Roman Triumphs and Early Modern English Culture

Early Modern Literature in History Within the period 1520–1740 this series discusses many kinds of writing, both withi...

Author: Anthony Miller

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Early Modern Literature in History

Within the period 1520–1740 this series discusses many kinds of writing, both within and outside the established canon. The volumes may employ different theoretical perspectives, but they share an historical awareness and an interest in seeing their texts in lively negotiation with their own and successive cultures. Titles include: Anna R. Beer

SIR WALTER RALEGH AND HIS READERS IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Speaking to the People

Cedric C. Brown and Arthur F. Marotti (editors)

TEXTS AND CULTURAL CHANGE IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

Martin Butler (editor)

RE-PRESENTING BEN JONSON

Text, History, Performance

Jocelyn Catty

WRITING RAPE, WRITING WOMEN IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND

Unbridled Speech

Danielle Clarke and Elizabeth Clarke (editors)

‘THIS DOUBLE VOICE’

Gendered Writing in Early Modern England

James Daybell (editor)

EARLY MODERN WOMEN’S LETTER-WRITING, 1450–1700

John Dolan

POETIC OCCASION FROM MILTON TO WORDSWORTH

Henk Dragstra, Sheila Ottway and Helen Wilcox (editors)

BETRAYING OUR SELVES

Forms of Self-Representation in Early Modern English Texts

Pauline Kiernan

STAGING SHAKESPEARE AT THE NEW GLOBE

Ronald Knowles (editor)

SHAKESPEARE AND CARNIVAL

After Bakhtin

James Loxley

ROYALISM AND POETRY IN THE ENGLISH CIVIL WARS

The Drawn Sword

Anthony Miller

ROMAN TRIUMPHS AND EARLY MODERN ENGLISH CULTURE

10.1057/9780230628557 - Roman Triumphs in Early Modern English Culture, Anthony Miller

Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-20

General Editor: Cedric C. Brown Professor of English and Head of Department, University of Reading

Arthur F. Marotti (editor)

CATHOLICISM AND ANTI-CATHOLICISM IN EARLY MODERN

ENGLISH TEXTS

The series Early Modern Literature in History is published in association with the Renaissance Texts Research Centre at the University of Reading.

Early Modern Literature in History Series Standing Order ISBN 0–333–71472–5 (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England



Mark Thornton Burnett

MASTERS AND SERVANTS IN ENGLISH RENAISSANCE DRAMA AND CULTURE

Authority and Obedience

Anthony Miller Senior Lecturer in English University of Sydney Australia



Roman Triumphs and Early Modern English Culture

© Anthony Miller 2001

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 0LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2001 by PALGRAVE Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global academic imprint of St. Martin’s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 0–333–94822–X This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Miller, Anthony, 1946– Roman triumphs and early modern English culture / Anthony Miller. p. cm. — (Early modern literature in history)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0–333–94822–X

1. English literature—Early modern, 1500–1700—History and criticism. 2. Triumph in literature. 3. Politics and literature– –Great Britain—History—17th century. 4. Politics and literature– –Great Britain—History—16th century. 5. Great Britain– –Civilization—Roman influences. 6. Processions—England– –History—17th century. 7. Processions—England—History– –16th century. 8. England—Civilization—17th century. 9. England– –Civilization—16th century. 10. English literature—Roman influences. 11. Rites and ceremonies in literature. I. Title. II. Early modern literature in history (Palgrave (Firm))

PR428.T75 M55 2001

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All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

List of Plates

vi

Preface

vii

1

Introduction

1

2

Roman Models

16

3

Humanist Transmission

38

4

Elizabethans and the Armada

62

5

Marlowe and Spenser

83

6

The Stuart Peace

107

7

Shakespeare and Stuart Drama

128

8

Civil War and Commonwealth

149

9

Marvell and Milton

171

Notes

190

Bibliography of Classical Texts

215

Index

217

v



Contents

1. Spoils of Jerusalem, Arch of Titus, Rome. (Photograph Alinari/Art Resource, New York.) 2. Andrea Mantegna, The Triumphs of Caesar: Canvas IV, The Vase Bearers. (Hampton Court Palace, Surrey. The Royal Collection # 2000, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.) 3. Andrea Mantegna, The Triumphs of Caesar: Canvas IX, Caesar on his Chariot. (Hampton Court Palace, Surrey. The Royal Collection # 2000, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.) 4. Onofrio Panvinio, De triumpho: Part IV, A triumph arrives at the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. (Venice: Michele Tramezzino, 1571. # Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Shelf mark: R.G. Storia 1353.) 5. After Titian, The Triumph of Christ, Block III, Christ on his Chariot. (Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations.) 6. Anon., Queen Elizabeth at Tilbury. (St Faith's Church, Gaywood, King's Lynn, Norfolk. Reproduced by permission of the Rector and Parochial Church Council, St Faith's Church.) 7. Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Charles I with Monsieur de St Antoine. (Buckingham Palace, London. The Royal Collection # 2000, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.)

vi



List of Plates

The Bibliography of Classical Texts (p. 215) lists the texts and translations from which I quote. I have occasionally modified the translations. Titles of classical texts use the form given in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edn (1996). Titles of early modern books use the form given in the edition cited. For books published before 1800, the place of publication is London, unless otherwise indicated. Where books list multiple places of publication, only the first-named place is given. Page and line numbers, when given in parentheses, do not carry a prefix, but the first note to any text always makes clear whether reference is to page or line numbers. In quotations, u/v, long s, and ligatures are regularized, and printers' contractions are expanded. Greek script is Romanized, except in references to page signatures. A grant from the Australian Research Council supported early work on this book, and a secondment to the Research Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at Sydney University gave me time to draft it. I gratefully acknowledge the bibliographical enterprise and Latin skills of my research assistant, Sue Price. I have received valuable suggestions or criticism at conferences in Toronto, London, Cambridge and Reading, and from colleagues, in particular from John K. Hale, Philip Hardie, G.K. Hunter, Philippa Kelly, Andrew McRae, Maria Teresa Marabini Moevs, Frances Muecke, Beverley Sherry and Lindsay Watson. A.M.

vii



Preface

1

`Nihil est uictoria dulcius' In ancient Rome, a triumph was the procession of a victorious consul from the Campus Martius, around one or more of the Circuses, through the Forum, where an encomiastic oration might be delivered, to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, where the consul offered sacrifices. The procession comprised the Senate, a display of spoils and captives, paintings and models representing conquered lands and peoples, animals decked for sacrifice, the triumphator and his army. The triumphator's chariot was drawn, like the chariots of Jupiter and Apollo, by four white horses. He wore robes from the treasury of Jupiter Capitolinus, and his face might be painted red. An attendant held a crown over his head, declaring his status as a god-king. The danger that this status might corrupt its holder and the state always haunted Romans; hence the attendant whispered the apotropaic words `Remember that you are a man', to avert the enmity of the fates and to remind the triumphator that victory and life itself were passing gifts of fortune. The triumph had a carnival aspect, under privilege of which the soldiers sang bawdy or satirical verses, and feasted after the procession. It also had a dreadful aspect, which saw the principal captives executed as the procession passed the prison of the Tullianum. The triumph attested not only to victory in war but also to the territorial conquest that ideally accompanied it. By displaying and distributing captive arms and wealth, the triumph defined the victorious city as centre and consumer, the conquered nation as margin and tributary. Under the emperors, this republican form of the ceremony underwent transformations that gave less emphasis to military victory or to extending the empire's boundaries and more emphasis to the office and person of the emperor. 1



Introduction

Nevertheless the original form of the triumph retained its prestige, both in ancient Rome and in early modern Europe.1 This ceremony had a diverse afterlife in the culture and politics of early modern England. The present book studies the imaginative power and political uses of triumph as they were transmitted from Rome to England and as they were deployed, in a variety of forms, from the Armada to the Protectorate. It brings into the foreground the original themes of military victory and imperial conquest that distinguish the triumph from cognate ceremonies ± the Roman aduentus and reditus, their successors such as the royal entry and the papal possesso, and the early modern coronation, wedding or civic festivities and the `Justs, and Tourneys, and Barriers' that were loosely called triumphs.2 Where these diverse ceremonies manifest an ideology of concord or of easeful victory, the military triumph manifests an agonistic ideology, turning on victory and defeat, and valorizing uirtus.3 Nevertheless, even in republican Rome, the ceremony was not definitely fixed in form or political function, and in its later history it was always susceptible to paradoxical transformations such as the triumph of peace or the Christian triumph, in which spiritual or heavenly victory is won through temporal or worldly defeat. The book narrates also the contest between such rival versions of the triumph. The most plentiful and ambitious uses of triumph in the early modern period were cultivated by the house of Hapsburg and by its ideological and battlefield opponent, the Dutch Republic.4 The election of Charles V as Holy Roman Emperor in 1519 made the Hapsburgs the most powerful European dynasty, and the first to rule over territories more extensive than the ancient Roman empire. The union of Spain and Portugal in 1580 made Charles's son, Philip II of Spain, king of a vast branch of this empire, and the first monarch to rule over territories in four continents. The Hapsburgs claimed to inherit the ancient Roman mantle through the office of emperor and by genealogical descent from Priam and Hector.5 The emperor was by tradition military defender of Christendom against Islamic infidelity; Charles, and after him Philip, also assumed secular leadership of Catholicism against Protestant heresy. The Hapsburgs fortified these imperial, religious and martial claims through magnificent ceremonies based on the late medieval usages of the court of Burgundy, but also borrowed from the Roman triumph. The rebellious Netherlands answered the imperial and Catholic triumphs of the Hapsburgs with their own republican and Protestant versions of triumph, extolling the valour of the ancient Batavian nation and asserting the rights and privileges of its modern cities and provinces.6



2 Roman Triumphs and Early Modern English Culture

Many English uses of triumph likewise arise from Protestant rivalry with the Catholic Hapsburgs. The first major triumph discussed in this book, when Queen Elizabeth, ìmitating the ancient Romans, rode into London in triumph' for her victory over the Hapsburg Armada in 1588, saw `the ensignes and colours of the vanquished Spaniards hung displayed' on St Paul's Cathedral. One of its last, a poetic and prophetic version of 1655, sees Hapsburg Spain humbled by the coming triumphs of Lord Protector Cromwell after he seizes its American empire: nec Iberia . . . Tunc Regimen sibi grande trahet, cum forte uidebit Riuales, alio dominantes orbe Britannos. [Then Spain will no longer claim for itself such mighty sway, when, as may happen, it sees its rival Britain ruling over the other hemisphere.]7

Though English foreign policy was not based exclusively on opposition to the house of Hapsburg, English claims to defend the reformed Christian faith and to an imperial status appropriated symbols, like the triumph, that had been adopted by the Hapsburgs for similar purposes.8 Few actual ceremonies in early modern Europe strictly observed the form of the republican martial triumph. Even approximations to the ceremony were rare enough in England, due to interrelated material and ideological causes. After the loss of Calais in 1558, England was no longer a continental military power. The chronic shortage of royal revenue further restricted military enterprises, and also deprived England of the teams of humanist propagandists that mounted ceremonial triumphs for the Hapsburgs and the Valois. Ad hoc and localized military organization meant that a victorious army with its spoils and captives could not be marshalled for a triumphal entry to London. The creation of the New Model Army did enable such entries after Naseby and Worcester, but civil war triumphs were of doubtful legitimacy, in England as in Rome. Even under the Augustan James, aristocratic culture continued to cultivate chivalric at least as much as Roman styles of festivity, while Tudor and Stuart monarchs alike preferred to represent themselves as peacemakers rather than military victors ± and, in the opinion of the dying Lord Burghley at least, the common people of England resented funding wars and had an ìnbred disaffection' for a martial nobility.9 An Elizabethan treatise on the ancient triumph turns in relief from pagan and bellicose past to Christian and pacific present: `But all these triumphes of Alexander, of Caesar, and of others were gotten with blood,



Introduction 3

and after lost with blood: therfore sing we of Eliza, the prince of peace.'10 Nevertheless the martial ideology of the Roman triumph appealed to at least certain groups in English society, and, on occasion, more broadly. The period of this book coincides with what has been called the military revolution of 1560±1660.11 This revolution coincided in turn with a series of crises and threats that contributed to the formation of a Protestant militarism. This movement utilized the triumph as a medium for defining the interrelated values of warfare, nation and religion, through its topoi of military combat, imperial destiny and religious thanksgiving. One major phase in the English renouatio of the Roman triumph is the 1580s, when the intensifying division of Europe along confessional lines after the Council of Trent culminated in the Spanish Armada campaign. Another occurs with the Thirty Years' War from 1619, in particular the travails of King James's son-in-law, the Elector Palatine Frederick, and the feats of the Protestant hero Gustavus Adolphus. A third occurs in the 1640s, with the English Civil War, and the 1650s, when the English republic and Protectorate fought wars not only with the old Spanish foe but even with the old Dutch ally. The English cultivation of triumph was also generated by the prospect of empire ± by the attempts to `pacify' Ireland by force and the hopes of opening up an American empire of boundless riches.12 The continuing and menacing power of Turkey, through its naval strength and Mediterranean possessions, kept alive the dream of the glorious Christian and imperial triumph that would celebrate the defeat of the infidel and the recovery of Jerusalem. Like the overthrow of the Hapsburg empire, the overthrow of the Ottoman empire recurs in triumphal prophecies from the Armada to the Protectorate.13 Such a triumph would both re-enact and redress the triumph of Titus and Vespasian for the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 71. It would answer a pagan with a Christian triumph, and it would mark a new phase in the transfer of religious and imperial authority ± from Jerusalem to Rome to London. England's paucity of ceremonial triumphs was balanced by a wealth of literary versions, from high-style poems to modest pamphlets. Literary triumphs could even claim to surpass ceremonies by their ability to disseminate victory more widely, from the city to the nation or the world. They could also have a compensatory or monitory function. Victories were accorded imaginary triumphs; defeats were solaced by ethical or religious triumphs; monarchs were urged into battle by the prospect of winning their own triumphs or by witnessing those of their rivals. Representations in plays and poems transmit the memory of the




ancient ceremony or rewrite it in new forms, and in varying degrees participate in contemporary contentions for the dignity of triumph. The importance of literary triumphs is not unique to England. As a fugitive ceremony designed to award an enduring fame, the triumph's paradoxical character had long been recognized. Some Renaissance scholars believed that the ancients had purposely chosen perishable insignia of victory: `the Athenians crowned the victor with a crowne of Oken leaues . . . that they might not in Greece make a monument of their victorie in brasse, or in any durable stoane to maintaine or to move dissention betweene their posterities.'14 In fact, the ancients had always attempted to perpetuate the memory of triumphal victories, through arches and columns and their sculptured friezes, and through writings. The Roman ceremony itself displayed pictorial and written representations of cities and forts, regions and rivers: it was in a sense a book, unrolling in processional form like the scroll on which a Roman book was written.15 The award of a triumph was also inscribed on tablets in the Capitol, in historical annals and in poetic odes and epics. These were the records that Renaissance scholars reverently scrutinized as they codified knowledge of the ancient triumph: the ceremony was always in part a literary property.16 The present study of English versions of triumph is based on records of actual victory celebrations, in contemporary histories, pamphlets and paintings, as well as imaginary triumphs in the same sources and in poems, plays and masques. It does not therefore treat triumph as a ceremonial or enacted genre, like the royal entry or the masque. Rather, it treats triumph as a discourse that can incorporate, or be incorporated by, those and other genres. Combining political gesture, cultural practice and literary convention, the Roman triumph in early modern England fashions a powerfully charged juncture between historical events and literary representations. This book aims to give a new historical location to canonical literary texts that include triumphs, and to elucidate the ways in which triumphal discourse contributes to their literary interest. It also aims to disclose the imaginative power that frequently animates non-canonical texts that evoke, claim, or deny triumphs. The martial triumph was cultivated most intensively at the time of the Armada and in the Civil War. Armada processions and writings revived the Roman conventions to celebrate Protestant militarism and to promote Virgilian visions of empire. The triumphal fervour of the Armada victory emerges, variously transformed, in Marlowe and Spenser. Marlowe imparts ideological and dramatic tension to the idea of triumph by investing it in the barbarian Tamburlaine. The Faerie Queene, a thesaurus



Introduction 5

of Renaissance triumphs in the broad sense of the word,17 introduces more strictly martial versions in its Books of Holiness and Justice. The triumphs of Book I are orthodox, validating the claims of nation and religion; those of Book V are ruptured by doubt and disappointment. Civil war presented the difficulty, confronted also by the Romans, of applying the triumphal tropes of unity to a dismayingly divisive conflict. Parliament's London triumphs emphasize the foreign elements in the royalist armies, or represent royalists themselves as ethically if not ethnically barbarian. They also transform the triumphator from a pagan aspirant to divinity into a humble servant of the Christian God. Civil War writers incorporate triumphal discourse into a range of genres, from pamphlets and sermons to the odes and epics of Oxford royalists, of Marvell, and of Milton. The style of these triumphs varies from baroque extravagance to all'antica austerity. Especially when the survey is extended to the Protectorate, the division between these styles by no means coincides exactly with the division between royalist and Parliamentarian. The discourse of triumph provided a medium of praise for worthy victors, actual or potential, and an incentive for England's reluctant monarchs to assume their martial responsibilities. This use was cultivated especially by the militant proponents of international Calvinism during the Netherlands war and the Thirty Years War, with their Protestant heroes Maurits of Nassau and Gustavus Adolphus. English nobles like Leicester and the second Earl of Essex, and their followers, sought to advance their militant policies and their personal prestige by appropriating triumphs. A rather different monitory use of triumph was the invocation of its republican values against Cromwell's monarchical tendencies in the Protectorate. Monarchs in turn sought to reinterpret triumph according to their own political priorities. Queen Elizabeth exploited the possibilities of the paradoxical female triumph; King James fashioned triumphs of peace and wisdom. King Charles's cultivation of the triumph did not overlook its military aspect, even as it sought to establish military uirtus on the basis of ambitious ethical and metaphysical virtues. Lord Protector Cromwell would reinstate triumph more plausibly and more firmly on the twin basis of military prowess and godly virtue. The recurring contentions over the place of uirtus emerge in the contentions over triumph in the Roman or Greek plays of Shakespeare in the 1590s and 1600s, Fletcher in the 1610s, Massinger in the 1620s, and Nabbes in the 1630s. Along with these more orthodox appropriations, early modern England experienced a proliferation of paradoxical triumphs and




anti-triumphs. Spectators of Tamburlaine and readers of The Faerie Queene shudder at triumphs of barbarism or papal tyranny. The unjust detractors of the Earl of Essex or of Lord Grey de Wilton and the persecutors of King Charles earn ignoble mock-triumphs. In military defeat, writers devise consolatory versions: stoical triumphs of loyalty or patience, or stupendous apocalyptic triumphs of vindicated truth. The female triumph, an impossibility at Rome, was fashioned for Elizabeth and refashioned for Henrietta Maria; its paradoxes or subversions are variously treated in the dramatic persons of Cleopatra, Volumnia and Bonduca. There are versions of the irreverent triumph of love and philosophical reflections on the transitoriness of victory. Together with Spenser and Shakespeare, it is Milton who devises the widest range of triumphs, and who attends most closely to the ancient paradigm of military victory, even as he submits it to strenuous Christian revision. Disputes between true and false triumphs, godliness and vanity, are acted out in Milton's poems, as in Spenser's. Milton's writings strive to balance humanist reverence for the institution of triumph against Christian mistrust of vanity and pomp. In his earlier writings certainly, and arguably in his later ones too, Milton accepts the necessity for military force and the associated practices of triumph. At the same time, he always emphasizes that the most important victories are those of virtue over sin, of self-mastery over temptation; without these ethical victories, battlefield victories are impossible or worthless. Milton teaches the danger of setting too much store by earthly rewards when any earthly triumph pales into insignificance beside the blazing heavenly triumphs of the Son. Though Milton's triumphs arise from the cosmic battles of human salvation, they also mirror the struggles over triumph at Rome, in the English Civil War, and in the Commonwealth and Protectorate. Milton's rich repertoire of triumph, and its relationship to earlier debates, make it impossible to forgo discussing his two epics, even though their dates of publication carry this book beyond the chronological limits it otherwise observes. To trace these English appropriations and transformations of triumph is to study a chapter in the history of relations between England and Rome. The claim to inherit this most Roman of ceremonies affirms a translatio imperii, an entitlement to the political or cultural authority of Roman antiquity. In England, this inheritance partakes of the conflicted relations between ancient Britain and early modern England on the one side and ancient Rome and papal Rome on the other. As Israel was a type of England in its role as elect nation, the repository of true religion, so ancient Rome was a precursor and model of England's military uirtus and



Introduction 7

imperial destiny. Modern papal Rome was however a bitter foe of the English church and the state that governed it. Reviving the triumph of ancient Rome therefore entailed its paradoxical mobilization against the cause of modern Rome.18 England's status as successor to Rome derived from its legendary foundation by `Trojan Brute', great-grandson of Aeneas; the succession and the rivalry remained current for Milton, for whom the Commonwealth was to constitute ànother Rome in the West', and for Cromwell, who was reported to have threatened to `make the name of an Englishman to be as much feared as ever was the name of ciuis Romanus.'19 According to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Julius Caesar himself acknowledged the kinship: èx eadem prosapia nos Romani descendimus, quia ex Troiana gente processimus. Nobis Aeneas . . . primus pater fuit, illis autem Brutus, Siluii Aeneae filius' [we Romans descend from the same family, because we come from the Trojans. Our ancestor was Aeneas, theirs was Brutus, the son of Aeneas Silvius].20 By another paradox, kinship between warrior nations expresses itself through enmity; Britons must claim their inheritance by warring against Romans. Geoffrey records Britain's proud history of armed resistance to Rome (iv. 1±10), and cites Lucan on Caesar: `Territa quaesitis ostendit terga Britannis' [he shows the rear of his fearful army to the British whom he had sought out]. According to Geoffrey, Caesar's eventual conquest of Britain was avenged by Arthur, when he defeated a Roman army in France, and audaciously began to march on Rome itself. Only treachery prevented Arthur from reversing the long progress of Rome's conquests by a British conquest of the caput mundi.21 Elizabethan writers of English nationhood amplify the paradoxical twinning of kinship and enmity in England's history as soror et aemula Romae. According to William Camden, the valour with which the Britons had fought against the Romans eventually sustained Rome: the most puissant Roman forces, when they were at the highest, could not gain of them (being but then a half naked people) in thirty whole years, the countries from the Thames to Striviling. . . . [T]hey found them so warlike a people, that the Romans levied as many Cohorts, Companies, and Ensigns of Britains . . . as from any other of their Provinces whatsoever.22 The demographics of Roman occupation produced a literal kinship between the two nations, allowing Camden to propose a rationalized version of the Brute legend:




whiles I consider and thinke otherwhiles with my selfe, how many Colonies of Romans were in so long a time brought hither; . . . who joyning in mariage with Britans, both planted themselves, and also begat children here . . . I enter oftentimes into this cogitation, That Britans may more truely ingraffe themselves into the Trojans stocke, by these Romans, who are descended from Trojans, than . . . the rest, who grounding upon a fabulous originall, have fathered themselves upon the Trojans.23 Camden's summary of the valour latterly exercised by the English nation catalogues several of the feats that would have earned a triumph at Rome. Englishmen have won far-flung victories, bringing new territories under their rule; they have put on display conquered kings; their global expeditions bring home knowledge of exotic places and promise of yet wider empire (17±18): Yet their military glory hath surpassed all; for they have terrified the whole world with their Arms in Syria, Aegypt, Cyprus, Spain, Sicily and India. They have traversed with most happy victories both France and Scotland, brought away their Kings captives, conquered Ireland, and the Isle of Cypres. . . . They . . . twice compassed the whole globe of the earth with admirable success, which the Spaniards have yet but once performed. The ideology of the Roman triumph prized emulation, the act of outdoing, both by overcoming enemies and by surpassing the glory of previous triumphators. This feature was expressed in the rhetorical figure quanto magis, `so much the more' or `so much the greater'. Christian triumphs had long utilized this topos: the military triumphator won a perishable earthly glory but, quanto magis, the Christian triumphator won an imperishable heavenly glory. Camden's summary is full of such emulousness: England's `military glory hath surpassed all'. The extent of English conquests surpasses the reach of Rome's empire, which took in only part of Scotland and none of Ireland; Romans certainly never `compassed the whole globe of the earth'. England also surpasses its modern rivals for the Roman inheritance. In remembering the conquest of Cyprus by Richard I in 1191, Camden's readers would remember also that in 1571 Venice had lost the island to Turkey, to the disgrace and discommodity of Christendom; Hapsburg Spain claimed to succeed and surpass Rome in its ambitions to global empire, but England's global feats double those of its Carthaginian rival.



Introduction 9

The Protestant historiography of the sixteenth century also staked a claim to the inheritance of triumph. The saints of the Reformation won triumphs over papal Rome as the saints of primitive Christianity won them over pagan Rome. In both eras of Roman persecution, seeming earthly defeat is transformed into heavenly victory, tragedies become triumphs. The martyrs who suffer under modern popes, like the martyrs who suffered under ancient emperors, win heavenly triumphs that outdo any earthly pomp: `so great honour, as never king or emperor could purchase in this world with all their . . . triumphs, temples, and all their solemn feasts.' John Foxe's calendar of the martyrs and confessors of the reformed church, though primarily a reformed liturgical calendar, resembles also the fasti of ancient Roman triumphs reconstructed by the humanist scholars of the late 1550s, shortly before Foxe's own book.24 Foxe does not admire heroic suffering only; he also commemorates the triumphal martial feats by which Englishmen have propagated true religion. The first Christian emperor, Constantine, was believed (mistakenly) to have been born in Britain and of a British mother, and (correctly) to have been declared emperor on British soil. Constantine became emperor by force of British arms, and his triumphal entry to Rome after the battle of the Mulvian Bridge in 313 initiated a Christian empire: Constantine, the great and worthy emperor, who was not only a Briton born, by his mother Helena (being king Coilus' daughter), but also by the help of the British army (under the power of God), which the said Constantine took with him out of Britain to Rome, obtained, with great victory, peace and tranquillity to the whole universal church of Christ.25 Tudor monarchs claimed descent and imperial status from Constantine. This succession opens up the stupendous hope that a virtuous British ruler, joined to the cause of true religion and reviving Constantine's military prowess, might again triumph in an errant Rome and initiate a Protestant empire. When Foxe recounts that `Hieronymus Savonarola . . . prophesieth, that one like unto Cyrus shall come over the Alps, and destroy Italy', he recalls both Arthur's march on Rome and Geoffrey's British kings Belinus and Brennius, who did succeed in capturing and sacking the city. He also looks to Elizabeth as a Protestant conqueror and successor to Constantine: `let Constantinus be never so great: yet wherein is your noble grace to him inferiour?'26




The prospect of overthrowing papal Rome or its traditional protector, the Hapsburg empire, does not occur only in Foxe's inflamed imaginings; it stirs Englishmen from Leicester in the 1580s to Cromwell in the 1650s. The grand Protestant alliance led by England that would achieve this feat never materialized, but `the importance, even the negative importance, of the impossible dream can scarcely be exaggerated.'27 Uniting religious and national ideals, the project combined the mission of the Christian warrior, the miles Christi, with the tradition of national resistance to Rome; it linked England's purified Christianity with the austere virtues of early Rome, and England's role as elect nation with ancient Rome's providential role as imperial unifier. This Christian cause utilized revivals of the pagan triumph to celebrate or prophesy victories, to dress its heroes in the mantle of antique uirtus, and to exhort unenthusiastic monarchs and ministers to lend their support. James Aske's Elizabetha Triumphans (1588) relates the history of English resistance to ancient Roman power and modern Roman perfidy, and reaches its climax with Elizabeth's Armada triumph, an appropriation of Rome's own ceremony; William Warner's Albions England (1602) invokes the Trojan origins of both Rome and Britain, and shows them contesting with one another for the dignity of triumph.28 The opponents of Spenser's Redcrosse Knight represent, as well as the spiritual power of sin and Satan, the political power of Rome and Spain, yet Redcrosse celebrates his victory over them by betrothing himself to Una and entering her liberated city in impeccably Roman ceremonies. The organization of this book answers to the Roman and martial foundations of the early modern English triumph by studying in some detail the ancient and Renaissance literature on the subject. Chapter 2 surveys loci classici in ancient historians and the uses, from gravely pious to scandalously irreverent, to which Roman poets put the triumph when they translated it into literary form. Chapter 3 traces the ways in which humanist scholars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries codified and transmitted these literary materials (and other materials, like the discoveries of an infant archeology). These studies, on the face of it neutrally antiquarian, began the process of appropriating the ancient triumph to contemporary political and religious ends; they themselves therefore provided further examples for imitation or contestation.29 The chapter also notices the most influential literary adaptations of triumph ± by Petrarch in the fourteenth century, Savonarola in the fifteenth, and Du Bartas in the sixteenth. Though Petrarch contributed to the Renaissance vogue of fanciful and allegorical trionfi, his reverence for the ancients ensures that his triumphs valorize uirtus and conquest; even



Introduction 11

their ethical matter is imbued with the Roman ethos of contention and outdoing. From opposite sides of the Reformation divide, Savonarola and Du Bartas provided poetic examples of adapting the triumph to stern (one might say, puritan) politico-religious projects. The transmission and renouatio of the Roman triumph is often attested, and in part accomplished, by the use of the Latin tongue. This use in itself claims for Renaissance Italy or early modern England the Romanitas that the triumph defined. Latin enables the universal dissemination of the claim to martial primacy or imperial dignity. When it adopts a Virgilian idiom, as it often does in triumphal writings of the early modern period, Latin claims in particular the inheritance of the imperial destiny that Virgil's triumph of Augustus confirmed for Rome. In writings where the impact of Latin lends weight in these ways, I have quoted in the original and added translations. This book emphasizes, then, those appropriations of triumph where the ancient martial model has, in Richard Jenkyns's terminology, a constitutive influence: it forms `the basis of or necessary condition for what it influences.' By bringing this element into the foreground, it causes other elements in the historical composition to recede ± for example, the variety of medieval and Renaissance ceremonies cognate with the triumph. In these ceremonies, ancient triumph has what Jenkins calls an auxiliary influence: it is `not itself the basis, but provides support or coherence.'30 The attempt to retrieve the distinctively Roman element in English triumphs explains why the present discussion does not include the earlier Tudor `triumph', whose origins lie in Renaissance Burgundy rather than ancient Rome, and which has been the object of admirable earlier studies.31 Another cultural practice bordering on triumph is the Renaissance tournament, which essayed a revival of the ancient chariot race and funeral games, and which opened with a procession often modelled on Roman descriptions of the triumph.32 FrancËois Modius's Pandectae triumphales (Frankfurt, 1586) and its English successor, Sir William Segar's Honor Military and Civill (1602), trace a continuity between the Roman triumph and Renaissance tournaments. Nevertheless, though they played a role in military training, tournaments were recreative; their victories were not the victories of nation and empire. London's Lord Mayors and their guilds celebrated their inaugurations with annual `triumphs' that also claimed a correspondence between the City of London and ancient Rome, between mayors and praetors, sheriffs and consuls, aldermen and senators.33 They staked London's claim to succeed Rome as an imperial centre, whose conquests and tribute were won not by arms but, quanto magis, by peaceful trade.




This interesting commercial renouatio of triumph perhaps diverges too far from the martial model to be included in this book. It is, moreover, a large topic in its own right, and it too has been the subject of some excellent studies.34 This book complements the work done in recent years on what has been called `triumphalism', the appropriation in early modern Europe of martial triumph to the display of royal magnificence and claims of easeful and perpetual victory. `Triumphalism' transforms the military triumph from a celebration and a site of contestation into a mystifying instrument of absolutism. The history of such transformations begins with the Actium triumph of Augustus, which defined him as à ruler whose essence it was to be a victor'. It was elaborated by Constantine and succeeding Eastern emperors.35 Despite the formidable state resources that propagated it, ancient triumphalism met, from the beginning, with a degree of opposition and satirical scepticism.36 In the early modern period, too, the triumphalist celebration of royalty and peace cannot be accepted at its own valuation. Triumphalism is not in fact the consummation and transcendence of the martial triumph that it claims to be, but one among many tactics in the continuing struggle to appropriate the prestige of the ceremony. The most prolific and influential modern scholar of Renaissance ceremony has been Sir Roy Strong, whose books centre on princely selfrepresentations, many in a triumphalist mode. In work on actual ceremonies, princes inevitably dominate, since it was usually only princes who had the means and the right to mount them. Nevertheless, the light that Strong casts on this part of the field has had the effect of obscuring other parts, such as the ceremonies of republican Venice. Strong writes from within triumphalist assumptions. He treats triumph as a sub-class of royal entry, based on the imperial Roman triumph, and invariably reinforcing absolutism.37 He characteristically prefers festive trionfi to military triumphs. He mentions, for example, the marriage triumphs for Alfonso d'Este and Lucrezia Borgia, celebrated at Rome in 1501, but not the military triumph of Pope Julius II, celebrated also at Rome in 1507, which is among the most remarkable Renaissance revivals of the martial model.38 A similar acceptance of the hegemonic and usually royal power that declares itself in triumphalism has tended to mark `new historicist' work in this field, at least in the movement's earlier days. In a notable essay, È rer's design of a mock-triumphal monuStephen Greenblatt makes Du ment for a victory over a peasant revolt an exemplary representation of `the victory of forces of order, property, and true religion'. Published just



Introduction 13

È rer's triumphal column is after the German Peasants' War of 1524±5, Du a means by which `the ruling elite, deeply threatened, conjures up images of repression so harsh that they can double as images of protest.'39 Greenblatt however assumes that protest, or sympathy with the È rer and his original audience peasants, is a solely modern reaction; Du must have applauded the repression memorialized by his imaginary È rer's column alludes explicitly to triumphal conmonument. Since Du vention, its analysis merits closer consideration of the polysemy of the Roman triumph. A triumph was never celebrated for victory over a slave revolt, because the enemy was unworthy (as Greenblatt notes); but neither was a triumph celebrated for victory in civil war, because it was disgraceful to parade fellow citizens as captives. Greenblatt suggests È rer's peasant may recall and applaud the that the sword in the back of Du sword of justice whose ruthless use against rebels was urged by Martin Luther. Equally, it may recall the sword of civil war whose tragic use Lucan deplores: populumque potentem In sua uictrici conuersum uiscera dextra, Cognatasque acies [a mighty people turning their conquering right hands against their own vitals, brother drawing sword against brother].40

Ancient triumph narratives incorporated sentiments of pathos for the king or general who was executed in the course of the ceremony, and for his helpless children. There is no record of sympathy for the common soldiers led in captivity ± in part, no doubt, because they were destined not to die but to serve the Roman people as slaves. The conflicted responses of vengefulness, sympathy and self-interest discernible in È rer ancient triumph narratives and poems may equally operate in Du and in other early modern versions.41 I modify in two directions the influential approaches just outlined. First, where Strong studies a variety of actual ceremonies in which the conventions of Roman martial triumph are only one component, this book inverts his method. It traces the original idea of the triumph in a variety of forms, of which actual ceremonies are only one component. Second, where Strong and the earlier new historicists concentrated on a `triumphalism' that seeks to suggest uncontested dominance, this book studies triumph as a site of contentions. Triumph celebrates victory and dominance, but it may also redefine victory and dominance, and it may




use triumph for exhortation, criticism, consolation, justification or prophecy. A model for my method is the one adopted by Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake in their essay collection, Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England. I study the triumph in early modern England as a series of cultural practices and texts, consisting of `strands of thought, congeries of concern, catchwords and symbols in and through which contemporaries could view, describe and shape their political experience' ± and other kinds of experience as well. Like theirs, my study seeks to show how triumph, like other discourses of the period, cannot be `reduced to a simple ideological programme . . . Rather they were all polyvalent, that is they could all be read or glossed in very different ways, appropriated for very different purposes.'42



Introduction 15

2

`Glorie to behold'

1 For Virgil, the history of Rome was a chronicle of triumphs: `res Italas Romanorumque triumphos'. For Cicero, the triumph and its cult of victory were intrinsic to Roman identity: ìpse triumphus quam ob rem gratissimus populo Romano fuit atque iucundissimus? quia nihil est uictoria dulcius' [Why was this triumph so popular and delightful to the Roman people? Because there is nothing sweeter than victory].1 Reverence for the republican military triumph long survived its transformation by the emperors and by Christianity. Though the ceremony was never static, even in republican times, certain features remain largely constant in historical and literary representations.2 The triumph was an occasion of communal jubilation. The population streamed out of the city to greet the triumphator's army.3 Èvery temple was open and filled with garlands and incense, while numerous servitors and lictors restrained the thronging and scurrying crowds and kept the streets open and clear.'4 Jubilation rose to àn ecstasy of joy'.5 The victorious soldiers added their carnivalesque contribution, singing ribald and satirical songs during the procession and feasting after it. Some were affectionate: `Such songs were sung by the soldiers about their commander [Gnaeus Manlius] that it was easily seen that they were sung about an indulgent leader who sought popularity'.6 Others had a sharp edge. In Caesar's Gallic triumph, imperator and soldiers contend to control the signifying power of the ceremony, and the soldiers' unofficial version of Caesar's career achieved currency alongside Caesar's official one: 16



Roman Models

Roman Models 17

All the Gauls did Caesar vanquish, Nicomedes vanquished him; Lo! now Caesar rides in triumph, victor over all the Gauls, Nicomedes does not triumph, who subdued the conqueror.7 The purpose of these ditties was apotropaic, to avert celestial envy, but they may also have supplied a precedent for the Roman elegists in their irreverent triumphs of love. They certainly show that authority could not be sure of controlling the ceremony, and they thus model the attempts to appropriate it that recur throughout its ceremonial and literary history. In the first part of the procession came a display of spoils. Captured weapons attested to military victory, captured riches and artefacts to the magnitude and variety of empire. In one version of its history, the ceremony originated when Dionysus carried back the riches of a mythical India: `bringing with him a notable quantity of booty, and he was the first man ever to celebrate a triumph seated on an Indian elephant.'8 Plutarch's virtuoso description of captured arms imparts a frisson of delightful terror: helmets lying upon shields and breast-plates upon greaves, while Cretan targets and Thracian wicker shields and quivers were mixed up with horses' bridles, and through them projected naked swords and long Macedonian spears planted among them, all the arms being so loosely packed that they smote against each other as they were borne along and gave out a harsh and dreadful sound, and the sight of them, even though they were spoils of a conquered enemy, was not without its terrors.9 Spoils of weaponry serve as both a reassurance of Rome's power over its enemies and a warning of their potential danger. A catalogue of captured riches became a topos of triumph narratives. Besides every kind of weapon, the catalogues detail crowns and sceptres, thrones and couches; statues, paintings and tapestries; vases, bowls and cups; chariots, horses' trappings, elephants and the prows of captured ships. They also compute the value of the gold, silver and bronze in these spoils and in captured coin, illustrating the massive influx of wealth brought into Rome by its conquests, which was deplored by



In his Gallic triumph his soldiers, among the bantering songs which are usually sung by those who follow the chariot, shouted these lines, which became a by-word:


