6. The Triumph of Tiberius

Description

The subject here is easily identified — Tiberius celebrates a triumph,¹ riding in the triumphal quadriga and preceded by the victim that he will offer to Jupiter Capitolinus in the culminating ceremony of the procession (pls. 10—12, 16; see p. 216 n. 16 for damage after 1899).

Tiberius’ chariot is accompanied by a number of attendants walking behind the car and by the quadriga team. The horses are guided by a slave who strains forward at their head, the traces gathered in either hand; those leading to his right are in low relief, those to his left were added in wire (missing). Originally the four horse heads occupied the center of the composition, in such high relief as to be completely detached; they have been torn away (like the similarly projecting head and chest of the imperator on the other side), and the whole central portion of the scene is badly worn.

Tiberius’ attendants fall into two distinct groups. The four behind his quadriga wear tunics and ankle-length boots, the two foremost bearing laurel branches in their right hands. These are officers, high-ranking or distinguished by special merit, and so privileged to follow immediately behind their general. The figure just behind the chariot wheel wears a smooth torque with swollen ends (pl. 24), a Celtic ornament. One more young officer walks between the reins looped up before Tiberius in a place of honor. He wears a tunic and a paludamentum whose folds fall down his back; his left leg is visible between the rear legs of the outermost horse (bare calf, tunic hem, caliga [military boot]). Four lictors walk on the far side of the horse team with their rods over their shoulders; remains of tunic and toga show between the horses’ legs. The heads of the front three p.144 lictors (in the middle of the cup) are badly abraded, and the rods over the shoulders of the first two are largely worn away.

The right-hand portion of the field is occupied by the victim group, a massive bull decked for sacrifice with two attendants. One slave walks at the bull’s flank, an axe over his shoulder, drawing the bull’s head up on a lead to display its ornaments properly; the other slave guides the bull forward in line with a hand clamped on its jaw. The bull wears a triangular head plaque (fastigium) from which garlands depend; it is decorated with an eagle like that on the pediment of the Capitolium on the other side of the cup.²

The Pompa Triumphalis and Tiberius

The various elements of the pompa triumphalis are known from a variety of literary sources; standardized by the middle Republic, the ceremony was not appreciably altered thereafter. Omitted here are the booty, captives, and painted placards variously borne and carted in the procession; the focus is on the triumphator himself and his immediate entourage and the victim (standing in fact for a number of victims) to be offered in the sacrifice on the Capitoline at the end of the procession. For a Roman viewer the scene implies the physical geography of the city’s core, laden with symbolic resonance; he would know that the triumph proceeds along the Sacred Way; he would know that its goal was the Capitoline hill, where sacrifice would be made to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, the giver of victory, and this is highlighted by two means — the presence of the Capitolium on the other side of the cup, and the emphasis on the victim in the procession, whose ornaments visually echo that temple’s pediment.

The steady, solemn movement of the procession is nicely conveyed within the constraints of the panel composition, which also manages to achieve its own balance as a composition in a rectangular field. The high note is the figure of Tiberius, elevated in his chariot with his head nearly touching the rim of the cup, standing figures massed solidly behind him. From his figure, the lines of the composition fall and rise again in regular cadence, with the two straining slaves before the quadriga and before the bull supplying accents of strong forward motion to punctuate the slow-moving beat of the parade. The attendants selected for rendering balance nicely, as distinct yet complementary groupings of military and civil escort. Paludati officers and togati lictors emblemize the joint strength of the institutions of the res publica, while the victim group stands for the p.145 exercise of religion through the priestly office of the triumphator. As Livy says, “pars non minima triumphis est victimae praecedentes, ut appareat dis grates agentem imperatorem ob rem publicam bene gestam redire” (45. 39. 11).

Tiberius himself is easily recognizable, his profile carefully delineated (cf. figs. 110, 112—113, 120b, 117): the vertical forehead, the aquiline nose, the thin, rather compressed lips, the round chin, the long and muscular neck (cf. Suet. Tib. 68: “incedebat cervice rigida et obstipa”), and the characteristic growth of hair low on the nape of the neck, which Suetonius noted as a family trait (ibid.: “capillo pone occipitium summissiore ut cervicem etiam obtigeret, quod gentile in illo videbatur”).

