MAKING A MEAL OUT OF A VICTORY
In 89 ce the emperor Domitian hosted a particularly imaginative (or menacing) dinner party for Roman senators and knights. The dining room was entirely black, with black couches, crockery, and food; even the naked serving-boys were painted in the same color. Each guest's name was inscribed on a slab shaped like a tombstone, while the emperor himself held forth on the topic of death to the silent and fearful company, who were convinced that their last hour had come. In fact, it was to be nothing of the sort. They were all sent home, and the ominous knock at the door that followed shortly after their return heralded not arrest and murder but a display of imperial generosity: Domitian had sent each guest as a present their name-slab (made of silver), the precious black dishes from which they had been served, and their individual serving-boy, now well scrubbed and nicely dressed. Or so at least Dio (as his Byzantine excerptors have preserved his text) tells the story.[1]
This has become a notorious and controversial incident in modern attempts to configure the relations between the emperor and the Roman elite. Some see it as a classic case of imperial sadism, showing that scare tactics in the form of humiliation and terror were as effective a means of control as violence itself. Others suspect that Dio, in his eagerness to cast Domitian as a full-blown tyrant, has missed the point of the dinner, and missed the joke. For lurking under Dio's outrage, they detect an elegant parade of imperial wit (and expensive fancy dress), or alternatively a philosophical fantasy in keeping with the other-worldly themes found elsewhere in the dining culture of the early Empire.[2]
What no one has spotted, to my knowledge, is that this occasion was not merely any banquet hosted by the emperor, but the banquet laid on to follow the emperor's triumph over the Germans and Dacians.[3] Even in its mangled state, Dio's text makes it clear that we are dealing with the triumphal celebrations of 89, which were followed both by a dinner at public expense for the people at large "lasting all night" and by this elegant, or somber, occasion for a more select group of the elite.
In fact, various forms of eating and drinking are referred to as an accompaniment to triumphs. We have already seen, in Josephus' account, that in 71 ce the soldiers were served with "the traditional breakfast" (or "lunch," depending on how we choose to translate the Greek ariston) before the procession itself started out, while Vespasian and Titus had a bite to eat, privately, elsewhere. In a triumph, no less than on campaign, the army marched on its stomach. It also needed a drink. An aside in a play of Plautus-that "the soldiers will be entertained with honeyed wine," even if there is no triumph-strongly hints (though we might have guessed it anyway) that the celebrating troops did not necessarily remain sober all day.[4]
More striking are the retrospective fictions that offer a different vision of how the soldiers were plied with food in some of the earliest Roman triumphs. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, in his account of the founding celebration of Romulus, imagines the ceremony consisting simply of the homecoming of the victorious troops, met outside the town by their wives and children and other citizens. As they enter this proto-Rome, they find that outside the most distinguished houses tables have been laid with food and wine from which, as they pass in procession, they can eat their fill. The image is repeated in Dionysius' account of Publicola's triumph in 509, the first year of the newly founded Republic, and in Livy's story of the triumph of Cincinnatus in 458 bce. Here, he pictures tables spread out before all the houses and "the soldiers, feasting as they went, to the accompaniment of the triumphal chant; and the usual ribald songs followed the chariot like revelers."[5]
These are more complex stories than at first they may appear, with an interlocking set of historical explanations and originary myths at play. On the one hand, the triumph is being used as an imaginary frame for a distinctively primitive form of banqueting: what is being conjured here is the "degree zero" of Roman dining, unencumbered by the rules and rituals of commensality, something as close to just eating as you can get within organized society. On the other hand, this practice of eating on the part of the soldiers-retrojected by Dionysius to the very first triumph of all and to the first triumph of the Republic-is itself being used, mythically, as a way of recreating and explaining the origins of the ceremony of triumph. Livy's language points clearly in that direction. When he writes that the soldiers were "like revelers," the Latin word he uses is comisor (modo comisantium), which echoes, even if it does not directly derive from, the Greek word komos-the procession of drunken revelers associated, for example, with marriages, some religious rituals, or with the celebrations for victorious athletes. Livy is asking his readers to imagine the early triumph on the model of a Greek komos, a soldiers' komos.