Silver and gold and ivory in masses, wrought into all manner of forms, might be seen, not as if carried in procession, but flowing, so to speak, like a river; . . . transparent gems, some set in golden crowns, some in other fashions, swept by in such profusion as to correct our erroneous supposition that any of them was rare. The soldiers had a right to a share in these spoils. Triumph narratives frequently include an accounting of the distributions, the scale of which had the potential to cause disputes.11 A dramatic feature of the triumph was the display of captives, and especially the display and execution of kings or generals, a vestige of the ceremony's sacrificial origin.12 The captives must show the enemy to have been a worthy opponent; hence a triumph could not be awarded for victory over a slave rebellion. The spectacle of Romans leading Romans in triumph could not be countenanced; hence a triumph could not in principle be awarded for victory in civil war. The ius triumphandi specified that a triumphator's army should have met a formidable enemy, and have slain at least 5 000 of them. The display of captives furnished the assurance of mastery, the satisfaction of vengeance, and the pleasure of the exotic. It also modified these reactions with pathos and awe. As the Romans gazed on the children of the Macedonian king Perseus, `many of them shed tears, and for all of them the pleasure of the spectacle was mingled with pain, until the children had passed by.' Jugurtha remains monstrous and strangely awesome even in captivity. Cleopatra retains an uncanny power even as her defeat is memorialized: àn effigy of the dead Cleopatra upon a couch was carried by, so that in a way she too . . . was a part of the spectacle and a trophy in the procession.'13 Cleopatra and other defeated rulers or generals were admired for their courage in taking their own lives rather than submitting to a triumph. Special honour was accorded to victories that, as well as capturing foreign enemies, freed Romans from foreign captivity. These Romans appeared in the triumph wearing the cap of a freedman, and their presence is remarked on by historical writers as the `most glorious feature' of a triumph.14



Roman historians as the cause of the city's ethical and political corruption.10 In Josephus's Bellum Judaicum the riches displayed in the triumph of Titus and Vespasian flow into Rome like a natural force (the rushing Tiber itself, perhaps), and the city exhibits a Midas touch (vii. 134±5):

At the centre of the triumphal procession rode the triumphator, who had prevailed in battle by his uirtus and his felicitas. The ceremony probably originated in part as a means of his imparting those gifts to the city, and of averting the jealousy of the gods toward their possessor.15 Even in republican Rome, the triumphator was allowed the attributes of royalty: Aemilius Paullus returned from Macedonia sailing up the Tiber in a king's ship and commanding a king's booty.16 More than that, the triumphator assumed the lineaments of deity: Ìouis ipsius simulacri faciem . . . minio inlini solitam triumphantiumque corpora; sic Camillum triumphasse' [It was the custom for the face of the statue of Jupiter himself to be coloured with cinnabar, as well as the bodies of those walking in a triumph; Camillus was so coloured in his triumph].17 The competitive militarism of the Roman republic honoured men who aspired to these heights. Cicero scorns an opponent who claims that he never sought a triumph: èrat angusti animi atque demissi iusti triumphi honorem dignitatemque contemnere' [it would have been the mark of a petty and abject spirit to set no value on the honour and dignity of a rightful triumph].18 Everyone recognized that such exaltation might provoke hubris. The opulence of triumphs existed in an uneasy equilibrium with the Romans' reverence for the city's pristine austerity. In one version of its history, triumph originated in a simple rustic procession, when Romulus gathered up the armour of a defeated general and wreathed himself from a nearby laurel tree. He then `began a triumphal march, leading off in a paean of victory which his army sang as it followed under arms, and being received by the citizens with joyful amazement. This procession was origin and model of all subsequent triumphs'.19 The ideal of such modest triumphs was invoked against extravagance or hubris. When Camillus became the first triumphator to ride like Jupiter in a chariot drawn by four white horses, `parumque id non ciuile modo sed humanum etiam uisum' [the act was considered inappropriate not only in politics, but in religion]; `Camillus was lifted up to vanity, cherished thoughts far from becoming to a civil magistrate subject to the law'.20 Citizens witnessing a joint triumph prefer the more modest of the triumphators: `let the other consul drive standing erect in a chariot drawn, if he wished, by many horses. The truly triumphant progress through the city was on a single horse'.21 When Marius wore his triumphal robes into a meeting of the Senate, `through inadvertance or with a vulgar display of his good fortune,' he was compelled to withdraw.22 A similar dialectic operates in English triumphs. After the Armada, Elizabeth rode to St Paul's in splendour, and poetic triumphs



Roman Models 19

rise to an astonishing opulence; after their allegorical versions of the same victory, Spenser's Redcrosse and Arthur celebrate with scrupulous Christian humility. Cromwell in the Civil War played the part of the modest republican and Christian victor; as victorious Protector, poets endowed him with regal magnificence. Milton's Son triumphs stupendously in heaven; on earth he turns aside from triumphal temptation. The Roman triumphator was warned against hubris by the attendant who whispered to him, `Respice post te! Hominem te memento!' [Look behind you; remember you are a man].23 Even this warning could not prevent the tragic turn of Fortune's wheel. Aemilius Paullus nobly recognized this truth: Èven to me this good fortune seemed excessive, and therefore I viewed it with mistrust . . . I hoped, since fortune is apt to plunge downward from its high point, that this change should impact not on the state, but on my household.' His prayer was tragically answered, producing a paradoxical symmetry between the triumphing Paullus and his conquered enemy Perseus: non Perseus tantum per illos dies documentum humanorum casuum fuit, in catenis ante currum uictoris ducis per urbem hostium ductus, sed etiam uictor Paulus, auro purpuraque fulgens. Nam duobus e filiis, quos . . . solos nominis . . . heredes retinuerat domi, minor, duodecim ferme annos natus, quinque diebus ante triumphum, maior, quattuordecim annorum, triduo post triumphum decessit; quos praetextatos curru uehi cum patre, sibi ipsos similis destinantis triumphos, oportuerat. [Perseus was not the only example of the state of human fortunes, as he was led in chains before the chariot of his conqueror through the city of his enemies. The conqueror Paullus, glittering in gold and purple, was no less an example. For of the two sons whom he kept at home as the only heirs of his name, the younger, aged about twelve, died five days before the triumph, and the elder, fourteen years old, died three days after the triumph. These were the boys who should have ridden with their father in the chariot, dressed in their togas, and planning similar triumphs for themselves.]24

The triumph of Scipio, `far more splendid than that of any of his predecessors',25 was also perhaps the most honoured of all Roman triumphs, celebrating as it did victory over Rome's most formidable imperial rival. (For the same reason, Englishmen coveted especially the prospect of a triumph over Spain or over Turkey.) Yet even Scipio was later driven into exile by his ungrateful countrymen:




Roman Models 21

[The two greatest cities in the world were at about the same time found ungrateful toward their foremost citizens, but Rome was more ungrateful, because conquered Carthage had driven into exile the Hannibal who had been conquered, while victorious Rome was driving out the Scipio who had given it victory].26

Similarly, at the moment when he narrates Pompey's world-encompassing third triumph, Plutarch foreshadows his tragic hubris and disaster: `How happy would it have been for him if he had ended his life at this point. . . . For succeeding time brought him only success that made him odious and failure that was irreparable.'27 As the fate of these triumphators shows, the hostility of fortune might manifest as the hostility of political opponents. Ideally, the Roman triumph charted `The reciprocal relations of benefaction, competition, and prestige among those who controlled the resources of the ancient world'. In general, its earlier history produced a `bond between the eÂlite and the peoples of the cities which was unique ± a major source of the stability and continuity which we associate with the ancient world.'28 Diodorus Siculus admired the way in which the ideology of competition and reward expressed in the triumph worked paradoxically to promote the common good: Ìn other states men are jealous of one another, but the Romans praise their fellow citizens. The result is that the Romans, by rivalling one another in promotion of the common weal, achieve the most glorious successes'.29 This happy equilibrium could however be upset. The many contentions surrounding triumphs at Rome chart also struggles for power or influence between elite and people and within the elite itself. Livy's history abounds in examples, illustrating Rome's habit of `suicidally eating up its own resources.' Triumphal claimants are accused of excessive exactions of tribute or inadequate donatives, political overreaching or faulty generalship (xlv. 35, xxxviii. 44±6). Triumphs are refused by the Senate (xxvi. 21) or vetoed by tribunes (xxxiii. 22). They are opposed by a commander's own legates (xxxviii. 47), or won through familial or political influence (xxxviii. 50).30 In England, supporters of Lord Grey de Wilton and the Earl of Essex cast these men in the role of the rightful triumphator who falls victim to ingratitude.



duas maximas orbis terrarum urbes ingratas uno prope tempore in principes inuentas, Roman ingratiorem, si quidem uicta Carthago uictum Hannibalem in exilium expulisset, Roma uictrix uictorem Africanum expellat.


That which most enhanced [Pompey's] glory and had never been the lot of any Roman before, was that he celebrated his third triumph over the third continent. For others before him had celebrated three triumphs; but he celebrated his first over Libya, his second over Europe, and this his last over Asia, so that he seemed to have included the whole world in his three triumphs.31 Caesar's five triumphs, four in a single month, sought to overreach even Pompey's, èach differing from the rest in its equipment and display of spoils.'32 Augustus in turn celebrated `three triumphs for his victories in Dalmatia, at Actium, and at Alexandria, all on three successive days.'33 The spoils displayed in these triumphs were unabashedly used to buy popular favour. Inscriptions at the head of Pompey's third triumph proclaimed that `he was bringing into the public treasury in coined money and vessels of gold and silver twenty thousand talents, apart from the money which had been given to his soldiers'. Caesar claimed his triple triumph by àsserting that he had subdued a country large enough to furnish annually for the public treasury two hundred thousand Attic bushels of grain, and three million pounds of olive oil.' The prestige of earlier triumphators was appropriated by the contestants, Caesar modelling his self-representation on Camillus and his triumphs.34 Such appropriation was one of the most effective weapons by which Augustus achieved and maintained his principate. Though his Actium triumph celebrated a victory over Roman as well as foreign foes, its liberal donatives meant that `the Romans forgot all their unpleasant experiences and viewed his triumph with pleasure, quite as if the vanquished had all been foreigners.' In this triumph, he characteristically `did everything in the customary manner, except he permitted his fellow-consul and the other magistrates, contrary to precedent, to follow him'.35 The seemingly minor variation was no such thing. The magistrates' position before the triumphator had symbolized his subordination to the state; by `permitting' them to follow him, Augustus claimed supremacy over them. Augustus's imperial myth included a dream vision, in which his father had allegedly seen him as a transcendent triumphator, `cum fulmine et sceptro exuuiisque Iouis Optimi Maximi



The `Roman revolution' of the first century BC was played out partly in contests over triumph that swept aside the niceties of the ius triumphandi. Pompey, Caesar and Augustus advertised their victories and promoted their ambitions by their multiple triumphs.

ac radiata corona, super laureatum currum, bis senis equis candore eximio trahentibus' [with the thunderbolt, sceptre, and insignia of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, wearing a crown that gave off rays of light, and riding in a laurel-wreathed chariot drawn by twelve brilliant white horses].36 Augustus's appropriation of triumphal honours prevailed even in death, when his funeral procession passed through the porta triumphalis, and his body was preceded by the statue of Victory from the Senate House and by the names of all the nations he had conquered.37 It became customary for Augustus's successors to be saluted on their accession as imperator. As the right to this title became confined to the emperor alone, the right to triumph likewise devolved upon the emperor or members of his family alone, making the ceremony a vehicle for their hegemony. As the Actium triumph was used to legitimize Augustus's rule, the triumph for the destruction of Jerusalem, the `Flavian Actium', was used to legitimize the claims of the newly elevated Vespasian and his designated heir, Titus (see Plate 1). Military victors not of imperial rank had now to be satisfied with the award of insignia triumphalia, the laurel wreath and other ornaments of the triumphator.38 This custom deteriorated into empty patronage. Claudius àwarded the triumphal regalia to Silanus, who was betrothed to his daughter, while he was still a boy, and awarded them to older men so often and for so little reason that a joint petition was circulated in the name of the legions'. Nero conferred the insignia triumphalia on men below senatorial rank and for non-military services.39 The emperor's triumph itself likewise became degraded. Nero celebrated his victories as musician and charioteer at the Greek games with an unintended parody triumph, as comical as the parodies of the love poets and satirists: eo curru, quo Augustus olim triumphauerat, et in ueste purpurea distinctaque stellis aureis chlamyde coronamque capite gerens Olympiacam, dextra manu Pythiam, praeeunte pompa ceterarum cum titulis, ubi et quos quo cantionum quoue fabularum argumento uicisset; sequentibus currum ouantium ritu plausoribus, Augustianos militesque se triumphi eius clamitantibus. [He rode in the chariot in which Augustus had once triumphed, and he wore a purple robe and a Greek cloak adorned with stars of gold. On his head was the Olympic crown and in his right hand the Pythian, while the rest were carried before him with inscriptions telling where



Roman Models 23


The most radical transformation of triumph was effected by early Christian fathers and by the first Christian emperor. In the period of persecution, Tertullian argued from triumphal customs to discredit the emperor's pretensions to divinity: `Caelum denique debellet imperator, caelum captiuum triumpho suo inuehat . . . Hominem se esse etiam triumphans in illo sublimissimo curru admonetur. Suggeritur enim ei a tergo: Respice post te! Hominem te memento!' [As a last test, let the emperor make war on heaven, and lead heaven captive in his triumph. . . . Even when triumphing in that most exalted chariot, he is reminded that he is a man. One whispers to him from behind: `Look behind you; remember you are a man'].41 No Christian could participate as victor in a military triumph, wearing the laurel sacred to pagan gods; the Christian's only place is walking to execution with the conquered.42 The worst dishonour for a Roman becomes the highest earthly honour for a Christian. Early Christianity thus redefined victory in a fashion that would counterpoint Christian militarism down to Milton's Paradise Regain'd. Christ becomes the sole triumphator; his earthly followers win true glory through worldly disgrace, spiritual victory through worldly defeat: Ea uictoria habet et gloriam placendi deo et praedam uiuendi in aeternum . . . Ergo uicimus, cum occidimur, denique euadimus, cum obducimur. . . . Hic est habitus uictoriae nostrae, haec palmata uestis, tali curru triumphamus. [Our victory means the glory of pleasing God, and the spoils are eternal life . . . So we have conquered when we are killed; we escape when we are condemned. . . . This is our garb of victory; this is the robe embroidered with a palm; this is the chariot in which we triumph.]43

When the Emperor Constantine embraced Christianity, he too discarded the garb of godlike conqueror. The disclaimer Non nobis Domine enters the discourse of Roman triumph, as Constantine assigns his victories to God alone: `This One, the Supreme Sovereign, our triumphant sovereign himself praises to us, having fully perceived in Him the cause of his empire'.44 The first Christian triumph was Constantine's



he had won them and against what competitors, and giving the titles of the songs or the subject of the plays. Just as if it were a triumph, his chariot was followed by his applauding attendants, who shouted that they were the attendants of Augustus and the soldiers of his triumph.]40

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then he entered Rome with hymns of triumph, and all the senators and other persons of great note, together with women and quite young children and all the Roman people, received him in a body with beaming countenances to their very heart as a ransomer, saviour and benefactor, with praises and insatiable joy. But he, as one possessed of natural piety towards God, was by no means stirred by their shouts nor uplifted by their praises, for well he knew that his help was from God; and straightway he gave orders that a memorial of the Saviour's Passion should be set up in the hand of his own statue; and indeed when they set him in the most public place in Rome holding the Saviour's sign in his right hand, he bade them engrave this very inscription in these words in the Latin tongue: `By this salutary sign, the true proof of bravery, I saved and delivered your city from the yoke of the tyrant; and moreover I freed and restored to their ancient fame and splendour both the senate and the people of the Romans.'45 Constantine's transformation of triumph is less complete than it pretends to be. The triumphator retains his exceptional status and political primacy, though he does so according to new rules. The triumph narrative retains familiar features, like the people's jubilation and the proclamation of the triumphator's feats. Constantine's demeanour and inscription reject the godlike status of the triumphator, but they endow him instead with signal piety and with the status of God's chosen instrument. In his alliance with the new God of Christianity, Constantine has also performed the ancient work of the triumphator: he has saved and restored lustre to the Roman city and its institutions. Constantine outdoes the pagan triumphator in needing no attendant to remind him of his humanity; his own `natural piety' guarantees humility.46 All these attributes will recur in the godly triumphs of Cromwell.

2 Roman poets participate in the contests and redefinitions that mark the history of the triumph. Horace and Virgil define the orthodoxy in which Actium and its triumph were uniquely momentous, outdoing the feats of all Augustus's military predecessors and culminating in his principate. Appropriating mythical triumphs and prophesying future ones, Virgil in particular redefines the ceremony from a celebration of war to a celebra-



entry to Rome after the battle of the Mulvian Bridge, which Constantine had fought under the sign of the cross:

tion of Augustus's reÂgime of pax et princeps. The early Ovid, discarding the reverence with which Horace and Virgil imagine the sacred ceremony, composes virtuoso and irreverent variations on triumphal themes. He later redresses this treatment by pious compliments to Augustus and hyperbolic dreams of the triumphal city from which he was exiled. Lucan, later in the empire, and Claudian, in its imperilled last years, both cherish the triumphs of the republic. Lucan contrasts them with the degraded versions of his usurping Julius Caesar; Claudian revives them for his general Stilicho. Horace deploys the triumphal topos of outdoing to elevate Octavian's Actium victory above the victories and triumphs even of Scipio and Marius: io triumphe, nec Iugurthino parem bello reportasti ducem neque Africanum, cui super Carthaginem uirtus sepulcrum condidit. [Io, triumphe! Neither in Jugurtha's war did you bring back such a general, nor was Africanus such, whose uirtus built for him a shrine over Carthage.]47

Horace associates Octavian's Roman rivals with Jugurtha and Hannibal, foes proverbial for barbarism or audacity. He thus helps initiate the Augustan myth that made Actium a contest for Rome's very survival, like the Punic wars, and a contest between civilized Rome and Cleopatra's barbaric east, a domain of tyranny and slavery.48 Sextus Pompeius has already allied himself with slaves, while Antonius, ignominiously unnamed, plays the slave to a woman and her eunuchs. Since victory over a slave rebellion or over fellow Romans was unworthy of a triumph, Horace must strike a careful balance between contempt and menace in setting up these associations. When he returns to Actium in his odes, Horace again magnifies the threat of Octavian's enemies, attributing to Cleopatra the ambition to lay waste Rome's triumphal centre itself: dum Capitolio regina dementes ruinas funus et imperio parabat [while a crazed queen was plotting ruin for the Capitol and destruction for the empire.]




A similar strategy of emphasizing the enemy's threatening magnitude and barbaric character appears in the English literature of the Armada and the Civil War. Yet Horace also pays a gracious tribute to Cleopatra's courage in taking her own life rather than submitting to the disgrace of being led in triumph, a gesture that always wins Roman admiration, and that Marvell adapts to King Charles in his own Horatian ode: saeuis Liburnis scilicet inuidens priuata deduci superbo non humilis mulier triumpho. [she scorned the thought that cruel Liburnian galleys should cause her to be led in an arrogant triumph, no longer a queen; she was a woman without a trace of ignobility.]49

In the Aeneid, the Actium triumph appears in the guise of a prophecy, rich in historical and cosmic resonance. Embossed by Vulcan on Aeneas's shield, it is described with sober splendour (viii. 714±19): at Caesar, triplici inuectus Romana triumpho moenia, dis Italis uotum immortale sacrabat, maxima ter centum totam delubra per urbem. laetitia ludisque uiae plausuque fremebant; omnibus in templis matrum chorus, omnibus arae; ante aras terram caesi strauere iuuenci. [Entering the walls of Rome in a triple triumph, Caesar dedicated to the gods of Italy his immortal votive offering, three hundred magnificent shrines throughout the city. The streets resounded with joy and games and shouting. In every temple there was a chorus of women, in every temple an altar, and before every altar slaughtered steers strewed the ground.]

The victorious Augustus next receives homage from the nations of his empire, splendidly catalogued in a passage that will be imitated in the prophecies of early modern England's imperial destiny (viii. 720±8). This homage actually took place a year after the Actium triumph: by combining the two events, Virgil tightens the connection between Actium and Augustus's imperial sovereignty. Though it thus affirms the military basis of his rule, the Aeneid prefers to represent Augustus as the inaugurator of peace. Virgil therefore transforms the customary and melancholy triumphal spectacle of captive generals and princes into a procession of dignified tributaries, and he transforms Augustus from



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nec uero Alcides tantum telluris obiuit, . . . nec qui pampineis uictor iuga flectit habenis Liber, agens celso Nysae de uertice tigris. [Not even Alcides ranged over such a breadth of earth, nor did triumphant Bacchus, who guides his chariot with reins made from vine-tendrils, as he drives his tigers down from the lofty peak of Mount Nysa.]

Antonius had claimed the special favour of these two gods; Virgil appropriates them and their triumphal status for Augustus. Hercules in particular becomes the type of Augustus when, after his conquest of Geryon, he appears in a proto-triumph on the future site of Rome (viii. 201±4): maximus ultor, tergemini nece Geryonae spoliisque superbus, Alcides aderat, taurosque hac uictor agebat ingentes. [The great avenger Hercules appeared, glorying in having killed in combat the triform Geryon, and glorying in his spoils. The conqueror drove this way his giant bulls.]

Here Hercules kills the fire-breathing giant Cacus, a possible allusion to Augustus's victory over savage Alpine tribes, or over the demonized Antonius. The statue of `Hercules triumphalis' in the forum Boarium was dressed in triumphal vestments on the day of a triumph, and Hercules remained a model of the triumphator.51 The gigantic ships of the Armada and the brutish enemies of Civil War writings derive from this legend of Hercules (as well as from the Biblical story of David). Spenser will allegorize his triumphators as antitypes of Hercules, and their enemies as descendants of Geryon, or as Cacus-like monsters. Ovid applies his dazzling invention to the topoi of triumph in each phase of his career: the poet of metamorphosis relishes the metamorphoses of triumph, and the virtuoso poet captures the dignity of



the military conqueror riding in his chariot into a paternal, Apollonian figure seated before one of the temples built by his piety ± a posture that would be favoured by the triumphal King James.50 In another of the poem's prophecies, the empire of Augustus associates him with the mythic triumphators Hercules and Bacchus (vi. 801±5):

the ceremony in a display of his own prowess. In his love poetry, Ovid plays a multitude of triumphal roles ± glorious victor and shameful victor, willing captive and impudent spectator. He scoffs at military solemnity, converting the triumph into a celebration of the sexual battlefield. Ovid's attitudes are not entirely unprecedented. The soldiers' licensed irreverence meant that even solemn triumphs contained parodies of themselves; the fescennine verses of Caesar's soldiers show how this irreverence gravitates towards sex and the triumphs of love. Venus already had an association with the triumph through the ouatio, a minor triumph, whose insignia were the myrtle instead of the laurel, and which was accompanied by flutes instead of trumpets. It was awarded when the requirements of the ius triumphandi were incompletely fulfilled. For example, to those generals who had had no need of war, but had brought everything to a good issue by means of conference, persuasion, and argument, the law awarded the privilege of conducting, like a paean of thanksgiving, this unwarlike and festal procession. For the flute is an instrument of peace, and the myrtle is a plant of Aphrodite, who more than all the other gods abhors violence and wars.52 This triumphal variant provided a pretext for Ovid's triumphs of love, and a sanction for the English triumphs of peace. In one of his wittiest love elegies, Ovid celebrates a triumph for a sexual conquest. The conqueror has prevailed by a solitary uirtus, and therefore he must both bestow and receive the triumphator's salutation: Ìte triumphales circum mea tempora laurus! / uicimus' [Come, triumphal laurels, surround my temples: I have conquered].53 Like a general claiming a triumph, Ovid boasts the magnitude of his feats. He has overcome formidable obstacles ± Corinna's husband or current lover, the servant or `keeper' assigned to watch over her, the forbidding door of her house (like a city wall or rampart). He has won his victory without shedding blood. This last feature, which would disqualify him under the ius triumphandi, earns him instead a more noteworthy triumph (II. xii. 5±8): haec est praecipuo uictoria digna triumpho, in qua, quaecumque est, sanguine praeda caret. non humiles muri, non paruis oppida fossis cincta, sed est ductu capta puella meo!



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Woman is an ancient and honourable casus belli: Ovid associates himself with Aeneas, who waged war with Turnus over Lavinia, and with the early Romans, who waged war for their Sabine wives (II. xii. 21±4). Ovid compounds his impudence by claiming to equal or outdo Rome's foundational wars. His mock-heroic capture of a woman also ridicules the gravity with which elder poets treated Augustus's victory over Cleopatra.54 In an altogether different and discomfiting elegy, Ovid castigates himself for an incident in which he has beaten his mistress. Now the topoi of triumph do not deride official pretensions but point up the degradation of Ovid himself, an unworthy triumphator for an ignoble victory. The soldiers' imagined jests and the pathetic spectacle of the beaten girl as a conquered captive express the poet's self-accusation (I. vii. 35±40): I nunc, magnificos uictor molire triumphos, cinge comam lauro uotaque redde Ioue, quaeque tuos currus comitantum turba sequetur, clamet ìo! forti uicta puella uiro est!' ante eat effuso tristis captiua capillo, si sinerent laesae, candida tota, genae. [Go now, victor, and mount your splendid triumphs, circle your hair with laurel, pay your vows to Jupiter, and let the thronging crowd that follows your chariot cry out: Ìo! our mighty hero has conquered a girl.' Let her walk before, a downcast captive with her hair let loose, and, were it not for her wounded cheeks, all white.]

Behind the passage lies the recognition that the triumph celebrated a martial violence and sustained an imperial dominance whose ruthlessness is mirrored by Ovid's domestic violence. In the Ars amatoria, the poet positions himself not in the procession but among the spectators. He mimics irreverently the prophecies of the Augustan poets as he imagines a triumph for Augustus's adopted son.55 The rapt attention in which he pretends to be held transforms all too soon into plans for his own sexual conquest. The elaborate allegories and distinguished captives of the triumph become opportunities for the young man to impress young women with his feigned knowledge (219± 22):



[Here is a victory that deserves a special triumph, for no part of the spoil is stained by blood. It is no mere walls, no towns surrounded by little moats, that I have captured by my generalship, but a girl.]

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[When some girl among them asks the names of the kings, or what places, what mountains, and what rivers are displayed, be sure to answer all her questions. Do it even if she does not ask you; and even if you do not know an answer, tell her as if you knew all about it.]

In his most influential triumph of love, Amores, I. ii, full of ingenious reversals or variations of triumphal convention, Ovid assumes the role of captive. He dwells repeatedly on his prompt and shameless surrender to the triumphator Cupid (I. ii. 9±10, 19±20, 29±30). His refusal to feel the captive's humiliation impudently challenges Roman militarism, as his satisfaction in the defeat of virtue's soldiers airily dismisses Augustus's programme of ethical renewal. Cupid outdoes the godlike Roman triumphator, since this triumphator actually is a god. He appropriates the chariot of his stepfather Mars, but loads it with symbols of his mother Venus. The birds that draw it are a fanciful variant on the exotic beasts displayed in triumphs. For all its wit, the passage's copia also evokes the magnificence of a triumph and the tremendous power of Eros (I. ii. 23±34): necte comam myrto, maternas iunge columbas; qui deceat, currum uitricus ipse dabit, inque dato curru, populo clamante triumphum, stabis et adiunctas arte mouebis aues.

ducentur capti iuuenes captaeque puellae;

haec tibi magnificus pompa triumphus erit. ipse ego, praeda recens, factum modo uulnus habebo et noua captiua uincula mente feram. Mens Bona ducetur manibus post terga retortis, et Pudor, et castris quidquid Amoris obest. omnia te metuent; ad te sua bracchia tendens uulgus ìo' magna uoce `triumphe!' canet. [Bind your hair with myrtle; yoke your mother's doves. Your stepfather himself will give you a suitable chariot, and in this chariot you will stand and skilfully guide the yoked birds, while the people cheer your triumph. Captive boys and captive girls will follow you. This procession will be your splendid triumph. I too shall appear, a newly won spoil, with my recently received wound, and I shall carry my new chains with resignation.



Atque aliqua ex illis cum regum nomina quaeret, Quae loca, qui montes, quaeue ferantur aquae, Omnia responde, nec tantum siqua rogabit; Et quae nescieris, ut bene nota refer.


In Ovid's later triumphs, transgression gives way to sobriety. He devises Virgilian prophecies of Augustus's rule. At the beginning of the Metamorphoses, Apollo prophesies that Augustus's doors will be crowned with laurel and oak. This tribute was in fact paid to Augustus, the perpetual triumphator and saviour of civic freedom.57 At the end of the Metamorphoses, Julius Caesar's act in adopting Augustus as his heir surpasses all his martial triumphs (xv. 746±58). In exile, Ovid's yearnings for Rome express themselves through a compulsive staging of imaginary triumphs. The tropes once treated with witty insouciance now confirm Rome's piety and majesty. Public exhilaration contrasts to the misery of the exiled Ovid; unable to participate in the city's joy, he nevertheless rejoices in the common good. In a palinode to the triumph episode of the Ars amatoria, spectators guess at the identity of captive leaders and captured places, awed by the spectacle that the virtuoso of love had treated opportunistically.58 The idealized distribution of spoils imparts a hieratic splendour and magical aura: atque ita uictorem cum magnae uocis honore bellica laudatis dona dedisse uiris, . . . deque tropaeorum, quod sol incenderit, auro aurea Romani tecta fuisse fori. [the victor, honouring them with a loud voice, gave warlike gifts to the heroes he praised, and from the gold of the trophies, lit up by the sun, the buildings of the Roman forum turned to gold.]59

Ovid strives to show that he has learnt the lesson of the triumph ± that service to the state is the paramount duty and satisfaction of the Roman citizen: `causaque priuata publica maior erit.'60 The rich poetry in which he imagines and commemorates Rome's triumphs, arriving late from a remote outpost of the empire, is Ovid's imitation of the triumphator's public service, or his gesture of submission, the spoils he willingly contributes to Augustus's triumphs.61 Of all the ancients, Ovid exhibits the widest range of uses to which triumph could be put. Of early modern writers, Marlowe and Shakespeare achieve a similar variety, alert to the comical, the grotesque and the subversive possibilities of the ceremony as well as to its dignity.



Conscience will be led along, with her hands tied tight behind her back, and Modesty, and everything that opposes itself to the camp of Cupid. All will tremble at your sight, and the people, stretching their arms toward you, will sing in a loud voice, Ìo triumphe!']56

Where Ovid idealizes the triumph in proportion to his geographical distance from Rome, Lucan's De bello ciuili idealizes it in proportion to his distance in time from a partly imaginary epoch of uirtus and imperial conquest. Past triumphs for foreign victories reproach a Rome that has succumbed to civil war. Lucan invokes again and again the three triumphs of Pompey as symbols of a magnanimous uirtus that perishes with Pompey himself, while the triumphs of Caesar announce the success of ruthless ambition and the advent of tyranny.62 Like Cicero, Lucan admires the contentious spirit that had urged Romans to win triumphs. When the riches of Egypt tempt Caesar to yet more ambitious conquests, Lucan acknowledges that they would have tempted even the temperate Romans of old: `Pone duces priscos et nomina pauperis aeui, . . . Optabit patriae talem duxisse triumphum'. [Put in his place our earliest generals, the great names from our era of austerity. . . . They will pray they may celebrate for their nation no less a triumph].63 Tragically, this very spirit had degenerated into the destructive envy of civil war: `Nec quemquam iam ferre potest Caesarue priorem / Pompeiusue parem' [Caesar could no longer endure a superior, nor Pompey an equal] (i. 125±6). Contention over triumphs governs the action of the De bello ciuili. It is the withholding of Caesar's legitimate triumphs that causes him to provoke war ± a poetic premise with ample historical warrant.64 In civil war, Rome seeks to triumph over itself, a tragic paradox on which the poet rings many rhetorical changes. He states the theme in the poem's principium: `Bella geri placuit nullos habitura triumphos?' [did you choose to wage wars that could win no triumphs?] (i. 12). As Caesar begins his march on Rome, a catalogue of Gallic nations recalls the display of captive nations in a triumph (i. 392±465). Now, however, Caesar leaves these nations ungarrisoned; instead of terrifying foreign foes, the Roman army terrifies Rome itself, which behaves not as a conquering city but as a conquered one. Caesar's easy passage as he marches through Italy is a kind of extended triumph, but it is contrasted in Lucan's elegiac tones with the joyful triumph Caesar might have celebrated had he been content with the conquest of Gaul and Britain (iii. 73±9): Pro, si remeasset in urbem, Gallorum tantum populis Arctoque subacta, Quam seriem rerum longa praemittere pompa, Quas potuit belli facies! . . . Perdidit o qualem uincendo plura triumphum!



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In civil war the honour won even by a noble soldier like Lucan's Scaeua is grimly paradoxical. Not only can he celebrate no triumph; by fighting for Caesar, his victory is really a defeat (vi. 260±2): Non tu bellorum spoliis ornare Tonantis Templa potes, non tu laetis ululare triumphis. Infelix, quanta dominum uirtute parasti! [You cannot deck the temple of Jupiter with spoils; you cannot cry out in a joyous triumph. Unhappy man, with what courage you fought, only to gain for yourself a tyrant.]

The victorious soldier changes places with the prisoners who walked in a triumph, destined to slavery. After his entry into a demoralized Rome, Caesar ascends to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. Where the triumphator offered up spoils, Caesar plunders the spoils once displayed in the famous triumphs of Scipio, Aemilius Paullus, Flamininus and Pompey (iii. 155±67). His theft marks the end of the subordination of the triumphator to the state: `tristi spoliantur templa rapina, / Pauperiorque fuit tunc primum Caesare Roma' [in a dreadful act of plunder the temple is despoiled; and then for the first time Rome was poorer than a Caesar] (iii. 167±8). The tragedy of Pompey exemplifies the turn of Fortune's wheel that always threatened the triumphator. The memory of Pompey's unprecedented three triumphs is what first drives him on (i. 120); on the eve of his defeat at Pharsalus it consoles or deludes him (vii. 7±20); after his downfall, it is the theme of his lament (viii. 25). His former wife and Caesar's daughter, Julia, remembers his `happy triumphs' as she prophesies his defeat (iii. 20±1). Book vi concludes with the prophecy that Pompey and his two sons will die in the three continents over which Pompey once triumphed: Èuropam, miseri, Libyamque Asiamque timete: / Distribuit tumulos uestris fortuna triumphis' [Unhappy men, you must now fear Europe and Africa and Asia; Fortune divides your graves among the lands you have triumphed over] (vi. 816±17). Lucan's impassioned apostrophes measure Pompey's doomed present against his triumphal past and Caesar's ascendant fortune. After cataloguing Pompey's troops at Pharsalus, Lucan bursts out with characteristic hyperbole,



[Alas, if he had returned to Rome having conquered only the regions of the north and the peoples of Gaul, what a series of feats, what scenes of war, he might have displayed before him in long procession. Oh, what a triumph he lost by adding to his conquests!]

Èripe uictori gentes et sanguine mundi / Fuso, Magne, semel totos consume triumphos' [Snatch back the nations from their conqueror, and shed every drop of human blood in one massacre; thus, Magnus, put an end to any more triumphs] (vii. 233±4). After Pompey's death, Lucan dictates to Fortune the inscription that should appear on his grave. The list of Pompey's feats ends with the triumphator's scrupulous respect for law and his antique Roman modesty (viii. 813±15): Dic semper ab armis Ciuilem repetisse togam, ter curribus actis Contentum multos patriae donasse triumphos.' [Say that whenever he returned from war he took up again the toga of the civilian, and that, content with driving the chariot three times, he waived his right to many more triumphs for his nation.]

For the Stoic Lucan, Pompey's virtue enables him to defy fortune in his fall as he had been unseduced by it in his prosperity: `Quamque fuit laeto per tres infida triumphos / Tam misero Fortuna minor' [Faithless Fortune, who was beneath him in the days when he enjoyed his three triumphs, is beneath him still in the days of his disaster] (vii. 685±6). In making his virtuous end, Pompey achieves a triumph of virtue. On his defeated entry into Larisa he is welcomed by a populace who open up their homes and temples as for a triumph ± in contrast to Caesar's supposedly triumphal entry into a deserted and demoralized Rome (vii. 712±16). After his death, Pompey's spirit ascends to the orbit of the moon like a conquering general ascending the Capitoline (ix. 1±4). Pompey's political heir Cato displays the same virtues and wins the same esteem. His march through the snake-infested deserts of Libya, a display of Stoic equanimity, equals the noblest of triumphs (ix. 598±600): Hunc ego per Syrtes Libyaeque extrema triumphum Ducere maluerim, quam ter Capitolia curru Scandere Pompei, quam frangere colla Iugurthae. [I would rather lead this triumphal march through the Syrtes and the remotest parts of Libya than mount the Capitoline three times in Pompey's chariot, or break Jugurtha's neck.]

These triumphs of virtue compensate for the barbaric travesty of triumph that sees Pompey's head paraded through the streets of Alexandria (ix. 137±40).65



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Less nimble than Ovid, Lucan provided models of triumph that were more usable politically. David Norbrook has made a comprehensive case for De bello ciuili as a master-text of seventeenth-century English republicanism. Lucan exerts an influence on earlier writers as well. His hyperboles are revived in the `high astounding terms' with which his translator Marlowe represents the triumphs of Tamburlaine, a hero who, like Lucan's Caesar, combines prodigious dreadfulness and hypnotic fascination. Antony's prophecy of civic destruction in Julius Caesar is also Lucanian. But the English Civil War naturally provokes the fullest use of Lucan. Cowley's fragmentary epic of the war opens with an allusion to the tragic triumphs of De bello ciuili. Lucan's consolatory triumphs of virtue are imitated in texts of royalist defeat, in which the dead King Charles triumphs through his patience over the snares of earthly glory and the threat of death and hell.66 More broadly, Lucan contributed to triumphal discourse a structuring principle of opposed versions ± virtuous and demonic, self-effacing and self-serving ± that compete with one another in a single text, not scattered between texts, like Ovid's. Many early modern contests adapt Lucan's dialectic: Petrarch's triumphs of Cupid and Chastity, Death and Fame, Time and Eternity; the vain triumphs of the papacy versus the soldierly ones of the reformed church; Spain's boastful prophecies of its Armada triumph versus England's actual ones, achieved by God's grace; the triumphalism of indolent royalty versus the triumphs of militant uirtus. It is debatable whether the poetry of Claudian (c. 400) is the last model or the first revival of the ancient triumph. Six hundred years after the triumph of Scipio, Claudian hails Stilicho, the last successful defender of the Western empire, as `Noster Scipiades', whose victories expunge the shameful triumphs of recent civil wars.67 Claudian praises Stilicho for doing more than extend the boundaries of the empire: in holding off the Goths, he is responsible for Rome's very survival. For all Claudian's enthusiasm, his triumph reads like the property of a remote age, miraculously and precariously resuscitated: `haec omnes ueterum reuocauit adorea lauros; / restituit Stilicho cunctos tibi, Roma, triumphos' [This victory has revived all the laurels of your ancient heroes; Stilicho has restored to you all your triumphs, Rome].68 The Rome that Claudian apostrophizes was in fact no longer the triumphal centre, the capital of the Western empire having moved to Milan in the fourth century, and, as the Goths reversed Stilicho's victory, to Ravenna in 402. Nevertheless, Claudian skilfully and lightly revives old triumphal tropes. As in Ovid's Ars amatoria, but now with decorous innocence, young girls ask their nurses to explain the spectacle; as in Plutarch, the




weapons or heraldry of the defeated enemy still seem threatening.69 Against the triumphs of Stilicho, Claudian sets the Eastern mock-triumph of Eutropius, the first eunuch consul: a slave now rides not as attendant but as triumphator; his army is a grotesque company of eunuchs; his welcoming throng has shrunk to a rabble of clients.70 Claudian's triumphs appealed to an early modern England fighting off papal and Spanish foes that were constructed as Gothic in their barbarism. Samuel Hawarden welcomes King James to England as `Scipiades', in a triumph that imitates features of Claudian's triumph of Stilicho, and an Armada painting of Queen Elizabeth in triumph incorporates a quotation from Claudian.71 The continual process of renouatio that marked the triumph, in Roman times and later, was made possible by the different potentials in the ceremony itself. The triumph is a liminal ceremony. It is literally so, since it was the only occasion when a military imperator and his army were permitted to cross the pomerium, the religious boundary of the Roman city. It is metaphorically so, since it marks the boundary between war and peace, military power and civil rule, and partakes of both.72 The battlefield victory it celebrates must have established a secure peace. It celebrates conquests won by blood, but it does so in a festive and even jocular form, both acknowledging and concealing the violence on which power rests. Weapons of warfare penetrate the city, but pacified into harmless ornaments. Military discipline is relaxed into riotous carnival, aggression into comic abuse. The triumph includes soldiers and civilians, Senate and people, in a ritual that affirms the unity and conquering destiny of the state, and bestows material benefits; but it also authorizes contestation for the prestige that attends it. Finally, the triumph recognizes the mutability and even the futility of the fame that it celebrates. This emphasis suggests that the triumph expresses the anxiety, the uncertainties no less than the certainties, that inhere in perpetuating military victory and imperial rule.