Tiberius’ triumphal regalia is depicted in full: the toga picta and tunica palmata (whose embroidery is hinted at in low relief on the sleeve), the gold oak-leaf crown known as the corona Etrusca, the eagle-tipped scepter in the triumphator’s left hand and the laurel branch in his right. (It is because the celebrant traditionally has his hands thus occupied that the quadriga reins are looped up on the edge of the car and the horses thus have to be guided by a servant; on this figure see p. 148 f. below.) As is traditional, all participants in the procession are crowned with laurel, some carrying branches of it in their hands;³ the triumphator is closely escorted by favored officers and by the lictors who derive from the imperium with which he will have directed the campaigns leading to the triumph, now in civilian dress with no axes in their fasces. Finally, the triumphator is accompanied by the servus publicus, whose duty it was to suspend the corona Etrusca over the celebrant’s head, as this solid gold crown was too heavy to be worn unsupported.

The Gallic Torquatus

The placement of a group of favored officers behind the triumphator’s chariot reflects actual practice. Its significance is easy to read; it corresponds not only to literary descriptions of triumph but to the practice of Roman generals whose dispatches and memoirs (for example, Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum) pointedly made special mention of valor on the part of the regular troops and in particular of centurions, at once commemorating extraordinary behavior and, by mentioning it regularly, making it ordinary: “just what my men typically do.” Caesar’s war memoirs are well known; compare Velleius’ pride in the mention his brother received in Tiberius’ dispatches and Augustus’ reports to the Senate.⁴ The literary topos makes p.146 it legitimate to see similar meaning in the visual commemoration of military achievement; certainly this theme will later dominate in the friezes of Trajan’s Column, which single out the ordinary round of legionaries on campaign as worthy of approval.

The torquatus immediately behind Tiberius’ chariot is significant (pl. 24). If the torque is supposed to be read as an element of the wearer’s normal costume, it identifies him as a Celt, a native commander of Gallic or German auxiliaries who had participated (as we know to have been standard) in Tiberius’ campaigns, which took place in northern Europe. On the other hand, this torque may be a military decoration awarded to a Roman officer, rather than an ethnic marker, granted for special performance by this officer in the campaign for which Tiberius was celebrating a triumph.⁵

Contemporary texts confirm that decorated soldiers wore their decorations in their general’s triumph; but did they put their torques around their necks? Velleius’ description of his brother accompanying Tiberius’ triumph of A. D. 8/13 (2. 121. 3: “adornatus”) does not answer this question,⁶ nor does the equally vague narration by Appian (Pun. 9; Hist. Rom. 8. 66) of the paradigmatic triumph of Scipio Africanus (hoi de aristeis kai ta aristeia epikeintai). Julio-Claudian grave reliefs from northwestern Europe, however, do show how military decorations were worn: corona on the head, armillae on the arms, phalerae on a leather webbing strapped across the chest to display them — like a scapular — and, finally, the torques, shown as a pair hung from the top of the leather phalera harness at the shoulder. Best known is the grave relief (Bonn) of the Augustan officer M. Caelius who fell with Varus in A. D. 9.⁷ This and similar reliefs in Mainz (Cn. Musius)⁸ and Verona (Q. Sertorius)⁹ portray the officer himself with his decorations on; other reliefs symbolically show just the phalera harness, with a pair of torques attached or in apposition to it.¹⁰ True, if an officer had only one torque,¹¹ he could not display it in this way; still, this visual evidence does suggest that Romans who received an honorific torque did not wear it as a necklace but hung it on their bodies.

This, and the emphasis of BR I on a cooperative Gallia, suggest that the torquatus of BR II: 2 is not a Roman officer but a Gallic officer in the auxiliary troops, like the (Augustan) Gallic officer wearing torques from Vachères (Avignon, Mus. Calvet).¹² Compare the Gemma Augustea (fig. 16), which also commemorates a triumph of Tiberius: in the exergue below the allegory of triumph, auxiliaries in sleeved tunics and brimmed helmets,¹³ as well as soldiers in standard Roman equipment, erect a trophy and assemble captives. The cup thus would, like the gem, p.147 credit the part played by loyal non-Roman, but Romanized, allies in the spread of Rome’s imperium; BR I: 2 puts major emphasis on just this theme. Other early imperial sculptures in the West (Glanum arch, fig. 85; Swiss cuirass statue)¹⁴ have groups similar to that in the Gemma Augustea exergue, that is, “good” non-Roman with “bad” non-Roman prisoner; this shows that the cameo’s theme was not invented for this one gem but instead derives with the provincial examples from a convention of commemorative relief in the capital. Such groups are symbolic analogues to the group of officers behind Tiberius’ chariot on BR II: 2, which contains a prominent Celtic officer as well as (presumably) Roman officers.

