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West Asian Geopolitics and the Roman Triumph A UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Parading Persia: West Asian Geopolitics and the Roman Triumph A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History by Carly Maris September 2019 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Michele Salzman, Chairperson Dr. Denver Graninger Dr. Thomas Scanlon Copyright by Carly Maris 2019 The Dissertation of Carly Maris is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgements Thank you so much to the following people for your continued support: Dan (my love), Mom, Dad, the Bellums, Michele, Denver, Tom, Vanessa, Elizabeth, and the rest of my friends and family. I’d also like to thank the following entities for bringing me joy during my time in grad school: The Atomic Cherry Bombs, my cats Beowulf and Oberon, all the TV shows I watched and fandoms I joined, and my Twitter community. iv ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Parading Persia: West Asian Geopolitics and The Roman Triumph by Carly Maris Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in History University of California, Riverside, September 2019 Dr. Michele Salzman, Chairperson Parading Persia: West Asian Geopolitics and the Roman Triumph is an investigation into East-West tensions during the first 500 years of Roman expansion into West Asia. The dissertation is divided into three case studies that: (1) look at local inscriptions and historical accounts to explore how three individual Roman generals warring with the dominant Asian-Persian empires for control over the region negotiated with the local populations and inserted themselves into West-Asian geopolitics; and (2) how these Roman generals then presented their campaigns and negotiations to the populace of the city of Rome, via spectacular military parades called ‘triumphs.’ Comparing Roman narratives with local evidence shows both the Roman adoption of West-Asian expressions of empire, while revealing that the maintenance of imagined sociocultural and geopolitical borders between the East and West were the result of Roman construction and presentation of empire in the city of Rome, and the perceived threat of Asian-Persian enemies. v Table of Contents Chapter One: Introduction.................................................................................................. 1 Chapter Two: Achaemenid Foundations and West Asian Parade Culture....................... 31 Case Study 1 Chapter 3: Scipio in Asia...................................................................................... 56 Chapter 4: Scipio in Rome.................................................................................... 76 Case Study 2 Chapter 5: Ventidius Bassus’ Triumph over Parthia.......................................... 109 Chapter 6: From Triumph to Res Gestae............................................................ 132 Case Study 3 Chapter 7: The Sassanids and Romans and the West Asian limes.................... 153 Chapter 8: Restitutor Orbis ................................................................................ 177 Chapter 9: Conclusion .................................................................................................... 203 Figures............................................................................................................................. 214 Bibliography.......................................................................................,............................ 225 vi List of Figures Figure 1 Sculptural relief of Arachosians………………………………………...213 Figure 1 Sculptural relief of Parthians…………………………………...………214 Figure 3 Screenshot of the results from TLG search of strategos hypatos………215 Figure 4 Breakdown of cost of Scipio’s triumph……………………………...…216 Figure 5 Sculptural relief of triumphal parade on Titus’ Arch, featuring tituli…..217 Figure 6 Pacorus’ coin……………………………………………………………218 Figure 7 Labienus’ coin…………………………………………………………..218 Figure 8 Ventidius Bassus’ coin……………………………………………….…219 Figure 9 Amphora with Athletic Victor...………………………………………..219 Figure 10 Relief 3 at Bishapur………………………………………………….…220 Figure 11 Relief 2 at Bishapur………………………………………………….…221 Figure 12 Aurelian’s route into Palmyra………………………………………..…222 Figure 13 Cities along Aurelian’s route………………………………………….. 222 Figure 14 Aurelian’s Eastern Cognomina ex Virtute…………………………….. 223 vii List of Abbreviations BE Bulletin épigraphique (Paris). CIG Corpus inscriptionum graecarum. CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum (Corpus of Latin Inscriptions). HA Historia Augusta. IC Inscriptiones Creticae. ID Inscriptions de Délos. IG Inscriptiones Graecae. IGLR Syria I Inscriptions grecques et latines de la Syrie, PAT Palmyrene Aramaic texts REA Revue des études anciennes. RGDA Res Gestae Divi Augusti SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum. Sherk Sherk, Robert K. Roman Documents from the Greek East. Senatus Consulta and Epistulae to the Age of Augustus. Baltimore. 