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3

Ùrbem Romam . . . triumphantem uidere' The pioneering humanist studies of the Roman triumph were produced by Valturio and Biondo in the 1440s and 1450s. A second wave of scholarship, pioneered by Marliani and Sigonio and consolidated by Panvinio, followed the discovery in 1546 of the Capitoline tables, ancient lists of Roman magistrates and triumphs. These writers codified the triumphal lore scattered throughout ancient sources, amplifying them with their own virtuoso and idealized descriptions. Renaissance antiquarians modelled themselves on Varro, whose collection of Antiquitates (described and praised by ancient writers, but now lost) was written with a political purpose. In the civil war and social stress of the first century BC, the Antiquitates set before its readers `the virtuous life of early Rome with its concern for wholesome work, social harmony and piety.'1 The three great Renaissance reconstructions of the triumph were likewise shaped by the political programmes of the patrons for whom they were written ± a warrior prince, a papacy re-establishing itself at Rome, and an aspiring prelate striving to reconcile papal and imperial allegiances. In educating their readers about the triumph, these studies simultaneously model its appropriation. As well as by the labours of humanist antiquarians, triumph was renovated and transmitted through poetic and religious writings. Petrarch's evocations of the ancient triumph, in his Africa as well as his Triumphi, were more complete, impressive and enduring than any ceremony. In expressly contrasting his splendid imagined triumphs to the absence of genuine triumphs in his own age, Petrarch develops Lucan's or Juvenal's oppositional use of the ceremony. Savonarola appropriates the pagan ceremony to his politico-religious regime in Florence, demon38





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strating how it could serve a `puritan' programme. In France, Du Bartas deploys it to legitimize in poetry the new and insecure house of Bourbon and to urge a new Christian and Protestant crusade.

The first major Renaissance study of the triumph appears in Roberto Valturio's treatise De re militari (1446±55?). A polymath member of the court of Sigismondo Malatesta at Rimini, Valturio was superintendent of works on Sigismondo's daringly pagan church, the Tempio Malatestiano, and memorialist of his words and deeds.2 At the fount of humanist studies of the triumph, Valturio writes for a brilliant soldier, ignoring or deriding the empty displays of `triumphalism'. Largely a cento of ancient military texts, De re militari praises war as a universal art incorporating all others ± philosophy and history, law and medicine, arithmetic and geometry. It is from this military orientation, a deliberate revival of Roman uirtus, that Valturio's twelfth and last book treats triumphs, `quum hi bellorum sint finis, uictoribus decus et gloria' [since these mark the end of wars and bestow honour and glory on the victors].3 Valturio's triumph bristles with the aspiration to contest and outdo. Every soldier seeks to appear in a triumph, so that his honour may be publicly acknowledged (354); every feature of the triumph is exceptional. Valturio's hyperboles communicate the spell that the triumph exercised over Renaissance humanism (357): crateras alii et phialas calicesque ornatissimos, et ingentis gestabant, et alii uasa permulta ex auro et gemmis eximiae artis et magni ponderis. . . . Ferebant simulachrorum sigilla, deosque quos illi habebant et magnitudine mirabili et arte non defunctiore facta . . . Ad haec tela et caetera hostium spolia, catapultae, balistae, tormenta quaeque et arma porro ornatissima atque pulcherrima splendentia aere et ferro absterso. . . . Maxime autem stupor erat machinarum quae portabantur. [Some carried huge and highly ornate bowls and saucers and cups, and others a great number of golden and jewelled dishes, of exceptional art and great weight. . . . They carried pictorial representations, and images of their gods, of extraordinary size and made with a quite lifelike art . . . Also weapons and the rest of the spoils of the enemy ± catapults, ballistas, every engine for hurling missiles, and highly decorated and very beautiful weapons of brilliant bronze and polished iron. Above all, there was astonishment at the machines that were carried.]



1

Valturio's patron, Sigismondo Malatesta (1417±68), ruler of Rimini from 1432, fought countless wars both on his own behalf and as a mercenary condottiere. An innovative general, he made technical advances in fortification and artillery, replacing wood with bronze as the material for projectile shells and inventing a `bronzina', a gun that he claimed would carry an iron ball five miles.4 Malatesta engaged in contests for the dignity of triumph with other Italian princes, such as Alfonso I and Federigo da Montefeltro. In 1443, Alfonso took possession of the kingdom of Naples with one of the first Renaissance triumphs all'antica, perpetuated in a sculpture over the gate of the Castel Nuovo in Naples.5 Federigo, lord of neighbouring Urbino and thus Malatesta's natural rival, represents himself as a triumphator, `parem summis ducibus' [the equal of the greatest generals] in a portrait by Piero della Francesca (1465).6 Sigismondo's bitterest enemy was Pope Pius II (1458±64), who marked one of their disputes by burning him in effigy under the inscription `rex proditorum . . . sacri censura senatus igni damnatus' [king of traitors . . . condemned to fire by the judgment of the Holy Senate].7 By making Sigismondo a traitor, by acting under the authority of a `Senate', and by holding the ceremony on the Capitol, Pius gives it the character of an anti-triumph. Valturio's volume is a weapon in Malatesta's campaign to surpass or overthrow these contestants for triumphal dignity. Its dedicatory epistle describes a triumph for Malatesta's most famous military victory ± which was won over Alfonso of Naples. In 1448, Malatesta raised Alfonso's siege of the city of Piombino, in the kind of daring victory that in Roman times merited a triumph. The enemy army outnumbered Malatesta's, and was made up largely of foreign Spaniards. Valturio praises Malatesta for imitating or outdoing the most famous generals of the ancients (144±5) and for winning the dignity of triumphator: ìn te triumphales coronae refulgerent' [for you triumphal crowns shone brightly] (sig. a4v). He expands this praise with an encomium in a richly periodic style, in which nostalgia for the mos maiorum is transformed into pleasure at its revival by Malatesta (360±1): quanquam ea consuetudo sicut et pleraque alia maiorum nostrorum deleta est, hac tamen corona nostris temporibus, Sigismunde, Populonea expeditione uno omnium ore donata est praecellens animi magnitudo tui . . . . restituentis redeuntisque exercitus speciem atque pompam effusa omnis incolarum et oppidorum multitudo obuiam processit, et uniuersi quidem milites tuos tantumque te unum inter tot tribunos et clarissimos eorum duces Sigismundum admirabantur.




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[Though this custom, like most other things of our ancestors, has been abolished, yet in our own day it was with this crown, Sigismondo, that the eminent greatness of your spirit was unanimously rewarded for the Piombino campaign. The multitude of the inhabitants and of the towns poured out and made their way to meet the spectacle and procession of the restoring army as it returned, and indeed everyone admired the soldiers, and especially Sigismondo, so great among so many tribunes and their most distinguished leaders.]

Later editions of Valturio's book fortify Malatestan claims, as Sigismondo's son Roberto succeeds his father, a younger Scipio succeeding an elder. Now allied with the papacy, Roberto defeated Neapolitan forces at Campo Morto in 1482, earning a triumph in Rome itself. A second printing of De re militari (1483) added dedicatory material commemorating this event and associating Malatesta with the magna nomina of the ancients (sig. a2): capitolinas arces et romanam ecclesiam seruaturus, . . . accurrit ueluti Papyrius Cursor et Furius Camillus, Pub. Decius, Curius Dentatus, Valerius Publicola . . . duces egregios et milites quadringentos in triumphum Romanam spoliis et militaribus signis onustus deducit. [he will now preserve the Capitoline citadel and the Roman church . . . he charged like a Papyrius or a Camillus, a Decius, a Curius, or a Valerius . . . laden with spoils and military standards, he led back illustrious generals and four hundred soldiers in a Roman triumph.]

Valturio's book had lasting and widespread influence. It became a model for later military treatises, including Machiavelli's Arte della guerra (1521).8 Malatesta sent manuscripts to fellow princes, among them, to the scandal of Christendom, Mehmed II, whose capture of Constantinople for the Ottoman Empire in 1453 coincided with the composition of De re militari. By this gesture, Malatesta declared his allegiance to a fraternity of uirtus that superseded religious allegiance. The political programme that the book subserved was however doomed. Malatesta's Roman style implied that Rimini too was destined to rise from modest city-state to imperial capital, but the city's fortunes proved to be moving in the opposite direction. The epoch of the Italian city-state was ending in Malatesta's own lifetime, and by 1528 Rimini been absorbed into the papal states. Nevertheless, Valturio's resuscitation of martial triumph offered a model to nations with different futures, like early modern England, showing how a militant state might defy the pope and triumph over a Spanish king.




Where Valturio made Malatesta's Rimini the site of a revived Roman militarism, Flavio Biondo made papal Rome the site of a revived Roman imperialism, transformed from pagan to Christian. Though Biondo's triumph celebrates primarily a peaceful and inclusive imperium, his papacy may on occasion have a warrior mission. In Biondo's own day, it must marshal Christendom to recapture Constantinople. The fall of Constantinople, which made Valturio's book a token of Malatesta's kinship with Mehmed, made Biondo's book a prophecy of Rome's future military triumphs as well as a resumption of its past pagan and its present Christian ones. Biondo entered the service of the papacy when it returned permanently to Rome in 1431, after the èxile' at Avignon. His antiquarian work Roma triumphans was compiled in the 1450s and issued in 1459. It studies the institutions of ancient Rome for the edification of a papacy retaking possession of the city.9 With his fellow humanists in the Curia of Eugenius IV, Poggio Bracciolini and Leon Baptista Alberti, Biondo sought to establish continuity between ancient and modern Rome as a means of re-establishing the authority of the Roman See after the Great Schism (1378±1429) and after the Council of Basel (1431±49), which had diminished papal power and prestige.10 The claim to continuity also strengthened the restored papacy against the Colonna and other great Roman families, who challenged its secular authority within the city. Like De re militari, Roma triumphans treats triumphs in a climactic final book; in Biondo, this book confirms the triumphal stature of the modern as well as the ancient city, which is claimed in the volume's title. Quoting and glossing Cicero, Biondo gives a graphic formulation of the psychopolitics of triumph: ìpse triumphus quam ob rem gratissimus populo Romano fuit atque iucundissimus? quia nihil est uictoria dulcius. uictoriae autem testimonium dulcius, si quos saepe metueris, eosdem uictos ad supplicium duci iubeas' [Why was this triumph so popular and delightful to the Roman people? Because there is nothing sweeter than victory, and the sweetest evidence of victory is when you can compel those whom you have long feared to be led in defeat to their punishment].11 Biondo's victor is the Christian church, whose triumphs are in part imagined and allegorical, in part actual ecclesiastical processions. In both forms, the Roman church redefines the ceremony for Christendom. Biondo discards parts of the pagan ceremony, such as the captured gold and silver displayed by the ancients, and the arms and `machinae' that Valturio regarded as the most wonderful part of an ancient triumph: `hanc solam partem quia nostrorum saeculi nostri praesertim ecclesiasticae rei Romanae principum neminem imitaturum esse




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credimus, in nostro hoc triumpho effingere desinemus, et pariter . . . nullas machinas adhibebimus' [that is the one part of the triumph that we consider, in our age, none of our princes of the Roman church would imitate. Therefore we shall exclude it from our depiction of this triumph, and likewise we shall introduce no machines] (215±16). Other features of the triumph must be reformed, like the representations of pagan deities, that now give place to the Christian saints who have outdone and conquered them (216): in curru illo circuncirca picti erant, hinc Iuppiter sceptrum, inde Neptunus tridentem, Iuno hastam quirini, manu gestantes, deinde Mercurius caput pedesque alatus, in nostro curru, Petrus claues, ensem Paulus manu gerant, Michael Georgiusque Dracones perimant, et Bartholomeus suam humero pellem portet. [all around the pagan chariot were painted Jupiter bearing in his hand the sceptre, Neptune the trident, Juno the spear of Rome, and also Mercury with his winged hat and feet. On our chariot, let Peter bear in his hand the keys, Paul the sword; let Michael and George slaughter dragons, and Bartholomew carry his own flayed skin on his back.]

Despite this gesture of outdoing, Biondo also values continuity between pagan and Christian triumphs. One almost miraculous continuity is topographical. Biondo believed (mistakenly) that the ancient territorium triumphale occupied the site of the basilica of St Peter. Where once Roman soldiers assembled for their triumphs, Christian soldiers may now begin their greater triumphs (214; cf. 212): sicut triumphalis pompa priscis omnium celeberrima e uaticano et ab Apollinis templo in urbem ducebatur, ita et christianis temporibus ecclesiasticorum ordinum processiones quaecumque solennes e uaticano pariter et a beati Petri basilica, quae in illius templi parte constructa est ineant. [as the triumphal procession, the most famous of all processions among the ancients, made its way from the Vatican and the temple of Apollo, so also in Christian times any solemn processions of the orders of the church should likewise begin from the Vatican and the basilica of St Peter, which was built on the site of the temple of Apollo.]

Another continuity arises from Rome's perpetual status as triumphal centre. Biondo believed (again mistakenly) that every ancient triumph




except two had been celebrated there. Despite all the political disturbances, changes of capital city, all the outrages of tyrants, no-one had sought to triumph at later capitals like Milan or Constantinople (205).12 Rome still retained its unique status as ùrbs terrarum orbis', the world city (1). As the centre of the Catholic church, it still attracted the most talented men of all nations, who served in the church the functions of the ancient magistracies. Its catholicity renewed the universal citizenship bestowed by imperial Rome. All this devolved on papal Rome the worldwide imperium once exercised by pagan Rome (216±17): Dum nullum fastiditur genus in quo uirtus enitesceret, creuisse Romanum imperium, et uiros ex omni parte orbis ostendimus Romae uisos esse, non ciues modo militesque et senatores, sed consules . . . Similem itaque praesentis rei statum esse hinc dicimus, quia pontificem Romanum consulis, Cardinales senatorum, reges, principes, duces, marchiones, comites, et alios Christiani orbis nobiles, legatorum, quaestorum, tribunorum militum, praefectorum praesidiis, centurionum, et decurionum, officio fungi et respondere uidetur. . . . Non itaque iniuria dixisse uidemur, Romanae olim reipublicae similem esse ecclesiasticam rem Romanam . . . et sub hac re nostra omnes nomen professos Christianum uelint nolint regi et gubernari oportet. [Since they disdained no nation in which valour shone out, we show how the Roman empire grew, and how men of every nation were seen at Rome, not only as citizens and soldiers and senators, but as consuls. We would claim that the present state is in a like condition, because the Roman pontiff may be considered to discharge and answer to the office of consul, just as the cardinals, kings, princes, marquesses, counts and other noblemen of the Christian world correspond to the offices of legati, quaestors, military tribunes, prefects, centurions, and decurions. It would be no error to say that in its government the Roman church resembles the old Roman state and it is fitting, whether they wish it or not, that all who profess the name of Christian should be ruled and governed under this system.]13

Biondo's version of triumph, though imperial and Christianized, did not discard its martial origin and function. A Christendom united under the pope must still do battle with its mighty opposite Islam, like Rome with Carthage. Roma triumphans not only marked the restoration of the papacy to Rome; it was also a response to the fall of Constantinople. In addresses, letters, and histories throughout the 1450s, and at the conclusion of Roma triumphans, Biondo calls on the rulers of contemporary




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Europe to combat the Turkish peril. Victory in this war will restore the boundaries of Christendom and rescue Christians enslaved by the enemy, thus earning the pious triumph that Biondo has newly defined: Ùt affirmare ausim si ad haec castra quoad debent ductores ordinum frequentes affuerint, facile futurum, orbis olim Romani prouincias reipublicae Romanae non rebelles, imperio restituere ac subiicere' [I venture to declare that, if the commanders of armies flock to this standard as much as they ought to, it will be easy to restore to our rule those provinces of the former Roman world that did not rebel against it] (217).14 Biondo's claim that the papacy inherited the mantle of ancient Romanitas was enthusiastically developed by later pontiffs. A writer in the pontificate of Sixtus IV (1471±84) sees in the Jerusalem triumph of Titus a translatio of religious authority from Jerusalem to Rome. By carrying the seven-branched candelabrum of the Temple in the place of honour before his triumphal chariot, Titus gave à tangible sign that the Church of God and the dignity of its priesthood had shifted from Jerusalem to Rome.'15 Pope Julius II (1503±13), who took his name from Julius Caesar, set out to rival Caesar's triumphs in a reign of unabashed belligerence. The humanist Francisco Albertini commemorated the two triumphs celebrating Julius's victories over Venice, enthusiastically tracing the parallels between pope and Caesar: deprecor ut alter Iulius inuictissimus in tertio triumpho cuius scriptum erat. Veni. Vidi. Vici. Eadem uerba in triumpho Crucis christi decantare ualeat Sanctitas tua . . . . Tertium triumphum duobus praedictis in meliorem formam redactis addam quod erit maximum de infidelibus ipsis ac perfidis maumethanis. [I pray that, like the other completely invincible Julius, of whom it was written in his third triumph, Ì came; I saw; I conquered', Your Holiness may be able to repeat the same words in a triumph of the cross of Christ. Even though the two triumphs that I have spoken of revived the ceremony in a very fine manner, I shall add a third, which will be the greatest of all, a triumph for victory over those infidels, the treacherous Mahometans.]16

Erasmus, on the contrary, was scandalized by the martial triumphs of Julius II, deploring the very conduct that Albertini applauded: `Summus Pontifex Iulius belligeratur, uincit, triumphat, planeque Iulium agit' [the Supreme Pontiff Julius wages war, wins victories, celebrates triumphs, and in all respects acts the role of a Julius].17 In Erasmus's Iulius




exclusus (c. 1513), St Peter shuts Julius out of heaven because of his martial violence and triumphal pomp. Biondo's prescription for papal triumphs attempted to forgo or at least minimize the bloodiness of a Julius. In appropriating and pacifying pagan triumphs for papal Rome, Biondo claimed an ally in St Augustine: Ùrbem Romam florentem ac qualem beatus Aurelius Augustinus triumphantem uidere desiderauit' [the blessed Augustine longed to behold the city of Rome in its flourishing and triumphal state] (sig. a1v; cf. 212). No such passage exists in Augustine, but it was necessary for Biondo to invent it.18 Biondo also speculates that Augustine may have discussed triumphs with Orosius, the last writer of Roman history before the city's fall, who computed what became the canonical number of 320 Roman triumphs (205). Far from building on Augustine, Biondo's correspondences between pagan and papal Rome reverse the main tendency of Augustine's City of God, which opposes the secular city of man, exemplified by Rome, to the mystical city of God, embodied in the church. Biondo finds continuities between pagan and Christian rituals and priesthoods, praises Roman religion for its belief in immortality, and defends the Roman amor laudis, the basis of triumph, as a means of social cohesion and even a stimulus to salvation.19 For Augustine, this love of praise was the fundamental error of the ancients and fatally vitiated their cult of uirtus. Biondo provided a variety of incentives and models for an English appropriation of Rome's triumphs. By tracing a continuity between ancient and papal Rome he staked a renewed, humanist claim for papal hegemony that Protestant England must contest. One response was to claim a continuity not between ancient Rome and papal Rome but between ancient Rome and Protestant England. By reinterpreting the largely political ceremony of the triumph in religious terms, Biondo provided a model that could be adapted to England's Protestant nationhood ± as it was by Spenser. By rejecting Augustine's separation of pagan and Christian, earthly and heavenly glory, Biondo might on the contrary prompt more scrupulous souls to reject the language of triumph or deploy it only in a strictly purified form, like Tertullian and some English puritans. Readers who disapproved of the bellicose conduct of a Malatesta or a Pope Julius might still accept in Biondo's crusade against the Turks the necessity for Christians to assume a martial mantle. Though Biondo's exhortations to a crusade of all Christendom went unanswered, the defeat of the Turkish navy at Lepanto a century later did produce the upsurge of triumphal celebration he prophesied, especially in Catholic Europe; the defeat of the Armada in turn appropriated this naualis triumphus to England's overthrow of a mighty Catholic foe.




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In 1546 were discovered the fasti triumphales, tablets from the Roman Forum listing triumphs from the foundation of the city to the end of the republic. The tablets were incorporated in the walls of the newly rebuilt Palazzo dei Conservatori.20 Study of the tablets and other archeological evidence enabled a more accurate listing and dating of Roman triumphs by a more advanced scholarship than Valturio's and Biondo's. This work was synthesized by Onofrio Panvinio, whose Fastorum libri V (1558) became the definitive study of the triumph for the rest of the early modern period.21 Though he died aged 39, Panvinio's prodigious industry left in print or manuscript 67 antiquarian works, many of vast scope, though many incomplete. His unfinished Antiquitatum Romanorum libri centum was to have earned him the title of the modern Varro, by reconstructing the entire life of classical Rome.22 Like Biondo, Panvinio traces the descent of modern institutions, including the triumph, from the ancient Rome whose life he reverently documents. In the tables that carry his Fasti down to the mid-sixteenth century, however, Panvinio locates the main triumphal succession not in the papacy but in the Holy Roman Empire. His Fasti traces the triumph à Romulo Rege usque ad Imp. Caesarem Carolum V Austrium Augustum', from Romulus to the emperor Charles V, as Panvinio's title page declares. Panvinio's reorientation of the triumph participates in the contentions between the papacy and the house of Hapsburg over the Roman imperial inheritance. These contentions had been revived at the date of Panvinio's book by the abdication of Charles V in 1555. Panvinio's commentary on Book V of his Fasti constitutes a short monograph on the triumph. Reprinted many times, it remained the authoritative study until the eighteenth century, and the 17 folio pages listing Panvinio's ancient authorities remain to this day the fullest bibliography. A series of engravings illustrating Panvinio was also much reprinted. These scholarly achievements made Panvinio the heroic literary preserver of the ancient city and earned him his own literary triumph: Annorum spatiis, Hunnorum adducta ruinis Te sine Panuini Roma sepulta foret. Utque triumphantem producis in ora triumphum Aeternae laudis debuit illa tibi. [The passage of years and the destruction of the Huns would have buried Rome, were it not for you, Panvinio. And since you bring her forth in triumph before the eyes of men, Rome has owed you a triumph of eternal praise.]23




Panvinio earns his pre-eminence partly by his exhaustive (if largely derivative and sometimes inventive) scholarship,24 and partly by his literary copia. Panvinio's virtuoso description of a triumph evokes its emotions, its sounds, and especially its sights more fully and richly than any of his predecessors; it is a version that invites the visual illustration it duly received (456; see Plate 4): deinde hostium reges, seu duces, cum filiis fratribus, et sororibus, omnibusque si qui essent familiaribus ueniebant, laccrimantes, casumque captiuitatis dolentes. Post haec multa hostium millia, manibus pone tergum reuinctis deducebantur, qui ex omnibus hostium exercitibus captis, pulchiores et elegantiores, uastioreque et proceriore forma selecti fuerant, atque ad triumphum exornandum reseruati. . . . Sequebatur deinceps dux ipse seu populi Romani imperator, aureato curru a quattuor albis equis uectus, toga purpurea triumphali auro, intertexta amictus, in capite lauream, seu auream lapillis gemmisque ornatam coronam gestans, dextera laurum, sinistra uero eburneum sceptrum tenens. [Next came the enemy kings or generals, with their sons and daughters and any other family members, weeping and bewailing the disaster of their captivity. After them were led many thousands of the enemy with their hands bound behind their backs. These had been chosen from all the captured enemy forces and set aside to grace the triumph, because they were more beautiful and graceful, more well-built and tall in appearance. . . . After that followed the general himself, or the Roman emperor, riding in a golden chariot drawn by four white horses. He was dressed in a purple toga woven with triumphal gold; on his head he wore a crown of laurel or of gold decorated with jewels and precious stones; he held in his right hand a sceptre of laurel, in his left a sceptre of ivory.]

Another of Panvinio's contributions was a sophisticated historicization of triumph. Where earlier writers had attributed the transformation of Rome's triumphs from austerity to extravagance to an ethical decline, Panvinio gives a historical and material explanation (454; cf 456±7): Ex gentium enim, et populorum deuictorum conditione, uel tenuiores, uel sumptuosiores fiebant. Itaque quum primis illis temporibus exigua oppida in deditionem populi Romani uenirent, debiles erant; postea quum integrae prouinciae, et regna a populo Romano subacta sunt, sumptuosissimi fieri coeperunt.





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Panvinio's work itself issues from a specific historical matrix, as no English reader would have failed to observe. Panvinio dedicates the Fasti to his patron Alessandro Cardinal Farnese, a fitting gesture, since it was in the pontificate of Alessandro's grandfather, Paul III (1534±49), that the Capitoline tablets were discovered, and under Paul's patronage that Marliani had first transcribed them. Panvinio praises the assembly and display of the tablets, carried out `magni munere Farnesii', by the generosity of the great Farnese, who alone deserves the glory for the restoration of ancient Rome (sig. a4v). The Farnese were a condottiere family that had been more resourceful than the Malatestas in adapting to the consolidation of political power in Italy. Paul III had aimed to raise his family to the eminence of the Medici or the Sforza, ruling over one of the extensive duchies into which the peninsula was now divided. To this end, he not only won the papacy but acquired the duchy of Parma, and he forged marital alliances with the Valois and Hapsburg dynasties. The Farnese aspired to secure their prestige and their wealth by a second pontificate, as the Medici and della Rovere had done. Alessandro, the chosen candidate, was created cardinal at the age of 14, and in the next year was appointed vice-chancellor of the Roman Church, a lifetime office second in power to the papacy itself. Accumulating more benefices than any other cardinal of the sixteenth century, Alessandro became the most splendid prelate of his day. The recipients of his patronage included the composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and the scholars Paolo Giovio and Fulvio Orsini; the project of Giorgio Vasari's Lives is said to have been conceived at a Farnese feast.26 Alessandro's patronage and its artistic and scholarly products all promoted the dignity of his house and his own papal ambitions. In return for pursuing scholarship useful to Alessandro, Panvinio was furnished with comfortable quarters and a research assistant. One of his duties was to help devise the programme of the `fasti Farnese', cycles of paintings recording the feats of Paul III and other family members. These fasti include a commemoration of the victory of the emperor Charles V over the Turks at Tunis in 1535. Hailed as `Tertio Africano', successor to the Scipios, Charles had made a triumphal entry to Rome, passing along the ancient Via Triumphalis and beneath the arches of Constantine, Titus,



[These things came about as a result of the circumstances of the subjugated peoples and nations, whether modest or magnificent. In the early days, when it was petty towns that submitted to Rome, triumphs were poor things; later, when whole provinces and kingdoms were subjected, they began to be very lavish.]25

and Septimius Severus. The `fasti Farnese' show the triumphator receiving a blessing from Paul III while kissing his foot ± an excessively optimistic version of the partnership between Farnese papacy and Hapsburg empire.27 Panvinio's writings, destined for wider circulation, were more diplomatic toward the empire and its Hapsburg rulers. They show Panvinio and Alessandro adjusting themselves to conditions different from Biondo's, in which it was evident that àn imperial ideology based on the papacy and on the city of Rome was increasingly anachronistic.'28 Panvinio's Fasti concedes to the emperor the triumphal status that Biondo had claimed for the papacy. The book thus takes an accommodating position in the debate between the claims of Church and Empire. In allowing it to be issued under his auspices, Farnese promotes himself as a potential pope who could work harmoniously with a Hapsburg emperor. In Romanorum Principum et eorum quorum maxima in Italia imperia fuerunt libri IIII (Basle, 1558), Panvinio traces the continuity between ancient and modern Roman emperors. Like Biondo, Panvinio celebrates the ancient Roman empire as an image of divine unity, but he no longer claims that its imperium has passed to the papacy. Temporal authority has passed to the Holy Roman emperor, while the pope wields a solely spiritual authority (sigs 3±5v). Panvinio's Preface explains that he had intended to dedicate the book to Farnese, but that Farnese `suggested' he dedicate it instead to Philip of Spain, who is himself the son of an emperor, and has been endowed with his own imperial and triumphatorial mission, to vindicate Christendom against the Islamic infidel (sig. 6). Panvinio's scholarship is closely aligned to Farnese policy in the political mutations of the late 1550s. On the abdication of the emperor Charles V in 1555, he divided his realms between his brother, the new emperor Ferdinand, and his son, Philip II of Spain. The truculently antiHapsburg Pope Paul IV refused to recognize Charles's abdication or Ferdinand's election, because papal approval had not been obtained. Paul also waged war against Spain, whose hegemony over Italy was another development of the 1550s.29 In these conflicts, the Farnese tended to align themselves with the Hapsburgs, and in particular with Philip's branch of the house. They had little choice: the overlordship of Parma that had formerly belonged to the papacy now passed to Spain. The Spanish alliance saved the Farnese dynasty by giving them a powerful protector, and in return the Farnese gave Spain one of its most able generals in the Netherlands wars. But Alessandro's diplomatic compliments to the imperial Hapsburgs failed to attain their ultimate aim:




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Spain was sufficiently mistrustful of Alessandro's ambition to veto his papal candidacies. Panvinio's treatment of the triumph, and its contemporary political import, are layered with significance for English readers. He bestows the Roman succession on the house of Hapsburg, and especially on Philip II, Protestant England's most formidable foe. At the same time, other aspects of Panvinio's scholarship open up for contestation the right to triumph. In the Fasti, tables of triumphs appear together with tables of Roman kings and consuls, tables of western and eastern emperors, and tables of their contemporary successors, the Holy Roman emperors in the west and the Ottoman emperors in the east. At times, Panvinio himself intervenes in contests for triumph. He declines to recognize a triumph of the Eastern emperor Heraclius in 629: this was the mere shadow of a triumph, not a true one (460). Panvinio's wide historical conspectus shows many instances of translatio imperii and a variety of claimants to imperial and triumphal status, including claimants of differing religions. Panvinio's writings locate his treatment of the triumph among the sixteenth-century debates over the imperial succession and the demarcation between secular and religious authority. All this makes it clear that the triumph has had a long history of renovation and appropriation, and confirms for Englishmen the possibility of staking their own claims to its dignity.

2 Petrarch's poetic renouatio of triumph antedates the historical researches of Valturio, Biondo, and Panvinio, which it doubtless helped inspire. Petrarch's own antiquarian studies give close attention to Roman arms in general: he praises the learning and courage of Rome's generals and the discipline of its armies as the basis of its empire and its system of justice.30 Petrarch's poetry represents the triumph as the epitome of Rome's republican virtues. In his Punic War epic, Africa, he catalogues the awesome triumphal spoils accumulated in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus: L[i]mina, quam innumeris iam tunc calcata triumphis . . . uariisque grauatos

Bellorum eximiis arcus, et crebra uidentes

Signa triumphorum.

[The threshold which had already been trodden by numberless triumphs, arches laden with the varied spoils of wars, and the massed emblems of triumphs.]





Sic tandem insueto capitolia celsa triumpho Ingreditur, gratesque Deis persoluit amicis . . . tristesque querelas Inuidiae, procerum crimen, culpamque senatus Non referam populique nefas. [Finally, in a triumph the like of which has never been seen, Scipio mounts to the lofty Capitol and offers his thanks to the gods who have been favourable to him. I shall not narrate the sad complaints of envy, the misdeeds of rulers, the errors of the senate and the wickedness of the people.]31

Petrarch's cycle of vernacular Triumphi incorporates the agonistic character of the military triumph into its contests between chastity and love, fame and death, and eternity and time. The received view of the Triumphi is that they transform the martial and political content of the Roman triumph into ethical and religious terms. This is only a halftruth. On the one hand, it misrepresents much of Petrarch's content: though his frame is allegorical or conceptual, much of his material is historical. On the other hand, it disregards the fact that the ancient triumph had its own ethical and religious content. The received view also tends to suppose that allegorical triumphs or triumphs of love in the early modern period derive from Petrarch, forgetting that Ovid too had devised such poetic variations on the theme. Petrarch's Triumphi were certainly influential: the following brief discussion concentrates on the ways in which they transmit to early modern Europe a humanistic reverence for uirtus, fame, and conquest, as well as the ways in which Petrarch expands or varies those features of triumphal ideology. In Triumphus Fame, humanistic Romanitas predominates startlingly over Christian piety. Challenging Triumphus Mortis and its empire of death, this poem adduces not the efficacy of faith but the power of the triumph and its poetry to reward and perpetuate human attainment. Where the Roman triumphator receives at the height of his fame a reminder of his mortality, Petrarch inverts the practice, reminding the Christian reader of the rewards of fame in spite of mortality. In discarding customary Christian admonition, Petrarch defies the teaching of his spiritual mentor Augustine, who in Book v of The City of God warns



The climax of Africa is the glorious Carthaginian triumph of Scipio. Here Petrarch introduces the tragic fragility of triumph, counterpoising jubilation with a prolepsis of Scipio's disgrace and exile:


53

gente de ferro e di valore armata: sõÁ come in Campidoglio al tempo antico talora o per via Sacra o per via Lata venian tutti. [A race armed with steel and with valour, just as in ancient times they all came to the Capitol, sometimes along the Via Sacra, sometimes along the Via Lata.]32

As he witnesses this triumph, the awestruck Petrarch matches the faces of these warriors, ìl buon popol di Marte' (ii. 2), to the descriptions he has read of them. Triumphus Fame gives special prominence to republican heroes: mythical early figures like Horatius Cocles, Cincinnatus, and Camillus; the conqueror Scipio; and the last hope of the republic, Pompey. Kings and emperors appear later and more briefly. As triple triumphator and republican champion, Pompey is worthy to be compared to the divine triumphators Bacchus and Hercules: `forse era il primo, e certo era fra noi / qual Bacco, Alcide, Epaminonda a Tebe' [he was perhaps the foremost of all, and certainly he had among us the stature of Bacchus, or Hercules, or Epaminondas at Thebes] (i. 92±3). A contingent of warrior women includes Zenobia, once led by Aurelian in a triumph to whose glory Petrarch and his readers lay claim, as posthumous citizens of Rome: àl nostro triumfo ricco soma' [the glorious climax of our triumph] (ii. 117). Petrarch's poetry of fame is able to raise Zenobia from the captive's place of shame, endowing her with a share in the glory of the triumphator who conquered her, and so reversing the customary direction of Fortune's wheel. In his rival triumphs of Cupid and of Chastity, Petrarch writes from a more orthodox Christian position. The Triumphus Cupidinis imitates the triumph of Cupid in Ovid's Amores, but Petrarch rectifies Ovid's libertinism, as well as vastly amplifying Ovid's use of the topoi of triumph. In both these ways he seeks to outdo Ovid. Triumphus Cupidinis opens Petrarch's cycle with the nostalgic apparition of a Roman triumphator. This figure revives the memory of a military uirtus that in Petrarch's age has vanished or transformed into a boastful triumphalism:



against the temptations of fame, instancing especially the Romans' thirst for military fame. Petrarch's triumph of Fame is however led by just such avid Roman victors:

Vidi un vittorioso e sommo duce, pur com'un di color che 'n Campidoglio triunfal carro a gran gloria conduce. I' che gioir di tal vista non soglio, per lo secol noioso in ch'i' mi trovo, voÁto d'ogni valor, pien d'ogn'orgoglio . . . [I saw a victorious and supreme general, just like one of those borne to great glory in a triumphal chariot on the Capitoline. I am unaccustomed to rejoice in such a sight, thanks to the spiritless age in which I live ± devoid of all valour, stuffed with every kind of pride.]33

Since no age is free from Cupid's conquests, Petrarch's catalogue of Cupid's captives is exhaustive. There are Biblical and Arthurian persons, poets of love, even Olympian gods ± the chief of whom fills the place of the principal captive: `veÁn catenato Giove innanzi al carro' [before the chariot came Jove in chains] (i. 160). There are the tragic lovers of classical mythology, such as Paris and Helen, Jason and Medea, Phaedra and Hippolytus. There are Roman rulers and emperors, such as Aeneas, Caesar and Augustus, showing how the turn of Fortune's wheel ± not now arbitrary, but driven by the fallen human will ± converts Mars's triumphators into Cupid's captives. The conqueror David too finds himself conquered, shut away in a voluntary and remorseful version of the imprisonment of a doomed king in a triumph: Cupid `sforzalo a far l'opra / onde poi pianga in loco oscuro e cavo' [compelled him to that act for which later he wept in a dark and hollow cave] (iii. 41±2). Petrarch's melancholy and relentless catalogue of Cupid's captives produces the recognition that love conquers all and rules everywhere. This realization expresses itself in the triumphal language of vast number and imperial exoticism. Where triumphs ratify conquest by naming and computing the conquered, the vast scale of Cupid's triumph disables this function (ii. 136±41): Non menoÁ tanti armati in Grecia Serse quanti ivi erano amanti ignudi e presi, tal che l'occhio la vista non sofferse: varii di lingue e varii di paesi, tanto che di mille un non seppi il nome, e fanno istoria quei pochi ch'i' 'ntesi.





55

In a striking variation of the conventions of triumphal narrative, Petrarch positions himself with the captives who are led in chains into an alien city (here, Venus's realm of Cyprus): `straccati per selve e per montagne, / tal che nesun sapea in qual mondo fosse' [led exhausted through forests and mountains, so that none knew in what part of the world they were] (iv. 98±9). The frieze on a triumphal arch displays the illusions of lovers, and the prison to which the defeated general was consigned gives a moral significance to their sufferings (iv. 139±50): errori e sogni et imagini smorte eran d'intorno a l'arco triumfale, e false opinioni in su le porte . . . carcer ove si veÁn per strade aperte, onde per strette a gran pena si migra. [Illusions and dreams and bleak images surrounded the triumphal arch, and mistaken ideas were over the portals . . . it was a prison approached by broad paths but left by narrow and difficult ones.]

The conquests of Cupid are not only personal or ethical; they also play a part on the political and imperial stage. It is cupidinous love that has overthrown Tarquin's rule and Paris's Troy (iv. 120), so that even love serves the city's mysterious destiny. On the other hand, virtuous love shows its power even in the face of political defeat, as in the example of the loving Scipio and his faithful Cornelia. By treating redemptive along with destructive love, Petrarch rewrites and contests the Ovidian triumph of Cupid. He seeks to outdo Ovid even more strikingly in the Triumphus Pudicitie, where Laura leads a counter-triumph, in which it is now Cupid who is bound (124±5), and in which Fortune's wheel turns again: `triumfar vidi di colui che pria / veduto avea del mondo triumfare' [I saw her triumph over those whom before I had seen triumph over the whole world].34 Astonishingly, Laura's triumphant army consists of women ± Lucrece, Penelope, Judith, a Dido now vindicated against vulgar opinion. These warrior women surpass Caesar in ardour (70±5) and they overthrow their opponent as abruptly and gloriously as David



[Even Xerxes did not lead into Greece as many soldiers as in that place there were naked, captive lovers ± so many that the eye could not take them all in. They spoke many tongues and came from many lands; they were so numerous that among a thousand I did not know the name of a single one, but the few that I did know provided enough material for my narrative.]


NeÂ 'l triunfo non suo seguire spiacque a lui che, se credenza non eÁ vana, sol per triunfi e per imperii nacque. [A man who, if report is true, was born for nothing but triumphs and command was not displeased to march in another's triumph.]