The Quadriga

The artist took considerable pains to render the form and decoration of the currus triumphalis; note, for instance, the wheel with its lion-head hub and spokes shaped like Hercules’ clubs (compare the wheels of Marcus Aurelius’ quadriga in the triumph panel of the Conservatori reliefs). The car itself is of the “fast” type, with a shell of medium height and sloping side edges, typical of Republican and early Julio-Claudian images (coins especially), rather than the “slow” type, which is a high, cylindrical shell with straight side edges. This fast type is standard for monumental relief beginning with our first extant such depiction, the triumph panel of the Arch of Titus; the coin record shows it becoming standard for triumphal quadriga issues after the reign of Tiberius. From the left and central photo views of the cup, one can make out a little over half of what would have been a symmetrical composition decorating the quadriga shell (pl. 25): in the center, a trophy consisting of a suit of armor on a pole, crowned with a helmet and hung on either side with an oval shield, is flanked by winged Victories who move forward to add weapons to the trophy — the Victory visible here holds a sheathed sword — while at the outside of the composition a wingless female personification stands behind each Victory, right arm bent holding a laurel branch (?).¹⁵

What is interesting here is that the outlines of this same composition can be made out on the coins that depict the quadriga made for Octavian’s triumph of 27 B. C. (fig. 106),¹⁶ and that this decoration does not turn up on other imperial quadriga depictions in coinage and relief. We know that other emperors made a point of using the triumphal quadrigae of Augustus for their own celebrations; Nero, returning from Greece, entered Rome in “eo curru quo Augustus olim triumphaverat” (Suet. Ner. 25. 1). p.148 C. Vermeule traced the imitation of the decoration on Augustus’ quadriga from his Parthian triumph (Victories bearing shields) on the coins and monuments of later emperors from Claudius to Marcus Aurelius.¹⁷ Suetonius’ text suggests that such reuse of Augustus’ triumphal chariots was meant to be noted by the educated viewer.

It is a worthy hypothesis that Tiberius in this, his first, triumph, initiated later practice and triumphed in the quadriga in which Augustus had held his first, triple triumph, and that if this favor was granted by Augustus, it would have been noticed and suitably interpreted by a large segment of the public. Indeed, Tiberius’ triumph of 8 B. C. was the first full triumph permitted to any Roman commander since 19 B. C.; that Augustus had it granted was not simply a tribute to Tiberius’ military achievements, it was an acknowledgment by Augustus before the Roman people that Tiberius was to be considered to have acted under his own auspices and not under those of Augustus as ultimate commander in chief. It was thus one-half of the process by which Augustus now took steps to establish Tiberius as his prospective successor, replacing Agrippa; the “civilian” half of this process of acknowledgment was carried through in the following year when Augustus had Tiberius (like Agrippa before him) granted the tribunicia potestas. This was the legal construct that was the mainstay of Augustus’ “office,” and so made Tiberius Augustus’ near-equal colleague. (On Tiberius’ position under Augustus see also pp. 172 ff. of Chapter 7.)

Use of Augustus’ quadriga would have helped to drive home the point that Tiberius was at the start of an illustrious career that could culminate, as had Augustus’ after his great triple triumph of 27 B. C., in the same special position at the head of the Roman state that Augustus now enjoyed.¹⁸ I can only repeat that the artist has gone to great pains here to depict the decoration of Tiberius’ quadriga shell as if its decoration were in fact a vital detail of the composition, which could not be left out of even a miniaturized rendering. If we are to read it as I have suggested might be the case, then we have yet another historical fact supplied by the visual record that has not come down to us in any text, a fact that is a small but significant addition to the body of evidence on Tiberius’ role in Augustus’ plans for the future, as those plans were formulated in the years before Tiberius’ self-imposed exile.

The Servus Publicus and the Date of the Boscoreale Cups

The servus publicus was the state slave who traditionally stood behind the triumphator in the triumphal car, charged with two offices. His primary p.149 duty was to uphold and take the weight of the triumphator’s gold oak-leaf crown (corona Etrusca; Pliny HN 33. 4. 11); his other, famous office was to whisper in the triumphator’s ear at this moment of temporary near apotheosis the following reminder of the triumphator’s mortality and dependence on other men: “respice post te, hominem te esse memento.”¹⁹ The servus publicus’s task was traditional and necessary; this depiction of the servus publicus is extraordinary and unique. Nowhere else in Republican or imperial art do we see this shadowy figure, who alone of all the participants (according to the cup) seems not to have worn the laurel crown.²⁰ His function on the monuments and coins is either omitted altogether or is taken by a winged Victory behind the triumphator, holding up the corona Etrusca — not a reminder of mortality or human limitation but rather the opposite, a further panegyric to the extrahuman status investing the triumphator accompanied in this epiphany by the goddess Victory herself (figs. 104, 106—107).