Most ancient writers, however, are not particularly concerned with the soldiers' fare but focus on the post-triumphal festivities for the other participants and spectators, both people and elite. The classic case is the banqueting provided by Julius Caesar after his triumphs in 46 and 45 bce. The general impression of lavishness is backed up by some ostensibly specific detail. Plutarch, for example, claims that in 46 the people feasted at 22,000 triclinia-which, according to the usual understanding that a triclinium comprises three couches with three diners each, means a grand total of 198,000 diners. The elder Pliny fills in some of the culinary information. In discussing different varieties of wine, he notes that Caesar provided Chian and Falernian for his triumphal guests. Elsewhere, in the context of lamprey ponds, he notes that Gaius Lucilius Hirrus-second-rate politician, erstwhile ally of Pompey, and highly successful fish breeder-gave Caesar 6,000 lampreys "as a loan" for one of his triumphal banquets. It was a generous and politically expedient gesture, no doubt, though, as the largest lamprey hardly exceeds a meter in length, if divided equally they would have provided a meager helping for 198,000 diners.[6]
This mass public dining has captured the scholarly imagination. Modern historians of ancient food and foodways have seen in such triumphal banquets the "greatest occasions" of public feasting at Rome. More than that, they have made the feast-rather than the sacrifice on the Capitol, or the dedication of the laurel or palm-the culminating moment of the whole triumphal ceremony. The public feast, as one historian recently suggested, was "ritually the capstone of triumphs." [7] Even poor Aemilius Paullus has been wheeled out to support such claims. "The organization of a feast and the giving of games is the business of a man who knows how to win wars," he is supposed to have once remarked- as if to imply that, as soon as the war was won, the general had to devote himself to organizing a (triumphal) banquet for the people and laying on games. But it is an over-optimistic translation. The sense is more correctly: "It takes the same talent to organize a feast, to give games, and to marshal troops like a general to face the enemy." [8] A significantly different observation.
In fact, the idea that mass eating, on the Caesarian model, was the regular culmination of the triumph is a typical example of the kind of generalization we have repeatedly seen in modern reconstructions of the ceremony. It is not that we have no further evidence for it at all. Athenaeus, for example, in his second-century ce compendium Deipnosophistae (Sophists at Dinner) refers to skins of "gorgons," sheeplike creatures with deadly eyes sent from Africa by Marius to hang "in the Temple of Hercules where commanders celebrating their triumphs give a banquet to the citizens." And elsewhere he quotes the early firstcentury bce Stoic philosopher Poseidonius, who wrote of the banquets held "in the precinct of Hercules, when a man who at that time is celebrating a triumph is giving dinner." [9] There are also the observations of Varro on the agricultural profits to be made from supplying "a triumph and a banquet." [10] Yet it is hard to pin down precise occasions of any such mass feasting.
The only case mentioned before Caesar is that of Lucullus' triumph in 63 bce, when according to Plutarch a banquet was given both in the city and in surrounding villages. [11] Otherwise, the few examples of largescale dining are all of early imperial date: a banquet to celebrate Tiberius' ovation in 9 bce (dinner for "some" on the Capitol, for others "all over the place," while Livia and Julia entertained the women); the entertainment following the triumph of Vespasian and Titus ("some" eating at the imperial table, others in their own homes); and Domitian's dinners in 89 ce. [12] Nowhere in Livy's notices of republican triumphs do we find any reference to any form of post-triumphal entertainment on a large scale.
Equally hard to pin down are the practical details of such occasions. Athenaeus does not specify which "precinct of Hercules" he means, but there was none in Rome that could possibly hold 198,000 diners. The most likely location for Caesar's banquet would be the Forum itself; and precedents do indeed exist for its transformation into an open-air dining area. Livy, for example, tells a vivid story of a funeral feast taking place there in 183 bce, when it was so windy that the diners were forced to erect little tents or windbreaks around their tables. [13] But the accounts we have hint that formal communal banquets may regularly have been offered to the elite alone, the mass of the people having food (or even cash equivalent) provided for private or local consumption-on the model of the "take-away" mentioned by Josephus at the triumph of 71 ce, or the widely dispersed dining ("all over the place") following Tiberius' ovation. [14] As for the menu, much of the information we have may well refer, again, to the elite rather than the popular version of the feast. Those 6,000 lampreys, or Varro's aunt's 5,000 thrushes, would have made a handsome contribution to the "top-table" party of perhaps senators and knights.
Unlike the mass dining of the people, there is considerable evidence for triumphal feasting by the elite (still, to be sure, on a large scale), as well as for ancient scholarly interest in the particular customs and social oddities that characterized it. In addition to the occasions we have just noted (where the "some" dining on the Capitol or at the imperial table almost certainly indicates the upper echelons of Roman society), Appian refers to Scipio entertaining his friends "at the temple, as was customary" at the conclusion of his triumph in 201 bce, just as Dionysius envisages Publicola in 509 "feasting the most distinguished of the citizens" at the end of his own procession and Dio reports a banquet for senators on the Capitol at the triumph of Tiberius in 7 bce. [15]
Livy, too, though silent on popular triumphal dining, mentions this elite custom in the context of Aemilius Paullus' triumph in 167. In the course of the triumphal debate, Paullus' champion (as Livy scripts his words) lists the "senate's feast" as one of the religious elements of the ceremony: "What about that feast of the senate that is held neither on private property, nor on unconsecrated public land, but on the Capitol? Does this take place for the pleasure of mortal men or to honor the gods?" [16] In other words, it seems that once the general had arrived at the Temple of Jupiter and the sacrifices had been performed, he did not necessarily make his weary way home: a banquet for the senate or maybe a wider group of the elite often followed, in the Capitoline temple itself or perhaps at a Temple of Hercules.