The Triumphi are a humanist encyclopedia, Petrarch's homage to the ancients, whose magna nomina parade verbally across his pages like triumphators through the streets of Rome. At the same time, the poems are a display of Petrarch's own learning and poetic art. The poet himself assumes in a sense the role of triumphator, marshalling the ancients like troops or captives in his own triumph. In their vast historical and geographical scope his triumphs outdo all their predecessors, ceremonial and literary, and in their poetic permanence they also guarantee the perpetuation of fame more certainly than any fugitive ceremony. Writing in a diminished age devoid of triumphs, Petrarch has made himself the equal or the superior of his ancient model, Ovid ± a feat like that of the triumphator who wins his victory against the most formidable rival. Girolamo Savonarola's Triumphus crucis (1497) appropriates the humanist revival of triumph to a purified Christianity that resolutely elevates Christianity over paganism, piety over learning. Savonarola describes his subject as Gloriosum crucis triumphum contra huius seculi sapientes garrulosque sophistas [the glorious triumph of the cross over those who are wise in this world and over chattering sophists].35 In his attack on false learning, Savonarola is willing to make learned use of the classical triumph. He represents the crucified Christ and his church, àd sensibilem imaginem sub specie currus triumphalis redacta cuilibet etiam rudi ingenio quasi palpanda' [as a tangible image in the form of a triumphal chariot, made easy to grasp by even the simplest mind] (119). Savonarola's Christ is the paradoxical triumphator who entered Jerusalem to meet his death and who serves as model for Tertullian's martyrs, embracing defeat in this world to win victory in the next. Christ rides as a triumphator, but instead of being garbed as the god-king of the Romans



overthrew Goliath or Scipio Hannibal (97±103). Scipio, who had appeared in the triumph of Cupid, appears again in the triumph of Chastity. Even as he manifests the ambition for triumph that burns in the noble heart, Scipio proves his surpassing nobility by his willingness to join in a triumph not his own (175±7):

57

he shows his wounds like a human soldier, or even a defeated captive: ànte ora constituamus currum quatuor uectum rotis, et super eo more triumphantis Christum spinis coronatum . . . plagarum liuorem totiusque cruentati corporis cicatrice et uulnera ostendentem' [let us set before our eyes a four-wheeled chariot, and on it, in the guise of a triumphator, Christ crowned with thorns . . . displaying the bruises made by blows, and scars, and wounds] (119). This triumphator displays as his insignia the cross and the instruments of the passion ± in Roman terms, marks of a shameful death, not of victory. Before his chariot walk apostles and preachers, patriarchs and prophets; surrounding it walk martyrs and doctors; following it, in the place of the triumphator's army, walks a great crowd, like the one that viewed the triumph at Rome: ìnfinita multitudo utriusque sexus et omnis generis et sortis hominum. Iudaeorum scilicet, Graecorum, Latinorum ac Barbarorum tam diuitum quam pauperum, sapientum, eruditorum, idiotarum et cuiuslibet aetatis plaudentium' [a numberless crowd of both sexes, and all races and all conditions. In other words, a jubilant crowd made up of Jews, Greeks, Romans and barbarians; both rich and poor; the wise, the learned and the simple; people of every age] (119±20). This crowd of all nations recalls the exotic captives put on display in the triumphs of pagan Rome. In Savonarola's Catholic church, however, as in Biondo's, those who were formerly subjects are welcomed by faith into the crowd of victors. As in Biondo, too, the spiritual victory of the Cross and the maintenance or extension of Christ's kingdom must be achieved partly through combat in this world. The triumph therefore displays as trophies the shattered idols of pagans and the burnt books of heretics (120): Savonarola does not share Biondo's willingness to accommodate or adapt pagan practices. The train of the conquered displays the enemies of the church, whether emperors, kings and princes, or sages, philosophers and heretics. Strictly, Savonarola's conquered do not form a train, but press in all round the triumph (120). The result is a sense of pervasive menace, which must be answered by continuing struggle: Savonarola's triumph does not celebrate the definitive victory and the routed enemy required by the ius triumphandi. The militarism of Roman triumph seems especially compatible with Savonarola's temperament, as it will be with Milton's. In both writers, truth conquers through combat on the mental battlefield: ùeritas maxime aperitur, cum acerrime impugnatur. Quia in conflictu ipsa per se emergit. Cum ergo doctrina Christiana a summis tam philosophis quam tyrannis ualidissime oppugnata semper insuperabilis fuerit' [truth is best revealed when it is most fiercely attacked,




because in conflict it appears illuminated by its own light. When therefore Christian doctrine is most vigorously assaulted, whether by philosophers or tyrants, it will always be unconquerable] (150; cf. 216). To the apocalyptic Savonarola, God himself will shortly exact his vengeance on pagans and heretics and will shortly renew his church (246). In the meantime men must rouse themselves to a crusade: `non satis est nostra construere, nisi ea quoque a destruentibus defendamus. Reliquum est, ut fidei aduersariis occurramus' [it is not enough to build our own house, unless we also defend it from destroyers. It remains for us to take measures against the adversaries of the faith] (176). Like Biondo before him and Spenser and Milton after him, Savonarola writes out of a conviction that history is at a crisis that will either subvert or vindicate true religion. The culminating challenge for Christians is to free the nations held captive by the infidel Turk. These captives may then march like freed Romans as the most glorious sight in the triumph: òpere Mahumetis innumeros populos ab imperio ipsius Christi subduci et ad alias leges compelli' [by the work of Mahomet a multitude of peoples have been stolen from the empire of Christ and forced to submit to other laws] (243). The Triomphe de la Foi (1574) of Guillaume Du Bartas translates the visionary triumphs of Petrarch and Savonarola into a distinctly Protestant language. Du Bartas makes his triumphator not the crucified Christ of Catholic devotion but a personification of Faith. He renders the pagan festivity not in Christian terms merely, but in terms suited to knowledgeable students of scripture: Faith sits triumphant in a Carr of gold,

Of Tubal's making . . .

Her glorious Charrets rowling wheels are like

The holy wheels the great Ezechiel saw.36

When he imitates Petrarch's encyclopedic catalogues of soldiers and captives, he accords the highest honour to those spiritual warriors who were distinguished by the virtue of faith, and when he reworks Savonarola's agon between the truth of Christianity and the false certainties of reason, faith is for Du Bartas a sufficient synecdoche for his religion: `Let lively Faith my Reason still direct' (252). Occasionally Du Bartas adopts Roman customs. His triumphal chariot is drawn by an eagle, `The Bird that led the Roman Standards out' (249); victories are pictured in `curious Tables drawn by cunning hand . . . after guise of warlik Romans' (254). But for the most part Roman features are introduced only to be





59

Faith flaunts it not in silver, silk, nor gold,

Nor precious scarlet of the Tyrian Dy,

Nor paints her face to hide deformity;

But, as shee is, shee doth her self unfold.

Her crown is `Not made of Olive, Pine, or Laurell bough' (249) but of unfading roses ± thus outdoing the triumphator, who remains subject to Fortune's mutability. Du Bartas's personified Faith is a paradoxical triumphator: a female victor, who wins her victories without weapons. In contrast to the pagan triumphator, who assumes godlike status only briefly and perilously, she has the power to sway the will of God himself: `the Giver of this Faith (wee see) / Seem to incline and bow unto her still' (255). Her troops include allegorical maidens such as Constancy, Charity and Repentance, but also the men of war who must on occasion fight her battles, `SaintSouldiers' such as Joshua, Gideon and David. Faith's prisoners include the kings whom Reason has lured away or who have persecuted her ± kings from Biblical history, Roman emperors, Goths and Vandals. They include also the kings of France who have persecuted Protestants, `That all the Earth with bloud of Saints distain'd, / And Christ his Church with Fire and Sword did waste' (250). The display of these kings threatens to make Du Bartas's poem a civil war triumph, but, as the writings of the English Civil War will later do, it conforms itself to the ius triumphandi by translating its conflict into the triumph of godly nation over ungodly nation, or the triumph of Christ over `the Beast that bears the purple Whore / (Great Anti-Christ usurping powr Divine)' (253). For Biondo, `the sweetest evidence of victory is when you can compel those whom you have long feared to be led in defeat to their punishment.' In Du Bartas's Protestant poem, one of the enemies thus overthrown is Biondo's own triumphator, the pope. The chief captive, who marches immediately before Faith's chariot, is her deceptive double, Reason. Along with this captive walk worldly writers, pagan philosophers and heretics, who, like false Reason, disguise themselves as Faith's soldiers. Faith has succeeded in unmasking these enemies, who are treacherous like Sinon or devious like the Jesuits. The existence of such enemies nevertheless gives Du Bartas's poem an uneasy edge, suggesting that the spiritual victories of Faith cannot in



surpassed by reformed Christianity. Thus Faith rejects the opulence of the pagan triumphator ± and, by implication, its revival by the Bishop of Rome, which Biondo applauded and promoted (249):

this world have the conclusiveness that was demanded of the Roman triumphator. Like Savonarola, Du Bartas expects continuing warfare in a harsh world where one sees `Babel triumphing over Sion still: / And on the Good th'Ungodly work their will' (255). Faith does however have one unambiguous arch-enemy, the prophet Mahomet, who appears as another version of the defeated king. The military threat of Islam turns the poem from allegorical to actual warfare, and to a another striking version of the long-feared enemy meeting his punishment (250): But who is this, that, loaden so with chains, By thousand hang-men racked with despight, By thousand Furies tortur'd day and night, For god-less deeds receives so righteous pains? 'Tis Mahomet, who more by Mavors Art, Than's Alcaron (Bird of a Friers nest) Hath all subdu'd the wealthy golden East, And won withall the triple world's best part. The Prophet's punishments offer imaginary compensation for his actual threat, as a formidable military opponent and also, with his vast and opulent conquests, as a challenger to the translatio imperii. The menace of Mahomet's warriors ± Saladin, Amurath, Solyman ± is renewed now by the threat of Selim II, `Who (by our Kings strange jars) so richly thrives, / That (proud) hee threats both Germany and Spain' (251). This fact elicits an apostrophe against the internecine wars of Christendom and a call for a united crusade (251): Forget then, Christians, your un-Christian jarrs

(Your civill strife for wagging of a straw)

Joyn hearts and hands, and all joint weapons draw

In Faith's defence to fight Jehova's warrs.

In Asi' and Egypt make your forces knowne:

Recover Gaza, Antioch, Ascalon,

Tyre, Sidon, Joppa, and King Davids Throne,

And Famagosta, lost a yeer agon.

Du Bartas catalogues not the proud conquests of the triumphator but a sorry series of defeats. These defeats reach to the date of writing, with the Turkish capture of Cypriot Famagusta in 1571. Du Bartas's complaint is directed particularly against the Catholic monarchy of France, whose




61

recently renewed alliance with Turkey had contributed to the loss.37 Nevertheless, in the face of the Turkish threat, Du Bartas sets aside sectarian differences. He renews Biondo's call for a European crusade, and, like Biondo, he looks to a triumph that will celebrate the victory of a united Christendom over its formidable Muslim foe. Like Savonarola, Du Bartas foresees an apocalyptic battle and the certainty of an ultimate triumph (252): soon shall wee see Faith's glory shine. Satan (perceiving nie His prides Eclipse) his greatest force doth try To stop great Faith's triumphant Victory. The many translations of Du Bartas by Joshua Silvester indicate an English readership sympathetic to his cultivation of Protestant triumphs.38 Silvester's publication of Triumph of Faith in 1592 both celebrates the victories of Protestant England over Spain and urges Elizabeth to further action in the Netherlands and at sea. English and continental celebrations of the Armada victory combined, like Du Bartas, triumphs of Protestantism with appeals for a unified Christian crusade against Islam. Later writers would, like Du Bartas, reinterpret civil war as a war of cosmic opposites allowing the celebration of triumphs, and would urge King James and Protector Cromwell yet again to lead unrealized crusades against the Turkish empire. The writer whose handling of the triumph most fully shares Du Bartas's prophetic and apocalyptic Reformation strain is Spenser. The Romish beast triumphs over Spenser's Redcrosse, though Redcrosse eventually displays a dragonish beast in his own triumph. Like Du Bartas's Faith, Redcrosse is implicated in a continuing warfare and imperilled by disguised enemies, but in his eventual triumph, his Una will stand revealed. Like Du Bartas's Faith, who às shee is, shee doth her self unfold', Spenser's Una ìn her selferesemblance well beseene, / Did seeme such, as she was'.39




4

`Triumphes and boastes'

1 In appropriating the triumph for England, Protestant polemic first denied it to papal Rome. For Biondo, the continuity between Rome's pagan and papal triumphs amalgamated temporal and spiritual rule in a renouatio imperii. For Barnabe Googe, in The Popish Kingdome, or Reigne of Antichrist (1570), papal triumphs represent mere temporal presumption. Googe repeats Erasmus's criticisms of the indecorous warrior demeanour and military triumphs of Julius II, which have transformed Christian shepherd into marauding wolf: Thus glistering all in armour brave, with spoyle and pillage rife, He closeth stately townes with trenche, and threatneth losse of life Unto his foes, with cannon shot he battereth downe a pace, The loftie walles, or lying long doth cause them sue for grace. And yelde for feare of famine up, their townes and goods withall, Then puttes he whome he list to sworde, for wordes and trespasse small. And so to Rome returneth straite, his triumph with him ledde.1 English triumphs follow Du Bartas in contesting and imbuing with Protestant militancy Catholic versions like Savonarola's. Barnabe Barnes's seizure of the triumph in his Divine Centurie of Spirituall Sonnets (1595) helps give his poem its powerful energy, which anticipates Donne's Holy Sonnets by simultaneously exploding its matter into a vast cosmic spectacle and imploding it into the density of sonnet form. 62



Elizabethans and the Armada

Elizabethans and the Armada 63

Armies of Angelles, Myriades of Saintes,

Millions of Emperours, and holy Kings,

Legions of sacred Patriarkes he brings,

Which his rebellious foes with feare attaintes.

Whose spirit at thy puisant spirit faintes,

(Great Lord of Lordes) whose sacred armis singes

Triumphant Peans, and new musicke bringes

In glorious phrase, which thy sweete glorie payntes:

Whilst under thy tryumphant chariot wheeles,

Rowling upon the starres, thy captives lye

In quenchlesse fiery lake, whose spirit feeles

An endlesse torment in captivitye:

When thy fowre sweete Evangelistes ride by

(Like corporalles) proclayming victorye.2

Peopled by armies, legions and captives, Christ's triumph is heavily militarized; even `sweete Evangelistes' have warrior rank. Moreover, this militarization and its triumphal topoi serve a recognizably Protestant cause. The triumphal rhetoric of number discloses not only the magnitude of Christ's battalions and empire but also the fact that it is the whole army of the elect ± not the few whom Rome presumed to canonize ± that constitute his `Myriades of Saintes'. `Triumphant Peans, and new musicke' connote the liturgy of the reformed church, with its new repertoire of psalm chants and hymns. The prominence of emperors and kings in the sacred procession cancels papal primacy and acknowledges the monarch's rank as supreme head of the English church. Barnes's spiritual sonnet and its apocalyptic triumph proclaim a Protestantism girding itself for battle with the papal antichrist. The queen herself was the principal actor in Elizabethan triumphs, actual and imaginary, but the role had its anomalies. For the Romans, a female triumphator was an impossibility: the function of a queen in their triumphal economy was to walk as a captive or, more nobly, to take her life. Livy praises Sophonisba, Horace Cleopatra, and Tacitus Boudicca for exercising this female version of uirtus.3 Elizabeth was, moreover, a reluctant warrior. Writers of militant stamp could hope to



Barnes unseats the Virgin Mary from the place in the chariot that she occupies in Savonarola. Christ himself becomes sole triumphator, while his closest auxiliaries, riding beside his chariot like the triumphator's sons, become the pre-eminent saints of Biblical Protestantism, the holy evangelists:

overcome her caution by modelling her as the warrior she might yet prove to be. Elizabeth's sex also furnished the opportunity for variations on triumphal themes through the trope quanto magis: whatever glory might accrue to male triumphators, so much the more must accrue to a female. The queen fills the role of military triumphator, and England of new Rome, in Accession Day verses for 1573 written by the High Master and pupils of St Paul's School. These poems translate England's army into legions, its Privy Council into a senate, and Elizabeth into a victorious imperator: Splendida spectatae redieÃrunt tempora lucis, È cuius laeta cum uoce triumphe, Dicit Io Et renouat ueteres dulci modulamine saltus, Clangit in Angligenis tara tantara buccina campis, . . . Anglia tuta tuos canit ELISABETHA triumphos, . . . Anglica sic tellus tua saepe trophaea sonabit, Semper et infestis uictrix remigrabit ab armis. [The glorious days of our light and hope have returned. Of her, one proclaims Io triumphe with joyful voice and resumes the ancient dances accompanied by sweet melody, while the war trumpet rings out in the battlefields of the English nation. A secure England sings your triumphs, Elizabeth. Thus the English land will sing often of your trophies, and always the queenly victor will thus return from the shock of hostile arms.]4

The year 1573 had in truth been a disappointing one for militant hopes, with the withdrawal of English forces from the Low Countries (after an initial show of support for the rebels), and a cautious rapprochement with France (despite the St Bartholomew massacre of August 1572). The activity hailed in these verses must be England's modest military intervention in the Scottish civil wars, which contributed to the surrender of Edinburgh Castle and the weakening of the Catholic party.5 In a pattern that will be often repeated, this exaggerated salute to the Scottish campaign is more an exhortation to the queen and her Council to earn triumphs by committing themselves to the military defence of Protestantism. Such urgings are renewed more directly and fervently in the crisis years of the 1580s. Lodowick Lloyd's Triumphs of Trophes (1586) celebrates the overthrow of the Babington plot to assassinate the queen, which implicated Mary Queen of Scots and led to her trial and eventual




execution. The Babington plot therefore brought together fears of conspiracy, Mary's danger as a gathering point for disaffection, and the threat from her supporters, France and Spain. Lloyd, a courtier and minor poet with a speciality in triumphal lore, was one who believed it necessary to meet this joint menace by war.6 In Triumphs of Trophes English jubilation for the queen's safety outdoes the triumphs of all the ancients: Ìf Rome of Romane Triumphes earst was oft so glad / . . . then England leap, and laugh aloud for queene enioyd.' Lloyd's superabundant exhilaration licenses him to add an unusually direct call to arms: Though you the Lambe imbrace, the Lion is your beast, for mercie must with iustice ioine to rule a land. Cleanse Augeus hall, destroy Stymphalides seede, your souldiers readie preast, do stand in aray.7 At Rome, the joyfulness of triumph was earned only through the total destruction of the enemy. Even more than the triumphs of Savonarola or Du Bartas, anxiously encompassed by enemies, Lloyd's triumph is pointedly incomplete. Rather than returning from war, the queen's soldiers still stand ready to depart for war. Lloyd adapts the role of the triumphator's attendant by warning of immediate danger, not the general truth of mortality. In the context of 1586, Lloyd's teaching on the need to add justice to mercy, the lion to the lamb, joins his voice to the chorus urging the execution of Mary; his reference to soldiers ready pressed urges support for the English force sent to the Netherlands in 1585, which was commanded by the Earl of Leicester from 1586. These are dauntingly Herculean labours. The kingdom's Augean stables have been polluted by treachery within, while the devouring Stymphalian birds threaten from without in the form of Hapsburg eagles. But Hercules is also an encouraging model. Not only is the lion Elizabeth's heraldic beast (and the heraldic emblem of the Dutch republic that she is called to protect); Elizabeth also has the capacity to dress herself in Hercules's heroic garb, the Nemean lion's skin, and eventually to re-enact his role of triumphator. From the same anxious pre-Armada period dates Angell Day's Shepheards Holidaie (1587), in form a Spenserian pastoral, the poetic code of militant Protestantism. Day's Elizabeth is drawn by horses of baroque magnificence and energy, triumphing as a new Bellona among the warrior peers of her realm. An allusion to Scipio's triumph suggests that Elizabeth's England is destined to gain honour for the overthrow





The rurall gods, about [th]y chariot flocke,

That milke-white steeds of Pegase heavenly stocke,

With breathing nosthrils spatling fire amaine,

Do trampling drawe, and fomie bits constraine. . . .

Of youthfull peeres eke issue foorth a route

That fiercely mounted hie thy chayre about,

Like to the traine that once Bellona led,

When on her altars prowde they incense shed

Triumphant on the honor and the spoile,

That fell to Rome by mightie Affrickes foile.8

The hopeful vision of a warrior Elizabeth among her peers may be a salute to Leicester as he returned for the last time to his Netherlands command, in June 1587.9 This departure was soon followed by Leicester's last failure, the loss of the strategic port of Sluys, and by his ignominious return to England in December. If the poem postdates the loss of Sluys, it shows a reaction to the queen's defeatism and discouragement at this period. Ì never saw Her Majesty's disposition so unfit for war as at present', noted a court informant. This disposition was confirmed by Elizabeth's entry into secret negotiations with the Spanish, which was widely known or rumoured.10 If from early 1587, Day's poem praises the queen for adopting the warlike posture in which he depicts her; if from late, it urges her to maintain that posture by prophesying eventual conquest in spite of current discouragement.

2 Elizabethan England claimed its climactic triumph with the Armada campaign in 1588.11 The victory of a lesser power over Hapsburg Spain proved that Protestantism was capable of surviving the onslaught of Catholic reaction. This resilience seemed to be confirmed by events in France, where the intransigently Catholic Duc de Guise was assassinated later in 1588, and the new Protestant king, Henri IV, won military victories over the Catholic League in 1589±90. This moment of Protestant ascendancy, and England's role as its leader, occasioned an eruption of triumphal ceremonies and writings. In Madrid, Philip II



of its rival across the sea and gain spoil from the riches of a new continent. As the conquest of African Carthage assured the survival and predominance of Rome's empire, the conquest of Spain and Spanish America will do the same for England's:

was said to have been shaken by his failure, thus enacting the melancholy role of the defeated king. In London, the severity of the Armada threat and the magnitude of the victory persuaded even Queen Elizabeth and the undemonstrative Burghley to indulge in a renouatio of martial triumph. The English fleet did not defeat the Armada in a single, decisive battle. Uncertainty hung over the high summer of Èighty-eight' until news of Spanish wrecks on the Irish coast reached London in late September, two months after the first engagements. Even then, England had won only a defensive victory that left open the possibility of renewed Spanish attack. There could be no single efflorescence of celebration, nor could the Armada triumphs boast the complete overthrow of the longfeared enemy, or the extension of empire, or the rich spoils that accompanied it ± though all this could be expected to follow with God's continued blessing. The ceremonies for the Armada victory were somewhat diffuse and improvised, yet revealing in these very qualities, and in the ways they both approximate to and diverge from the Roman model. The paucity of ceremony was redressed by abundant literary production, from ambitious odes and epic fragments in Latin to modest vernacular pamphlets. These writings variously gave thanks to God, recorded the Protestant victory for posterity, publicized it to the wider world, gave it prophetic resonance, and cashed in on popular enthusiasm or fear.12 The celebrations centred on Elizabeth, who triumphed not only as head of the nation (like a Roman emperor) but also as commander in the field (like a republican imperator). In the mythology of the Armada victory, Elizabeth assumed this role on her visit to Tilbury on 8 August. Here, on the Essex coast near the mouth of the Thames, a land force under the Earl of Leicester was mustered to meet the Spanish invaders. In her address to the army at Tilbury, the queen discarded the allegorical conquests of Elizabethan court compliment and prepared to join actual battle: I am come amongst you . . . not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of battle, to live or die amongst you all . . . I my self will take up arms, I my self will be your general.13 She assumes the role of a warrior queen fighting the invader ± in British terms, a new Boudicca fighting a new attempt to impose the rule of Rome; in classical terms, a Tomyris, the queen who resisted the mighty Cyrus, or a Penthesilea, the Amazon general who fought at Troy.14 James Aske's Elizabetha Triumphans acknowledges the military role that Elizabeth assumed at Tilbury (777±80):





By the time of the queen's visit, the Armada had retreated, and the threat of invasion had in fact passed. Dispatches to this effect from the Lord Admiral arrived at Tilbury shortly after the queen's address.15 The timing was exquisitely apt: at the moment of assuming the role of general, Elizabeth assumed also the role of victor, and the plaudits of her army corresponded to the Roman army's acclamation of a victorious general as imperator. The link between visit and victory is written into the title and form of Aske's Elizabetha Triumphans, à declaration of the manner how her excellency was entertained by her Souldyers into her Campe Royal at Tilbery in Essex: and of the overthrow had against the Spanish fleete'. The Tilbury triumph likewise celebrates the link between England as God's elect nation, a new Israel, and England as earthly conqueror, a renovated Rome. This dual destiny is inscribed in Aske's description of the queen's chariot, an English verson of the chariot that Biondo imagined for his popes. On the one hand, the Elizabethan fantasticality of its encrusted jewels alludes to the New Jerusalem, `garnished with all maner of precious stones' (Revelation 21:19, Geneva). On the other hand, it endows the queen of England with the dignity of the classical queen of the gods: He happy was that could but see hir Coatch, The sides where of beset with Emmerods, And Diomonds with sparkling Rubies red . . . Thrise happy they who sawe her stately selfe, Who Iuno-like drawne with her proudest birds, Whose tayles do hold her Heard-mans hundred eyes, Passed along through quarters of the Campe.16 A painting in St Faith's Church, Gaywood, King's Lynn (Plate 6), also shows Elizabeth riding in triumph at Tilbury, with a scroll quoting from Claudian's triumph poem for Theodosius: Ò nimium dilecta Deo, tibi militat aether / Et coniurati ueniunt ad classica uenti' [dearly loved of God, the sky fights on your side, and the winds, your allies, come at the call of the trumpet].17 The first triumphal procession in London, a parade of battle trophies, took place on 8 September, even before it was certain that the Armada



Thus comes our Queene (our thrise renowned Queene)

A Generall beseeming such a Campe:

Thus comes our guide, a princely carefull guide,

In war-like sorte to see her warring men.

had been defeated and destroyed. Far from displaying the Roman bond between elite and people, the management of this improvised event uses triumphal convention for the official manipulation and control of public opinion. In a combination characteristic of the Elizabethan regime, it shows at once a skilful reading and a profound mistrust of popular sentiment. Its story is told in The Copie of a Letter sent out of England to Don Bernadin Mendoza Ambassadour in France for the King of Spaine, declaring the state of England, contrary to the opinion of Don Bernadin, and of all his partizans Spaniardes and others (1588). The pamphlet is a riposte to the writings issued under Spanish auspices in support of the Armada. It purports to print a letter written by a well-wisher to Spain and found in the chamber of a Romish priest in England. In fact, the Copie of a Letter emanated from the office of Burghley, and was the work of the Secretary himself.18 According to the Copie of a Letter, the London triumph originated when it was published, and of many beleeved, that the Lordes of Spain . . . had determined of sundry manners of cruell death, both of the Nobilitie, and the rest of the people. . . . [I]t was reported that there were . . . certain Irons graven with markes, to be heated for the marking of all the children in their faces, being under seven yeeres of age: that they might be knowen hereafter to have bene the children of the conquered Nation. Indignant at this barbarism, some Englishmen wished to kill Spanish prisoners, but `the wiser sort of men' deflected their vengefulness: to content the people with some other matter, there was upon Sunday last, at the request of the Maior and his brethren, a great number of Banners, Streamers, and Ensignes, which were wonne from the Spanish Navie, brought to Paules Church-yard, and there shewed openly in the Sermon time, to the great reioysing of all the people. And afterwards they were carried to the crosse in Cheap, and afterwards to London bridge: whereby the former rage of the people was greatly asswaged, the fury generally converted into triumph.19 Burghley's triumph is a limen between war and peace, converting fury into rejoicing. But it subtly modifies the original conventions. The Mayor speaks on behalf of the people, like a Roman tribune, but he directs their indignation into a channel ordained by the authorities. The




triumph displays the long-feared but now defeated enemy not in person but symbolically, and it has the purpose of saving prisoners, not killing or enslaving them. Burghley's propaganda demonstrates that England's governors act according to the Christian rules of war, surpassing pagan Romans and barbaric Spaniards alike. Though he is willing to retail the atrocity stories with their apocalyptic reverberations, Burghley is reluctant to commit himself to their truth. He may be playing the part of the Spanish sympathizer, unwilling to believe such stories, and so drawing all the more attention to their horror. Or he may prefer to protect even Spanish authorities from the unschooled condemnation of the London populace. Burghley's show of moderation and virtue is not all that it seems, however. He conceals the fact that in Ireland, where it was feared the Spanish might still attempt to land and might find popular support, the English authorities themselves killed Spanish prisoners. The document thus seeks to protect England from charges of barbarism; in a classic propagandist strategy, it depicts the authorities forestalling the very activity that they actually practised. Moreover, any prisoners brought to London were likely to have been men of rank, who were held for ransom and thus too valuable to be killed.20 Such ransoms were kept in private or official hands, making a further difference from the Roman model, in which at least some of the spoils of war were distributed to soldiers and populace. In the privatized warfare of Elizabethan England, profits flowed back to the entrepreneurs who invested in it, while the people of London had to be content with a display of symbolic spoils.21 The grandest ceremony for the Armada victory took place on 24 November, with Elizabeth in the role of triumphator. According to Hakluyt's Voyages, the Queenes Majestie herselfe, imitating the ancient Romans, rode into London in triumph, in regard of her owne and her subjects glorious deliverance. For being attended upon very solemnely by all the principall estates and officers of her Realme, she was carried thorow her sayd City of London in a tryumphant chariot, and in robes of triumph, from her Palace unto the Cathedrall Church of Saint Paul, out of the which the ensignes and colours of the vanquished Spaniards hung displayed.22 Other Armada writings amplify this account of a triumph all'antica, some by detailing the ceremony, some by transforming it into an ideal version.





[F]or ships they have built them like Castels: for men, made choyse of expert and mightie: for munition, they have much and marueilous . . . so manie and mightie Monarchies against so smal and litle an Iland: such huge ships against so small pinases.23 A Spanish propaganda pamphlet published before the expedition, cataloguing the fleet's enormous resources was now translated into English. The turn of Fortune's wheel converts Spain's premature triumphing not to tragedy but to comedy: `to take (as the Lord bee praised they have) so strange repulse, is in respect of the trust and confidence they put in them, and of the triumphes and boastes before the victorie they made in divers places . . . to be derided and laughed at.'24 In accordance with the ius triumphandi, the threat of the formidable enemy had (allegedly) been annihilated: `Thus the magnificent, huge, and mighty fleet of the Spaniards (which themselves termed in all places invincible) such as sayled not upon the Ocean sea many hundreth yeeres before, in the yeere 1588 vanished into smoake.'25 The enemy was fearsome not only in its size but in its barbarism: the Spanish are à people and Nation . . . extremely cruell and tyrannous as the Scithians.'26 The ceremonial Armada triumphs paraded no prisoners and no spoils except captured banners; nor did they have room for victorious English soldiers or sailors. The English forces had been dispersed as quickly as possible, in order that `by death, by discharging of sick men, and such like . . . there may be spared something in the general pay', as the frugal Burghley minuted.27 The Armada pamphlets paraded in print these missing elements. Papal bulls were reprinted and the impotence of their verbal weaponry exposed.28 The formidable resources boasted by Spanish propaganda became imaginary spoils, their quantities catalogued with the same satisfaction as in the ancient historians: `130 ships of 57 868 tunnes, 19 295 souldiers and 8 450 mariners, 2 088 slaves, and 2 630 great pieces of brasse of all sortes.'29 Lists of captives give the satisfaction of seeing the enemy led to his punishment, and impart the triumphal pleasure in the exotic: Ìohn Anthonio de Monona . . . Emanuell Fremosa a Portingall . . . Iohn de le Conido of Lekit in Biskey . . . Iohn Anthonio of Genua . . . Iohn Anthonio de Moneke xxx. miles from Ganna . . . Pierre Carra a Flemming.'30



Since the most `glorious deliverance' was achieved, and therefore the most signal triumphs were won, over the most formidable enemies, the magnitude of the Spanish enemy and the reversal of his triumphal hopes is a favoured theme in the Armada writings.


Tu, quae Romanas uoluisti spernere leges, Disces Hispano subdere colla iugo. [Thou England which the Romish lawes, long time hast now reiected,

Shalt learne ere long to Spanish yoke, thy necke shalbe subiected.]

The distichs drew poetic answers, also much reprinted, which hurl back defiance. This very defiance, and the recuperation of the Latin language, position England as successor to early Rome's uirtus and liberty: Scis cui Romanas spernit gens Anglica leges? Haud seruile ferunt libera colla iugum. [That English nation Romish lawes reiecteth, wot you why?

A people free to servile yoke is hardly brought to ply.]31

Burghley too makes the Armada victory an English challenge to modern Rome and an English claim to succeed ancient Rome. The Copie of a Letter boldly proclaims it urbi et orbi: `the whole world, from Rome to the uttermost parts of Christendome may see, that she and hir Realme, professing the Gospell of his sonne Christ, are kept and defended.'32 England, not Rome, becomes the object of men's wondering gaze, the global centre defined by the ceremony of triumph. The Armada victory drew more august literary notice, as Camden explains: `The Learned men, both at Home and abroad, congratulating the Victory with Hearts transported for Joy, wrote Triumphal Poems in all Languages upon this Subject.'33 These transports conjure imaginary triumphs of the utmost grandeur, and make the highest claims about the scale and significance of the victory. They make the campaign part of a wider religious and imperial Protestant crusade, something the authorities were wary of doing. The most ambitious of these high-style poems is Johann Kuehn's epic fragment of some 2 000 Latin lines, Naumachiae (Herborn, 1588). Kuehn's poem concludes with a triumph, a masterly specimen of Renaissance copia in over 400 lines. The pseudonymous N. Eleutherius edited Triumphalia de uictoriis Elisabethae ([n.p.], 1588), a collection of Latin and Greek verses, including another



The Armada triumphs played out a contest for the Roman inheritance. A collection of Latin distichs prophesying Spanish victory had been much reprinted in Spanish pamphlets. One conceit was that Spain would bring to an end England's history of resistance to the claims of Rome, ancient and modern:

epic fragment and odes, elegies and epigrams.34 Its poems are addressed to worthies of international Calvinism like Daniel Rogers, the English poet and diplomat resident in the Netherlands, and the Counts Palatine John and Frederick Casimir. It embeds the Armada campaign in a wide international context ± the war in the Low Countries, the religious wars in France, the inroads of the Ottoman empire in Hungary and of the Corsairs in the Mediterranean. In all these theatres of conflict, the poems of Triumphalia look hopefully to the demise of Hapsburg power or to its redirection against the common enemies of Christendom. A British counterpart to these continental productions is a Scots poem, The Triumph of the Lord, After the Manner of Men (Edinburgh, 1599; written 1589). Its author, Alexander Hume (1560?-1609), had studied law in the Paris of Catherine de' Medici, where he probably acquired both his very full knowledge of triumphal practice and his interest in applying the classical model to modern conditions. Hume's poem is the most learnedly and comprehensively Roman of sixteenth-century British triumphs. At the same time, it is the most assured and the most charming in naturalizing the Roman ceremony to a contemporary and local setting. These productions give a Christian application to the trope quanto magis: earthly human triumph is subordinated to, or included within, the universal triumph of God. One of the Triumphalia poems evokes but then forgoes a triumph all'antica in the hope of seeing the greater spectacle of true religion gaining its freedom.35 Hume announces a stupendous universal triumph, in the visionary mode of Savonarola or Barnes: Triumphant Lord of armies and of hostes,

Thou hes subdu'd the universall coastes: . . .

O captaines, kinges, and Christian men of weir,

Gar harraulds haist in coats of armor cleir,

For to proclaime with trumpet and with shout:

A great triumph th'univers throughout.36

When Hume narrates his imagined human triumph, he alludes to its Roman destination at the temple of Jupiter, and to the Roman custom of feasting the soldiers, but these originals transform into a Christian church and the eucharistic banquet (365±72): The great triumph this way sall take an end And all the hoste sall to the temple wend,




As custome is in well arrayed ranks,

With sacrifice of prayers and of thanks:

The soldarts stout sall all receave reward,

For lo, the Lord the banket hes prepaird:

To feede his hoste with heavenly livelie fude,

Even with his sonne Christs bodie and his blude.

The liturgical thanksgiving that concludes Naumachiae paraphrases in epic hexameters Christian canticles and psalms. Elizabeth is the antitype of Biblical warriors like Deborah and Judith ± and of the pagan warriors Semiramis and Penthesilea. She triumphs over the mighty tyrant Philip like David over the mighty Goliath ± and like Fabricius over the mighty Pyrrhus.37 The poems written in Latin endow monarch, soldiers, and city with an awesome Romanitas. London crowds greet Elizabeth with cries of `Victor io, bellator io'. Her naval commanders metamorphose into antique heroes: Auratos Equites creat, Hauardum, Fenarumque,

Schefeldum, Forbisceriumque, Haukumque Ioannem,

Tunsendumque, aliosque insignes fortibus ausis.

Victores ibant euincti tempora lauro

HeroeÈs, quotquot Mauortia bella secuti.

[She creates as knights clad in gold Howard and Fenton, Sheffield and Frobisher and John Hawkins, Townshend, and others distinguished for their valiant exploits. The victors were making their way, their heads wreathed in laurel, heroes every one who had prosecuted Mars's wars.]38

Triumphalia describes the jubilation of an imaginary naualis triumphus, in which Elizabeth sails up the Thames as Aemilius Paullus sailed up the Tiber `decorated with the spoils of Macedonia' (Livy, xlv. 35). Outdoing this entry, Elizabeth bears opima spolia, the supreme spoils won when a Roman general killed an enemy general and stripped him of his armour: Plausibus o quales iactari ad sidera uoces!

O quales resonare tubae! quantaÃque salire

LaetitiaÃ Nymphae, spoliis oneratus opimis

Cum Thamesina redux ingressus es ostia uictor,

Puppe vehens niueaÃ tecum tot colla superba,

Tot pondo argenti, tot pondo diuitis auri,

SõÂgnaque diuersis in summo exserta trophaeis!





Against the majesty of the Latin poems, Hume achieves a seemingly effortless and unselfconscious naturalization of triumphal topoi. The people Hume summons to a Roman triumph emerge from a Scottish landscape of fields and crofts, highlands and muirs, forests and burghs. The plants and perfumes that deck his city combine native and exotic, `Mint and Medwortes seemelie to be seen, / And luikin Gowanes of the medowes green' with `myrhe, and muske, camphyre, and bdellium, / With incence frank, Aloes, Calamus' (27±28, 36±37). Classical trumpets and drums are augmented by Celtic instruments, `hieland pypes Scots, and Hybernik' (58). Ancient custom admits modern weapons. Models of Armada ships are Àll furnisht full of fire-warks, and of guns'(84), and the trophies of sixteenth-century battle are knowledgeably described (109±11): Great ordinance, and feilding peices fell, Muskets maist meit with men of armes to mell, Hagbuts with lunts, Pistolles with rowets fine. Hume's matter-of-fact assurance in naturalizing and updating of the triumph is itself a political gesture: the translatio imperii to a Protestant Britain is unquestioned. The continental poets write with more urgency: for them, the survival of Protestantism against the temporal power of Spain and the spiritual power of Rome remains at issue. They engage in a more strenuous contest for the martial Roman inheritance, lauding Elizabeth as a Christian warrior, urging wider war, and prophesying empire. The Triumphalia collection in particular rejoices in the victory of a paradoxical `Virgo . . . Mascula'. The Armada has seen a man conquered by a woman, a king by a queen, mighty Spain by lightly armed England: `Sic magno regina minor de rege triumphat, / Atque uirum exiguaÃ femina classe fugat.' The overthrow of a great empire by a female antagonist fulfils the threat of Cleopatra, so menacing to the Augustan poets. Instead of representing barbaric passion, Elizabeth is God's instrument for initiating a new historical epoch ± claiming the role of Cleopatra's conqueror Augustus. The female agency of God's victory is inscribed on the impressive triumphal pillar that the Triumphalia raises near the site of battle, on the cliffs of Albion:



[O what cries were flung at the heavens in applause, what trumpets reechoed, how maidens leapt for joy, when the returning victor, weighed down with opima spolia, made her entry into the mouth of the Thames. It carried with you in its snow-white keel so many proud prisoners, such a weight of silver, such a weight of precious gold, and, to cap it all, standards bristling with a variety of trophies.]39


[A monument was erected near the lofty seashore, on which in enormous characters she inscribed these words: Behold, by a woman's strength the Almighty has destroyed Spain, which was greedy to rule over all the kingdoms of the world.]40

This is a semi-imaginary monument. No such pillar was raised in 1588, but there did stand near the `littora celsa' of Dover the remains of a Roman pharos, one of the best preserved and most famous of all Roman lighthouses. The poet appropriates for England and for Elizabeth this monument of Roman imperialism, converting it into a triumphal pillar like Trajan's column. The pharos alludes also to the pillars of Hercules, which had been claimed as the emblem of global empire by the Hapsburgs, `greedy to rule over all the kingdoms of the world.' The Triumphalia now claims this emblem as spoils of victory, which ratify England as the recipient of the translatio imperii.41 For the continental poets, the triumphal outcome of the Armada does not mark the end of warfare. Naumachiae encourages Elizabeth to carry the war into the Spanish homeland; an ode in Triumphalia prophesies that the Armada victory heralds the imminent fall of the Guise in France and the papacy in Italy.42 The Armada victory thus re-enacts the early victories of Rome, laying the foundations of future empire. Naumachiae is especially rich in Virgilian prophecies of imperial destiny. As Venus presented Aeneas with a shield picturing the future history of Rome, so Minerva presents Elizabeth with a shield that depicts England's history of past and future triumphs. This renouatio of ancient Rome culminates in the overthrow of a corrupted modern Rome: Illic res Britonum pugnataque in ordine bella,

Et pugnanda aeui uenturi haud inscia Pallas

Pinxerat: et dictas pugnas, clarosque triumphos:

Ãm se tollere coelo: Et plausum, fremitumque uiru

Hesperios fugere, et uictrici classe Britannos PoneÁ sequi: Hesperiam, alteriusque ingentia Mundi Subdere regna sibi: sanctique oracula Verbi Deuictos armis hostes, Indosque docere: Et Latiam eÁ solio meretricem sternere Romae.