1969. SIG Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum. SKZ Šābuhrs I. an der Ka’ba-I Zardušt. Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum. viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Recent scholarship on the Roman triumph has demonstrated that these military parades were an integral part of the Roman imperial project, constructing and expressing official Roman narratives of conquest over foreign peoples, and presenting these constructed narratives to the people of the capital through artful staging and spectacle.1 Captives in chains, stolen booty, broken enemy weapons, and more appeared in the procession as indications of successful military conquest, followed by Roman soldiers. At the triumph’s finale, the victorious general (the triumphator), clad in special military attire and riding in the traditional triumphal chariot appeared in a position of honor as the individual primarily responsible for the military victory.2 Through ceremonial pomp, the triumph presented to Roman crowds a visual representation of the defeated foreign enemy, what wealth Rome received from that enemy, and which individual Romans were responsible for the successful military campaign. For the triumphator, the spectacle was a high public honor, an honor that would be commemorated in a variety of public venues including monuments, coins, and funerary inscriptions.3 For the captives, however, the parade operated as a humiliating rite de 1 See particularly Östenberg (2009) 6-9, who writes, “The triumph possessed characteristics that made it particularly suited to construct worldviews. The procession not only repeated certain Forceful schemes, it also Frequently introduced novelties to Rome. Following each Foreign campaign closely in time, the triumphal procession was in fact the public ritual that presented the outside world to Rome.” 2 Discussion oF the order oF display in the pompa Versnel (1970) 96-98; a brief discussion in Latham (2016) 13; For Roman Triumphal Paintings see Holliday (1997)130-147. 3 For discussion of the multiple ways that triumphs were publicly commemorated, see Beard (2007) 19-31, 43-46. 1 passage, the ceremonial moment during which a person or a people, their homeland, and their objects became ‘Romanized,’ subsumed (or re-subsumed) under Roman control.4 The images of the glorified Roman military and victorious general juxtaposed alongside the spectacle of the humiliated, chained foreigners created a simple but powerful visual narrative of successFul military conquest over a specific region and a specific group of people.5 But to what degree does the narrative of conquest and empire projected by the triumphal parade reflect, or distort, the geopolitical reality occurring in the conquered location? Parading Persia: West Asian Geopolitics and the Roman Triumph explores the narratives of conquest and empire as presented by Roman triumphs through a series of three case studies on individual processions. Recent scholarship on the Roman triumph has emphasized the need for a more contextualized study of the institution, one that locates parades within specific temporal milieus. To that end, recent scholarship has worked towards better understanding specific triumphs, or triumphs during specific time periods, 4 Debates and scholarly discussions on the term ‘Romanization’ began with Mommsen, who called the process Romanisierung in his discussion of the consolidation of empire beginning with Augustus: Das werk der Hellenisierrung und Romanisierrung, der innere Ausbaus, ist ein Hauptverdienst der Kaiserzeit. Erfreulich ist ihre Betrachtunt nicht. Mommsen (1882/3) 67; the argument was picked up by who defined the process as when conquered peoples “began to think of themselves as Roman,” Harris (1971) 147; Ramsay MacMullen’s deFinition, “how Roman civilization eventually appeared everywhere, as one single thing, so far as it was ever achieved,” took a problematically ubiquitous approach to seeing the eFFect oF the spread of Roman identity, Macmullen (2000) ix; Woolf added to Harris’ viewpoints by noting that, “there was more than one kind oF Roman, and the studies of provincial culture need to account For the cultural diversity, as well as the unity, of the empire,” WoolF (2000) 7; Beard links the triumph to the process of Romanization, as a rite de passage for foreign people, which moves discussion of Romanization from considerations at local levels outside of Rome back to the center of empire. The triumph thus acts as a keystone in the Romanization project, For it becomes a ritualized way For Romans to ceremonially bring and appropriate Foreign elements into Rome itselF, Beard (2007) 141. 5 For discussion of the visual impact
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