TRI'IIMPH (Lat. triumphus) was the naive .iven in ancient Rome to the public honor bestowed on a general who had been successful in war. It consisted in a solemn pro cession along the Via Sacra up to the capitol, where sacrifice was offered to Jupiter. The victor sat in a chariot, drawn by four horses—his captives marching before, his troops following behind. Certain conditions had to be fulfilled before a triumph could be enjoyed, and it was the business of the senate to see that these were enforced. Under the empire generals serving abroad were considered to be the emperor's lieutenants, and, therefore, however successful in their wars, they had no claim to a triumph. They received instead triumphal decorations and other rewards.
The appearance that Rome presented on the occcasiou of a triumph, especially in later times, was joyous in the extreme. All work was suspended; the temples were thrown open, and decorated with flowers; the populace were clad in holiday attire, and crowded the steps of all the public buildings in the Via Sacra, and the forum, or mounted the scaffoldings erected for the purpose of viewing the procession; banquets were spread before every door. As for the imperator himself, after having pronounced a eulogy on the bravery of his soldiers, he ascended his triumphal car, entered the city by the porta triumphalis, where he was met by the senate, and now the procession began. Firet marched the. senate, headed by the magistrates; next came a body of trumpeters; then a train of carriages and frames laden with the spoils of the vanquished; then a body of flute-players, followed by the oxen doomed to be sacrificed, and the sacrificing priests, etc. ; then the distinguished captives with bands of inferior prisoners in chains; after whom walked the ]ictors of the imperator, having the fasces wreathed with laurel. Next came the hero of the day—the imperator—in a circular coariot, attired
in an embroidered robe (toga pieta) and flowered tunic (waled palinata), bearing in his right hand a laurel bough, in his left, a scepter, and having his brows garhincled with Delphic laurel. He was accompanied by his children and his intimate friends. his grown-up sons, the legates, tribunes, and equites, rude behind; and the rear was brought up by the rest of the soldiery, singing or jesting at their pleasure, for it was a day of edrnival and license. When the procession had reached the capitoline some of the captive chiefs were taken aside and put to death; the oxen were then sacrificed, and the laurel wreath placed in the lap of Jupiter. In the evening the imperator was publicly feasted, and it was even customary to provide him a site for a house at the public expense.
The oration, or lesser triumph, differed from the greater chiefly in these respects: that the imperator entered the city on foot, clad in the simple toga prcetexta of a ina:*is trate; that he bore no scepter, was not preceded by the senate and a flourish of trumpets, nor followed by his victorious troops, but only by the equites and the populace. and that the ceremonies were concluded by the sacrifice of a sheep instead of a hell, whence, doubtless, the name ovation (from orris, a sheep). The ovation, it is scarcely to add, was granted when the success, though considerable, did not fulfill the conditions specified for a triumph.