Erectoque maris prope littora celsa trophaeo Grandibus inscripsit talia uerba notis: HISPANVM REGNIS INHIANTEM TOTIVS ORBIS FEMINEA OMNIPOTENS SVBRVIT ECCE MANV.

[There the prophetic Pallas had depicted the history of Britain, the train of battles fought in the past and those to be fought in the age to come, battles much spoken of and famous triumphs, with the applause and cheers of men rising to heaven. She had depicted the Spaniards fleeing and the British pursuing them in their victorious fleet; she had depicted Britain subjecting to herself the Western hemisphere and the great kingdoms of that other world, teaching defeated enemies and Indians the revelation of the holy Word, and casting down from her throne the Latin whore at Rome.]43

Naumachiae presents a display of spoils and a train of captives ± far more impressive than anything London actually saw ± imitated from the Actium triumph in Virgil. In the Aeneid, Augustus dona recognoscit populorum aptatque superbis postibus; incedunt uictae longo ordine gentes, quam uariae linguis, habitu tam uestis et armis [views the gifts of his nations and hangs them on the magificent portals. Conquered peoples pass by in a long procession, various in their tongues, their dress, and their weapons].

His tributary nations range from Africans to Scythians, the pictured rivers from the Euphrates to the Rhine. In Naumachiae, Elizabeth too Dona recognoscit, praedasque: aptatque superbis Postibus exuuias hostis, fulgentiaque arma, Ã m, et rorantes sanguine cristas, Telaque trunca uiru Captaque signa manu templis, hastasque trabales Applicat, augustis decorans aulaea trophaeis. Incedunt iuxta uictae longo ordine gentes, QuaÁm uariae linguis, habitu tam uestis, et oris, Magnorum nati Heroum, Comitumque, Ducumque, Teutones, Ausonii, Belgaque, Afrique et Iberi. [She views the gifts and spoils, and fixes to proud posts the enemy's armour and their gleaming arms and their broken spears and their helmets dripping with blood. She takes up the captured standards and the massive spears, adorning the hangings with majestic trophies. Nearby, a long procession of conquered nations passes along, diverse in speech, in dress, and in visage; the sons of great heroes, counts, and dukes; Germans, Italians, Dutchmen, Africans, and Spaniards.]44




Virgil's Anchises prophesied to Aeneas Rome's worldwide empire: `super et Garamantas et Indos / proferet imperium' [he will extend his rule beyond both Africans and Indians]. With the destruction of the Armada, when Aeneas's English successors may sail the ocean unchallenged, the prophecy of empire renews itself: Èst uia aperta mari procul ad Garamantas, et Indos' [there is a way open at sea to far-off Africa and the Indies]. Anchises commanded the Romans to exercise a worldwide justice: `parcere subiectis et debellare superbos' [to spare the conquered and bring down the proud]. In the Reformation, this exhortation makes England the protector of true religion; the emperor who had claimed the role, and his Hapsburg associates, become the representatives of false religion: `Tutarique pios, et debellare profanos' [protect the pious and bring down the ungodly].45 In the glorious triumph of Naumachiae, the succession to Rome that Biondo had claimed for the papacy and the Hapsburgs had claimed for their empire passes to Protestant England.

3 Despite the hopeful prophecies that it engendered, the Armada victory, purely defensive and very fortunate, did not initiate a Protestant crusade. The idea of such a crusade was nevertheless potent. It was cultivated, before the Armada, by the Earl of Leicester and, after it, by the Earl of Essex. These lords, whose pious support for militant Protestantism is inseparable from the promotion of their own political careers, introduce competing new voices into Elizabethan triumphal discourse. Their triumphal aspirations were formally justified by the consular authority that each exercised, Leicester as Governor-General of the United Provinces (1586±7), Essex as Lieutenant and Governor-General of Ireland (1599±1601). Though Essex in particular had wide military experience, fighting in the Low Countries, in France, and in post-Armada operations against Spain, neither he nor Leicester won the signal battlefield victory of the triumphator. Instead, their triumphs were enacted or imagined before their campaigns for propagandist purposes and after them to console or vindicate, to censure or moralize. These triumphs participate in the personal, factional and ideological rivalries of the late Elizabethan court, re-enacting the dramas of dangerous ambition and fierce detraction that were played out over the triumph at Rome. As leaders of the militarist party, both Leicester and Essex assumed a Roman style. The `triumphs' that greeted Leicester in the Low Countries in 1585 drew on longstanding Burgundian practices and bore little relation in their form to the Roman model. Nevertheless, they sup-




ported Leicester's claim to the status of a Roman dictator ± a magistrate with unlimited powers, appointed in a military emergency. Leicester was compared to the triumphator Camillus, who refounded Rome after a Gaulish invasion of the fourth century: Leicester would refound the Netherlands after repelling the Spanish tyrant. He was compared to Constantine, whose triumph marked the inauguration of Christianity at Rome: Leicester's triumphs announced the restoration of true Christianity to the Netherlands. A hubris-laden prophecy proclaimed that Leicester would celebrate an epochal triumph like Augustus's: finem tua dextra malorum, Hoste triumphato, nobis promittit, et almam Restituens pacem, Saturnia regna reducet. [Your right hand promises us that you will triumph over the enemy and bring an end to our evils. You will restore blessed peace and bring back the reign of Saturn.]46

Essex favoured a reformation of English society along Roman military lines, reviving, as the later Romans always dreamed of doing, the nation's àncient virtue'. By sponsoring the first English edition of Tacitus (1591), Essex aligned himself with Tacitus's martial heroes, such as Agricola and Germanicus, and Elizabeth's rule with the military torpor and palace intrigues of Tacitus's emperors. Another document that promotes the Essex legend is Shakespeare's Henry V, which voices triumphal expectations for Essex's Irish campaign (V. Cho. 24±34): How London doth pour out her citizens!

The Mayor and all his brethren in best sort,

Like to the senators of th' antique Rome,

With the plebeians swarming at their heels,

Go forth and fetch their conqu'ring Caesar in;

As, by a lower but by loving likelihood,

Were now the general of our gracious Empress,

As in good time he may, from Ireland coming,

Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,

How many would the peaceful city quit,

To welcome him!47

Shakespeare's use of the ancient topoi (efflux of citizens, senatorial reception, decisive victory) does not disguise the audacious contempor-




aneity of this imagined triumph. The chorus triangulates Henry V, Caesar, and Essex. Henry returns from his French conquests, as in the past Julius Caesar returned from his Gaulish conquests, and as ìn good time' Essex `may' return from his Irish conquests. It is a provocative succession: from a usurping Roman emperor, to the successor of a usurping English king, to a governor-general whose military command and public popularity might lead to an attempt at usurpation ± as they eventually did. If Essex's return from Ireland repeats Caesar's return from Gaul, it may repeat also Caesar's rise to power through his claims as triumphator. Having raised the possibility, Shakespeare diplomatically shrouds it in a cloud of subjunctives and conditionals, as well as in other uncertainties. Is `Caesar' necessarily Julius Caesar? If not, is it fitting to compare Essex to a generic `Caesar', or king? Shakespeare's text illustrates the sensitivity in early modern England of awarding a triumph to a subject, even ± or especially ± a governorgeneral. The actual campaigns of Leicester and Essex produced so little matter for triumph that friendly writers were reduced to devising exculpations. George Peele greeted Essex's return from the failed Portugese expedition of 1589 with a Spenserian pastoral dialogue, a form whose openendedness helps Peele negotiate the embarrassment of the situation. `Piers' does the best he can to simulate a triumph, but his hyperbole cannot disguise the fact that Essex's return is merely safe, not victorious, and that he is laden with disappointingly intangible spoils, not material ones: Safe is he come, laden with Honors spoile,

O swell my Pipe with ioy, and breake the while.

Io Io Paean.

Bewildered by Piers's jubilation, `Palinode' surveys a scene of ignominy rather than triumph: I see no Palme, I see no Laurell bowes,

Circle his temples, or adorne his browes,

I heare no Triumphes for this late returne,

But many a Herdsman more disposde to morne.

Piers produces the classic explanation: Ènvie doth ay true honors deeds despise'.48 Even in failure, Essex can take the role of triumphator, by falling victim to the triumphator's one invincible enemy. The pattern of




exculpation occurs again after Essex's rebellion and execution. The halting lines of Robert Pricket's Honors Fame in Triumph Riding become the vehicle of Essex's posthumous triumph. As in Petrarch, the triumph of death gives place to a triumph of fame: `From forth the dust, my lines desire to rayse / bright honors fame, in triumphs state to ride'. Pricket vindicates Essex against his enemies, who stage their own unworthy mock-triumph, displaying the poisoned weaponry of malevolence. Pricket's denunciation takes specific aim at Essex's court rival, Sir Robert Cecil, representing him as an arriviste who belongs in the cart of baseness, not in the noble Essex's triumphal chariot: No cause there was, that in his lucklesse fall, So proudly some should triumph as they did, Against an Earle to spit impoysoned gall: . . . No up-start groome sprung from the Cart, Should brave the honour of a lands desart. Like the Christian martyrs and the royalists' King Charles, Essex wins a triumph through his noble submission and death. Even in this apparent disgrace, Essex's martial prowess and loyalty are simultaneously asserted. The courage that enables Essex to triumph before `the gates of death' re-enacts his famous bravado before the gates of Lisbon in 1589, when he challenged any member of the garrison to single combat in the name of his mistress the queen: His noble minde the path of death did tread,

As if it did unto some triumph lead. . . .

Thus nobly did the life of honors breath,

a conqueror like all worldes respects subdue:

So did he triumph in the gates of death,

as if he then no such like danger knew.49

Triumph could be deployed in opposition to Elizabeth's aspiring nobles, as well as in their support. In the same year that Shakespeare prophesied a triumph for Essex, Thomas Storer published poems on Thomas Wolsey and Thomas Cromwell, over-mighty subjects of a previous age. Dedicated to the queen's chaplain John Howson, an opponent of Essex, Storer's historical poems encode the present threat of Essex and prophesy his coming fall. In his hubris, Wolsey presumes to bestow `Laurel wreaths of dignitie', an allusion to Essex's presumption in bestowing knighthoods in Ireland. With admonitory grimness, Storer





Looke how the God of Wisdome marbled stands,

Bestowing Laurel wreathes of dignitie . . .

Such was my state whom every man did follow,

As living statue of the great Apollo.

But see, even when my ioyes did most abound,

My crowned pillar most untimely fell . . .

Who stoppes the triumph of my chariots course?50

Leicester's hubris and his propensity to let ceremonial display and political manoeuvring take the place of actual achievement are scornfully diagnosed in Leicester's Ghost (1602±4), a poetic rescension by Thomas Rogers of the pamphlet libel Leicester's Commonwealth.51 At his height, Leicester plays the Roman triumphator in England, as he had in the Netherlands: Like Claudius Marcellus drawne through Rome, In his fayre Charriot with rich Trophees deckt, Crowned with Garlands by the Senats doome, Whom they five times their Consul did elect, . . . Soe did I ride in triumphe through cheife Townes As if I had been Vice-roye of this land, My face well grac'd with smiles, my purse with crownes, Holding the raynes of honnor in my hand, I managed the state, I did commaund, My lookes with humble Maiestie repleat, Made some men wish me a kings royall seat.52 Where his model Marcellus fought Hannibal and won opima spolia in Gaul, Leicester's weaponry consists of ingratiation and bribery. Leicester's `humble majesty' is the appropriate demeanour of a triumphator, but he merely feigns it with a view to usurping the throne. Leicester resembles a true triumphator only by posing a danger to the state, a risk that always accompanied the office because of its dizzying elevation.



evokes the turn of Fortune's wheel, always ready to bring down the overreaching triumphator:

5

`Glad signe of victorie'

1 No early modern English text makes more comprehensive or more historically informed use of triumph than Marlowe's Tamburlaine plays, nor does any treat the triumph with such a disconcerting combination of bedazzlement and scepticism. The word sounds obsessively through the two texts, and triumphal rhetoric and spectacle shape the major confrontations between the plays' protagonist and established monarchs. Tamburlaine possesses ad extremum the martial prowess and bloodiness of the triumphator. Before doing battle with the Turkish emperor Bajazeth at the centre of Part I, Tamburlaine promises Zenocrate that he will return `Triumphing over him and these his kings / Which I will bring as vassals to thy feet'; the episode concludes with the proclamation of this promised triumph.1 At the centre of Part II, yet more savage prophecies of triumph precede his battle with Bajazeth's successor Callapine; after it, comes the spectacle of a procession that outdoes any Roman triumph in dreadfulness: `[Enter] Tamburlaine, drawn in his chariot by Trebizond and Soria with bits in their mouths, reins in his left hand, in his right hand a whip, with which he scourgeth them.'2 When Tamburlaine's appearance of godlike invincibility succumbs to mortality, this turn of Fortune's wheel fulfils the warning of the triumphator's attendant. Marlowe both enacts and makes problematic the triumphal topos of outdoing. The triumphs of Tamburlaine have a stupendous magnitude, evoked through Marlowe's mastery of the triumphal rhetoric of number. The hero challenges the achievements of Rome in his feats of world 83



Marlowe and Spenser

conquest, and surpasses them in his imagination of cosmic conquest. But his career also transgresses the Roman values that it revives. The Roman triumph defined and fortified the boundaries between civilized and barbarian, centre and margin. In Tamburlaine, the barbarian outsider seizes the role of triumphator; as he does so, he reveals the attributes and feats of the triumphator to be interchangeable with the barbarism they claim to subdue. Marlowe's sharpening of such triumphal paradoxes must owe something to his study of Ovid and Lucan, who composed the most subversive variations on triumphal themes. It must derive too from the competing triumphal practices and imaginings of the European 1570s and 1580s. Marlowe's plays and the Armada celebrations emerge alike from this matrix, but Marlowe's adaptations of triumph are not performed in the service of the English nation or the Protestant religion or Christian Europe. On the contrary, they register the contradictions and the paradoxical equivalences that emerge when the ancient ceremony is reclaimed and reoriented in late-sixteenth-century Europe. At the same time as they mirror and interrogate the unstable Renaissance politics of triumph, Tamburlaine's career and its triumphs have another character again, a sense of fabulous remoteness. Along with the agonistic vigour that the idea of triumph imparts to the plays, it imparts also a dreamlike, elegiac quality. Like the humanist scholars and poets, Marlowe combines a bold appropriation of the ancient triumph with a nostalgia for an irretrievable antiquity.3 Several characteristic features of the Tamburlaine plays derive from well-known topoi of the Roman triumph. Tamburlaine has a career of remorseless victories, `like to Julius Caesar's host, / That never fought but had the victory' (Part I, III. iii. 152±3).4 As the triumph displayed the far-flung regions and treasures acquired by Roman power, so Tamburlaine's visual and verbal display catalogues his imperial conquests. The play's exhilarating geographical reach spans the globe from `the Eastern India' to `the gold of rich America'.5 Tamburlaine's most precious prize, Zenocrate, embodies an exotic geography: she has been reared in Media; she is betrothed to Alcidamus of Syria; on her first entry, she bears letters from the Cham of Tartary. In winning this daughter of the Sultan of Egypt, Tamburlaine outdoes Augustus, who failed to win Cleopatra for his Egyptian triumph. These verbal displays of poetic opulence and expansive conquest open up for an English audience, as the triumph did for ancient Romans, a wide prospect of empire. The magnitude of Tamburlaine's victories, spoils and empire is rehearsed through a rhetoric of size and number. As the Romans required




the triumphator to win a large-scale engagement and slay 5 000 enemies, so Tamburlaine's armies and opponents are numbered in a stupendous arithmetic: À hundred and fifty thousand horse . . . Three hundred thousand men in armour clad . . . Five hundred thousand footmen threat'ning shot' (Part I, IV. i. 21, 24; IV. iii. 51). As the Roman historians detail the captured treasure displayed in triumphs, so Marlowe details the spoils that Tamburlaine accumulates: the crowns of defeated monarchs; helmets full of gold; pearl and treasure carried on his sweating soldiers' backs.6 His enemies hope at first to seduce his rustic simplicity with the promise of wealth. But Tamburlaine is greedy for victory, not wealth: `What, thinkest thou Tamburlaine esteems thy gold?'7 In this he resembles the pristine Romans idealized by Sallust: `Laudis auidi, pecuniae liberales erant; gloriam ingentem, diuitias honestas uolebant' [they were greedy for praise, but generous with money; they sought unbounded fame, but only such riches as could be gained honourably].8 Tamburlaine appropriates the Roman triumph most audaciously and notoriously in his display of defeated kings. The presence of the caged Bajazeth and Zabina give Tamburlaine a perennial triumph: `There, whiles he lives, shall Bajazeth be kept, / And where I go be thus in triumph drawn' (Part I, IV. ii. 85±6). The conquered kings drawing his chariot place him among the fabled triumphators (Part II, V. i. 69±72): Where Belus, Ninus, and great Alexander

Have rode in triumph, triumphs Tamburlaine,

Whose chariot wheels have burst th'Assyrians' bones,

Drawn with these kings on heaps of carcasses.

Tamburlaine outdoes triumphal precedent by combining the traditional and prized display of conquered kings with the later and frequently despised use of exotic creatures ± elephants, tigers, dogs, hermaphrodites ± to draw the triumphator's chariot. Valturio's De re militaria records and condemns a precedent for Tamburlaine's kings: Apud Aegyptios Sesostris eorum rex, tam elato, tam immani animo fuisse fetur, ut quotannis non elephantos, sed sorte reges singulos e subiectis iungere ad currum solitus erat, sicque triumphasse, nullo maiorum fretus exemplo, quod equidem inuenerim: tantum licentiae dabat gloria, immanitas, et intoleranda superbia. [The Egyptian king Sesostris is said to have been so haughty, so enormously proud, that every year he was in the habit of harnessing to his chariot not



Marlowe and Spenser 85


Tamburlaine's own ìnsufferable pride' in this episode has a multiple impact. Its victims arouse the pity that accompanied the display of conquered kings in Roman triumphs; the deaths of Bajazeth and Zabina win also the admiration accorded to kings who took their own lives rather than submit to a triumph. Together with revulsion, Tamburlaine's outrageousness nevertheless draws reluctant admiration, or at least fascination. The absence of an ancient precedent may condemn Tamburlaine, but it may equally win him admiration for outdoing the ancients in virtuoso cruelty. This dual reaction of admiration and revulsion, which has often been noted in Tamburlaine, was also a feature of triumph at Rome: when the Romans gazed on the defeated Macedonian king Perseus and his children, `many of them shed tears, and for all of them the pleasure of the spectacle was mingled with pain'.10 Tamburlaine's `boastfulness' and `pride' convince him also that his status as triumphator is unassailable (Part I, I. ii. 172±4): we will triumph over all the world. I hold the Fates bound fast in iron chains, And with my hand turn Fortune's wheel about. Like his belief that he could overcome Mars himself in battle (Part I, II. vii. 58±67), these lines evince Tamburlaine's cosmic presumption. He will lead the entire world in triumph, and he will display the Fates themselves as his chained captives. The ethical teaching of triumph always sought to warn against such hubris. In Tamburlaine, Part II, the deaths of Zenocrate and eventually of Tamburlaine himself manifest the truth of this teaching: `death cuts off the progress of his pomp / And murd'rous Fates throws all his triumphs down' (Part II, Prol. 4±5). Tamburlaine's last entry in his king-drawn chariot brings him face to face with his own mortality. For the first time, Tamburlaine is accompanied by a version of the attendant who whispered a reminder of the triumphator's mortality (Part II, V. iii. 67±71): See where my slave, the ugly monster Death, Shaking and quivering, pale and wan for fear, Stands aiming at me with his murdering dart



elephants but kings chosen by lot from those subjected to him. And so he triumphed, following no precedent among the ancients (that I can discover, at least): his outrageousness was the product of his own boastfulness, brutality, and insufferable pride.]9


In this variation on triumphal convention, the attendant metamorphoses into Death itself ± aptly so, for Death has been Tamburlaine's slave, attending on his martial prowess. The slave now rises in revolt and commits the scarcely conceivable indecorum of assaulting the triumphator as he rides in his chariot. The insult is heightened by the fact that this cowardly slave is an unworthy foe for a Tamburlaine: at Rome, victory over a slave revolt could not earn a triumph. If, at Tamburlaine's glances, Death actually takes flight, rather than simply flees, then the figure also parodies the winged Victory that hovers over the triumphator in Roman friezes.11 By its incursion into Tamburlaine's triumph, this feeble foe has the power to transform victor into victim: the triumphant general merges with his defeated opposite who walks in the triumph on his way to meet death. Tamburlaine's career exaggerates the glories and the horrors of ancient triumphs; it also mirrors the ambitions and the contradiction of Renaissance revivals of the triumph. In the later-sixteenth century, appropriations of triumph multiplied, as opposing sides claimed the legitimacy and prestige that the ancient model afforded. In the Netherlands, triumph was deployed on both sides, by Catholic Hapsburgs and Protestant States. After Lepanto, triumph was claimed by Rome and Spain against Turkey, after the Armada by England against Rome and Spain. These multiple and conflicting claims opened up the very discourses of dominance that they attempted to control. Tamburlaine's triumphs manifest the arbitrariness, the contradictoriness, and the paradoxical equivalences that emerge in the revival of triumph. He is positioned as a reassuring figure who defeats the Turk and defends Christians; he is positioned also as a menacing figure who enacts the Turkish threat to Christendom and the Spanish threat to England. The Turks who are Tamburlaine's major antagonists are, on occasion, unmistakably early modern Turks. There is mention of Turkish slaughters `through the midst of Varna and Bulgaria' (Part II, II. i. 8) and Orcanes is `he / That with the cannon shook Vienna walls' (Part II, I. i. 86±7). Marlowe is remembering the Turkish victory at Varna in 1444 and the siege of Vienna in 1529. Tamburlaine's victories over the Turks therefore position him as the champion of Christendom against its still dangerous foe. In a surprising show of pity, he vows to ènlarge / Those Christian captives which you keep as slaves, / Burdening their bodies with your heavy chains' (Part I, III. iii. 46±8).12 Just as a special



Who flies away at every glance I give, And when I look away comes stealing on.

distinction attached to a Roman triumph that included liberated Roman prisoners, so the release of Christian prisoners was a special cause for joy after Lepanto in 1572, and remained a concern for Englishmen: Queen Elizabeth had in 1582 protested to the Turks about Englishmen `deteined as slaves and captives in your Gallies'.13 Again, when Tamburlaine wins his victory, the defeated Bajazeth imagines Christian jubilation, `Ringing with joy their superstitious bells / And making bonfires for my overthrow' (Part I, III. iii. 237±8). These details conflate Tamburlaine's victory with the famous triumphs for the Christian victory at Lepanto and the English victory over the Armada. Marlowe's version of these triumphs cuts them adrift, however, from their ideological moorings. With Bajazeth's complaint, the audience momentarily views a victory over the Turk from the losing side. More disturbingly, the victory over the Turk is accomplished not by a Christian but by a barbarian. It is possible to rationalize him as the scourge of God, as does John Foxe, who saw justice in Tamburlaine's èxercising the like cruelty upon his prisoners as Bajazet had done before upon the Christians.'14 But Marlowe's Tamburlaine is a less stable and reassuring figure than Foxe's. For, discomfiting as he is as an ally, Tamburlaine metamorphoses into the arch-enemy of Christendom, the figure that elsewhere he is represented as fighting, the Turk. Contrary to his occasional solicitude for Christians, Tamburlaine also delights in reversing their conquests and in exercising dominion over them (Part I, I. ii. 193± 5, II. vi. 84±6). An audience steeped in the Acts and Monuments would recognize the similarity between Marlowe's catalogues of Tamburlaine's victories and cruelties and Foxe's catalogues of Turkey's: In Thrace, and through all the the coasts of the Danube, in Bulgaria, Dalmatia, in Servia, Transylvania, Bosnia, in Hungary, also in Austria, what havoc hath been made by them . . . At the siege of Moldavia, at the winning of Buda, of Pest, of Alba, of Walpo, Striegau, Soclosia . . . . For as in Constantinople, Mahomet, the drunken Turk, never rose from dinner, but he caused every day, for his disport, three hundred Christian captives of the nobles of that city to be slain before his face: so, in Modon, after that his captain Omar had sent unto him at Constantinople, five hundred prisoners of the Christians, the cruel tyrant commanded them all to be cut and divided asunder by the middle, and . . . thrown into the fields.15 The spectacle of Tamburlaine's triumphs and slaughters metamorphoses into the spectre of the Turk celebrating his conquests of Christian lands




and his slaughter of Christian captives. This spectre disturbs Christian Europeans as sharply as the spectre of a triumphing Cleopatra offended Horace or Virgil.16 For an English audience, Tamburlaine also represents Hapsburg Spain. His vast empire and prodigious wealth call ominously to mind the resources of Philip II. Tamburlaine plans to attain world empire by assembling a prodigious fleet, drawn from the Mediterranean and Persia, which will sail (Part I, III. iii. 255±60) Even from Persepolis to Mexico,

And thence unto the straits of Jubalter,

Where they shall meet and join their force in one,

Keeping in awe the Bay of Portingale

And all the ocean by the British shore:

And by this mean I'll win the world at last.

Tamburlaine's vision in this speech combines every possible maritime menace or rival to Elizabethan England ± galleys and sailing ships, the Turks and Corsairs of the Mediterranean, a fleet commanding the high seas and girdling the globe. The political union of Spain and Portugal in 1580, augmenting Spain's Atlantic and American strength with Portugal's Indian Ocean and East Indies strength, had put many of these resources in the hands of Hapsburg Spain. In a Tamburlainian coup, Philip II `gained a million new subjects, a long Atlantic seaboard, and . . . nearly doubled the size of his ocean-going fleet.'17 The Armada aimed, like Tamburlaine, to àwe' and then `win' the `British shore'. The whips and branding irons allegedly carried by the Armada have their equivalent in the `whips of wire' and other instruments of torment that Tamburlaine wields. In English legend, Philip II resembles Tamburlaine in his intimidatory vaunts and in his barbaric treatment of his enemies. Like Tamburlaine's defeated kings drawing his chariot, Philip's victims are treated as beasts: `the Spanishe king: . . . having with Nimrod, like beastes hunted men with dogges in India, woulde fayne use the like practise heere in England, and hath by hys ships, made like Babel towers, vaunted himselfe to make us afrayd'.18 For the English, the Spanish were spiritually allied to the Scythian Tamburlaine, being à people and Nation . . . extremely cruell and tyrannous as the Scithians'.19 As well as its dreadful quality, the elegiac quality of triumph haunts the Tamburlaine plays as it often haunts the Renaissance and sometimes even the Roman imagination. Lucan's defeated Pompey recollects his past triumphs as a reproach to his Rome or consolation to himself.




Petrarch's Triumphi, Poggio Bracciolini's De uarietate fortunae, and Joachim Du Bellay's Antiquitez de Rome all view the Roman triumph across the poignant distance created by the fall of the city or the degradation of their own epoch. Spenser, who translated Du Bellay, will also come to lament the inaccessibility of the ancient triumph in a circumscribed and treacherous present. In Marlowe, the lords of the failing empire of Persia, the caged Turkish empress Zabina and the imprisoned Callapine all dwell nostalgically on their memories of triumphs, measuring the distance between past empire and present abjection (Part I, I. i. 6±10): Unhappy Persia, that in former age Hast been the seat of mighty conquerors That in their prowess and their policies Have triumphed over Afric, and the bounds Of Europe where the sun dares scarce appear . . . 20 The effect of dreamlike remoteness in some of Marlowe's triumphs arises paradoxically from their very pervasiveness and imaginative power. Triumphs are so variously and so richly imagined, so easily won by Tamburlaine and with so little enactment of actual battle, that they take on a fabulous quality, even within the already fabulous frame of Marlowe's texts.21 The more Tamburlaine's high astounding terms threaten the world with his promised feats and triumphs, the more Marlowe places them at an irretrievable remove. The triumphs that Tamburlaine wins and stages can never rise to the height of his imaginings, so that his prophecies share some of the wistfulness of his opponents reminiscences. This paradox appears when Tamburlaine's ambition for conquest is first stirred, by the spell of triumph (Part I, II, v. 50±4): And ride in triumph through Persepolis! Is it not brave to be a king, Techelles? Usumcasane and Theridamas, Is it not passing brave to be a king And ride in triumph through Persepolis? Tamburlaine's entire quest for empire originates in this Roman image; for Tamburlaine as for Cicero's Romans, there is nothing sweeter than victory and its concomitant, `The sweet fruition of an earthly crown.' Nevertheless, Tamburlaine's incantatory repetition of his line has a counteractive force. At the moment when they move him to embrace




his prodigiously active and masterful destiny, his words also hold him in a dreamlike arrest of action: the idea of enthralling enemies itself enthrals Tamburlaine. The one other thing that can master Tamburlaine is the beauty of Zenocrate. At the moment when he takes possession of Zenocrate as his most precious trophy, Tamburlaine exchanges places with her. It is Zenocrate who will ride in triumph, while Tamburlaine will surrender himself as her prize (Part I, I. ii. 98±105): With milk-white harts upon an ivory sled Thou shalt be drawn amidst the frozen pools And scale the icy mountains' lofty tops, Which with thy beauty will soon be resolved; My martial prizes, with five hundred men, Won on the fifty-headed Volga's waves, Shall all we offer to Zenocrate, And then my self to fair Zenocrate. This haunting triumph of love is Marlowe's imitation of Ovid's triumph of Amor or Petrarch's of Cupid. The imitation is fraught with dramatic tension, spoken as it is by a martial conqueror in whom the fierce desire to possess metamorphoses into the melting desire to surrender. Tamburlaine also transports the triumph from the city and its pressing populace to a remote and unpeopled region, imperiously converting his original Scythian fastness into the triumphal centre. But in the scene that Tamburlaine evokes ± in its frigid splendour and dreamlike vacancy; in Zenocrate's silent, phantom, feminine triumph; in Tamburlaine's own immolation ± signifier refuses to be reduced to Tamburlaine's habitual signified of conquest. His speech carries an imaginative surplus that vanquishes, or inverts, the competitive vaunting in which it originates. Tamburlaine dies with his own dream of triumphal closure unfulfilled. At the height of his fortunes, he envisages a return to his native city (Part II, IV. iii. 114±15, 125±32): Thorough the streets with troops of conquered kings

I'll ride in golden armour like the sun, . . .

Then in my coach like Saturn's royal son,

Mounted his shining chariot, gilt with fire,

And drawn with princely eagles through the path

Paved with bright crystal and enchased with stars,

When all the gods stand gazing at his pomp ±





In Tamburlaine's imagining, the triumphator's resemblance to the gods becomes near-identity. In his sun-like armour, Tamburlaine is Apollo; he outdoes Venus; he rides in his chariot like the presiding deity of the Roman triumph, Jupiter. Where the triumphator took on temporarily the attributes of Jupiter and for a time turned the streets of Rome into the god's abode, Tamburlaine's simile tends to dissolve any distinction between the earthly city and the heavenly. Riding through Samarcand, mounting the Milky Way: Tamburlaine is equally at home in either place. He is also equally exiled; for the triumph here prophesied does not take place. Tamburlaine never returns to his home city and the imperial centre, as the ancient triumphator always did.22 In this respect, there is a telling gap between the Roman triumph and Tamburlaine's nomadic victories. It is Tamburlaine's glory to define the triumphal centre as the place where he is, but his unfulfilled dream of return also endows his career with a poignancy of exile. The Roman triumph bears home the riches of the wide world; Tamburlaine disperses himself among them. His dreams of triumph resemble the dreams of Ovid, in his exile on the borders of Tamburlaine's Scythia.

2 Like Tamburlaine, The Faerie Queene of 1590 emerges from the ideological matrix that produced the Armada celebrations.23 Spenser's imagination is as stirred as Marlowe's, if less intoxicated, by the sixteenth-century contentions for triumph. Where Marlowe's triumphs are appropriated by the barbaric outsider, Spenser strives to be orthodox in bestowing them. As no Roman could countenance a foreign triumph, so Spenser's true triumphators are always champions of the English nation. The most spectacular victories and triumphs of The Faerie Queene occur in Book I, where the spiritual victory of the miles Christi over Satan simultaneously figures the military victory of England over Spain and Rome. The victory celebrations of those enemy powers are stigmatized as anti-triumphs or mock triumphs. In The Faerie Queene of 1596, the prophetic hopefulness of the Armada years gives way to the contested political agendas and discouragements of the Tudor fin de sieÁcle. Book V is fraught with a new anxiety about the practice of triumph. This Book covers wider historical and geographical ground than Book I, its military campaigns ranging



So will I ride through Samarcanda streets Until my soul, dissevered from this flesh, Shall mount the milk-white way and meet him there.

from the Armada to the Netherlands to Ireland, but its triumphs are fragmentary or understated. Spenser struggles with the problems of awarding aristocratic triumphs under a monarchy, and military triumphs under a pacific regime. He complains about worthy triumphators who go unrewarded, or he rewards them with triumphs that historically did not take place, or he deplores the detraction that besets them. The triumphs of The Faerie Queene, Book V, therefore resemble the exculpatory triumphs devised by other writers for Leicester and Essex. They also reveal ideological fissures comparable to Marlowe's, in which Christian victors show a disturbing resemblance to their pagan foes. Redcrosse's quest is to release, by force of arms, Una's imprisoned parents. This spiritual and political warfare does not admit of ceremonious `triumphalism', which appears only as the vain festivities of the House of Pride. Two contrasted triumphs define the Book's structure: that of Orgoglio and Duessa at the low point and that of Redcrosse at the high point of the narrative. In the warfare that produces these triumphs, spiritual and political conflicts coalesce. Redcrosse enacts the victory of the Christian soul over Satan, of the true Church over the beast and the whore of Babylon, and of the English nation over its Spanish and Roman foes. These related victories are Spenser's Protestant and English version of the relationship Biondo traces between ancient Roman empire and modern Roman papacy or the warfare that Savonarola fights simultaneously against sinfulness in the soul, heretics in the church and infidels in the world. Each aspect of these triumphs helps enable the other aspects, but the present discussion concentrates on Spenser's treatment of national victory and its triumph. The dragon that Redcrosse slays bears the heraldry of Philip of Spain, `Bespotted as with shields of red and blacke' (xi. 11).24 With its wings `like two sayles' and its feathers `like mayne-yards, with flying canvas lynd' (xi. 10), it suggests the stupendous ships of the Armada. When wounded, it roars like the `raging seas' and `rolling billowes' that wrecked the Armada (xi. 21). The epic simile describing its eyes draws on English preparations for the Spanish invasion (xi. 14): As two broad Beacons, set in open fields,

Send forth their flames farre off to every shyre,

And warning give, that enemies conspyre,

With fire and sword the region to invade.