This iconographic possibility was already a standard option in late Republican commemoration, for the triumph coin types of Sulla and Pompey show them crowned by flying Victories (fig. 104). It is a good bet that the quadriga statuary groups that no doubt adorned at least some of their triumphal monuments were like the statuary groups that stood on various of Augustus’ arches (fig. 105), where a winged Victory stood in for the servus publicus. These are known from architectural depictions on Augustus’ own state coinage,²¹ a further dissemination therefore of this image.²² The central chariot group of Augustus in his Forum (2 B. C.) (plan 123) could hardly have been different. These groups and coin types may originally have been inspired, or sanctioned, by a monument (probably second century B. C.) that the Romans thought had been erected by Romulus. This bronze quadriga, a statue of Romulus in or by it, stood in the precinct of the Temple of Vulcan; supposedly erected from the booty of Romulus’ second triumph over Camerina, it showed him being crowned by the goddess Victoria (Plut. Rom. 24. 3: poiesamenos heauton hypo Nikes stephanoumenon; Dion. Hal. 2. 54. 2 mentions its Greek inscription). By the time we get to the Arch of Titus, the next surviving relief depiction of an emperor triumphing (fig. 107), not only does Victory crown the emperor; the slave leading the horses of the quadriga, a stock figure in the Augustan period,²³ has been replaced by the figure of Roma/Virtus, while crowding behind the car replacing the human escort of the BR cup are Honos, the Genius of the Roman People, and the Genius of the Roman Senate.²⁴

The process of panegyric transformation that is visible in maturity on this Flavian paradigm, and is thereafter standard for imperial art, was p.150 begun already by the time that Augustus took up rule, and the relevant artifacts of his reign confirm the absence or allegorical replacement of the servus publicus. With reference to the BR cup, note especially the Gemma Augustea (fig. 16), which was made in Augustus’ lifetime to commemorate the later of Tiberius’ two triumphs and on which the quadriga from which Tiberius alights to pay his respects to Augustus is manned by a winged Victory (and the now cut-away male holding the chariot at left, his arm preserved, is probably the Genius of the Roman People; cf. Roma in the center).

The presence of the state slave in triumph depictions, then, is evidently a feature that in visual panegyric, however historical, is generally omitted as not really “real,” that is, not worth notice or mention in the formal commemoration of the event. What we have in the BR depiction is a triumph narrative that is “factual” beyond even the demands of strictly documentary narrative, where selective editing of facts was taken for granted because it was a necessity imposed by the limits of a constricted two-dimensional image. There is plenty of artful telescoping in the BR triumph depiction — how could there not be? A full depiction of the displays of captives and booty, of the full tally of sacrificial victims, the full complement of lictors and escorts, et cetera, could, if desirable, be extended to encircle a monumental arch or even an entire temple (e. g., the small frieze of the Temple of Apollo Sosianus, constructed in connection with Augustus’ triple triumph osf 27 B. C.).

The servus publicus is omitted or replaced in all other official images of the Republic and Empire, and the Gemma Augustea shows that this was true too of small-scale pieces celebrating members of the imperial family not of Augustus’ own rank. Why then is this slave depicted on the BR cup, on a minor arts piece where, as on the Augustan cameos in general or in the allegorical depiction of Augustus on BR I: 1, one would expect all of the resources of visual panegyric to be called into play? It is the depiction of this figure, in fact, which I believe provides the key to a secure date not only for the cups’ prototype but for the creation of the cups themselves; this image dates the cups to the reign of Augustus and rules out the reign of Tiberius altogether. Tiberius is given prime place in this composition, but the artist has used only the “facts” — that is, the natural elevation of the triumphator in his quadriga — to call our attention to Tiberius. He has also included details like the figure of the servus publicus, and for that matter the slave at the horse team’s head who is generally omitted, details whose omission at least would have been a great deal more appropriate in a tribute to Tiberius;²⁵ such bare omission, even if p.151 allegorical replacement was avoided, would have been in fine keeping with Republican tradition.²⁶

