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It was the TRIUMPHATOR making his entry into the conquered city. The philosopher thought of the history of ancient Rome, and it seemed to him as though the face of the modern Caesar were that of a resuscitated statue of antiquity.
In this sense the Roman aristocracy had been at all times hereditary; in fact, it had displayed its hereditary character with great naivete in the old custom of the senator taking his sons with him to the senate, and of the public magistrate decorating his sons, as it were by anticipation, with the insignia of the highest official honour the purple border of the consular, and the golden amulet-case of the triumphator.
That this should have been done with Pompeius, who had solicited the consulship as a commander-in-chief crowned with victory and a triumphator, at the head of an army and after his coalition with Crassus also of a powerful party, we can readily conceive.
Sound in body and mind, a capable athlete, who even when a superior officer vied with his soldiers in leaping, running, and lifting, a vigorous and skilled rider and fencer, a bold leader of volunteer bands, the youth had become Imperator and triumphator at an age which excluded him from every magistracy and from the senate, and had acquired the first place next to Sulla in public opinion; nay, had obtained from the indulgent regent himself half in recognition, half in irony the surname of the Great.
But a short time afterwards he appears to have changed his political opinions, for when the city was captured by the Danes in 1676, Weiser met the conqueror, and greeted him with the words: Perge Triumphator reliquas submittere terras, Sic redit ad Dominum, quod fuit ante, suum. This verse was fatal to him.
If these were many, they would accompany the procession on chargers, riding along beside the triumphator. None of the rest rode, but all went on foot wearing laurel wreaths.
The eyes of those present turned to him unconsciously, for never had triumphator ascended the Capitol with pride such as his when he stood before Cæsar. He began to speak slowly and with emphasis, in tones through which the bite of iron, as it were, was heard, "Listen. O Cæsar, for I can say: I have found! The people want vengeance, they want not one victim, but hundreds, thousands.
It gladdened him to make good the prophecy of the great poet as to his future fame. Once indeed, at his famous entry into the conquered city of Naples he himself chose to appear before the world in ancient style. Not far from the market a breach forty ells wide was made in the wall, and through this he drove in a gilded chariot like a Roman Triumphator.
No other instance is known where these particular distinctions were decreed; the nearest parallel lies in the right accorded to Paulus Macedonicus and to Pompeius to wear the triumphal toga picta for life on each occasion of the ludi. It may be conjectured that the music and the torch were part of the ceremony on the evening of a triumph when the triumphator was escorted home. Cf.
He added that the latter had received a crown from almost nobody, whereas he obtained many, and particularly from the people, tribe by tribe, as had never been the case with any former triumphator.
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