Allan Massie
Victory March
A few years ago Mary Beard and Keith Hopkins wrote a fascinating book about that most famous monument of imperial Rome, the Colosseum. They asked just what exactly went on there. Now Mary Beard has turned her attention to the most celebrated ritual in Roman life: the Triumph granted to a victorious general. It’s not only celebrated, but is something we know, or think we know, a lot about. For one thing, we have a list of Triumphs, the ‘Fasti Triumphales’, which she calls ‘an extraordinary achievement of Roman historical reconstruction and the backbone of many modern studies of the ceremony’s history’.
For another, some elements of the ceremony are common knowledge that goes beyond the narrow field of classical scholars. Take, for instance, the slave, who stood behind the triumphant general in his chariot, and repeatedly reminded him that he was only a mortal man who must die some day. We’ve
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'What Bower brings sharply into focus here is how lonely Johnson is, how dependent on excitement and applause to stave off recurring depression.'
From the archive: Michael White analyses the life and leadership of Boris Johnson.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/crisis-what-crisis-3
'Sometimes, dragons’ greed can have comic consequences, including indigestion. We read the 1685 tale of the dragon of Wantley, whose weakness is, comically, his arse. The hero delivers a lethal kick to the dragon’s behind, and the dragon dies.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/terrors-of-the-sky
'We must all "shoot down the canard", McManus writes, that the World Cup is going to a nation "that doesn’t know or appreciate the Beautiful Game".'
Barnaby Crowcroft on the rise of Qatar.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/full-of-gas