The immediate answer seems to be that on the BR cups Augustus alone is granted direct association with divine figures, while it is made clear that the achievements of others (Drusus and Tiberius) are strictly the work of mortals who are not themselves in possession of divina virtus, at least not to the same degree as the emperor; the servus publicus behind Tiberius keeps him in his place one rung under Augustus, as the presence of the real slave in the real triumph kept the celebrant firmly ranked below the gods. Such caution, for lack of a better word, would not in the least be necessary in the minor arts; witness not only the Gemma Augustea (fig. 16) but also other pieces, like the Boston turquoise (fig. 113), showing Tiberius as a young warrior sprung of a goddess, Livia/Venus. Once Tiberius himself became emperor, it would in no way have conformed to his taste: on a piece of armor like the “Sheath of Tiberius” (fig. 117), mass-stamped in the military armories, Tiberius is even more patently a Jupiter substitute than Augustus on BR I: 1; on the pillar monument from the forum of Noviomagus (Nijmegen) (fig. 119) Tiberius togate makes a libation while crowned by Victory, a representation clearly derivative from official statue groups and reliefs.²⁷ This “caution” is all the more paradoxical given the fact that the BR cups as a pair give him representational focus equal to Augustus’. Tiberius, like Augustus, enjoys two panels of one cup of the pair, a not inconsiderable paean to Tiberius’ deeds; compare the much more thorough subordination of Tiberius’ triumph, the ostensible occasion of the scene, to the glorification of Augustus on the Gemma Augustea.

The only answer that I find plausible is that the triumph of Tiberius was not a creation of the minor arts but was copied faithfully from some public monument made to commemorate the triumph erected during Augustus’ reign; this public monument, erected immediately after the triumph, could, and would, logically have depressed any complete elevation of Tiberius to Augustus’ own extraordinary status as chosen delegate of the gods, driving the point of avoidance home by the inclusion of the servus publicus. I also think it necessary to see the cups themselves as having been made in Augustus’ reign before Tiberius came to the throne; given the panegyric language extended to Augustus’ stepsons within that emperor’s own lifetime in the panegyric media of court poetry and court minor arts, I find it impossible to believe that an artist executing a commission for a “Tiberius cup” while Tiberius was emperor would have failed to omit the sordid detail of the presence of the public slave, let alone p.152 transform that uncrowned servant into a suitable allegorical figure. Even Augustus’ own coinage of A. D. 13, just before his death and Tiberius’ accession, shows Tiberius celebrating his Pannonian triumph alone in the quadriga, and no slaves are visible at all.

The Date of Tiberius’ Triumph

The principal question that scholars have asked of the cup BR II is, Which of Tiberius’ triumphs is depicted on this cup, his first triumph, awarded in 8 B. C. over Germany, or his Pannonian triumph, awarded in A. D. 8?²⁸ Those who opted for the date 8 B. C. could not make their hypothesis stick, as no one writing on the cups paid much attention to tracking down the historical event portrayed on BR I: 1, nor looked at the triumph as one of four panels of a programmatically unified cup pair.

In the triumph panel itself, no details have been supplied that would inform a viewer who looked at this panel in isolation, details such as a suitably dressed barbarian captive or a ferculum (display litter) with recognizable spoils. It is true that, in the order of a triumphal pompa, the captives, spoils, trophies, paintings, et cetera, would come first in the long parade, with the triumphator in his car at the very end. So, in a sense, the BR panel is being more or less less faithful to the order of the event it portrays, even at the cost of information. This seems to be the case with other monumental triumph representations as well; compare the Arch of Titus, whose passage reliefs (figs. 107—108) celebrate Titus’ Jewish triumph. Here the triumphator is in one panel, representing one section of the parade; it is the panel opposite that tells the viewer what triumph this is, by depicting the ferculum carrying the famous menorah from the Great Temple in Jerusalem, in a different section of the parade. The BR cup designer did not use the opportunity afforded by the other side of the cup to show such an informative segment of Tiberius’ pompa; besides the fact that he evidently wished to play on the themes of profectio/adventus and pietas this might perhaps suggest that at the time the cups were made there was no opportunity for confusion because Tiberius had not yet celebrated more than one triumph.

However, the artist must certainly have relied on his viewer to use the information that the artist did supply — that is, to look at BR II in the light of BR I. BR I refers in a unique and (at the time) recognizable image to Drusus’ activities shortly before his death in 9, when, having organized the tres Galliae to stand firm at his back, he had just begun to prosecute a p.153 massive campaign in Germany. It was this campaign or project that Tiberius took up at his brother’s death, and it was for successes in this task of completing his brother’s work that he was awarded his first triumph. His own acts as triumphator underscored the fact that he believed himself to be completing the task and building on the accomplishments of his beloved brother, for he vowed the greater part of his manubiae to the restorations of major temples — those of Castor and Pollux and of Concord, highly symbolic of fraternal love — to be rededicated in Drusus’ name jointly with his own. Similarly, the coins issued at Lugdunum for Tiberius’ 8/7 B. C. triumph, which would have gone not least to pay the legions that had served his brother as well as himself, looked back to the BR I: 2 event associated with Drusus. If the cups have any meaning at all as a pair, which is the only way to look at them, then Tiberius’ triumph must be the one connected with Drusus’ last accomplishments: Tiberius’ first triumph, of 8/7 B. C., celebrated de Germanis. It was for this triumph that Augustus revived the old rite that a triumphator should retake auspices before entering the city (Dio 51. 19. 6); and if this was indeed the occasion of one of Augustus’ pomerial extensions, ritual acknowledgment of permanent imperial expansions,²⁹ the imagery of BR I: 1 of Augustus as world ruler would have specific political resonance.