Even Redcrosse's name and emblem are contested with the Hapsburg foe, which had claimed the patronage of St George in its holy wars




against infidels and Protestants.25 Redcrosse's warfare engages another, less proximate, enemy. The land from which Una is exiled is spiritually Eden; historically, it is the city that stands in the same place, Jerusalem, held captive by Ottoman Turkey.26 A threatening Turkish presence casts its shadow over The Faerie Queene, as over Tamburlaine, and the poem's promised climax is a battle `Twixt that great faery queene and Paynim king' (xi. 7).27 In suggesting a Turkish antagonist, Spenser claims for Reformation England the role of crusading nation, as Tasso had claimed it for his Counter-Reformation heroes. In Book I, the crusade is however directed primarily against the papacy and Spain. Spenser thus turns the crusading triumph envisaged by Biondo against Biondo's own sponsor, the papacy. The Holy League of Spain, Rome and Venice had defeated Turkey in the sea battle of Lepanto in 1572, and celebrated the victory with a famous efflorescence of triumphs. Spenser appropriates the imagery of the Lepanto triumphs and turns it against the victors of Lepanto. They had defeated the Turkish dragon, but they themselves have now become the dragon.28 To reinforce the identification, the dragon is compared to the Hapsburg eagle (xi. 9), though Redcrosse in turn appropriates for England the symbolism of the eagle (xi. 34). The youthful and untried Redcrosse vies with the youthful Don John, Spanish commander at Lepanto. According to the Lepanto literature, Don John begins `ne' primi anni de l'etaÁ fiorita', but ends `cinto d'immortal gloria'. He is destined to surpass the Roman triumphators over Jerusalem and the east: Ònde tu vincitore alto e sovrano / Di gloria avanzerai Tito, e Traiano.'29 In the same way, Redcrosse advances by grace from à tall clownishe young man' to `the goodliest man in al that company', and ends by celebrating the supreme triumph, for the restoration of Christ's empire. At the midpoint of his quest, however, Redcrosse lapses from vigilance and is captured by the giant Orgoglio. The puffed-up Orgoglio represents spiritually the pride that is the root of sinfulness; politically he represents the proverbial pride of Spain and the papacy.30 Orgoglio casts Redcrosse into a prison, like the defeated general cast into the Tullianum as the Roman triumph approached the Capitol. This nadir in Redcrosse's career occurs at the arithmetical midpoint of Book I, so that his abjection parodies the place of the triumphator at the centre of a triumph. The terrible castle in which Orgoglio imprisons Redcrosse signifies Philip II's kingdom of Castile (whose emblem was a castle) and `those huge castles', the ships with which he threatened England.31 With its `darkesome dungeon' (vii. 31), the castle signifies too the prisons of the Inquisition, whose victim `cannot see so much as the ground where he





O who is that, which brings me happy choyce Of death, that here lye dying every stound, Yet live perforce in balefull darknesse bound? Orgoglio and Duessa celebrate Redcrosse's overthrow with the demonic triumph that King Philip and Pope Sixtus would celebrate for subjugating England. The Biblical model of this triumph reinforces rather than qualifies its Roman character, since the Reformation reading of the Biblical text gave it a Roman significance: `The beast signifieth the ancient Rome: the woman that sitteth thereon, the new Rome which is the Papistrie' (Revelation 17:3, Geneva gloss). Reformation Protestants understood all too well the project enunciated by Biondo, in which the papacy sought to renew the conquests and empire of pagan Rome and to boast their continuity through the medium of the triumph (vii. 16): He gave her gold and purple pall to were, And triple crowne set on her head full hye, And her endowd with royall maiestye. The presentation of the triumphator as divine, with garments borrowed from the temple of Jupiter, is re-enacted by the papacy, which dresses itself in vainglorious garments derived from pagan ones. Tricked out in this fashion, the whorish Duessa brings to pass what Horace dreaded, the spectacle of a whorish Cleopatra entering Rome in triumph. Duessa rides on a `monstrous beast ybred in filthy fen', a version of the exotic creatures who drew the chariot of the Roman triumphator in the degraded imperial epoch. By comparing this monster to the Lernaean serpent, `that renowmed Snake / Which great Alcides in Stremona slew', Spenser again inverts a favoured Hapsburg emblem. The Hapsburgs claimed the patronage of Hercules, but Spenser associates them instead with one of Hercules's monstrous foes, whose destiny is to be overthrown by a Herculean England. Àll embrewd in bloud', the beast signifies the executions that accompanied the triumphs of ancient Rome, and the bloodshed that enforced the authority of modern Rome, from the reign of Mary and Philip in England, to the massacre



is; and is not suffered either to read or write, but there endureth in darkness palpable, in horrors infinite, in fear miserable, wrestling with the assaults of death.'32 This is the plight Redcrosse describes to the rescuing Arthur (viii. 38):

of St Bartholomew in France, to the Spanish repression in the Netherlands, all well known to Englishmen from Foxe's graphic documentation. The triumph of Orgoglio and Duessa is designed not to gratify the citizens who witness it, but to terrify them, to make the tyrants `dreaded more of men, / And peoples harts with awfull terrour tye'. Their hearts bound by terror, the subjects of Hispano-papal rule play the role of the chained prisoners who marched in the Roman triumph, not the role of the citizens who exulted in victory. There is one more spectator. Redcrosse's `wofull Dwarfe' (vii. 19), When all was past, tooke up his forlorne weed, His mightie armour, missing most at need; His silver shield, now idle maisterlesse; His poynant speare, that many made to bleed, The ruefull moniments of heavinesse, And with them all departes, to tell his great distresse. The dwarf feels the pathos elicited by the defeated king or general; he gathers Redcrosse's weapons in a melancholy version of the display of captured weapons; his departure `to tell his great distresse' inverts the dispatch of the laureate letter announcing a triumphal victory. From these emblems of defeat, there miraculously emerge the promise of victory and the recuperation of triumph. By narrating Redcrosse's defeat to Una and Arthur, the dwarf assures his rescue; by gathering up his weapons, the dwarf enables Redcrosse to resume his warfare. The infernal conqueror has not after all won the irreversible victory required by the ius triumphandi, as, historically, Britain and England never submitted entirely to the yoke of the Roman empire or Roman papacy. England had almost failed, as Redcrosse failed, in warlike vigilance, but it might still fulfil its triumphal destiny.33 Redcrosse models this destiny when he slays the dragon and celebrates in the final canto of Book I a godly triumph that cancels the demonic triumph of Orgoglio and Duessa.34 Spenser's text weaves a rich fabric of ancient ceremonial, Christian thanksgiving, and Renaissance marriage festivity. `Triumphant Tromparts' announce to Una's nation the overthrow of `him, that had them long opprest with tort, / And fast imprisoned in sieged fort' (xii. 4). Redcrosse has won the special glory reserved for the triumphator who liberated Roman citizens from captivity or enslavement. These liberated prisoners include Una's parents in their àntique robes' and `sage and sober Peres,' like the senators who received a Roman triumphator. They also include young men who





Whom farre before did march a goodly band

Of tall young men, all hable armes to sownd,

But now they laurell braunches bore in hand;

Glad signe of victorie and peace in all their land.

Redcrosse's martial Roman triumph also incorporates his betrothal to Una. Though accompanied by angelic Christian music, this too takes the form of a Roman ceremony all'antica, incorporating a `bushy Teade' or torch, doorposts sprinkled with wine, and burning frankincense (xii. 37±8). Redcrosse's triumph incorporates all the people of the liberated city, down to the `raskall many' and the `fry of children young'. This multitude signifies the catholicity of the church, and also recalls the great crowds of Roman triumph narratives. Like the Romans, Spenser's people gaze with fascination at the defeated enemy (xii. 9±11): But when they came, where that dead Dragon lay, Stretcht on the ground in monstrous large extent, The sight with idle fear did them dismay, Ne durst approch him nigh, to touch, or once assay. Some feard, and fled; some feard and well it faynd; One that would wiser seeme, then all the rest, Warnd him not touch, for yet perhaps remaynd Some lingring life within his hollow brest, . . . So diversly themselues in vaine they fray; Whiles some more bold, to measure him nigh stand, To prove how many acres he did spread of land. As in Cicero and Biondo, the sweetest testimony of victory is to witness the overthrow of those whom one has feared. The dragon is also a source of wonder, like the exotic captives or beasts of a Roman triumph. Even in defeat, it has the power to terrify onlookers, like the clash of captured weapons in a triumph. Measuring the dragon's corpse quantifies the victory, as the Roman historians quantified a victory through its captured wealth, and Armada pamphlets through the numbers and



declare their readiness to carry on the Protestant fight, saluting Redcrosse as `Lord and Patrone', like Roman soldiers saluting an imperator (xii. 5):

resources of the Spanish fleet. The humorous rusticity of these stanzas is Spenser's version of the licensed disrespect of the soldiers and of the jesting `ludos' said to have accompanied some triumphs.35 The people's anxiety connotes the facts that (spiritually) the satanic enemy will never be overthrown in this world and (historically) fears of Spanish invasion continued to haunt the years after the Armada. Spenser warns against triumphing excessively or prematurely, as the Spanish themselves had done at the time of the Armada. This is one reason why the music and rich fabrics and feasting of Redcrosse's triumph are tempered with humility and abstemiousness (xii. 14): Yet was their manner then but bare and plaine: For th'antique world excesse and pride did hate; Such proud luxurious pompe is swollen up but late. This simplicity aligns Reformation England with republican Rome and the primitive church, before the advent of the pride and luxury that corrupted both. Like Cromwell's Civil War triumphs, Spenser's puritan triumphs strive to balance national jubilation against Christian humility. Book I of The Faerie Queene treats the tremendous warfare of the Christian soul and the elect nation. Its model is the Christ who triumphs humbly on entering Jerusalem and gloriously after overcoming Satan and harrowing hell. Book V treats the more tentative enterprise of maintaining justice in a fallen world. Its last five cantos recount in the exploits of Arthur and Artegall the wars of Elizabethan England and the feats of Elizabeth's martial nobility. These cantos reiterate the glories of the Armada; they give a roseate version of Leicester's Netherlands campaigns; they conclude with a dispirited version of the career of Lord Grey de Wilton in Ireland.36 All these episodes award or deny triumphs, though more cursorily than Book I. The model for the heroes of Book V, with their multiple quests and multiplying enemies, is Hercules and his manifold labours.37 Spenser begins by invoking Bacchus and Hercules, the founders of justice in east and west (i. 2) and the legendary first triumphators. This is in many ways an encouraging model. Hercules's labours have a vast geographical sweep, from winning the ceston of the Amazon queen in the east, to stealing the cattle of Geryon on the western shore of Europe, to gathering the apples of the Hesperides at the farthest edge of the world. His example befits the imperial destiny of England, whose empire will extend even further, `From th'utmost brinke of the Armericke shore, /




Unto the margent of the Molucas' (x. 3). Like St George in Book I, Hercules in Book V turns against the Hapsburgs another of their favoured patrons. The English Hercules does battle with Philip II in the person of Geryoneo, the successor to Hercules's adversary Geryon. Spenser's adaptation of this labour is felicitous, since the ancient island of Geryon lay off the modern port of Cadiz, his prodigious wealth in cattle foreshadowed Philip's American gold, and Hercules's maritime mission to steal his cattle foreshadowed the plunder by English privateers of Spain's treasure fleets.38 Less encouragingly, the multiplicity of Hercules's tasks suggests the burden of empire and its endless succession of enemies. The Blatant Beast that enters the poem at the end of Book V is the offspring of the Cerberus that was captured by Hercules (xii. 37, VI. i. 8), as Geryoneo is the offspring of the Geryon who was slain by Hercules (x. 9). These reincarnations suggest that Hercules's victories must be won again and again. Moreover, the career of Hercules models not only triumphal success, but also the humiliation and the detraction that visited martial heroes. As Hercules has many tasks, Book V has many heroes, and the result is less powerfully synthetic, more anxious than Book I. Where Redcrosse represents an ideally unified nation, Book V shows the fissures opened up by the personal ambitions and factional struggles of late Elizabethan England. The triumphs of Book V honour the champions of Protestant England but also minimize their ceremonial recognition. These limited triumphs concede the melancholy truth that the achievements of militant Protestantism fell short of the hopes raised by the Armada victory. They also result from the poem's dedication to Queen Elizabeth, who had frequently put herself at odds with all of Spenser's heroes and their cause. The conflicts between warlike and peaceable justice are exposed in Book V when Arthur and Artegall, having overthrown the Souldan and extirpated Malengin, make their entry into Mercilla's palace (ix. 24): They ceast their clamors upon them to gaze;

Whom seeing all in armour bright as day,

Straunge there to see, it did them much amaze,

And with unwonted terror halfe affray.

For never saw they there the like array,

Ne ever was the name of warre there spoken,

But ioyous peace and quietnesse alway.

The entry of the triumphator into Rome likewise produced amazement at the threatening clash of captured weapons and at the presence of an




army in the demilitarized city. But the subjects of Mercilla are unacquainted with war, and Mercilla's justice has abandoned force: àt her feet her sword was likewise layde, / Whose long rest rusted the bright steely brand' (ix. 30). Mercilla could not exercise her clemency unless protected by the warlike feats of Arthur and Artegall, but she shows no recognition of this fact: the jubilation of Rome's citizens is eerily absent from the entry. Mercilla's unused sword and terrified subjects put Englishmen in the position of Lucan's Romans, unprepared and defenceless before the invading Caesar, grasping at `scabros nigrae morsu rubiginis enses' [swords roughened by the bite of dark rust] (De bello ciuili, i. 243). The allusion casts Spenser's martial heroes in an ambiguous role. In part, they represent the necessity that Elizabeth had been forced to recognize by the implication of Mary Queen of Scots in the Babington plot: `Though you the Lambe imbrace, the Lion is your beast, / for mercie must with iustice ioine to rule a land.' In part, they represent the terrible incursions of violence into the peaceable England of Elizabethan propaganda and of Spenser's own hopes.39 The tensions between Elizabeth, her aspiring courtiers, and her more zealously Protestant subjects govern Spenser's writing of the Belge episode. Spenser revises Leicester's record in the Netherlands war, with its very limited successes, by according Arthur decisive victories. At the same time, he vindicates Leicester from charges of overreaching himself by revising his triumphal entries into more modest celebrations. In Spenser's version, Arthur's campaign in Belge is all duty and humility. He assumes the task of freeing the realm from Geryoneo only when no other knight is willing to do so. He shows no concern with external honours. It is Mercilla herself who bestows on Arthur the tokens of royalty that Leicester was accused of arrogating from Elizabeth (x. 17): taking humble leave of that great queene, Who gave him roiall giftes and riches rare, As tokens of her thankefull mind beseene. On his arrival, far from displaying grandiose ambition, Arthur deflects Belge's effusive welcome and comports himself humbly and compassionately: Ànd low dismounting from his loftie steed, / Gan to reconfort her all that he might' (x. 22). While Leicester's triumphs unwisely preceded combat, Spenser puts Arthur's triumph after his victories, and represents it as devoid of vainglory. Arthur's triumph is earned by the completeness of the victory: as required by the ius triumphandi, he leaves Belge `settled in her raine, / With safe assuraunce and establishment' (xi. 35). Belge





She gan reioyce, and shew triumphant chere, Lauding and praysing his renowmed worth, By all the names that honorable were. As a Roman triumph was awarded on the recommendation of the senate and by the vote of the people, so Arthur's reception by the Lady Belge is seconded by her people, who display the exuberant tokens of rejoicing familiar from the Roman historians (xi. 34): Then all the people, which beheld that day, Gan shout aloud, that unto heaven it rong; And all the damzels of that towne in ray, Came dauncing forth, and ioyous carrols song: So him they led through all their streetes along, Crowned with girlands of immortall baies, And all the vulgar did about them throng, To see the man, whose everlasting praise They all were bound to all posterities to raise. Though it is recounted briefly and acted out unostentatiously, this triumph is no ephemeral festivity; with puritan seriousness, the ceremony is the token of Arthur's èuerlasting praise'. In the rewriting, Belge and her people ± and Spenser ± pay Arthur, unsolicited, the honour that Elizabeth and her England owed, but failed to pay, Leicester. When the Armada campaign is commemorated in The Faerie Queene, Book V, Spenser allegorizes the Spanish enemy as a Turkish `Souldan', the great sea battle as a land battle, and the national mobilization as a single chivalric combat.40 These changes point up further divisions in Spenser's historical representations. Spenser always valorizes in his triumphators the feats of an aristocracy ± gentle knights fighting single combats ± not of a popular army. The apocalyptic victory of Protestant England over papist Spain and eventually over infidel Turkey must be won by conquest, on land. For the militant Protestant Spenser, the defensive sea victory over the Armada only foreshadows the final victory, which the reluctant Elizabeth must be urged to win. The British prince having accomplished the overwhelming victory that earned a Roman triumph, Spenser withholds its full exercise. There is no single



herself bestows on Arthur the honours that were bestowed on the triumphant general by his soldiers (xi. 33):

jubilant triumph like Redcrosse's, but a scattering of triumphal gestures, all subordinated to continuing military action. Spenser's rewriting of the Armada and its triumphs extends his praise and defence of Leicester. At the time of the Armada, Leicester was commander-in-chief of England's land forces, and, after the victory, Elizabeth intended to declare Leicester Lieutenant-General of England and Ireland. In Roman terms, Leicester thus held the imperium militiae of a consul, and he was to have had the primary place in the Armada triumphs.41 In the event, Leicester died after the Armada's defeat and before the celebrations. Spenser now bestows on him poetically the honours he was unable to receive in person, and at the same time he repudiates the legend of the overweening triumphator that derived from the Netherlands campaign and would reappear in Leicester's Ghost. The exalted status of triumphator, its honours and its wealth, are all thrust unsought on Spenser's Leicester. Arthur first displays the spoils of battle, as the Armada spoils were displayed at St Paul's and London Bridge. In Spenser's version, Arthur puts a strenuously moral gloss on this triumphal convention. It procures no glory for the warrior himself, emphasizing not Arthur's victory but the Souldan's fall, and ascribing all the glory to God. Above all, the display of spoils is designed as a perpetual memorial, not a fugitive celebration, and it teaches an admonitory lesson (viii. 44): Onely his shield and armour, which there lay, Though nothing whole, but all to brusd and broken, He up did take, and with him brought away, That mote remaine for an eternall token To all, mongst whom this storie should be spoken, How worthily, by heavens high decree, Iustice that day of wrong her selfe had wroken, That all men which that spectacle did see, By like ensample mote for ever warned bee.42 In a second ceremony, mounted entirely on Artegall's initiative, Arthur makes a triumphal entry to the Souldan's castle, às victour of that day, / With tryumph entertayn'd and glorifyde' (viii. 51). Spenser's narration of this episode, too, betrays anxieties about the use of triumph. On the one hand, the ceremony is a thing indifferent, incidental to the knights' need for rest and food, after which they promptly resume their mission. Arthur's unrelenting devotion to the public good takes priority over celebration ± another attempt by Spenser to acquit Leicester of vainglory. The traditional marks of the triumphator ± his chariot,




his godlike stature ± are in this episode bestowed on the pagan foe. The `proud Souldan with presumpteous cheare, / And countenance sublime and insolent' is mounted in a `charret hye', which is compared to the chariot of Phaeton (viii. 28, 33, 40). The triumphator's chariot was originally based on Apollo's, but from the beginning there was anxiety about the boundary between an earthly version of Apollo and an overreaching imposter like Phaeton. With Spenser's Souldan, the anxiety that the triumphator might succumb to hubris is projected onto the enemy. On the other hand, even this scrupulous version of triumph creates a disturbing identification between the dutiful Christian victor and his overweening pagan adversary. When Arthur and Artegall make their entry, and feast themselves like the carousing soldiery at a triumph, they do so not in their own city but in the Souldan's castle. Their triumph does not assert the primacy of the victorious centre but transfers it, experimentally and transgressively, to the domain of the conquered. It is therefore the Souldan's luxury that they consume, `Well solast in that Souldans late delight' (ix. 3); and, where the triumphator dressed himself in robes from the treasury of Jupiter, Arthur inherits a more compromising garb (viii. 51): Presenting him with all the rich array,

And roiall pompe, which there long hidden lay,

Purchast through lawlesse powre and tortious wrong

Of that proud Souldan, whom he earst did slay.

Like Englishmen enjoying the spoils of Spain's treasure fleets, Spenser's warriors plunder the Souldan's luxury, but their action points up the risk of compromise in engaging in martial combat, in taking spoils, and in triumphing. In their combat with the tyrant, Spenser's knights must use the weapons of the tyrant; in overthrowing him they risk occupying his place; and in celebrating victory they indulge themselves in festivities whose adoption Spenser applauds but also mistrusts: `Such proud luxurious pompe is swollen up but late.'43 The doubts about triumph betrayed in Arthur's Souldan triumph are compounded at the end of Book V, when the victories of Artegall on behalf of Irena are rewarded not with a triumph but with the assaults of Envy and Detraction. In this final episode, England re-enacts the melancholy occasions at Rome when faction and ingratitude deprived the worthy general of his triumph. The pattern of rejection makes a further correspondence to the story of Hercules, who was proverbially unable to slay his last opponents, Envy and Detraction.




Artegall's campaign against Grantorto and its aftermath are based on the career of Lord Grey de Wilton, Lord Deputy of Ireland from 1580 to 1582, a supporter of Leicester, whom Spenser served as secretary. The Faerie Queene of 1596 ends where The Faerie Queene of 1590 began, with warfare between England and the new Rome, augmented by another item from the repertoire of triumph, the conquest of a people deemed barbarian. The papacy had claimed sovereignty over Ireland after Pius V `deposed' Elizabeth in 1570, and the papal legate was instrumental in coordinating rebellions by both Gaelic clans and Òld English' lords. Soon after Grey took office, a force of 600 Italians and Spaniards landed to support the rebels, under the overt sponsorship of the pope and with covert support from Philip II. Grey captured the invaders' fort at Smerwick and massacred the inhabitants after they surrendered, refusing to recognise them as prisoners of war on the grounds that they were not regular soldiers. Grey's further excesses, and the hostility of Burghley and other opponents of Leicester, led to his recall in 1582.44 Despite critical attempts to distance Spenser from Artegall, and Grey, or to dehistoricize the episode entirely, there is little doubt that Spenser admires Artegall's administration of `true Iustice'.45 Spenser's romance machinery telescopes, and sanitizes, Grey's largescale massacres and executions into the chivalric combat of Artegall and Grantorto for the maid Irena. Through his genre and the details of his narrative, Spenser makes his case for Grey as a worthy triumphator; he recounts his feats like the advocate of a Roman victor before hostile senators or citizens. Spenser argues that Artegall undertakes his combat in order to minimize future loss of life (xii. 9±10) ± as Cromwell would in turn again argue in 1650.46 If Spenser has any criticism of Artegall's measures, it is that they come too late, the Herculean English nation having been distracted by its many other labours (xi. 37±43, xii. 3). In Spenser's version, Artegall's feats conform to the ius triumphandi. He has fought against a formidable enemy, won a conclusive victory, and reduced the territory to a state of peace (xii. 18, 35). He has restored Irena to her seat and imposed an obedience that renders the victory irreversible (xii. 25). Like Roman citizens released from foreign captivity, the Irish themselves `shouted all for ioy of his successe' (xii. 24). When recalled from his command, Artegall returns, like a Roman general obeying the senate. Once on native soil, he restrains the violence of his adjutant Talus (xii. 43), as in republican Rome the army disarmed itself within the city's pomerium. Despite his services, no triumphal honours reward the returning Artegall. Instead of a welcoming crowd, he meets the triumphator's prover-




bial enemies, Envy and Detraction.47 The movement from Redcrosse's triumph in Book I to Artegall's disgrace in Book V follows the trajectory that Petrarch foreshadowed for Scipio at the end of Africa. Envy nurtures malevolence in her breast and Detraction publishes it at large (xii. 35): the combination parodies the pairing of victory in I. xi and its public recognition in I. xii. Envy's anti-triumphs celebrate misfortune, the opposite of the triumphator's felicitas. She annuls England's claim to the Roman succession by ensuring the truth of Diodorus Siculus's observation that Rome is unique in awarding triumphs: Ìn other states men are jealous of one another, but the Romans praise their fellow citizens.'48 So here (xii. 32): But if she heard of ill, that any did, Or harme, that any had, then would she make Great cheare, like one unto a banquet bid; And in anothers losse great pleasure take. Envy and Detraction stage for Artegall a grotesque anti-triumph (xii. 37± 8). Their greeting parodies the senate's welcome; their ugliness parodies the beauty of the decorated city; their raucous noise parodies music and the cries of ìo triumphe'; their slanders parody the jocular abuse levelled at the Roman triumphator by his soldiers. Like Orgoglio and Duessa with their beast, Envy and Detraction parade an exotic monster, `which the Blatant beast men call, / A dreadfull feend of gods and men ydrad'. The disgrace of Artegall converts Faeryland, as the disgrace of Lord Grey converts England, from triumphal centre into the place of barbaric outrage. This recognition generates a deeper anxiety, about the institution of triumph itself. Like Lucan's Caesar, Orgoglio and Duessa had shown that the machinery of triumph might be captured by unworthy victors. Artegall's fate shows that it may also be utilized to wound and calumniate the worthy victor. Artegall is bitten by Envy's serpent, and Detraction's words become the public record (xii. 40): Then th'other comming neare, gan him revile, And fouly rayle, with all she could invent; Saying, that he had with unmanly guile, And foule abusion both his honour blent, And that bright sword, the sword of Iustice lent, Had stayned with reprochfull crueltie, In guiltlesse blood of many an innocent:





Part of the bleakness of this conclusion to The Faerie Queene, Book V, is the recognition that Spenser's poetry is no more efficacious than the apparatus of triumph in controlling the understanding of history. As Book I begins with the terrifying fertility of Error, Book V ± and after it Book VI ± end with the daunting power of false persuasiveness and the noisy barking of the Blatant Beast. In the disillusioning years that followed the Armada victory, Spenser found that triumph was a doubleedged weapon, which in the hands of Detraction was capable of wounding and disempowering both a victor like Grey ± and a poet like Spenser (VI. xii. 41).



As for Grandtorto, him with treacherie And traynes having surpriz'd, he fouly did to die.

6

`to vanquish . . . all the answerers of the worlde' Until Charles I found himself fighting a civil war, the Stuart kings showed little enthusiasm or aptitude for the martial virtues. James I made peace with Spain, and in his monarchical self-presentation adopted the Erasmian model of rex pacificus. Charles I began his reign with naval campaigns against Spain and France, after which inauspicious ventures England played little part in the military affairs of Europe. Both James and Charles, and their adherents, nevertheless cultivated the triumph, translating its martial discourse into terms compatible with their policies.1 For their part, Protestant militants continued, as under Elizabeth, to assert their alternative policies and to criticize royal inactivity by recuperating the triumph. The first decade of James's reign abounds in complimentary triumphs of peace, magnificence, and wisdom; only a few writers used the triumph to urge the King to combat the papist enemy. Admonition became sharper with the tensions of the 1610s. In 1612 England joined the Protestant Union, and in 1613 James's daughter married the Protestant Elector Palatine, developments that James sought to balance by a renewed opening to Spain. Protestant enthusiasts, however, saw England again taking its place in an alliance against the Hapsburg foe. They expressed their hopes and their urgings through literary triumphs for James's heirs and for the heroes of the continental wars. The advent of the Thirty Years War and the accession of Charles procured a more widespread revival of the martial tropes of triumph, such as the Protestant overthrow of Rome, the recovery of Jerusalem, and the prospect of empire. The years of Charles's personal government saw a stream of `triumphalist' court masques.2 These masques generally translate the grounds for 107



The Stuart Peace


triumph into the royal status, ethical virtues and marital love of the king and queen. Some of them draw more directly on Roman martial values, giving their courtly refinement a basis in military might.

The accession of James I in 1603 and his entry into London in 1604 initiated his cult as a pacific triumphator.3 In lauding the new prince as a peacemaker, ceremonies and writings alluded not only to the messianic `Prince of Peace' but also to Augustus and his motto pax et princeps. The great triumph that inaugurated Augustus's epoch of peace had however claimed a signal and quasi-apocalyptic victory in war, which made peace possible by establishing the dominance of west over east, masculine reason over feminine passion. In its conceits of an altogether peaceable conquest, James's London entry claimed to outdo any military victory, by conquering without battle. Samuel Rowlands's Aue Caesar locates James by its salutation in a Roman succession and by its review of history in a British. Rowlands rehearses the triumphs of James's predecessors ± for the conquests of Henry II in Ireland, of Richard I in the Holy Land, of Henry V in France. James equals their examples by extending his dominions, but surpasses them by doing so peacefully: Their welcomes were from warres they had in hand, Which losse of blood, and valour caus'd to cease: Thy welcomes are from out a quiet Land, Inlarging us a wondrous league of peace.4 James has fulfilled the ius triumphandi by extending the boundaries of his kingdoms, joining England and Scotland into a new empire that revives Roman Britannia. This `league' between the two nations is wondrous to readers of 1603 because so different from the fears of discord that had accompanied the death of Elizabeth. It differs too from the hated League founded by the house of Guise to prevent Henri IV from achieving the peaceful accession in France that James has achieved in Britain. In Henry Petowe's Englands Caesar Elizabeth looks down from heaven on the coronation of the new Caesar and commands her subjects to transfer their love to him: Bid heavens Eliza from that continent,

Where she sits crownd in blisse: bid her looke downe



1

The Stuart Peace 109

The assertion of royal continuity is also a deft revision of triumphal convention. In James's triumph, the executed enemy king is transformed into the triumphator's deceased sister who commands love from his new subjects; these subjects are transformed from the sullen enemies who are led in captivity into the jubilant citizens who welcome home the triumphator. The visit to England in 1606 of James's brother-in-law, Christian IV of Denmark, produced new triumphs of union and peace. Where James's `brotherhood' to Elizabeth had procured the union of England and Scotland, his marriage to Anne of Denmark has expanded the union to include all three realms. The contestatory discourse of triumph is transformed into a celebration of marriage and amity: Arches tryumphall to the Heavens erect,

Whereunder threefold-Maiestie may passe, . . .

Great Britaines Denmarke, Denmarkes Britaine is,

By transmigration one int'other gon; . . .

Then shall we not (as glad) triumph in this,

Sith their two heads are now (or never) one: . . .

Top thy Church Battlements with Streamers white,

To show thou peace enioy'st, and offrest peace

To all that do in civill strife delight.6

In Rome, the triumphator rode behind his vanquished and doomed opposite; in London the two kings display fraternal unity. Miraculously, each nation has conquered the other, not through violent invasion but through the peaceable compenetration of love and marriage. The shared souls of the three majesties mirror the Holy Trinity itself. The joint triumph of the two kings also re-enacts the joint triumph of Titus and Vespasian. For papal writers, that triumph had inaugurated a new epoch, the translatio of the temple from Jerusalem to Rome; for Davies, James inaugurates a new era of peace. Under Elizabeth, the streamers of defeated Spain had flown triumphantly from St Paul's Cathedral. The white streamers of Jacobean peace outdo that display (and perhaps Tamburlaine's dreadful display of red and black streamers). James appro-



On princely Iames her deere succeeding brother:

To see him goe tryumphant to his Crowne,

Belov'd of those that whilome call'd her mother: . . .

She will'd us love him, and in love persever,

And we do vow to love King Iames for ever.5

priates to his peaceful ascendancy the shameful flag of military surrender. James's triumphs celebrated his feats not only as peacemaker but also in another role of the Erasmian monarch, as teacher of wisdom. The Biblical typology of Solomon cultivated by James parallels his Roman self-fashioning: as the wise Solomon surpassed the warrior David, so Augustus surpassed Caesar, and so James surpasses the warrior monarchs who preceded him and surround him. James achieved his proudest conquests in the realm of learning.7 In 1607, he issued a tract defending his policy toward recusants against strictures by Pope Paul V and Cardinal Bellarmine; this pamphlet drew responses from Catholic controversialists, which James answered in turn in 1609. Victory for James in this pamphlet war was declared and celebrated by George Marcelline in Triumphs of King Iames the First . . . Published upon his Maiesties advertisement to all the Kings, Princes and Potentates of Christendome (1610). Marcelline displays the victorious king not in the theatre of a city or even a nation, but before an audience of all his fellow monarchs. James wins his triumph in a dramatic battlefield coup. He snatches its emblem from the hands of an enemy that had thought itself victorious: `Let the Laurell wreaths be wrung out of their hands, to impale the victorious head of our IAMES, truely Triumphant, over Pagan idolatrie, and Popish Heresie'.8 James thus matches the feat of his predecessor Elizabeth, who had snatched victory from the Armada even as Spanish hubris was claiming its premature triumph. The rex pacificus wins his victory not by arms but by the weapon of writing. While triumphs were often staged or preserved in book form, James's triumph was actually won by the act of writing a book. `The very written book it selfe doth furnish us with strength sufficient, to vanquish and convince all the answerers of the worlde, and their answers' (sig. B4). It will be re-enacted in the mind of each reader: `Let us prepare the hauty Trophees of his heroick actions . . . in the Temple of Memory, and in the hearts of all men' (sig. C3v). So formidable is James's bookish weapon that he can comport himself in majestic repose, eschewing the frenzy of the battlefield (sig. D2v): not running, like Aratus, with a drawne sword in his hand, upon the Wals of Rome, and to the Tyrants gate, to take revenge in his iust displeasure, but seated. Seated in signe of Royall power and Soveraignty of his owne right and Iustice. Sitting on his Throne, in signe that . . . The King that is seated upon his Throne, chaseth all evill out of his sight.9




James thus outdoes Aratus, who led Achaean resistance to Macedonia in the third century BC. Though James's weapon of wisdom is superior to Aratus's guerilla warfare, the two champions pursue similar aims. Marcelline's Triumphs of King Iames issues in a call for all the princes of Europe to meet in a council of religious reconciliation, presided over by James himself. James sought to fashion a pan-European confederacy, united in opposition to Rome, as Aratus had fashioned an Achaean Confederacy in opposition to Macedonia. Behind this comparison lies a still more exalted model: `having a Constantine amongst your selves, capable to preside as the other did in the Nicene Assemblies'. James's hoped-for role distinguishes him as successor to the British emperor, inaugurator of concord between empire and church, and first Christian triumphator.10 Though James might claim a dialectical victory over the pope and his allies, there were always writers ready to remind him that verbal victories did not suffice. Even in James's London entry of 1604, the military origins of triumph unexpectedly asserted themselves. The triumphal arch erected by the Dutch merchants of London challenged James's peace with Spain, or at least brought to the surface the tensions it had produced. Though the arch conformed to official iconography by incorporating figures of Peace and of the king seated in majesty, it countered them with figures of armed Justice and scenes of battle. Exaggerating for the occasion the commitment of Elizabeth to the Dutch cause, the speech addressed to James at the Dutch merchants' arch begged him to grant his fellow Protestants the same support: ìntreating wee may be sheltred under your winges now, as then under hers.'11 The pacific and nurturing imagery in which this protection is diplomatically couched does not conceal the fact that it must in practice be martial. Cambridge University bade farewell to Elizabeth and welcomed James in Threnothriambeuticon, or `Dirge-Triumph', a poetic collection that likewise tempers festive praise with bellicose admonition. Samuel Hawarden of King's College casts James in the role of the triumphal Scipio: Qualis Scipiades, post Libyam iugo Subiectam Latio, cuÁm capitolia Cinctus nobilium flore cohortium, Scandit uictor in aurea. [As when Scipio, after subjecting North Africa to the Latin yoke, ascends to the golden Capitol as a victor, surrounded by the flower of his noble troops.]12




The conceit casts Spain as England's Carthage, a historical typology that had appeared in Angell Day's triumph for Elizabeth in 1587. As Day's Elizabeth was surrounded by a troop of `youthfull peeres . . . fiercely mounted', so James is accompanied by noble soldiers. Hawarden's poem replaces James's triumph of peace with an imagined triumph for the conquest of Spain. An imperial England will impose the yoke that Rome once laid on England itself, and that Spain had threatened to reimpose with the Armada. For the present, therefore, Hawarden's triumph remains prophetic: while the papist foe remains unsubdued, the triumphal jubilation of James's entry is premature. Instead of displaying the realms pacified by the triumphator, Hawarden's triumph discloses a world full of dangers. The weaponry of papist superstition, which should be paraded as trophies in the triumph of the Protestant victor, is still in enemy hands (sig. C2): Horrendam rabidaÃ fauce tonans Papa QuaÁm diram in miseros nos strueret luem? . . . Quae pestes premerent? quae mala nos? fratres, Idola, impia reclusio pectoris, Execratio, crux, sancta aqua, monstraÁque Quotquot styx habet impia? Nec quae praesidij spes superest, nisi Tu morum radio, tu iubare inclytae Vitae, haec discutias, uimque Papae tuo Frangas Marte Draconicam. [What a dreadful and terrifying affliction might the pope be contriving for our suffering people, thundering with raving voice! What plagues might weigh upon us, what woes! Friars, images, the impious laying bare of the breast, curses, crosses, holy water, prodigies: however many impieties hell contains! Neither does any hope of defence remain unless, by the radiance of your character, by the brightness of your renowned life, you dash all these things to pieces and shatter the dragonish power of the pope by your warlike spirit.]

The dragonish pope is the formidable opponent whose overthrow is required for a triumph; his `dreadful and terrifying affliction' connotes both the Romish religion and the tortures with which the pope's ally Philip threatened to impose it on a conquered England. In fact, the papal weapons are foolish and futile, like the `magnificent, huge, and mighty' Armada that abruptly `vanished into smoake', or the deflated Orgoglio and the unmasked Archimago. Hawarden appears to pay the




conventional Stuart compliment that James will scatter the enemy by his royal virtues alone, but his poem continues to breathe the warlike spirit of Elizabethan and Spenserian Cambridge. It ends with James assuming the identity of the Mars who had been expelled from his official triumphs. The cautiously coded admonitions of James's early reign become stronger and more direct in its second decade. Militant Protestants now invest their hopes for triumph in James's children and find their examples in the continental champions of the faith. James's deÂtente with Spain had been checked in 1611, but resumed in 1614, when he entered into negotiations for a marriage between Prince Charles and the Spanish Infanta. Balancing the proposed Spanish match, James in 1613 married Princess Elizabeth to Frederick, the Protestant Elector Palatine. This event became the occasion for reviving the prophetic triumphs of militant Protestantism.13 John Gell, a Scottish resident of Heidelberg, Frederick's capital, welcomed home the married couple with an Epithalamium et gratulatio. Gell's poem shows a bellicose Protestantism at odds with James's accommodating pacifism. Where James gloried in effecting the peaceful union of his two kingdoms, Gell invokes their ancient warrior spirit, resuscitating the boast that England and Scotland were of all nations the most resistant to Roman arms: `Gentem unam inuictam Romano marte Britannam' [the British people, the only ones undefeated by Roman arms].14 In marrying Princess Elizabeth, Frederick unites himself with this indomitable uirtus, which will sustain him in his inevitable wars with the new Rome of church and empire. His marital union itself is accordingly positioned in a martial context: it will be capable of resisting the pope's armoury, which (as in Hawarden's poem) is recognized for what it is ± specious persuasion, spurious indulgences and hollow threats (sigs. D3v±D4). Frederick returns with his bride like a triumphator returning with precious spoils (sig. C3v): Haud secus ac cum capta redit post oppida uictor Miles ouans, spoliis et plenus ab hoste recurrit Praedae quisque ferens, grato gestamine, sortem. [Just so, when a victorious army returns in triumph after it has taken a city, and comes back laden with enemy spoils, each soldier carries his share of the prey.]

The marriage becomes a prolepsis of the heroic feats that await Frederick, with a suggestion that James's England risks becoming the feminized object rather than the masculine practitioner of triumphs.




In 1615, Princess Elizabeth gave birth to a son, Henry Frederick. Henry Peacham's genethliacon, Prince Henrie revived, discovers in the infant prince a successor to Henry, Prince of Wales, who until his death in 1612 had acted as a gathering point for the hopes of militant Protestants. Peacham prophesies for Henry Frederick a remarkably complete translatio imperii. His victories will earn him the title of Caesar; an English emperor will rule over a continental empire, as Constantine once did; he will renew the Holy Roman Empire in Protestant form, as Charlemagne once renewed the ancient empire: That I the footsteps of thy praise mought presse

In riper yeares, How should my song addresse

Thy Honours Triumphs! . . .

Till foes thy feet, and Laurell kisse thy browes,

That Caesar Henrie thou maist one day raigne,

As good, as great, as ever Charlemaigne.15

In Peacham's prophecy, the infant Henry Frederick resuscitates the uirtus that James hoped to render obsolete through peace-making. When the time comes for the prince to turn soldier, Peacham urges him to imagine `The triumphs, trophees of thine ancestrie', arrayed in a gallery of Hampton Court (236).16 A `Mansion fitting Iove, / Or Phoebus selfe' (290±1), Hampton Court takes the place of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, in which were displayed the sacred relics of Rome's victories. Peacham's gallery displays England's foreign conquests, beginning with Richard I in the Holy Land, the ideal destination of the Christian triumphator. As his models of royal uirtus, Henry Frederick will witness `valiant Cordelion come, / Fore Acon', `Third Edward, there in triumph leading France', the Black Prince at Poitiers, Henry V at Agincourt (298±315). He will witness too England's most recent triumphator. Peacham revives in James's England the Armada cult of Elizabetha triumphans and the Spenserian language of Herculean conquest (320±4): Eliza queene, the Maiden conqueresse, Borne in triumphall Charriot, (I ghesse, Like Thomyre, or that brave Semiramis) From hundred handed Gerions defeat, And his proud Castles fall in eightie eight. The Elector Palatine was nephew of Prince Maurits of Nassau, later Prince of Orange. If James sought to fill the role of leading pacifist,




Maurits could claim to be the leading soldier of early-seventeenth-century Europe. Beginning in the 1590s, he had revolutionized many areas of military science, partly by recourse to Roman models, helping the Netherlands to win the initiative in the Spanish War and enabling it to negotiate the Twelve Years Truce of 1609.17 Maurits visited England for the wedding of Frederick and Elizabeth in 1613, receiving the Order of the Garter from James at a special ceremony. In honouring Maurits the Protestant general, it was unavoidable that a contrast would be drawn with James. William Shute marked the occasion with The Triumphs of Nassau, a translation from the French of a history of the war in the Netherlands down to the truce of 1609. Like the Malatesta of De re militaria, Nassau stands out both for his military innovations and for his revival of antique military valour. Shute commemorates the fierce encounters in which Maurits preserved his homeland and thus attained the status of triumphator. Some 28 folio pages are given to the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, and 21 to `the horrible, bloudie, and unheard of siege of the towne of Ostend'. England's record stands in reproachful contrast to the feats of its Dutch brethren. On land, English withdrawals imperilled the Dutch armies.18 At sea, their record consists of lost opportunities: `The English doe againe loose the opportunitie of meeting with the Indian fleet, notwithstanding that the Hollanders offered their service' (sig. Aa3v). The book awards no compensatory triumphs of peace. The lessons that Shute's prefatory epistle draws from the career of Maurits contrast with the premises of James's pacifism. Virtus is the supreme princely attribute; adversity in war strengthens a nation; military art and discipline overcome an enemy superior in numbers; a just cause always prevails in war with God's aid. In the English experience, the Armada had proved these maxims; the Dutch navy was now applying them while the English navy was losing its repute (sigs 3±3v). Shute dedicates his book to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery, the nephews of Sir Philip and Sir Robert Sidney. He thus seeks to keep alive the Sidney-Dudley leadership of the militant Protestant cause. Shute recalls the feats of the earlier Sidneys in the Netherlands, which provide an English version of Nassau's example. Their commentary on the work of valour written by Nassau's life results in a book very different from James's triumphal productions: `You have a most exact commentarie of your owne upon this work, the all sufficient and most understanding viscount Lisle your noble unckle, who hath scarce bin ever absent in any service where honour hath bin present among them' (sig. 2v). Where Marcelline claimed that James's books won the best victories, Shute claims that battlefield victories are the best books.




