INTRODUCTION

What, or where, was the triumphal route in Rome? Did triumphs follow a set path, or did their route vary from procession to procession? These questions have been hotly debated in recent years, and it is necessary to address them head on before discussing the route's monumental appearance in the following chapters. This chapter reviews the history of scholarly reconstructions of the triumphal route, paying special attention to heated controversies and recent efforts to deconstruct the route as it has traditionally been envisioned. Taking into account material and textual evidence as well as the spectacular nature of triumphal processions, I ultimately argue in favor of a model of the triumphal route that is not a continuous, linear path through the city but rather a network of public spaces and buildings that could best accommodate crowds of spectators.

This chapter demonstrates the status of certain areas in Rome as regular, continual sites of triumphal processions, where monuments and memories of triumphs could reciprocally impact one another. The triumphal route was hardly a fossilized, unchanging path through Rome, but triumphs did tend to pass through certain key urban spaces and sites. The permanent monuments that accumulated at these sites gave the illusion that triumphs followed the same route as historical performances of the ritual. One could feel as though one was passing before the same monuments as triumphs past, and this could foster a sense that the triumphal ritual was the same as it had always been, even as it underwent transformations. It was this perceived constancy of the triumphal route – even if the constancy was ostensible rather than actual – that enabled the triumph to maintain the semblance of continuity that its ritual nature demanded.

RECONSTRUCTIONS AND DECONSTRUCTIONS

The historiography of the triumphal route is lengthy and complex, but I present debates about the route as concisely as possible. Such brevity reflects my conviction that the precise location of the Porta Triumphalis, for example, has proportionally little impact on the ways in which monuments affected the experience and memory of triumphal processions.