The Narrative Structure of BR II

The nuncupatio votorum sacrifice and the triumph procession of Tiberius together form a unified narrative — not “continuous narrative,” for that would imply that the later event is to be understood as following the earlier event in close chronological sequence. Instead, these two episodes function as temporal brackets, summing up the achievement of their protagonist in his successful campaign by showing the votive sacrifice performed in hope and trust at the campaign’s outset and the triumph at its successful conclusion, stressing in the depiction of the triumph the pious thanks about to be paid to the god who was invoked to bring about Tiberius’ success.

The state reliefs of the middle and late Empire typically couple profectio and adventus scenes in order to commemorate in symbolic form the martial successes intervening between the imperial protagonist’s setting out from (profectio) and return to (adventus) his “permanent” seat in Rome. This formulation, like the BR II pair of scenes, represents a carefully thought-out solution to the problem of referring in a handful of static p.154 images to the long temporal sequence of an imperial military campaign; the solution consists in showing the set ceremonies at the beginning and end of campaigns in order to evoke in the viewer the satisfied recollection of a task well done over a period of time. The profectio/adventus theme has been much studied and does not need much more comment here,³⁰ for the BR cup does not use this particular scheme; the first extant exemplar of profectio/adventus is Flavian, and there may not have been any conscious Augustan manipulation of this formula. The BR cup focuses instead not on the protagonist’s leaving and returning to Rome as such but rather on the exercise of pietas at the beginning and end of a campaign as intimately linked to success in warfare.

It is interesting, in a long view of Roman imperial art, to see that this Augustan coupling of scenes points to the structure of the later commemorative formula, in its evocation of temporal sequence by the choice of “beginning” and “end” as they would in fact have appeared to the population of the capital — you see the imperial general sacrifice/leave in procession, over the months dispatches describing victories trickle back, and then one day you hear the war is over, “we won,” and the imperial general comes home to reappear to your excited eyes, rolling home in procession, celebrating his triumph. This is a formulation that selects particular moments of the temporal flow as particularly meaningful, “privileging” them over less meaningful incidents, thus interpreting and structuring everyday experience to make it seem a comprehensible sequence of significant episodes.

The BR scheme is more than just an evocative sequence, in the style of the profectio/adventus scheme: it is also an explanatory sequence, which gives a logic of cause and effect to the fact of military success. In so doing it follows the underlying logic of all Roman religious, and especially fetial, rite, where proper performance of ritual ensures success and conversely defeat can always be blamed on improper performance of rite (ignoring the sacred chickens, etc.); it is also peculiarly Augustan in using the logic of pietas as a framework for the expository commemoration of achievement. We are breathing the air of Livy’s histories and of Vergil’s Aeneid, where pietas fogs the atmosphere at every turn; this is not the dominant logic of Sallust and Caesar, nor of Tacitus.

¹On the rite, see Künzl 1988; BR cup: 70 f, fig. 51a-b.

²Described by Kleiner (1983, 288—89). Corrections: Kleiner: the torquatus behind Tiberius’ chariot holds two laurel branches; no, he holds one, the other is held by the background figure in lower relief beside him. Kleiner: all five figures before the chariot are lictors; no, only four, the partly hidden figure on the horses’ far side is an officer in caligae, tunic, paludamentum. Kleiner: only two sets of lictor’s rods are visible; no, a pair is visible in very low relief near center, one crushed, the other abraded. Contra Koeppel 1983b, 105, the horses are led not by the background figure behind them but by the slave at their head.

³Most recently on the carrying of laurel branches by soldiers in triumphs and associated Italian, Republican, and Augustan images: Schneider 1990, 190 f.

⁴His brother was legate to Tiberius in Dalmatia: “quali adiutore legatoque fratre meo… usus sit, ipsius patrisque [sc. Augustus] eius [sc. Tiberius] praedicatione testatum et amplissimorum donorum, quibus triumphans Caesar [sc. Tiberius] donavit, signat memoria” (Vell. Pat. 2. 115. 1).

