotting historical elaborations and misinformations and her particular ability to unravel them without at any point seeming petty or in any way spiteful to other authors. In this work she focuses on the spectacle of the Roman Triumph and its societal and political uses in ancient Rome. Where several generals, politicians, and emperors lobbied for these proceedings (Cicero, Nero, etc...) others were granted it for genuine military success, thus securing their place among the Roman elite. The grandeur of this ceremony has been somewhat exaggerated through the centuries and Beard does a wonderful job breaking the issues down in coherent and easily readable prose. Highly recommended for Roman history buffs!
• 
  James Miller

  Mary Beard has obviously written this with an intention to myth bust and to create a picture of what a triumph was, meant, articulated etc. that owes more to a model of overlapping family resemblance theory than clear demarcations in time, influence etc. The argument is persuasive and the prose very readable. Certainly the picture of the triumph I had has been changed and the ways it speaks with Dionysiac processions, Etruscan antecedents (or African) was very interesting. Sadly the myth busting is so successful that one finishes aware we in fact seem to know surprisingly little about so frequently mentioned a ceremony (or collection of diachronically changing ceremonies). The book could have done with better printing and some coloured plates when exploring visual evidence as well as bigger pictures of small details of (e.g.) Etruscan coffin reliefs.
• 
  Sean

  More meta-history than history, or so it seemed to me. Beard methodically deconstructs every aspect of the triumph, and seems to delight in leaving the reader unsure of any received wisdom concerning any facet of Roman history. Frankly, this book made me dizzy.
  
  Which seems fair, even if it isn't much fun. It's pretty remarkable how flimsy our foundation of knowledge is for something as (I would have thought) basic and straight-forward as the ceremony of the triumph.
  
  I think Beard needs to write a book on Roman historiography, if she hasn't already. She would also make a pretty mean philosopher, I imagine.
  
  In the meantime, I'm going to go watch the "triumph" episode of HBO's "Rome" and laugh at all of the assumptions they've made, and all the things they've done wrong. Nice.
• 
  Emily

  Mary Beard, as usual, gives an excellent analysis of the evidence regarding the Roman triumph - a procession that celebrated exceptional victories & the generals who won them. Sadly, as she often does, she reminds us that we really can't know much at all about the Triumph as an actual ritual/ceremony/procession, but can know a lot about how the Romans thought with the idea of THE TRIUMPH and how they explained, created and mythologized about it. As usual, the notes are endless array of useful citations and comments. As usual, her writing is exceptionally clear and easy to follow.
• 
  Vicki Cline

  Beard goes into minute detail about the history of Roman triumphs. It turns out there's not a lot of agreement among the ancient and modern historians about how the triumph was created or even celebrated. Some think it was imported from Greece and others believe it originated with the Etruscans. Even the order of the various parts of the parade varies among different historians. Beard is a very good writer and kept the topic interesting, but all in all, I didn't really need to know this much about triumphs.
• 
  Charles Giguère

  My rating don't do justice to this book, I was wrong buying this book because it is not for an amateur historian, it is a book for scholars. I though that I was going to read a general history of the roman period, but the book was in fact related only to the triumph roman ritual or procession. It is a very detailed book and analysis on this ritual, far too detailed for an amateur like me. It was my error, but now I know the precise meaning of "Triumph" in Roman history!
• 
  Aislinn

  Borrowed from James when I couldn't sleep, it put me out quite effectively. Just compelling enough to keep reading, but not something I'd recommend.
• 
  Marfy

  
  Cleopatra: A Life This book is a good companion to Cleopatra.