The Roman Triumph
Author | Mary Beard |
---|---|
Publisher | Harvard University Press |
Publication date | United Kingdom 2007 |
Pages | 434pp. |
The Roman Triumph is a 2007 book by Mary Beard.
Content
The book explores the ritual of the
Beard's analysis cuts through the enormous amount of writing about Roman triumphs to try to ascertain what their reality was as a fixture in Roman life, attempting to demystify them from the large number of what she refers to as 'rituals in ink' that have existed (whereby contemporary writers such as Polybius, Livy or Josephus sought to glorify a particular triumph) and the large amount of secondary historical scholarship on the matter.[2] An example of the kind of details that are heavily contested and questionable is the tradition of a slave accompanying a processing general repeatedly urging him to remember that he is mortal; this tradition is mentioned differently in accounts by Pliny, Dio or Tertullian and is not mentioned at all in other accounts. Beard therefore argues that such stories may in fact be myth-making rather than a report of actual reality. Another aspect of the oft-repeated later depiction of the triumph includes stories of harsh treatment of captives, which Beard argues may instead have involved a reality where they were treated relatively mildly before then often becoming citizens.[3]
References
- ^ Vervaet, F.J. "Mary Beard, The Roman Triumph". Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2008.09.39. Retrieved 17 August 2014.
- ^ Woolf, Greg. "Pomp and circumstance". The Guardian. Retrieved 17 August 2014.
- ^ Hart, Christopher. "The Roman Triumph by Mary Beard". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2022-06-18. Retrieved 17 August 2014.