⁵Compare ILS 3320 = Ehrenberg and Jones 1976, no. 43b, an inscription from Dalmatia by the proud recipient of a torque from (he specifies) Tiberius’ Dalmatian campaign.

⁶See p. 284 n. 4 above. Vell. Pat. 2. 115. 1: “et amplissimorum donorum, quibus triumphans Caesar [sc. Tiberius] donavit”; 121. 3: (this triumph) “quem mihi fratrique meo inter praecipuos praecipuisque donis adornatos viros comitari contigit.”

⁷Doppelfeld and Held 1974, vii. fig. /cat. 22; Simon 1986, fig. 289; Franzoni 1987, 111, pl. 32. 2; Kais. Aug. 1988, 566, cat. 392. CIL XIII. 8648; ILS 2244 = Ehrenberg and Jones 1976, no. 45.

⁸Mainz inv. S 182. Franzoni 1987, 43, pl. 12. 1; Selzer et al. 1988, 128, fig. 49, cat. 30; Espérandieu 1918, no. 5790. CIL XIII. 6901.

⁹Verona, Mus. Maffeiano, from Cellove d’Illari. Franzoni 1987, 51—54, cat. 30, pl. xvi.

¹⁰Selzer et al. 1988, cat. 45, Mainz (L. Refidius Bassus). Franzoni 1987, cat. 28, pl. xv. 1, Este; cat. 54, pl. xxvi. 3, Brescia; cat. 60, pl. xxix. 2, Milan (CIL V. 5586); cat. 65, pl. xxxii. 3 (P. Cassius). Frenz 1985, pl. 50. 2, Augustan, Naples, phalerae and four torques between busts of an officer and his wife. Espérandieu 1918, nos. 5438, Brugg (C. Allius); 5811, Mainz (Q. Cornelius; CIL XIII. 6938); Espérandieu 1922, 6248, Bonn (C. Marius eques; CIL XIII. 8059), harness in corner of cavalry duel scene.

¹¹A single torque fills a metope of a grave monument at Modena, probably next to a panel with a phalera harness. Here elements of military costume and honors are isolated as a decorative scheme. Franzoni 1987, 106 n. 11.

¹²Espérandieu 1907, 38, no. 35; Espérandieu 1910, 373; Vermeule 1960, 35, pl. 4. 14; Eydoux 1962, 69, fig. 64. Over-life-size (1. 55 m to the knees), local stone; chain mail, paludamentum, sleeved tunic, braccae, sword, and shield. Attributed to the mausoleum of a Vocontius who commanded under Caesar.

¹³Hannestad (1986, 80) suggests Thracian auxiliaries sent by Rhoemetalkes to Tiberius in Pannonia.

¹⁴See p. 109 above.

¹⁵Highly decorated triumphal cars were traditional; cf. App. Hist. Rom. 8. 66 and Pun. 9 on the 201 B. C. triumph of Scipio Africanus (a quadriga katagegrammenos poikilos).

¹⁶RIC 7; BMCRR III, pl. 59. 16; BMCRE I, pl. 15. 7; Kent et al. 1973, cat. 122, pl. 32.

¹⁷Vermeule (in Vermeule and Haufmann 1957, 245 n. 80) cites a Claudian denarius, Trajan’s quadriga on the arch at Beneventum (small frieze), and the triumph panel in the Aurelian panel relief series.

¹⁸Cf. Velleius’ words on Tiberius’ position immediately before his exile, 2. 99: “Ti. Nero duobus consulatibus totidemque triumphis actis [sc. the triumph of 8 B. C. and an earlier ovation] tribuniciae potestatis consortione acquatus Angusto, civium post unum, et hoc, quia volebat [!], eminentissimus, ducum maximus, fama fortunaque celeberrimus et vere alterum rei publicae lumen et caput.” Cf. Zanker 1988, 232, on the succession imagery in this scene.

¹⁹Künzl 1988, 28. Juv. 10. 36—42 (the pompa circensis modeled on the triumphal pompa): the servus holds the crown and shares the chariot “sibi consul/ne placeat,” lest the celebrant think too much of himself; Courtney (1980, 458, s. v.) cites Mart. Ep. 8. 33. 1 on the lightness of a leaf from the praetoricia corona — surely, an implied contrast to the crown’s noted heft. Tert. Apol. 33. 4: “hominem se esse etiam triumphans in illo sublimissimo curru admonetur, suggeritur enim ei a tergo: Respice post re! Hominem re memento!”

²⁰Künzl (1988, 28, 163) notes a recently discovered marble relief at Praeneste, being published by L. Musso, said to depict the servus publicus.

