Literarische Triumphe

The triumphal procession determined the thoughts and actions of the Romans to a great extent. This applies not only to the period of the late Republic, in which triumphal processions were fiercely contested, but also to the early imperial period, in which the ritual increasingly disappeared from everyday life.

In addition to texts that refer back to the Roman triumph, this volume examines above all those that inscribe the triumph as a model performatively or metaphorically: While Caesar immortalises his own campaign in De bello Gallico, Pliny the Elder presents his Naturalis Historia as a triumph of science. Cicero and Vitruvius transfer the concept to the intellectual realms of rhetoric and architecture, and the early imperial Laus Pisonis makes the life of an imperial aristocrat appear as a single triumphal procession. The notion of conceptual metaphor makes it possible to understand the triumph as an intertextual and intermedial model and to examine its actualisation in different contexts.

By systematising the heterogeneous texts, taking cultural studies concepts into account, this volume makes an important contribution to the study of ancient aesthetics and cultural identity.