![]() ![]() captives and spoils, the victorious general himself, the qualifying rules and regulations for those who sought the honour and the bewildering variety of similar celebrations that appeared in Rome and elsewhere. ![]() ![]() Chapters 4 through 8 constitute the book’s heart and are concerned with the most revealing and mesmerizing aspects of the ritual, viz. The second and third chapters address the overall role of the triumph in Roman culture and the reliability of the remaining evidence. 2 The choice of Pompey the Great’s grandiose third triumph of 61 as the opening to this book is justified in that it concerns the best documented triumph in Roman history and so sheds the brightest possible light on some of the evidence for the triumphal ritual as well as the remarkable extent of its individual impact. As in the movies, it first zeroes in on a specific triumphal celebration, whereas the history of the triumph is not dealt with before the last chapter - quite in contrast to the traditional approach. 1 For a start, there is the book’s rather daring and unusual structure. With this major contribution to the subject of the Roman triumph, Mary Beard fully lives up to her self-professed reputation as a “wickedly subversive” ancient historian. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |