Triumphs in the Age of Civil War - by Carsten Hjort Lange (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Many of the wars of the Late Republic were largely civil conflicts. There was, therefore, a tension between the traditional expectation that triumphs should be celebrated for victories over foreign enemies and the need of the great commanders to give full expression to their prestige and charisma, and to legitimize their power.

Triumphs in the Age of Civil War rethinks the nature and the character of the phenomenon of civil war during the Late Republic. At the same time it focuses on a key feature of the Roman socio-political order, the triumph, and argues that a commander could in practice expect to triumph after a civil war victory if it could also be represented as being over a foreign enemy, even if the principal opponent was clearly Roman. Significantly, the civil aspect of the war did not have to be denied.

Carsten Hjort Lange provides the first study to consider the Roman triumph during the age of civil war, and argues that the idea of civil war as "normal" reflects the way civil war permeated the politics and society of the Late Roman Republic.

Review Quotes

Carsten Hjort Lange's book is the first to tell the story of what happened to the triumph - Rome's highest military honor - in a long period of civil war. In doing so, he offers new answers to the urgent question of how societies end civil war and come back together as one. There is bold and confident argument throughout, culminating in a superb discussion of the triumph's development under the emperor Augustus and its foundational role in the establishment of imperial government.
Josiah Osgood, Professor of Classics, Georgetown University, USA

Lange has already made significant contributions to the study of Rome's first-century civil wars, and the present book represents a valuable expansion of this work into questions of triumph and triumphal commemorations ... Lange has successfully challenged long-standing ideas about the relationship between triumphs and civil wars at Rome and has shed new light on one of the most-studied periods of ancient history. The consequences for our understanding of the Triumviral period and the early Roman Empire are rich and varied, particularly so with respect to the figure of Octavian/Augustus. Any reader interested in the Late Republic, or the commemorative dynamics of civil war and competitive politics more generally, will find much to reward the time spent with this volume.
Bryn Mawr Classical Review

The first comprehensive monograph on the Roman triumph in the momentous civil war era, this insightful and thought-provoking enquiry is as much a study of a well-known but poorly understood aspect of late republican Roman political life as an alternative viewpoint on the historic transition from Republic to Empire. This original and readily accessible book much advances our understanding of one of the Roman aristocracy's foremost rituals in a transformative period and is bound to stimulate further debate and reflection.
Frederik J. Vervaet, Associate Professor of Ancient History, The University of Melbourne, Australia

About the Author

Carsten Hjort Lange is Assistant Professor of Ancient History in the Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Denmark. His extensive writing on the Roman Republic and triumphal practice includes Res Publica Constituta: Actium, Apollo and the Accomplishment of the Triumviral Assignment (2009) and (as co-editor) The Roman Republican Triumph (2014).