The Roman Triumph

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Boris Drucker, New Yorker cartoon, 1988. The anxious Romans are putting the finishing touches on an imaginary arch—a composite loosely based on the Arch of

Constantine in Rome and the Arch of Trajan at Beneventum (Fig. 10).

phal processions as they have been in the modern world, and in the

modern imagination. But, anyway, here the cartoonist pictures a group

of Roman workmen finishing off just such a structure—when the dark

thought strikes them that Rome might not actually be victorious in

whatever war this arch is intended to celebrate. The joke is partly on

the dangers of anticipation, on “counting your chickens before they

are hatched.” But it is also on the fact that a triumph involves both

winners and losers—that those who triumph today may one day be tri-

umphed over.

This book will write those doubts and quizzical reflections back into

the history of the Roman triumph. Most modern accounts of the cere-

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