Alas For Romance: Military History that Isn’t True - Defeated Enemy Leaders were Executed after Roman Triumphs

Under the Republic, successful Roman generals were often awarded a triumph, a custom which under the Empire quickly became limited to the Emperor himself.  A triumph was an elaborate ceremonial parade through the streets of Rome.  Spectacularly outfitted, the triumphator rode in an elaborate chariot with his children as the enemy chieftains and their families walked in chains behind, followed by floats displaying paintings of battles, wagons loaded with loot, and flocks of prisoners, and then the general’s troops, unarmed (contrary to Hollywood), bringing up the rear singing bawdy songs about him.

Consider this description of  Pompey’s the Great’s famous third triumph, held September 29-October 1, 61 BC, written by the historian Plutarch (fl., c. AD 46-c. 120) 

Inscriptions borne in advance of the procession indicated the nations over which he triumphed.  These were: Pontus, Armenia, Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Media, Colchis, Iberia, Albania, Syria, Cilicia, Mesopotamia, Phoenicia and Palestine, Judaea, Arabia, and all the power of the pirates by sea and land which had been overthrown.  Among these peoples no less than a thousand strongholds had been captured, according to the inscriptions, and cities not much under nine hundred in number, besides eight hundred piratical ships, while thirty-nine cities had been founded.  In addition to all this the inscriptions set forth that whereas the public revenues from taxes had been fifty million drachmas, they were receiving from the additions which Pompey had made to the city's power eighty-five million, and that he was bringing into the public treasury in coined money and vessels of gold and silver twenty thousand talents, apart from the money which had been given to his soldiers, of whom the one whose share was the smallest had received fifteen hundred drachmas. 

The captives led in triumph, besides the chief pirates, were [Tigranes] the son of Tigranes the Armenian, with his wife and daughter, Zosime, a wife of King Tigranes himself, Aristobulus, king of the Jews, a sister and five children of Mithridates [the Great of Pontus], Scythian women, and hostages given by the Iberians, by the Albanians, and by the king of Commagene; there were also very many trophies, equal in number to all the battles in which Pompey had been victorious either in person or in the persons of his lieutenants.  But that which most enhanced his glory and had never been the lot of any Roman before, was that he celebrated his third triumph over the third continent. For others before him had celebrated three triumphs; but he celebrated his first over Libya, his second over Europe, and this his last over Asia, so that he seemed in a way to have included the whole world in his three triumphs.

There is a very old belief, which originate in Roman imperial times, that after marching in a general's triumphal procession, the defeated enemy commander was executed in some fashion, usually by strangulation.  It is supposedly because of this custom that a number of Rome’s greatest enemies -- Cleopatra most famously -- committed suicide.  This tradition rests on shaky grounds.  There were at least 320 triumphs in Roman history, and although we do not know the fate of all defeated enemy leaders who marched behind the triumphator, in only a handful of cases is there evidence that the defeated leader was executed at the procession’s conclusion.  To take as an example, of the captives paraded behind Pompey’s chariot, only the pirate chiefs were executed. 

So it turns out – as so often – that what “everyone knows” is not quite correct. 

In fact very little is known about the details of the triumph; not even the route through the city can be ascertained with much reliability.  For all the hundreds of triumphs, details on the fate of those who marched in chains behind the victorious commander are surprisingly sparse.  The list here seems to include all occasions on which we know what happened to the defeated enemy leaders.

So we have sixteen instances in which we know the names and fate of the defeated enemy leaders who were led in a triumphal procession.  In only nine cases are we certain that the defeated enemy leader was executed or died: Pontius, Eumenes III Aristonicus, Jugurtha, two batches of pirate chiefs, Vercingetorix, Adiatorix of Galatia and King Alexander of Emesa, and Simon ben Gioras.  And in eleven cases (since there was some overlap in which there were multiple captive leaders), the enemy leaders were kept in comfortable retirement or actually honored by being returned to power.

Oddly, we also know of one instance in which a very unusual “punishment” was inflicted on captive enemy leaders.  In 225 BC Lucius Aemilius Papus was awarded a triumph for defeating an Insubrian invasion from Gallia Cisalpina (northern Italy) in the Battle of Telamon.  According to Cassius Dio (fl. c. AD 150- 235), Aemilius had the Insubrian chiefs march in their armor during the triumph, and then “conveyed the foremost captives clad in armor up to the Capitol, making jests at their expense for having sworn not to remove their breastplates until they had ascended to the Capitol.”  Alas, what happened to the boastful Insubrians afterwards is absent from the historical record.  As, unfortunately, is the fate of almost all those who marched behind conquering hero’s chariot in a Roman triumph.