Fabian Goldbeck; Johannes Wienand, Der römische Triumph in Prinzipat und Spätantike, Berlin 2017

The volume entitled “Der römische Triumph in Prinzipat und Spätantike“, edited by Fabian Goldbeck and Johannes Wienand, is the impressive result of a conference on the Roman triumph that was held at the Humboldt Graduate School Berlin in October 2012. The main goal of the volume is to provide a comprehensive overview of the development and characteristics of the Roman triumph during the Principate and in Late Antiquity. In doing so the editors hope to tackle a desideratum of classical studies since earlier research mainly focused on the history of the triumph during the Roman Republic and neglected the role of the ritual in later times.

The individual articles are arranged in four chronological sections. The first section covers the time of the early Principate and traces the development of the triumph ritual from the late Republican period until the end of Nero’s reign. An important part of this long period was the reign of Augustus which is central to Tanja Itgenhorst’s article. Itgenhorst draws attention to the various transformations of the triumphal ritual under the first princeps. One of these transformations was the new exclusiveness of the ritual: after 19 BC only members of the imperial household celebrated triumphs. These and other changes in the triumphal culture of early Imperial Rome reflect the shift of power from the Senate to the princeps, who had gained the sole right to decide to whom a triumph was to be granted.

The second section of the book deals with the development of the triumph from the Flavian period until the end of Commodus’ reign. The articles in this section approach the topic from different perspectives and examine amongst other things the historical development of the ritual in this period (Michels), the triumphal architecture in the city of Rome (Hölscher), and the reception of triumphs in Graeco-Roman literature (Icks). Similarly, the articles of the third section, which roughly covers the time span between the Severans and Constantine’s ascension, and those of the fourth section dealing with Late Antiquity offer highly insightful perspectives on triumphal culture in these often-neglected periods. Besides classic historical approaches such as Haake’s study on the development of the triumph in the third century, there are also contributions from other fields, such as the numismatic article by Mittag that examines triumphal scenes on coins and medallions, and the archaeological study by Bassett who analyses the role of triumphal architecture in Late-Antique Constantinople. His text provides an interesting counterpart to Hölscher’s article on the triumphal topography of Rome.

This variety of perspectives and academic backgrounds is one of the major strengths of the volume, since it allows the reader to understand the comprehensiveness and ubiquity of this antique phenomenon. However, the wide range of takes on the topic impedes the development of a continuous narrative. Therefore, the book cannot be considered a comprehensive history of the triumphal ritual in the time span under investigation. Despite many valuable insights into various aspects of victory celebrations in the Roman world a history of the triumph in Roman and Early Byzantine times remains a desideratum.