Greatness is earned by action, while elevated ideas of innate royal magnificence, recognizably like James's, are contemptuously dismissed. Birth and rank are the passing gifts of fortune, whose blandishments the triumphator must resist: `That which slender iudgements call greatnesse . . . is not so, but a bumbast of titles and other shreds of fortune. . . . But a mind well grown then best shewes it owne hight when it stands downe, and puts off the slippers of fortune' (sig. 4).

2 The end of James's reign and the beginning of Charles I's brought more pressing calls upon England's military capacity, in the form of the Palatinate crisis and war with Spain. The claims of the Elector Frederick to the leadership of continental Protestantism, and the imperial aspirations voiced by Gell, were put to the test in 1619, when Frederick accepted the crown of Bohemia from a group of Protestant nobles, precipitating the Thirty Years War. Imperial and Bavarian forces rapidly reclaimed Bohemia, while Spanish forces attacked the Palatinate from the Netherlands. By 1623, Frederick had been deprived of both his lands and his title. In these wars, the continental Protestant cause had dynastic as well as religious claims on England. James responded by sending forces to help defend the Palatinate, under Sir Horace Vere in 1620 and under Ernst Count Mansfeld in 1625. More congenially, he attempted to negotiate the marriage of Prince Charles to the Infanta of Spain, on condition that Spain would restore Frederick and Elizabeth. When this initiative failed, Charles married instead the French princess Henrietta Maria and, late in his father's reign and early in his own, he embarked on a series of ambitious martial ventures. A great Protestant alliance was projected; naval expeditions were mounted against Spanish Cadiz and, in support of French Protestants, against the Ile de ReÂ and La Rochelle. These ventures also failed, and the Protestant goodwill that they might have won Charles was dissipated by the unpopularity of his favourite Buckingham and by Charles's conflicts with Parliament over financing them. These crises renewed the invocation of Roman and British martial models, together with the countervailing criticism of England's inactivity and unpreparedness.19 In 1620, Henry Holland, who had journeyed to the Palatinate with Frederick and Elizabeth (and would fight for Parliament in the Civil War), published with Dutch sponsorship a Heroologia Anglica, containing portraits and biographies of English worthies from 1500. Written with the fervour aroused in England by Vere's expedition, the Heroologia




combines Protestant hagiography and martyrology with commemoration of Protestant England's martial triumphs. Queen Elizabeth appears in the persona of `Vergo Imperatrix altera Pallas, et Triumphatrix Regina'. Holland includes a vision of a triumph of the saints. Replete with the apocalyptic rhetoric of the Thirty Years War, this triumph exults over the downfall of a threatening enemy and displays the treasures that manifest victory in war, national pietas, and God's grace: Infensi frendunt Hostes, trepidantque Papani, Cladem instare rati subimet, celeremque ruinam: Exultant uero Sancti, plausuque triumphant. . . . Dona Dei, Dotesque patrum, Regumque Trophaea Omnino celebrare decet. [Our furious enemies gnash their teeth and the papists tremble because disaster is looming over their fleet and it will suffer abrupt destruction; but the saints exult and triumph and show delight. . . . What could be more fitting than to celebrate the gifts of God, the patrimony of our fathers, and the trophies of our kings?]20

The recognition that England was dangerously ill-equipped to participate in such a visionary triumph is a burden of Belgiaes Troubles, and Triumphs, an epic fragment treating the war in the Palatinate and the Netherlands. Its author, William Crosse, had been chaplain to Sir John Ogle, an officer in the service of the Dutch Republic. Regrettably, it is the Netherlands rather than England that has assumed the mantle of ancient Rome ± as Ogle's personal history shows. It is the Netherlands that practises the arts and virtues of the conqueror, being `maintained at this present in that greatnesse, which the world sees and admires, by Policie, Power, and Religion'.21 The warlike vigilance of the Dutch contrasts with English somnolence (sig. B3v): Nor doe the Dutch like Lethargists secure, Sleepe being prickt, but doe their mindes inure To all preventions, policies, and care. In the years of Jacobean peace, the English have lost their warlike qualities, and `like Iades have liv'd in pomperd ease' (sig. C2). Now that Vere's Palatine expedition has at last begun to redress this neglect, it finds itself ill equipped and ill trained for the task. As a result, it encounters horrors of plague and siege, eloquently narrated by Crosse.




As Crosse's title implies, it is nevertheless through these very tribulations that men win `Lawrell-consecrated praise'. The Protestant commander Christian of Brunswick wins his triumphal status at the moment he receives a severe wound: he `lost his hand whilst he the lawrell got' (sig. H4v). His fellow commander Mansfeld, forced to a retreat from which victory eventually follows, also wins in adversity `the triumphant wreaths of glorious fame' (sig. H1v). Now that England has risen to the call of duty, Crosse is able to salute English soldiers along with these famous continental generals. He dedicates Belgiaes Troubles, and Triumphs to Sir Horace Vere, Colonel-General of the English forces, and to the Lords Essex and Mountjoy, who served under Vere. All three bear the names of honoured soldiers of the previous generation. Crosse constitutes them as an English patriciate, who revive not only Elizabethan but also Roman uirtus: their `daring valour fitly may contest / With Romes old Minions' (sigs B1v-B2). Crosse also enumerates lesser English heroes, who play the role of the soldiery marching in the triumph (sigs H1±H1v): In these conflicts brave Mountjoy, Morgan, Gibson,

Rich, Courtney, Conway, Halsewell, Hinderson,

Cooke, Tibals, Pollard, Clarke and Killegree,

Knolles, Bacon, Turney, Kenniethorpe and Carey,

Shewed matchles valour, and deserve to be

For this the children of Eternitie,

Being all selfe lavish of their dearest bloud

For Bergens defence, and our unions good.

Amongst the list of the Philippicke bandes

Blunt of his foes ev'n admired stands

Haples in this, that home spunne discontents

Made him to follow Spaines ambitious bents.

Blunt's career, like that of Edward Lord Vaux (sig. G3), shows that fighting in the `Philippicke bandes' ± on the Spanish side ± is preferable to not fighting at all.22 This poetic triumph of England's revived valour annuls the customary demarcation between victors and vanquished, native and foreign. Blunt stands out like the impressive prisoners that take the spectators' attention in Roman triumph narratives, and it is startling that he should be an Englishman. Moreover it is in England that the webs of deceit appear to be spun, while Spain is guilty only of the soldierly vice of ambition. Remarkably for a Protestant clergyman ministering in the Netherlands, Crosse comes close to reversing the `black




legend', which made Spain the home of all treachery, and his commitment to the revival of English valour in general surpasses even his commitment to the Protestant cause in particular. Celebrations for Charles I's accession in 1625 and panegyrics of his early reign incorporated the fervour aroused at first by his Spanish and French adventures. Like the Armada poems, they also prophesy a widening circle of imperial conquest. From the Netherlands, Kasper van Baerle greeted the accession of Charles with Britannia triumphans. At a time of crisis for his homeland, marked by the death of Maurits and the victories of the Spanish general SpõÂnola, Baerle looks to Charles as a successor to Prince Henry, acclaimed by the enthusiastic crowds of triumphal tradition: Scande triumphales, Rex augustissime, currus, Purpureamque apta chlamydem, praereptaque fratri Fato sceptra cape, et sacraÃ sublime coronaÃ Cinge caput . . . Vndique concurrunt populi, feruensque uiator Ad Tamesin molitur iter, fremituque secundo Colligit ipsa suas animosa Britannia voces. [Most majestic King, mount your triumphal chariot; garb yourself in your purple robe; take up the sceptre that fate snatched from your brother; circle your noble head with the sacred crown. The people gather together in every place; the enthusiastic voyager makes his way to the Thames; greatsouled Britannia herself joins their voices in a supportive clamour.]23

This triumph is to be no mere coronation pageant. Charles has modelled himself on Camillus, Scipio, Paullus Aemilius, and Germanicus, `totque inclyta bello / Nomina' [so many names celebrated in war] (11). These are triumphators who saved the Roman state in its most serious danger or who waged war against its most formidable enemies ± that is, in conditions like the Netherlands' own present emergency. The triumphal forebears of Charles and Henrietta Maria, Elizabeth of England and Henri IV of France, will support him as he takes up England's rusty sword, like Lucan's Romans before Caesar or Elizabeth herself before the Armada. By this transformation, Charles will accomplish the long awaited overthrow of the Hapsburg triumphs across all Europe (7, 23): Hi gladios, Rex magne, tuos, atque obsita longo Arma situ, residesque acuent in praelia gentes. . . .





[They will sharpen your swords and your other weapons, rusty from long disuse, and will rouse your sluggish people. May your queen bear you Bourbon princes and Stuart warriors. Bring comfort to the Dutch; may you restore to your noble sister her stolen realms; bring an end to the triumphs of Austria; and finally let your thunderbolts strike at uttermost Cadiz.]

The most robust poetic supporter of Charles in his early reign is George Lauder, a Scot who fought in the expedition to the Ile de ReÂ. Even after Charles's military reverses and in the midst of peace negotiations, Lauder continues to urge him on with fierce loyalty and shrewd strategic advice. Lauder too deplores the kingdom's unpreparedness. His Hotspur-like exuberance at the advent of war criticizes peace-making diplomats generally and perhaps Buckingham in particular, represented as the feminine parody of a military triumphator: all our Lordings armde, shall cast away The frizled perwigges, powders, and perfumes, Which foeminine conceits no Man becomes, And put on plumed casques with loftie crests Upon their heads, and Corslets on their brests.24 Lauder rehearses the past triumphs won by Scottish and English arms and prophesies new ones, more stupendous even than Baerle's. Charles will conquer Spain; he will win back the Palatinate; he will claim the entire Holy Roman Empire for Protestantism, and expand it to include France. He will thus fulfil Peacham's prophecy for Prince Henry Frederick, and more aptly, since it is another Charles who will occupy the throne of Carolus Magnus: his royall brow Crown'd with triumphant bayes, as `tis with gold, That all the World his greatnesse may behold: . . . And may HEE crown'd with ever living Fame, Get on his owne the Imperiall Diademe.



Borboniosque duces, bellatoresque Stuartos Parturiat Regina tibi: Solatia Belgis Suffice: magnanimae reddas erepta sorori Imperia: Austriacis finem decerne triumphis: Atque iterum extremas feriant tua fulmina Gades.


Further afield still, Charles will `see his Roses bud, / And Thistles rise upon the walles of Rome'. In overthrowing `That sometime Empress of the World, old Rome' and thus reversing the Roman conquest of Britain, Charles will appropriate the triumphal boast of Julius Caesar: `hee shall come and see, and overcome.' Finally, he will overthrow the Ottoman empire and raise his colours on the walls of Jerusalem. He will thus reenact the feats of Constantine, the first British imperator, who vindicated the Christian faith by force of arms. With touching conviction, Lauder declares that he will `see him crowned with these eyes of mine / Into the Citie of great Constantine.'26 As well as succeeding the Roman emperors on the throne of Charlemagne, Lauder's Charles will rule a worldwide empire: From frozen Zembla to the torride Zone,

Thence to the Southerne Cape wee'll make our owne;

And all shall be great Brittaines Empire wide,

Having no neighbours but the Seas beside.27

Triumphs for the Armada had opened a similar prospect of empire, but more in continental than in English writers. In the 1620s, the imagining of empire by English Protestant militarists attains a new expansivenessness and particularity. William Crosse enumerates in rich Tamburlainian or Miltonic catalogues the imperial spoils that England will seize from Spain. Ships, `Swelling with profit, and full fraught with gaine', may be captured `homewards bound from Venice, or Ligorne, / From Scanderoun, or Aegypt rich in Corne', or `loaden with that rich Potosian Oare, / Which Lima sends from Perues wealthy shoare', or ballast with those drugs, which Chinaes plaines Send from their fruitfull Aromatique vaines; Or with those Spices, which for barter'd Gold Are by the Iavans, and Moluccoies sold. England will eventually take direct possession of the wealth of the Americas and create an empire in a hemisphere unknown to ancient Rome, as `th'Andian Mountaines' and `Brasilian woods' fall under English rule.28



Thence forward, holding on a constant race To France, reclaime his right, and take his place In Charlemaigne's fair chayre.25


Charles's personal rule from 1629 left unrealized the martial and imperial ambitions that began his reign. His major initiative was to assert a large claim to sovereignty over the English Channel and the North Sea, and to maintain this claim by building up his `ship money fleet', first launched in 1635.29 Charles nevertheless cultivated and adapted the style and ideology of triumph, one manifestation being his acquisition of Andrea Mantegna's Triumph of Julius Caesar (between 1486 and 1492). The Triumph was the most prized item in Charles's purchases from the collection of the Gonzaga family at Mantua, first negotiated in 1627; it arrived in England in 1629±30. Mantegna's cycle consists of nine large canvases, though even on this grand scale it is apparently incomplete, since it ends with Caesar in his chariot and does not show his army. The cycle brought to Stuart England one of the defining texts of the early modern cult of the triumph (Plates 2±3). Mantegna based his version of the triumph on ancient and modern friezes, sculptures and drawings, and on Valturio's De re militari and Biondo's Roma triumphans.30 The project may have been conceived as early as 1474, a date suggesting that it was inspired as well as informed by Valturio's and Biondo's books, both first printed in 1472.31 Like its literary models, Mantegna's Triumph serves the function of legitimating its sponsor through associating him with ancient Rome and its most prestigious ceremony. The choice of Caesar's triumph complimented the military prowess of the Gonzaga family, many of whom held generalships in the north Italian wars of the later-fifteenth century, and whose palace already contained paintings of Caesar and Pompey.32 The subject of Caesar's Gallic triumphs became particularly apt in the 1490s, when Gonzaga generals won victories over the French forces of Charles VIII (though Mantegna's project was begun before the French invasion). Charles's purchase translates the prestige of martial and imperial Romanitas from the house of Gonzaga to the house of Stuart. As part of a major collection, the purchase also allowed Charles to vie in magnificence with his brother monarchs and collectors of the Hapsburg and Valois families.33 Mantegna's paintings were hung at Hampton Court, rendering actual the gallery of triumphs imagined by Henry Peacham. In their English setting, the paintings invite a reading that defines Roman Caesar as the historical type of English Charles. Mantegna's Caesar prefigures Lauder's vision of Charles, `his royall brow / Crown'd with triumphant bayes'. Mantegna's Caesar celebrates a triumph for his conquest of Gaul, as Lauder's Charles was destined to crown his imperial career with the conquest of France. Caesar's tri-



3

umphal motto, ùeni, uidi, uici', appropriated for Charles by Lauder, has a climactic position in Mantegna's paintings. With its pictures and models of captive cities and its profusion of gold plate and coin, the Triumph of Julius Caesar represents an empire whose vast extent Charles would, in the heady prophecies of Crosse and Lauder, not only rival but outdo. A commission of the same period associates Charles directly with the Roman triumph and adjusts the conventions of Mantegna's cycle to seventeenth-century royal portraiture and triumphalism. Van Dyck's Charles I on Horseback with M. de St Antoine (1633) shows the king dressed in armour and riding through a triumphal arch, his magnificent white horse evoking the white horses that drew the chariot of a Roman triumphator (Plate 7). The striking feature of the use of triumphal motifs in this painting is the triumphator's near-solitude. Charles rides into his own palace, not into a city; he is accompanied by no army and saluted by no crowd, for both of which a single attendant, his riding master, does service. Instead of displaying emblems of defeated foes, the painting shows only one emblem, Charles's own coat of arms. Disburdened of friends and foes alike, the king reigns in godlike remoteness. The portrait was designed to hang at the end of a gallery in St James's Palace, where its centrally placed triumphal arch simulated an actual opening, through which the king makes his spectacular entrance. The painting locates its spectator below natural height, making him look up at the looming horse and its majestic rider, a posture taught by the figure of St Antoine, who also directs upward his respectful gaze. This attendant is in no position to remind the king that he is a man; his function is to remind the viewer that the king is a god. Van Dyck's positioning of the spectator corresponds to Mantegna's in the Triumph of Julius Caesar, where the pictorial procession is also designed to be admired from a height lower than that from which an actual procession would be viewed. The gallery into which van Dyck's king rode was lined with portraits of the 12 Caesars by Titian and Giulio Romano.34 Like the hanging of the Mantegna canvases, this arrangement announces Charles as the modern successor to the emperors of ancient Rome. In an exercise of quanto magis, it does more, positioning the ancient Caesars themselves as spectators of Charles's triumph. The conceit of converting the jubilant crowd of triumphal convention into an admiring crowd of kings had been essayed by George Marcelline in the Triumphs of King James and would be repeated by Marvell to celebrate Cromwell. The most characteristic expression of Stuart royal triumphalism was the court masque. Especially under Charles's personal rule, many masque titles use the term `triumph', usually in the eclectic Renaissance sense.




Davenant's Britannia Triumphans (1638), does celebrate victory, Charles's `vindicating' of the sea from Dutch privateers and Moroccan pirates ± but even these victories were more notional or prospective than actual. The masque appropriates the prestige of triumph to support the collection of ship money, which had funded Charles's fleet, but whose legality had been contested over the three previous years, and remained so at the date of the masque's performance.35 In its fanciful form, as distinct from its occasion, this naualis triumphus does not utilize the Roman model. It is Albion's Triumph, by Aurelian Townshend and Inigo Jones, performed at Whitehall on 8 January 1632, that most fully incorporates the Roman triumph, before transcending it in a Neoplatonic exercise of quanto magis, and then briefly but tellingly recapitulating martial values at its conclusion. The masque opens with the triumph of King Albanactus, àttended like a Roman emperor' in a city that boasts a splendid Roman atrium, amphitheatre and forum.36 Jones's atrium is a fantasy of Roman splendour (based on a Florentine baroque original), while his amphitheatre, like his costumes for the antimasque, derive from the sixteenth-century illustrations of Panvinio's study of triumph (Plate 4).37 Albanactus's triumph passes through the forum, and is described by a plebeian spectator, Publius: `before Caesar marched captive kings with their hands bound . . . and a number of lictors and pictors, and a number of priests' (190±3). The anti-masque recreates another aspect of triumph, as conceived by Jones. `Such kind of pastimes as victorious conquerors were wont to present as spectacles to the people' are performed in the amphitheatre by `saltators or tumblers', `pugili or buffeters', and `gladiators or fencers', all witnessing to the magnificence of the fictitious triumphator and the actual king (244±53). Though the opening procession has the externals of a Roman martial triumph, the masque encourages the audience to understand these externals allegorically. Albion's Triumph does not celebrate military conquest, or any particular action at all; it manifests under the appearances of a triumphator the royal virtues or perfections of Albanactus, or Charles. Like James I and Christian IV in 1606, and as in van Dyck's portrait, Charles triumphs simply by virtue of being a king. The royal triumphator does not need to show that he merits a triumph; a triumph must strive to be sufficient to his merits (87±91): From fair Albipolis shall soon proceed A triumph: mighty as the man designed To wear those bays, heroic as his mind,





Just as his actions, glorious as his reign, And like his virtues, infinite in train.

he daily conquers a world of vices . . . no vice is so small to scape him, nor so great but he overcomes it, and in that fashion he triumphs over all the kings and queens that went before him. All his passions are his true subjects; and knowledge, judgement, merit, bounty, and the like, are fit commanders for such a general; these triumph with him. Charles triumphs not by force over outer foes but by self-mastery over inner foes. In doing so, he also wins a political victory, outdoing all his predecessors in virtue. These monarchs join his allegorical triumph in the role of captive kings, making up a magnificent but imaginary celebration of universal victory. When the Roman setting of Albanactus's triumph is translated to the Palace of Whitehall and the city of London, Charles therefore not only succeeds Rome but supplants it; he does not manifest ancient uirtus in a new form but he manifests new virtues unknown to the ancients.38 First of these virtues is the model of wedded love and good government provided by the hermaphroditic combination of Albanactus and Alba, or Charles and Henrietta Maria, or `Hymen's twin, the Mary-Charles' (440±8). The conquest of Albanactus by Alba enables a further triumph of mystical love, transcending both Publius's martial and Platonicus's ethical triumphs.39 When Charles is presented to Henrietta Maria as `the trophy of thy praise', Albion's Triumph appropriates and reforms Ovid's triumph of erotic love. The immoral subversion of the Roman triumph is now made moral, and elevated above any other version. The masque also redefines the figure of the female triumphator, as Elizabeth's triumphs had done. The queen conquers even the sublimely virtuous king, not by the disruptive force of female sexuality but by feminine virtue. In this refined realm, it is an honour, not a dishonour, to be taken captive ± another moral transformation of Ovid, who had been shamefully willing to surrender to Cupid. If Townshend and Jones consulted the text as well as the illustrations of Panvinio, they may be drawing on his treatment of the mystical joint triumph of Titus and Vespasian, which, like the triumph of the `Mary-Charles', shadows the unity-in-diversity of the Holy Trinity.



The patrician spectator, Platonicus, recognizes that the king's true triumphs are ethical, not military (206±14):

The fruit of the union of Charles and Henrietta Maria is revealed with the apparition of a `beautiful cloud in which triumphant sat Peace, a woman in a carnation robe richly adorned, a veil of silver, and on it a garland of olive, and in her hand a palm'. Peace's celestial triumph appropriates the palm clasped by Mantegna's Caesar, and she instructs her hearers in the superiority of her olive to the military laurel (392±3). The entire kingdom participates in an unending triumphal feast that ratifies its stature as an imperial centre: `Men eat and drink in massy plate, / And are with dainties daily fed' (414±15). England is raised àbove the rest' not by the wars that raised Rome, and that still racked the continent, but by Charles's peace. Yet in one last important transformation, Peace the triumphator recruits as her auxiliaries the Roman gods of maritime domination, armed warfare, and imperial wealth (429±36): Neptune to sea, and let no sail Meet Albion's fleet, but make it vail. Bellona arm, that foes may see Their lilies kept by lions be. . . . And let both Indies, Pluto, meet And lay their wealth at Alba's feet. This conclusion to Albion's Triumph makes multiple reference to the foreign politics of early 1632. The insistence on the dignity of Àlbion's fleet' alludes to maritime tensions between England, the Netherlands, and France. In September 1631, a skirmish occurred in the Channel when a French ship failed to lower, or `vail', her colours to an English naval ship.40 The call to Bellona would evoke for an English audience of January 1632 the feats of the Protestant military hero, Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden. In September 1631, Gustavus had defeated the Hapsburg commander, Tilly, in a major victory at Breitenfeld, and had swept west to the Catholic stronghold of Mainz. Later in 1632 he would again defeat Tilly and, while meeting his own death, defeat Wallenstein È tzen in November.41 This `lion of the north' serves as an example to at Lu the English lions of Albion's Triumph. Neoplatonism and triumphalism metamorphose at the conclusion of Albion's Triumph into themes of war and conquest. Publius's excitement at the Roman martial triumph with which the masque began proves not to be altogether misplaced. The conclusion may urge Charles to act forcefully in the Protestant cause at a time when he was moving toward an understanding with Spain. Aurelian Townshend would himself press




this point in his elegy for Gustavus Adolphus, which praises him as `shield of Christendome' and model for all princes.42 On this reading, martial exhortation is insinuated into a masque whose main tendency is to praise Charles's pacific virtues over Gustavus's uirtus. On the other hand, the attempt to create a connection between `private mysteries of love and will' and `public world of politics and action'43 is not necessarily at odds with Charles's policies. If, as Kevin Sharpe argues, Charles's neutrality in the 1630s was based on a more realistic military policy than has been recognized, the conclusion of Albion's Triumph voices Charles's own policy.44 In either case, the idealism of the masque form meets the realities of military power, and the meeting is engineered partly through transformations of the Roman triumph.45




7

`silken wings / Of victory and peace' Shakespeare's Roman plays date from both sides of 1603, making it necessary to return briefly to the Elizabethan context of his earlier stage triumphs before discussing his more richly developed Jacobean versions. This mixture of reigns, though formally untidy, draws attention to the fact that the memory of Elizabeth's victories and gloriously paradoxical triumphs persisted into the Stuart years as political weapon and imaginative stimulus. The triumphs of Titus Andronicus derive part of their energy from the sense of peril and of nationhood generated in the Armada years. The play is akin to Tamburlaine not only in date and bloody horror but also in its use of triumph to redraw the boundaries of civility. In Julius Caesar, political interests and ideologies define themselves through conflicting uses of the Roman triumph. The contestation between Caesar's hubris or magnanimity, his opponents' resentment or principle, and Roman reverence for the memory of Pompey, mirrors the conflicts and manoeuvres of the Essex years. Antony and Cleopatra dramatizes the advent of the pax augustana, the model for James's pacific triumphalism, but the text gives Caesar's Actium triumph little of the imaginative gravity that it has in Virgil and Horace, and Shakespeare's Caesar is at best a lustreless compliment to James. Cleopatra's witty appropriations of triumph reintroduce the transgressive figure of the female triumphator, and admiringly recall the audacious heroism of Elizabeth and her victories. Coriolanus and its triumphs have a paradoxical relation to James's policy and royal persona. The military savagery of Martius and his fellow patricians, and the political disruptions generated by contests over triumph, constitute an Erasmian-Jacobean exemplum of the discommodities of war. Yet Martius's unwillingness to play 128



Shakespeare and Stuart Drama

his ceremonial role, and his combativeness toward the political claims of the `commons', align him unexpectedly with James, and impart to the play a monitory edge. Three later Stuart plays have as their dramatic focus contending or divergent attitudes toward the triumph. These texts participate in the debates over militarism and war after James's first decade. All three invoke the martial triumph as a corrective to pacific and triumphalist versions, yet they also subordinate or reorient martial uirtus or bellicose national allegiance by reference to other values. Fletcher's Bonduca espouses a catholic brotherhood in arms, based on respect for Rome but rejecting the aggressive militarism that has affinities with the enthusiasms generated by the the Palatinate match. Massinger's The Bond-Man dramatizes the martial enthusiasm aroused by the Palatinate war, but finds the military triumphator deficient as romantic lover and ethical exemplar. Nabbes's Hannibal and Scipio contrasts the philosophical detachment of Scipio to the untutored violence of Hannibal in their pursuit of military glory.

1 The ancient nexus of triumph and tragedy is the structuring principle of Titus Andronicus (1593±4). The play opens with Titus in triumph for a victory over the Goths.1 It also dramatizes the topos of the victor who wins a triumph but soon after loses his sons, by boldly conflating this loss with the triumph itself: the coffins of his sons mar from the outset the spectacle of Titus's gloria. Other triumphal customs also contribute to the play's tragic form. The execution of a princely captive generates the revenge plot of the Gothic queen Tamora; the action that Tamora sets in train extravagantly corroborates the warning of the triumphator's attendant about the instability of fortune; the turn of Fortune's wheel is completed in an anti-triumph when, instead of foreign generals, two more of Titus's sons are led to their execution (III. i o.s.d.). This turn of the wheel brings low not Titus alone but Rome itself, and it raises up Tamora and the Goths. From the place of abjection, marching as a royal captive in Titus's triumph, the defeated barbarian rises to the place of power, as consort of the new emperor Saturninus. As mistress of Rome, Tamora occupies the position that Augustan writers dreaded to see a triumphal Cleopatra occupy. The consequence is that revenge, murder and rape convert the civility of Rome into a site of barbarism, à wilderness of tigers' (III. i. 54).



Shakespeare and Stuart Drama 129

In the post-Armada context, the spectacle of barbarian Goths capturing Rome and subverting its triumphs encodes, like Tamburlaine, the threat that the barbaric Spaniard might triumph in England. The butchery and cannibalism inflicted on Romans and their children correspond terrifyingly to the scourgings and brandings of Englishmen and their children catalogued in the Armada pamphlets. Tamora's paramour, Aaron the Moor, introduces further subversions of triumph when he exhorts himself to `mount aloft with thy imperial mistress, . . . whom thou in triumph long / Hast prisoner held, fett'red in amorous chains' (II. i. 13±15). Aaron's impudence imitates Ovid's in his love triumphs. He also reverses the anxiety of the Augustan poets about the rule of a barbarian empress: he welcomes rather than dreads Tamora as a `siren that will charm Rome's Saturnine, / And see his shipwrack and his commonweal's' (II. i. 23±4). In displaying this monarch as herself a captive of love, Aaron imitates Petrarch's Triumphus Cupidinis, with its train of kings and queens conquered by love. In raising himself by Rome's downfall, Aaron the Moor plays the role of the servile but vindictive races in Spenser's Ruines of Rome: So those which whilome wont with pallid cheekes The Romane triumphs glorie to behold, Now on these ashie tombes shew boldnesse vaine, And conquer'd dare the Conquerour disdaine.2 But it is not barbarians alone who disrupt the political concord that was celebrated in Rome's triumphs. Rome displays its own barbarism, in the execution of the captive prince Alarbus, in Titus's execution of his own son Mutius, denounced as an ìmpiety' and `barbarous' (I. i. 355, 378), and in the enmities engendered by military victory.3 The result is that the honourable Roman Lucius must put himself at the head of a Gothic army, the virtuous renewers of a corrupted Romanitas. Lucius leads his Goths into Rome, not exactly in a triumph but as `Rome's young captain', a new Aeneas who will re-found the state (V. iii. 80±95). Shakespeare's rude but virtuous Goths act out England's own history of resisting the Roman yoke and renewing the decayed religion of Rome through Protestant Reformation. Like Titus Andronicus, Julius Caesar (1599) enacts the classic tragedy of the triumphator. With his warning, `Beware the ides of March', the Soothsayer assumes the role of the triumphator's attendant, while Caesar's godlike ostentation and regal ambition manifest the hubris against





O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low?

Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,

Shrunk to this little measure?

Like Caesar's ambition, the republicans' opposition defines itself through his triumph. The Pompeyan tribunes open the play with the detraction to which the triumphator was proverbially subject. They affirm the traditional view that a triumph is unfitting for victory in civil war, because a victory over fellow-Romans cannot display new territories and foreign prisoners (I. i. 32±4): What conquest brings he home? What tributaries follow him to Rome, To grace in captive bonds his chariot-wheels? The contrasting memory of Pompey's worthy triumphs recalls the spectacular descriptions in the Renaissance humanists and the nostalgia for Pompey's triumphs in Lucan. The tribunes exploit, like Roman orators, the potency of triumphal memories in political controversy (I. i. 37±44): Many a time and oft Have you climb'd up to walls and battlements, To tow'rs and windows, yea, to chimney-tops, Your infants in your arms, and there have sate The livelong day, with patient expectation, To see great Pompey pass the streets of Rome; And when you saw his chariot but appear, Have you not made an universal shout . . . ? Like the opening triumph of Titus Andronicus, Caesar's opening triumph sets in train the tragic action of the play, occasioning the compact between Cassius and Brutus that leads to Caesar's assassination. After Caesar's death, the conspirators attempt to mount a procession that is an abridged counter-triumph, beginning with its proclamation of victory (III. i. 78±9, 105±10): Cinna: Liberty! Freedom! Tyranny is dead!

Run hence, proclaim, cry it about the streets . . . .



which the attendant warned. Caesar's fall exhibits the reversal of fortune that always threatened the triumphator (III. i. 148±50):

Brutus: Stoop, Romans, stoop, And let us bathe our hands in Caesar's blood Up to the elbows, and besmear our swords; Then walk we forth, even to the market-place, And waving our red weapons o'er our heads, Let's all cry, `Peace, freedom, and liberty!' The conspirators' triumph displays not harmless weapons but bloody ones; the red that coloured the triumphator's face is here the blood of a fellow-Roman. The conspirators' intended triumph therefore replicates Caesar's opening one for a victory of Roman over Roman. The paradoxical similarity wins briefly for Brutus the same recognition that Caesar had won: `Live, Brutus, live, live! ± Bring him with triumph home unto his house' (III. ii. 48±9). In the event, the conspirators' triumph is forestalled by Antony, whose forum oratory produces instead the antitriumph of the plebeians' riot. Tearing down the city instead of decking it, sacrificing a harmless compatriot poet instead of an enemy general, the Roman people turn the triumph upside-down in the service of Caesar's posthumous destiny. After the defeat of the conspirators by Caesar's heirs, Brutus takes the role of the defeated general who would die rather than be led in triumph (V. i. 107±12): Cassius: Then if we lose this battle,

You are contented to be led in triumph

Thorough the streets of Rome?

Brutus: No, Cassius, no. Think not, thou noble Roman,

That ever Brutus will go bound to Rome;

He bears too great a mind.

The claims laid on the triumph by divergent political interests in Julius Caesar at Rome encode similar contests in late Elizabethan England.4 The godlike claims of the physically failing Caesar share the implausibility, by 1599, of Elizabeth's claims to embody the virtuous beauty of Diana or the victories of Minerva. The new generation of Brutus, Cassius and Antony struggle to appropriate the triumph, as the Essex circle attempted to do. Contrary to historical fact, Shakespeare endows the conspirators with an Essex-like youthfulness (II. i. 148±9); the choleric Cassius particularly resembles Essex, who was famously à man of nature not to be ruled.'5 As Mark Rose has argued, Julius Caesar also relates the Roman triumph to popular Elizabethan festivities and the attempts to suppress them. The indignation of the tribunes at Caesar's civil-war




triumph mirrors London anxieties about civic order and a puritan suspicion of ceremony, as much as it expresses Roman martial ideology. The tribunes are indignant not just at Caesar's triumph but at any triumph at all: `wherefore art not in thy shop to-day? / Why dost thou lead these men about the streets?' (I. i. 27±28). In their Lord Mayors' Shows, London's civic authorities would seek to redefine such unruly triumphs into a celebration of prudence, sobriety and industry.6 Where the triumphs of Julius Caesar subserve a single political contest for dominance, those of Antony and Cleopatra (c.1607) are more diverse. A brilliant array of triumphs and mock-triumphs is staged, planned, reported or imagined. The triumph serves still as token of victory in war and as political weapon, but also as token of victory in love and as licensed revel.7 The play treats its heroine's eroticism sometimes with the buoyancy of Ovid's love triumphs, sometimes with Horace's fascinated revulsion. Cleopatra's triumphs manifest the feminine excess that the Romans feared in her but also the feminine valour that they reluctantly admired in her. Cleopatra succeeds, imaginatively if not actually, in outdoing or thwarting Rome's own triumphs. The play abounds in processions that allude to the Roman triumph. The first massed entry, of Àntony, Cleopatra, her Ladies, the Train, with eunuchs fanning her', is a barbarian and female triumph, in which Roman Antony appears as captive of the `gypsy' Cleopatra, shackled by the `strong Egyptian fetters' of her erotic power. This shocking exchange is repeated when Cleopatra narrates her drunken cross-dressing with Antony, in which she flaunted `his sword Philippan' as spoils in a burlesque triumph (II. v. 18±23). The Romans' biggest formal entry is also a burlesque triumph, marking the revels on Pompey's ship (II. vii. 16 s.d.). This meeting celebrates not victory in battle but an opportunist political pact. In these debased circumstances, triumphal bacchanals shrink to Lepidus's drunken befuddlement, and the attendant Menas whispers in Pompey's ear not a warning against fortune but a temptation to seize fortune ignobly. The play's last entry is one final anti-triumph: Ènter Caesar and all his Train, marching' (V. ii. 332 s.d.). Caesar is indeed the nominal victor, but instead of claiming his triumph he is left to prepare the `great solemnity' of the lovers' funeral, which forms the tragic love triumph of his conquered foes. As the triumphs staged in Antony and Cleopatra are scandalous or disappointed versions, so the triumphs imagined by its characters are qualified, though splendid. One of the play's most exuberant versions of triumph celebrates Antony's victory in his first sea-battle (IV. viii. 8±36):




Enter the city, clip your wives, your friends, . . . O thou day o' th' world, Chain mine arm'd neck, leap thou, attire and all, Through proof of harness to my heart, and there Ride on the pants triumphing! . . . Through Alexandria make a jolly march, . . . Trumpeters, With brazen din blast you the city's ear . . . This joyfully embodied triumph is a premature celebration of a fugitive victory, the momentary rise of Antony's fortunes before their decisive fall. Octavia's solitary return to Rome after her desertion by Antony elicits a similar rhetorical flight from her brother, an awesome evocation of Rome's magnitude, in which the trees should have borne men and the dust raised by its armies should have risen to heaven ± all describing the rightful triumph that has been denied her (III. vi. 42±55). Cleopatra's marvellous dream vision of the èmperor Antony' includes a glimpse of a triumph, in which Antony is accompanied by the spoils of war and the catalogue of conquered kingdoms (V. ii. 90±2): in his livery Walk'd crowns and crownets; realms and islands were As plates dropp'd from his pocket. In sobering contrast to such impossibly munificent triumphs are the political realities of the late republic. When Ventidius does actually earn a triumph for extending the boundaries of the empire, a companion imagines how thy grand captain, Antony, Shall set thee on triumphant chariots, and Put garlands on thy head. Ventidius prudently recognizes his danger: `Better to leave undone, than by our deed / Acquire too high a fame' (III. i. 9±15). To seek a triumph had always been to invite envy, but in the Rome of Antony and Cleopatra the classic military triumph has receded into naive dream. The play eventually sets up Caesar and Cleopatra as rival triumphal claimants. The most persistently imagined triumph in Antony and Cleopatra is Caesar's Actium triumph, the one impressively mythologized by Virgil and Horace. In her real or pretended submission to Caesar, Cleo-





we, Your scutcheons and your signs of conquest, shall Hang in what place you please. Enraged at his defeat and at Cleopatra's suspected treachery, Antony evokes the humiliations of defeat: `Follow his chariot, like the greatest spot / Of all thy sex; most monster-like, be shown' (IV. xii. 35±6). Caesar himself expresses only enigmatically his ambition to display the defeated Cleopatra: `her life in Rome / Would be eternal in our triumph' (V. i. 65±6). His politic phraseology makes the event somehow benefit Cleopatra as much as Caesar himself. Recognizing the truth, Cleopatra refuses to be `brooch'd' in Caesar's ìmperious show' (IV. xv. 23±5), to be hoisted up before `the shouting varlotry / Of censuring Rome' (V. ii. 56± 7). Cleopatra's resolve to take her own life arises from her vivid imagining of her place in Caesar's triumph (V. ii. 209±21): Mechanic slaves With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers shall Uplift us to the view . . . Saucy lictors Will catch at us like strumpets, and scald rhymers Ballad `s out a' tune. The quick comedians Extemporally will stage us, and present Our Alexandrian revels: Antony Shall be brought drunken forth, and I shall see Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness I' th' posture of a whore. Cleopatra evokes memorably the exuberance and grossness of triumphas-carnival. Her satirical sharpness responds with relish as well as revulsion to the burlesque theatricality she envisages. In transforming Caesar's triumph in this way, Cleopatra achieves her own power over the conqueror, as Ovid triumphed licentiously over Augustan grauitas. Cleopatra's speech also brings together, indeed equates, Caesar's Roman triumph and Shakespeare's English play, with its boy Cleopatra. In setting Rome on the English stage, Shakespeare contributes to England's appropriation of triumph, displaying Rome as a trophy of English culture as the Roman triumph had once displayed British trophies.