Puzzling to ancient scholars were the rules of precedence at these dinners. Both Valerius Maximus and Plutarch refer to the "customary" banquet. Why, they ask, was it the tradition for the consuls to be invited to this occasion and then to be sent a message that they should not turn up? The answer, they each suggest in slightly different formulations, is to ensure that the triumphant commander is not upstaged: "So that, on the day on which he triumphs, no one of greater imperium should be present at the same dinner party." [17] This nicely indicates that more was at stake in this banquet than the standard Roman practice of sharing the sacrificial meat between priests, officials, and key participants-the "religious" function hinted at by Livy. [18] More too than the reintegration of the general into the society of his elite peers after his day on the borderline of divinity. We have already seen how written recreations of the triumph repeatedly harp on the fragility of triumphal success, on the competitive calibration of triumphal glory, and on the dangers of humiliation that went along with the temporary elevation of the general. Exactly those issues are reflected in this ancient explanation of the strange "rule" about the invitation and disinvitation of the consuls, with its implied recognition of the threats to the general's status.
Those issues are reflected, too, in Domitian's black dinner party. Though the fact that emperor and triumphing general were here one and the same inevitably complicates the story, an important underlying theme remains the jockeying for preeminence between the general and other participants in (or observers of ) the triumph. The intricate games of power, humiliation, and control implied by the ceremony are in this case both won and lost by Domitian: the emperor-general retains the upper hand, but only at the cost of revealing his own sadistic tyranny (or, on the other interpretation, at the cost of history forever missing his joke!).
=====
1. Dio Cassius 67, 9.
2. “Autocratic sadism”: Murison (1999) 239–42. Elegant wit or philosophical fantasy: Waters (1964) 75–6; Dunbabin (1986) 193–5.
3. Either two separate triumphs or a single, joint celebration: Griffin (2000) 63.
4. Plautus, Bac. 1072–4 (the “triumph” and “soldiers” in question are part of an elaborate comic metaphor).
5. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. 2, 34, 2; 5, 17, 1–2; Livy 3, 29, 4–5.
6. Lavish celebration: Dio Cassius 43, 42, 1; Suetonius, Jul. 38, 2 (though it is not certain that these “dinners” [prandia] are closely connected with his triumphs). Triclinia: Plutarch, Caes. 55, 2. Wine: Pliny, Nat. 14, 97. Lampreys: Pliny, Nat. 9, 171.
7. “Greatest occasions”: Purcell (1994) 685. “Capstone”: D’Arms (1998) 35 (the capstone of major public holidays and funerals too, he claims).
8. Polybius 30, 14 (from a Byzantine excerption); Livy 45, 32, 11; Purcell (1994) 686.
9. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 5, 221f; 4, 153c, with Kidd (1988) 282–3 (a passage which could refer to elite dining only).
10. Varro, RR 3, 2, 16; 3, 5, 8.
11. Plutarch, Luc. 37, 4. The claims that Sulla and Crassus also held mass triumphal banquets depend on interpreting the feasts they offered on dedicating a tenth of their property to the god Hercules (Plutarch, Mor. 267E–F ( = Quaestiones Romanae 18) as simultaneously triumphal celebrations (Plutarch, Sull. 35, 1; Crass. 12, 2).
12. Tiberius: Dio Cassius 55, 2, 4. Vespasian and Titus: Josephus, BJ 7, 156. Domitian: above, n. 1.
13. Livy 39, 46, 2–3.
14. There is a clash here, I suspect, between an ideal of the commensality of the whole people (as fantasized by Martial of a later victory celebration of Domitian: “the knights, and the people, and the senators all eat with you,” 8, 49, 7) and the political reality of hierarchy and separation. Handouts for the people (versus feasting for the elite) feature on other occasions in the Empire (e.g., Suetonius, Cal. 17, 2).
15. Appian, Pun. 66; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. 5, 17, 2; Dio Cassius 55, 8, 2 (a ladies’ occasion was hosted by Livia elsewhere).
16. Livy 45, 39, 13.
17. Valerius Maximus 2, 8, 6 (quoted); Plutarch, Mor. 283A (=Quaestiones Romanae 80).
18. Scheid (1988).
Я, как и Вы, довольно слабо себе представляю хронологию этого периода и связанные с ней проблемы. Я ориентировалась на Гранта, но сейчас смотрела книгу Джонса про Домициана: он датирует триумф серединой 88 г., восстание Сатурнина - 1 января 89 г. Джонсу я доверяю больше, чем Гранту.