²¹Spanish coins of 17—16 B. C., depicting at least three different arches, variously Augustus in quadriga or in elephant biga.

²²This scheme is rooted in Greek athletic dedications, such as the fifth-century bronze group by Pythagoras of Rhegion at Olympia, of Cratisthenes of Cyrene and Nike sharing a chariot (Paus. 6. 18. 1). See chap. 2, pp. 62—63. Coins: Sulla, 82 B. C. denarius, RRC 367. 1, pl. 47; Pompey, 71 B. C. aureus, RRC 402. 1b, pl. 50; Octavian/Augustus, ca. 17 B. C. denarii (arch), BMCRR III, pl. 63. 18—20. The servus publicus’s replacement by divinities: Höscher 1967, 82—84, ascribing the BR image to a fictitious “streng republikanische Ablehnung des Kaiserkultes” by Tiberius. Precedents go back to the fifth century B. C.; cf. a monument to their founder Battos put up by the Cyrenians at Delphi (Paus. 10. 15. 6).

²³This leaning figure was by 30 B. C. a stock type in narrations of the triumphal procession; on the (probably satirical) paraphrase of a triumph by Antony and Cleopatra/Hercules and Omphale on a datable early Augustan Arretine ware matrix, the centaur chariots are pulled along by such a figure. See chap. 4, p. 97.

²⁴Strong 1988, fig. 69, p. 350 nn. 6—7.

²⁵The epigraphic description of a triumphal arch for Germanicus in Rome enjoins simply supraque eum ianum statua Germanici Caesaris poneretur in curru triumphali (Tab. Siar. 18—19). As the text goes on to specify in detail family portraits and their placement relative to the arch, the omission of subsidiary figures (i. e., the servus publicus) in this Tiberian commission must be deliberate. González 1984, 55 ff; the Tabula Siarensis, found near Seville in 1982, records the Senate’s decrees of posthumous honors to Germanicus on 16 December A. D. 19, supplementing the Tabula Hebana.

²⁶See chap. 2, n. 109. Republican triumph types with a quadriga group begin in 101. 101 B. C. denarius for Marius: rev., Marius in quadriga, three-quarters right with scepter and laurel, on the near horse Marius’ eight-year-old son; RRC 326. 1, pl. 43. 83 B. C. denarius for Sulla: rev., Sulla in quadriga, three-quarters left in cuirass and tunic with palm and trophy; RRC 358. 1, pl. 47. 82 B. C. denarius for Sulla: Sulla in quadriga, three-quarters right, crowned by flying Victory, reins in his left hand, a caduceus (divine symbol of peace = pax, the product of victory) in his right; RRC 367. 1, pl. 47. 71 B. C. aureus for Pompey: Pompey in quadriga, profile right, crowned by flying Victory, with palm, on the near horse his young son (the eldest, born between 80 and 76 B. C.); RRC 402. 1b, pl. 50. 29/27 B. C. denarius for Octavian: Octavian in quadriga, profile right, branch in his right hand and reins in his left; BMCRR III, p. 13; II, pl. 60. 29/27 B. C. denarius for Octavian: quadriga group on arch, Octavian in profile right, crowned by Victory standing behind him in the chariot. 13—14 A. D. denarius and aureus for Tiberius: Tiberius in quadriga, profile right, in toga and crown with eagle-tipped scepter and branch. Note that the two Sullan issues tinker with the triumphator’s regalia, replacing elements of the costume with symbolic dress and attributes; note too that on a Sullan coin and on Octavian’s quadriga issue, the triumphator holds the reins himself, when in fact the horses would have been led by a slave.

²⁷Found in 1980; the square altar is inscribed TIBeRiusCaeSar. Provinciaal Museum G. M. Kam 1986, 26 and fig., cat. 105; Bloemers in Schatkamer 1989, 28—29, figs. 1—6, and Bloemers 1985 (I thank the author for bringing these articles to my attention and permitting me photographs of the pillar).

²⁸Summary: Kleiner 1983, 290—93; Kienast 1982, 108 n. 165. Zanker (1988, 229) chooses the second triumph of A. D. 12, ascribing the four cup panels to a victory monument erected for it. Simon (1986, 143) (omitting BR II) dates the cup pair to the end of Augustus’ reign when Tiberius was active in the Balkans. Künzl (1988 and 1989) picks A. D. 12.

²⁹On these rituals and the “fuss” over Tiberius in 7 B. C., see Boatwright 1986, 16.

³⁰See esp. Koeppel 1969, 130—94; Hölscher 1967, 48 ff.