patra plays the defeated monarch and imagines the captured banners displayed in a triumph (V. ii. 134±6):

Deprived of its most prized exhibit, Caesar's triumph, which Virgil glorified as the fulfilment of Aeneas's mission, comes to seem a hollow festivity, an afterthought to the lovers' tragedy. Cleopatra outdoes it with her own versions, above all her manifestation on the river Cydnus. Enobarbus's description of this event concentrates the play's virtuoso variety of triumphs. It is a naualis triumphus, like the ones imagined for Elizabeth by the Armada poets.8 Cleopatra's barge serves as the chariot of the triumphator, in which she rides not as Apollo or Mars but as Venus, attended not by soldiers but by women and pretty dimpled boys. The city `cast / Her people out upon her' as Rome did for triumphators, and failed to do for Octavia. Cleopatra stages in effect a triumph of love, but, unlike Ovid's erotic triumphs, this one includes rather than rejects political power, for Antony, Ènthron'd i' th' marketplace, did sit alone, / Whistling to th' air' (II. ii. 215±16). À most triumphant lady' (II. ii. 185), Cleopatra deprives Antony of his subjects, and outdoes him in a contest of magnificence. Part of Cleopatra's weaponry is the naualis triumphus itself, which thus becomes not only the celebration of a conquest but also the means of conquest itself. In Enobarbus's narrative, Cleopatra combines the glorious opulence of triumph with its carnival indecorum: Ì saw her once / Hop forty paces through the public street' (II. ii. 228±9). Cleopatra's infinite variety encompasses all the possibilities of triumph in her own person. Enobarbus himself takes on but inverts the role of the triumphator's whispering attendant. He does not remind Cleopatra of her mortality but endows her with immortality: Àge cannot wither her'. Cleopatra does die, however. Even in choosing death she robs Caesar of his triumphal prize, and having done so indulges in the common soldiers' licensed abuse, calling `great Caesar ass / Unpolicied' (V. ii. 307± 8). In her death, Cleopatra creates a final triumph for herself, re-enacting the splendid display of Cydnus (V. ii. 228±9). Like the triumphator riding as a god-king, she decks herself in the garb of queen-goddess. She has an attendant who calls to mind (albeit muddlingly) the mortality dealt by the bite of his serpent and whose jests, like those of the triumphal `ludos', relieve the tragic solemnity. She strikes the lookers-on, the undemonstrative Caesar onstage as well as the theatre audience offstage, with the wonder that was an end of triumphal display as well as of Renaissance tragedy. Coriolanus (c.1608) enters imaginatively into the early Rome chronicled by Livy and idealized by Sallust and Tacitus, where military triumphs and internecine political struggles threaten but also energize the state. The intensity of Rome's commitment to war makes triumph




problematic as an instrument of concord: an explosive tension exists between the military victor and the city that attempts to contain him through triumph. The triumphator himself, not his vanquished opposite, eventually becomes the sacrifical victim, while the feminine triumph of Volumnia signifies the survival power of the city, `whose course will on' even at the expense of its warriors. Caius Martius dominates his play as Tamburlaine dominates his. Both heroes disdain material benefit (Tamburlaine, II. i. 54; Coriolanus I. v. 4± 8). The juvenile savagery of Martius's son (a rare addition by Shakespeare to Plutarch) recalls the military zeal of Tamburlaine's sons. The climactic appearance of the vengeful Martius before the gates of Rome rewrites the spectacle of Tamburlaine before the gates of Damascus. Where the appeals of the virgins and of Zenocrate draw from Tamburlaine a soliloquy of eloquent puzzlement but no relenting, the women of Rome draw from Martius a baffled silence and a suicidal mercy. Tamburlaine finally succumbs to mortality, Coriolanus to detraction, the two enemies that the triumphator could not overcome. Unlike Tamburlaine, Martius disdains the formal and ceremonial recognition of victory: Ì had rather have my wounds to heal again / Than hear say how I got them' (II. ii. 69± 70; cf. I. ix. 69±70, II. i. 168±9). Martius's impatience with any activity except battle makes Tamburlaine almost courtly by comparison. It also means that Coriolanus lacks Tamburlaine's mastery of triumphal discourse and display. Coriolanus makes the politics of triumph its problematic centre by dramatizing the internal contentions that arise from Rome's martial ideology and the ways they are exploited by the politically adept. The text dwells on the contentiousness of Roman militarism, its politics and its triumphs. Menenius boasts himself àlways factionary on the party' of Coriolanus (V. ii. 29). The tribunes analyse shrewdly the politics of military reputation (I. i. 273±6): Half all Cominius' honours are to Martius, Though Martius earn'd them not; and all his faults To Martius shall be honors, though indeed In aught he merit not. Martius's battlefield feats at Corioles activate these allegiances and calculations. Saluted as victor by the consul Cominius, Martius enters Rome, not strictly in a triumph (because not himself a consul), but in an ouatio: À sennet. Trumpets sound. Enter Cominius the General and Titus Lartius; between them, Coriolanus, crown'd with an oaken garland; with




Captains and Soldiers and a Herald' (II. i. 161 s.d.).9 `Factionaries' on both sides recognize that Coriolanus's military triumph will win him the political prize of the consulate. For Volumnia, `There's one thing wanting, which I doubt not but / Our Rome will cast upon thee' (II. i. 201±2); for the tribune Sicinius, Òn the sudden, / I warrant him consul' (II. i. 221±2). The patricians' campaign to make Coriolanus consul is countered by the plebeian tribunes, who find their opportunity in his refusal to act out the ceremony of submission to the people's vote. By provoking Coriolanus in public assemblies, the tribunes engineer his exile and eventually his death. The tragedy of Coriolanus thus re-enacts the theme of detraction in ancient triumphal narratives, such as the tragic career of Scipio, in which the triumphator saves the state but is driven out by ingratitude and political dissension. In Shakespeare's treatment, the theme achieves a powerful density, because it is the triumph itself and the associated honours and ceremonies that provide the occasion for rejecting the triumphator. However, this rejection does not arise solely from the people's ethical shortcomings: it is represented as the outcome of a culture of warfare, and of Coriolanus's inability to match battlefield feats with triumphal display. Coriolanus is scripted and rehearsed in his political role by his mother (III. ii. 73±106): Go to them, with this bonnet in thy hand, . . . say to them, Thou art their soldier, and, being bred in broils, Hast not the soft way which, thou dost confess, Were fit for thee to use as they to claim . . . Come, come, we'll prompt you. If Volumnia's prescription for courting the people recalls Queen Elizabeth's artful crowd-pleasing, Coriolanus's refusal to play his role recalls King James's gracelessness (II. iii. 50±1, III. ii. 99, 105±6): Plague upon't! I cannot bring My tongue to such a pace . . . Must I go show them my unbarbeÁd sconce? . . . You now have put me to such a part which never I shall discharge to th' life. Coriolanus's refusal or inability may be construed as an aspect of his oldfashioned, soldierly nobility. Equally, it may be construed as cautionary




to a monarch such as James, teaching that statecraft demands not only the ability to win victories, like Martius in war or James in peace, but also the ability to win public recognition and unify the state ± the purpose of the triumph in ancient Rome. In failing to master the peaceful weapon of the triumph, Coriolanus becomes its victim.10 In tracing this tragic fall, the play creates a surprising parallel between the overweening military hero and the plebeians who bring him down. Like Coriolanus by his fellow patricians, the plebeians are scripted and rehearsed by their tribunes Sicinius and Brutus (III. iii. 13±16): when they hear me say, Ìt shall be so I' th' right and strength a' th' commons,' be it either For death, for fine, or banishment, then let them, If I say fine, cry `Fine!', if death, cry `Death!' The remorseless requirements of glory enslave Martius to his military tasks as completely as the humblest citizen or slave to his labours, `Like to a harvest-Man [that's] task'd to mow / Or all or lose his hire' (I. iii. 36± 7). Coriolanus's metamorphosis in Antium, where he appears as a mere `companion' or `fellow', in `mean apparel', makes visible his ambiguous status. This parallel makes a striking variation on the theme memento se hominem esse: the godlike triumphator who rides in glory is indeed one with the commonest man who gazes upon him, not only metaphysically but politically as well. The point is made clear when Rome celebrates a new triumph, for its deliverance from the reconquering Martius himself. The return of Volumnia is greeted by triumphal jubilation (V. iv. 49±51, V. v. 1±3): The trumpets, sackbuts, psalteries, and fifes,

Tabors and cymbals, and the shouting Romans,

Make the sun dance . . .

Behold our patroness, the life of Rome!

Call all your tribes together, praise the gods,

And make triumphant fires! Strew flowers before them!

Unlike Cleopatra's imagined triumph for the destruction of Rome, Volumnia's female triumph celebrates the city's salvation, but it is a terrible spectacle all the same. Volumnia saves the city but sacrifices her son. She thus recasts the tragic topos of the triumphator who loses his sons at his moment of glory: this triumphator owes her glory precisely to the loss of her son. Her triumph illustrates the destructiveness




of a military state, and the awesome but ruthless survival power of Rome, converting the dea Roma and the suckling wolf of Rome's foundation legend from nurturers to devourers. Though Shakespeare may have based Volumnia's triumph on a hint in Livy, his version of the politics of Roman triumph grimly belies Livy's summary: `Non inuiderunt laudes suas mulieribus uiri Romani. adeo sine obtrectatione gloriae alienae uiuebatur' [the men of Rome did not begrudge to the women their praises. For in those days people lived free from detraction] (ii. 40).

2 John Fletcher's Bonduca (1613±14?) conflates two episodes from the history of Roman Britain, the resistance and revolts of Caratacus (AD 43±51) and of Boudicca (AD 61), as a means of contrasting two kinds of militarism, two attitudes to Rome, and two uses of triumph. Fletcher's Bonduca exercises a fierce militarism in the service of British independence; she claims to vindicate the rustic virtues of Britain over the civilized vices of Rome. When besieged, she refuses to surrender or to throw herself on Roman mercy. In parley with the Romans, Bonduca's daughter asserts Britain's equality with Rome, based on their shared Trojan origin: Britons are `The children of as great as Rome, as noble'.11 When eventually defeated, Bonduca and her daughters take their own lives, in a scene that imitates Shakespeare's treatment of Cleopatra's suicide. This act of defiance, like Cleopatra's, wins Bonduca and her daughters their own victory, which outdoes military victory and refashions the triumph to celebrate female heroism and patience (IV. iv. 59±72): we were not born for triumphs, To follow your gay sports, and fill your slaves With hoots and acclamations . . . No, no, ye Romanes, we have ways to scape ye, To make yee poor again, indeed our prisoners, And stick our triumphs full . . . To torture ye with suffering, like our slaves; To make ye curse our patience, wish the world Were lost again, to win us onely, and esteem it The end of all ambitions. The historical Caratacus had been led in defeat to Rome ten years before Boudicca's revolt, but Fletcher makes Caratach Bonduca's ally




and tutor. Though he too fights the Romans, Caratach rejects Bonduca's savagery. He frees Roman soldiers whom Bonduca's daughters intend to hang. When these daughters capture Roman officers by a ruse, Caratach orders their release too, rejecting a triumph won over Roman `gentlemen' by base female sleights: À womans wisdome in our triumphs? Out, / Out ye sluts, ye follies . . . Arm again, Gentlemen' (III. v. 66±8).12 When Bonduca boastfully claims a triumph, Caratach judges that her victory is incomplete, since the Romans are not decisively turned back. He chides her for thus transforming the religious majesty of a military triumph into the frivolity of a Renaissance festival (I. i. 40±4): Why are your Altars crown'd with wreathes of flowers,

The beasts with gilt horns waiting for the fire?

The holy Druides composing songs

Of everlasting life to Victory?

Why are these triumphs, Lady? for a May-game?

Even in resisting Roman conquest, Caratach does so according to a Roman code of battlefield honour (a more punctilious code than Romans themselves historically observed). Like the militarists of early modern England, Caratach claims a fraternal Romanitas in the act of waging war with Rome. Before doing battle, he offers up a remarkably even-handed prayer: `steel us both with angers / And warlike executions fit thy viewing' (III. i. 66±7). After battle, he buries a fallen Roman, and bestows on him a triumphal memory (V. i. 62±4): in thy earth Some Lawrel fix his seat, there grow, and flourish, And make thy grave an everlasting triumph. Even in defeat, Caratach outdoes Bonduca. Instead of taking his life, he submits to Roman captivity and is led in triumph to Rome. In the dignity with which he faces defeat, Caratach wins the praise of his captors, who thus reciprocate his fraternal respect. Caratach succeeds through his virtue in transforming the role of the defeated king who marched in the triumph. Neither thwarting the victor by suicide, nor supplying an emblem of tragic pathos, he will be received honourably in Rome. Though Fletcher does not stage the scene, his conclusion anticipates Caratacus's speech in Tacitus, in which he gains his life by justifying his resistance and placing mercy above retribution: `si uos omnibus imperitare uultis, sequitur ut omnes seruitutem accipiant? . . . suppli-




cium mei obliuio sequeretur: at si incolumem seruaueris, aeternum exemplar clementiae ero' [because you wish to rule over the whole world, does it follow that the whole world welcomes slavery? My execution would be forgotten, whereas if you save my life, I shall be be an everlasting memorial of your clemency].13 Bonduca has the marks of a royalist response to the political conditions created by Princess Elizabeth's marriage and by the proposed Spanish match for Prince Charles.14 Fletcher writes a corrective to the bellicose outburst of enthusiasm for the Protestant cause and opposition to a Spanish deÂtente. His contrast between a fiercely martial and a judiciously moderate nationalism, and their respective ideals of triumph, parallels Shakespeare's contrast in Cymbeline (1609±10) between a fierce queen seeking war and discord and a wise king seeking peace and concord. Like Shakespeare's British queen, Bonduca represents a feminine excess of national and martial fervour. Boudicca had served as a warrior model for the triumphal Elizabeth of the Armada writings, but in Fletcher's version she represents atavistic savagery and female intemperance ± qualities that the true triumphator claimed to have overthrown. This revision of Bonduca may also apply to Elizabeth herself, or to attempts to invoke the myth of a martial Elizabeth as a model for James. It is Caratach who provides the true model of royal conduct, and this model coincides with the conduct and policies of James, or at any rate with an ideal version of them. Caratach cannot be accused of surrendering the national interest or dignity, but his moderation in defending them makes possible a new concord between Britain and Rome. In the same way, James has joined his daughter to Elector Frederick and his kingdom to the Protestant Union, but he also seeks to establish a concord with Spain. Caratach's strict observance of the ius triumphandi, and the fact that it is a king who thus maintains triumphal decorum, reclaims triumph for James from what the play suggests are the excesses of the militant Protestants.15 Though the text is imbued with respect for the institution of triumph, it also shares James's awareness of the perils of war. The play ends with a triumph of blind Fortune, and with an admonition concerning the destructiveness, perhaps for England itself, of the victories that earn martial triumphs (V. iii. 162±4): Fortune now see, now proudly Pluck off thy vail, and view thy triumph: Look, Look what thou hast brought this Land to.




Philip Massinger's The Bond-Man (1623) is full of the stagey peripeteias of Stuart tragi-comedy and full of allusions to triumph: the combination of the two causes tension in the play's politics. Some of the allusions to triumph are satirical, measuring the distance between ancient uirtus and the mock triumphs of a decadent kingdom. The Sicily of The Bond-Man offers, notably, the spectacle of female triumphators: here women are `borne / In triumph on mens shoulders'.16 This corrupt Sicily encodes a corrupt England, and Massinger adds his triumphal topos to the satirical condemnation of the new vogue of sedan-chairs in England. The criticism was as much political as ethical. Sedan-chairs were not only luxurious, but they forced a slavelike posture on their bearers; the vogue came from Spain, and it had been introduced by the court favourite, Buckingham.17 The corrective to decadence and its anti-triumphs is war. When Sicily allies itself with Corinth against Carthage, Massinger's heroine Cleora urges the men of Sicily to a contest for triumphs (I. iii. 329±31): now your Countries libertie's at the stake, Honour, and glorious tryumph, made the garland For such as dare deserve them.18 Cleora voices the widespread English militarism of 1623±4. This mood originated in the peril of the Elector Frederick before imperial and Spanish arms, and in James's eventual despatch of an English force to aid him. It was intensified by the campaigns of Prince Maurits, who had re-emerged as leader of the anti-Hapsburg and Protestant cause at the expiry of the Spanish-Dutch truce in 1621. It was given renewed impetus in late 1623 by the bellicose attitudes of Charles and Buckingham after their return from Madrid and the failure of Charles's proposed Spanish match. The Bond-Man, written for Princess Elizabeth's company and acted before Prince Charles in December 1623, alludes unmistakably to these events.19 Sicily aids Corinth against Carthage, as it is the duty of England to aid the Netherlands against Spain; Corinth's Timoleon is the play's version of Prince Maurits. The military hero of The Bond-Man, Leosthenes, returns from the Corinthian expedition to a triumph. This event, imagined with a handsome copia, not only marks a revived national valour but will regain for him the affections of Cleora, who has been alienated by Leosthenes's jealousy (III. iv. 33±50): when she views you Like a triumphant Conquerour, carried through




The Streets of Syracusa, the glad people

Pressing to meet you, and the Senators

Contending who shall heape most honours on you;

The Oxen crown'd with Girlands led before you

Appointed for the Sacrifice; and the Altars

Smoaking with thankfull Incense to the gods:

The Souldiers chaunting loud hymnes to your praise:

The windowes fill'd with Matrons, and with Virgins,

Throwing upon your head, as you passe by,

The choycest Flowers; and silently invoking

The Queene of Love, with their particular vowes,

To be thought worthy of you; can Cleora,

(Though, in the glasse of selfe-love, shee behold

Her best deserts) but with all ioy acknowledge,

What she indur'd, was but a noble tryall

You made of her affection?

Like the triumph in Ovid's Ars amatoria, though much more decorously, this triumph becomes the occasion for romantic love: as Ovid promises his pupil, the ceremony renders female spectators susceptible to love. The Ovidian reminiscence draws attention to the fact that The Bond-Man is not solely a political play, and that other features qualify its apparent allegiance to militant Protestantism. The mechanisms of tragi-comedy transfer the emphasis of the text from politics to love and fidelity. Far from being conquered by Leosthenes's triumphal display, Cleora claims her own ethical triumph over the triumphator: `My Chastity triumphs over your iealousie' (II. i. 199). The play's military hero proves not to be its romantic hero, the worthy warrior not to be a worthy lover. Instead, he proves to be ignobly untrusting of Cleora and a promise-breaker toward another mistress. The accelerating peripeteias with which The Bond-Man reaches its climax reveal instead a new hero. A rival lover of Cleora, Pisander, has disguised himself as a slave and wins her, by displaying the virtues of chastity, fidelity and submission that the play discloses as more meritorious than martial virtues. The imagined triumph celebrating Leosthenes's return measures therefore the incomplete glory of the merely military victor, who has not earned a triumph of chaste love. A version of the captives marching in Petrarch's Triumphus Amoris, Leosthenes is a military victor who cannot master love. The turning point of The Bond-Man, when the emphasis shifts from martial uirtus to trustful love, is the lavish speech anticipating Leosthenes's triumph. Leosthenes's entry constitutes the





I cannot doubt You that haue bin victorious in the war, Should in a combat fought with words come off, But with assured triumph. But it is this `combat' that fully reveals Leosthenes's deficiencies and Pisander's virtues. Ìn such symptomatic slippages', as Walter Cohen remarks, òne catches glimpses of the anxieties and inadequacies of the circumscribing strategies of aristocratic opposition.'20 The division in The Bond-Man between the triumphs of military valour and the triumphs of faithful love exemplifies the way that Massinger `seems torn between intense interest in political themes and fear of carrying them to a coherent conclusion.'21 This division may itself have a political basis, in the debate over war and peace at the end of James's reign. On the one hand, Massinger's text urges a military revival and a commitment to the Protestant cause that will purge and revitalize the kingdom.22 On the other hand, military virtues are suspect, or at any rate the man of war is an incomplete model of virtue. Where James's writings and monarchic propaganda replace warrior king with Solomonic king, Massinger replaces warrior with lover, a strategy that anticipates the cultivation of Neoplatonic love at the Caroline court. In relation to more topical and local politics, the play embraces the newfound militarism of Charles and Buckingham, yet it criticizes Buckingham through its attack on sedan-chairs and on Sicily's military unpreparedness. Massinger dedicated the printed text of The Bond-Man (1624) to Philip Herbert, Earl of Montgomery. As a nephew of Sir Philip and Sir Robert Sidney, Montgomery seemed a natural leader of the militant Protestants and had been a dedicatee of Shute's Triumphs of Nassau. Even this gesture, however, is self-divided, since Montgomery never became active in military affairs and identified himself with James's policies to the end of the king's life.23 Had he wished to position himself unequivocally with the militant Protestants, Massinger could, like Shute, have dedicated his book also to Montgomery's brother, William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, who in 1623 actively opposed Buckingham's claim to military leadership.24



point of intersection between divergent ideologies, at which the dramatic emphasis passes from valour to submission, from jealousy to love, from the soldier deficient in nobility to the seeming slave who possesses it. A climactic trial scene again holds out the expectation of triumph for the man of uirtus (V. iii. 32±5):

Where The Bond-Man combines martial epic and amatory romance, and vacillates between military heroism and faithful love, Thomas Nabbes's Hannibal and Scipio (1635) is an exemplary history that teaches the priority of political duty over ambition and love. Hannibal and Scipio treats the heroic rivalry of Scipio and Hannibal, and the tragedy of Massanissa and Sophonisba. Nabbes maps his ethical terrain through the varying attitudes of his characters to the Roman triumph. The underlying historical conflict of the play, the rivalry of Rome and Carthage, is framed as a contest for triumph: great Carthage; But greater Rome: whose Eagle eyes have gaz'd Against the Sunne of many a glorious triumph!25 Like Cleopatra, Sophonisba makes an honourable suicide, refusing to appear in Scipio's triumph, `to be gaz'd at, / And scorn'd by the course rabble' (III. iv; 235). Scipio encourages even an unworthy ally by promising him a place in an idealized triumph: (II. ii; 212) Rome shal make great esteem of Syphax friendship, And, when she shall be wrapt in silken wings Of victory and peace, his statue crown'd Shall grace the triumph. The play's central conflict, Scipio's rivalry with Hannibal, defines itself too through his ambition to outdo his predecessors' triumphs. Livy and Petrarch had distinguished Scipio's African triumph as the supreme celebration of Roman uirtus; Nabbes's Scipio shows his honourable ambition by being dissatisfied with even that distinction.26 He repines at the fact that his triumph lacked the display of the defeated general that would have made it complete (V. ii; 263): Had my fortune Captiv'd the person of great Hannibal, My triumph should out-vye all the rich pompes That ever made Rome shine. On the opposite side, Hannibal's appetite for triumph is voracious, even desperate (I. iii; 201):





Hannibal's Lucanian hyperbole locates him as truculent and vainglorious. Through such contrasting uses of triumph, Hannibal and Scipio calibrates its political and ethical opposition between protagonist and antagonist, temperate man and man of excess. Nabbes's choice of the Punic Wars and their contest for triumph as his dramatic subject suggests that his text is designed as a corrective to the `triumphalism' cultivated by the Caroline court of the 1630s. Through the example of Scipio, and through a lengthy discourse in which Scipio justifies the practice of triumph, Nabbes reinstates martial triumph and its uirtus over mere triumphalism. The play criticizes courtly sloth and the corruptions of peace in both its Rome and its Carthage (III. v; 240). A similar emphasis appears in Nabbes's `Presentation Intended for the Prince his Highnesse on his Birth-day' (1638). Writing for Prince Charles as he set up his own household as Prince of Wales, Nabbes casts him in the heroic role that in the previous reign had been assumed by Prince Henry. In order to `Present Heroick actions so t'his mind', Nabbes has masquers represent the martial feats of eight of Charles's predecessors as Prince of Wales. Pre-eminent among them is `black Prince Edward', who `bravely did advance / His ensignes through the very heart of France '.27 This is a provocative example when England has a French Catholic queen, and when Englishmen might remember from the 1620s the failure of King Charles's French campaigns and the French refusal to allow English armies, and their ènsignes', to cross France when going to the aid of the Elector Frederick. Nevertheless, Nabbes's play is not unequivocally militarist. Scipio differs from Hannibal in his ability to temper military ambition with political and ethical wisdom. Immediately the senate concludes a peace with Carthage, Scipio obediently discards his hope for a triumph over Hannibal. He is able, by example and exhortation, to instruct the lovers Syphax and Massanissa to subordinate passion to the claims of constancy and fame. The play ends with Scipio's famous retirement to Liternum, setting aside the temptations and vicissitudes of fame: `He that suffers / Prosperity to swell him `bove a meane . . . Leaves nothing but an empty fame behind' (Epilogue; 270). As an exemplar of selfmastery and duty, Scipio resembles the heroes of Corneille's contemporary heroic dramas.28 The play also resembles Caroline masquing



Have we cut our way Thorow Mountaines, and thaw'd rocks of Ice for passage To reach the head of Rome, and shall we not Triumph in her rich spoyles? Yes; we will triumph!



triumphs in its emphasis on self-mastery and private virtue. Like the Charles of Albion's Triumph, Scipio conquers on the battlefield because he first `conquers a world of vices' in himself, in which Àll his passions are his true subjects; and knowledge, judgement, merit, bounty, and the like . . . triumph with him.'


8

`Cypresse, not Bayes' The travails and conflicts of the English Civil War and Commonwealth were typically conceived in Judaeo-Christian terms: Israel neglects its covenant and suffers the captivity of Egypt or Babylon; God in his mercy delivers it through the prowess of a Joshua or a Gideon. Roman precedents also contributed: King Charles was identified with Tarquin or Caesar, Parliament and its generals with the Bruti or Cato. Fairfax's New Model army and Cromwell's navy were admired for reviving a republican discipline.1 The apocalyptic excitement, the conviction that God was active in political affairs, imparted the sense of national uniqueness and imperial destiny that Romans celebrated in the triumph. Both sides appropriated the conventions of triumph, to celebrate victories and for other purposes as well. In difficult times, consolatory triumphs promised eventual vindication. In defeat, the noble deaths of the king or his soldiers created the paradoxical triumphs of martyrdom. In the Civil War, royalist uses of triumph generally reconstruct Roman convention more accurately, while Parliamentary adaptations are more varied and resourceful. In the 1650s, this balance is redressed, or even reversed. Some Commonwealth writers produce triumph poems of baroque grandeur and endow Cromwell with the traits of an Augustus, though others contest this ostentation. Royalist writers prophesy vindicatory triumphs with a feverishness that recalls Puritan apocalyptics.

1 The conditions of civil war restrained both the imagining and the staging of triumphs. Under the ius triumphandi, Romans did not celebrate 149



Civil War and Commonwealth


Alas, what Triumph can this vict'ory shew That dyes us red in blood and blushes too! How can we wish that Conquest, which bestowes Cypresse, not Bayes uppon the conqu'ering browes!2 A Parliamentary triumph poem writes of the painfulness of civil war in Virgil's language for the descent to Hades: why should I blaze The civill battailes of our troubled dayes? To count the conquered foes, the nobles slain, This is a labor, this a work of pain.3 The conditions of civil war also made impracticable the staging of ceremonial triumphs. Victors were usually more occupied with consolidating than with celebrating victories. The Puritan conviction that `public sports do not well agree with public calamities' extended from stage-plays to most other forms of ceremonial and spectacle. Though it staged diplomatic ceremonies with the dignity appropriate to a republic, Parliament preferred the `season of humiliation' to the triumph.4 Nevertheless, the Civil War was to its participants no mere struggle for earthly power. Its religious dimension also made it something greater ± a war against anti-Christ, a crusade to extend God's empire. Such an understanding readily expressed itself in triumphs: `Shall the Militant Church be Triumphant over the Dragon and his Angels? Then Christs Souldiers have no reason to repent . . . His side will be the prevailing side'.5 Even the austerity of Parliamentary thanksgiving has an affinity with the grauitas and conviction of historical destiny that marked Roman republican triumphs: Thursday . . . shall be set apart for a day of publique Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the great Successe of the Army under the Command of Sir Thomus [sic] Fairfax General, against the Enemy in the West, in breaking and destroying their Armies, and giving them up into the hands of the Parliament.6



triumphs for victories in civil war, whose sorry divisions were incompatible with the exultation of triumph. A rhetoric of regret marks many Civil War writings, even ones that also deploy the rhetoric of triumph. Abraham Cowley's royalist Civil War opens by imitating Lucan's disavowal of triumphs at the opening of De bello ciuili:

In the Civil War, printed propaganda from both sides largely took the place of ceremonies. The printed narrative or letter extends the celebration to a wider public than any ceremony could include ± potentially, from the city to the nation. One simple but impressive memorial of victory consisted of single folio sheets with titles like Victories Obtained (by Gods blessing on the Parliaments forces) both by Land and Sea (1646) and A perfect List of all the Victories obtained by the Lord-General Cromwel (1651). With their itemized battles, their lists of prisoners and spoils, and their engraved portraits of military commanders, these sheets parade in printed form what triumphs paraded in material form: they are modest versions of the tablets and friezes on which Rome's victories were similarly catalogued and illustrated. For puritans, these printed versions were indeed a superior form of triumph. As the Bible and its private reading prevailed over the Prayer Book and its public ceremonial, so victories were marked not by a ceremony but by a `relation' to be pondered and internalized. A pamphlet published for the anniversary of Naseby describes the use of these godly triumphs. They move the faithful to meditate thankfully on their victories: às men more then Conquerours through Christ, and enabled to triumph in him over all our enemies; Psal. 92. 4, 5. Thou Lord hast made me glad through thy worke, I will triumph in the work of thy hand.' They perform the memorializing function of ancient fasti or triumphal monuments, so that òur children after us may preserve the memory of them from one Generation to another.' This new form of triumph reiterates the ancient repertoire. A formidable enemy is overthrown, rich spoils are won, divine favour is acknowledged, and the experience produces what Josephus called àn ecstasy of joy': If ye instance in these times, tell of Edge-hill, Marston-moor, Naseby, Routen-heath, and other Victories; . . . Tell of a great enemy subdued, great prisoners taken, great Garrisons received, great store of Armes and Ammunition yeelded up; . . . willingly lose your selves in relating them, and adoring our great Benefactor.7 The signal victories of the Civil War produced not only these modest versions of triumph but also occasional ceremonies. The victory of the New Model Army at Naseby was celebrated by a parade of 3 000 prisoners and 55 captured standards through London.8 This rare event took place one week after the battle, on 21 June 1645. A pamphlet issued on that day specified The Manner how the Prisoners are to be brought into the City of London. It gave the route to be followed by the prisoners, from



Civil War and Commonwealth 151

Aldersgate Street to Charing Cross. It described the captured colours for the edification of spectators: no pupil of Ovid will be able to discourse speciously and seductively on the contents of this triumph. The pamphlet communicates its satisfaction in displaying the grandiose riches and threatening heraldry of the Crown on the streets of the Parliamentary capital; ensigns that had once awed the people were now public spoils [3,5]: 1. The Kings standard with a goulding Lyon, and over the Lyyon a goulden Crown, and over the Lyon and under the Crown this motto, DIEV EST MON DROIT. 2. The Queens Standard, with a Dragon and a Crown, both in gould. 3. A Percullis and a Crown, both in gould . . . .The Colours aforesaid are to be Carried (splaying) before the prisoners, all the way. In the week after Naseby, various official dispatches and at least seven personal narratives also found their way into print. Like ancient triumph narratives, these reports catalogue spoils of wealth and weaponry: `there was many of the Wagons laden with rich plunder, and other with Arms and Ammunition, about 50. loads of Muskets, Pikes, Powder, Match, and Bullets, abundance of Trunks, which the Souldiers soone emptied'.9 They measure the scale of the victory by the number of prisoners and of enemy dead: `We have also taken some hundreds of Officers prisoners, amongst which are many persons of qualitie, besides a great number of common Soldiers, . . . the generall rumor is two thousand killed and taken.'10 The barbarousness of the enemy takes the form of sinfulness, which is punished with puritan rigour: `the whores that attended that wicked Army are marked in the face or nose, with a slash or cut.'11 The pamphlets ascribe to Fairfax the triumphator's attributes of godlike felicitas and uirtus: `his very countenance discovered an Embleme of true valour, as ever we saw; and had a spirit heightned above the ordinary Spirit of man . . . and received not the least wound; though hee ingaged bareheaded, and routed the Enemy'.12 Cromwell's conquests in Ireland in 1649±50 transcended civil war victories. Like the Elizabethan campaigns commemorated in The Faerie Queene, they consolidated empire, and they defeated barbarians who might join with Charles Stuart and with French forces to attack revolutionary England.13 The campaign was reported with a profusion of pamphlets, including the printed dispatches of the Lord General himself. Cromwell's victorious dispatches perform the function of the laureate letter sent to Rome by an imperator when claiming a triumph, with





not by power, or might, but by the Spirit of God . . . That which caused your men to Storm so couragiously, it was the Spirit of God, who gave your men Courage, and took it away again, and gave the Enemy Courage, and took it away again, and gave your men Courage again, and therewith this happy Success; and therefore it is good that God alone have all the Glory.14 The godly victor himself adopts the role of the triumphator's attendant, warning not one man alone of his mortality but the whole army and nation of the mortal consequences of sinfulness: `wee have just cause to fear, that without a thorough Reformation of such sins, he may deservedly break off the continuance of his wonted loving kindnesse towards this place, and give us over to destruction.'15 The Lord General's return from Ireland in June 1650 was received with a scrupulously moderate triumph. The godlike triumphator has his share of human frailty, being on his return `not so Sea sick, as when he first went over thither'. His arrival at Windsor is domestic, amiable, and businesslike. He is met by his wife as well as `persons of eminency,' with whom he `had some discourse on the affaires of Ireland, . . . he shows himself very affable, and courteous unto all'.16 Like the Roman triumphator's sojourn outside the walls of Rome before his entry, Cromwell's sojourn at Windsor was a preparation for his entry to London. Efforts are made to ensure that this event will show a proper combination of humility and courtesy: They tell us that a great number will also meet him by the way, in his passage to London; but his Lordship expresseth much humility, and when any Victory obtained is spoken of, he acknowledgeth God to be all in all . . . He also declareth, That it is not sutable to his desire, to come up to London in great Pomp and Glory, yet because men would not be thought guilty of that abominable vice of ingratitude, and for that Worthy deeds are not to be requited with neglect, it may be decent and seemly, for such as are well-wishers to the common good, to testifie their affections this way, which may be done without ostentation in the one, or ascribing more then is due by the other.17



the difference that Cromwell does not claim the personal glory of the triumphator, but attributes all the glory to God. Likewise, the ups and downs of worldly fortune that imperil the pagan triumphator are to Cromwell only apparently random: they too express the will of God. Cromwell has prevailed

The final victory of the Civil Wars, at Worcester in September 1651, was won against a largely foreign army of Scots, commanded by a now foreign king, Charles Stuart (as Parliamentary writers style him). Like the enemy whose defeat earned a triumph at Rome, this army was à very formidable Body, and well provided, and having their spirits double edged with Revenge and Despair, the strongest ingredients of resolution.'18 Like the battle that earned a triumph, Worcester was àn Absolute Victory, and so full an one as proved a total Defeat and Ruine of the enemies Army'.19 The 4 000 prisoners who marched through London exhibit the dreadfulness of the enemy, and, as in Biondo's Roman triumph, they prompt gratitude in those who have escaped them: they were very sturdy surley knaves, keep them under, and they may serve for nasty stinking vassals, I leave to every indifferent person that hath beheld them to judge what a condition they had been in if such a generation as this had prevailed and become their masters, or cut their throats, of which they made themselves so sure.20 Cromwell's entry to London after Worcester took place on a different day from the parade of prisoners and was more ceremonious than his return from Ireland. He was met outside the city by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen and greeted with a speech by the Recorder. He was also met by a jubilant multitude, `many thousands of Citizens both horse and foot . . . which filled the ways and places best scituate for beholders four or five miles together.'21 Nevertheless, the humility of the triumphator again redefines the event. Cromwell repudiates the deceptions of spectacle and makes his entry an occasion for reflection and understanding: his Excellency chose rather to come in as privately as he could in a coach then openly on horseback, to avoid the popularity and applauses of the people, desiring rather that the good he doth to this Common-wealth may be heard and felt then seen, that the people should attribute or ascribe too much unto him, who desires to carry on the work of the Lord in all meekesse and humility.22 The occasion bears an implicit contrast not only to the Romans but to the Stuart kings' displays of magnificence and their claims to divine status. Yet in differentiating itself from triumphal and royal hubris Cromwell's entry comes full circle. By riding in a coach instead of on horseback, Cromwell re-enacts the triumph of Camillus, the renewer of




Rome after the Gaulish invasions, as Cromwell was the renewer of English liberty after royal tyranny. Camillus was the first triumphator to ride not on horseback but in a chariot. This act drew charges of hubris: `parumque id non ciuile modo sed humanum etiam uisum' [the act was considered inappropriate not only in politics, but in religion]. Cromwell's preference for privacy also replicates the unwillingness of James and Charles to parade themselves before the people's eyes, or affect `Their loud applause and aves vehement'. His triumph therefore produces a paradoxical identification between puritan humility and the exclusiveness of seventeenth-century monarchies. Royalist triumphs were necessarily fewer than Parliamentary. Where Cromwell attempts to revive an austere martial Romanitas, royalist triumphs have a baroque extravagance, though they reveal also a ruthlessness below their opulent surface. In February 1642, as the two sides prepared for war, Queen Henrietta Maria had voyaged to the Netherlands, ostensibly for the marriage of her daughter to Prince William of Orange,23 but also to buy arms and raise troops. After stalemate in 1642, the campaigns of early 1643 favoured the royalists, culminating in the capture of Bristol at the end of July. In the west, Sir Ralph Hopton defeated the Earl of Stamford against unfavourable odds, and defeated also his friend Sir William Waller, who had won early successes in the region. In the north, the Earl of Newcastle won victories over Sir Thomas Fairfax, confining him for lengthy periods to his stronghold of Hull. Newcastle's successes enabled the safe return of the queen from the Netherlands. She landed on the Yorkshire coast on 23 February, made her way to royalist York, and from there took a circuitous route through friendly territory toward Oxford. At Lincoln, she led her own army in an attempt to capture the city, denominating herself `Her she-majesty, generalissima'. She was reunited with the king at Edgehill on 13 July, whence they returned to Oxford.24 The return of the queen after 17 months, and the royalist successes, were saluted in the most glorious royalist triumphs of the Civil War. This took the form of Musarum Oxoniensium Epibateria Serenissimae Reginarum Mariae ex Batauia Feliciter Reduci, `welcome songs by the poets of Oxford for the happy return from Holland of the most serene Queen Maria', a book in which Oxford University's dons apply their ingenuity to the occasion with poems in Latin, Greek, French, and English.25 Oxford was now no academic enclave; since Edgehill, it had become the royal capital and the base for the royalist war effort. As even the queen has donned martial armour, so the Muses of Oxford too must take up arms.26 The pacific tropes and polite gallantries of Stuart court poetry adopt a




sterner guise. The queen has braved storms at sea and battles by land like a pia Aeneas. She has returned to impose justice like a returning Astraea. In one bizarre conceit, Ìntactis Mammis Henretta reuertit Amazon, / Quae Venus exiuit, Penthesilea redit' [the Amazon Henrietta has returned, but with her breasts intact; she who left as Venus comes back as Penthesilea] (sig. A4v). The compliment alludes to the myth that Amazon warriors cut off a breast so that they could wield their javelins more proficiently; it represents Queen Henrietta Maria in an unfamiliar guise, as woman and soldier, mistress and general. The arrival of the queen at Edgehill accords a delayed triumph to the indecisive victory that had been won there in 1642: `'Twas Conquest then, 'tis Triumph now' (sig. Aa(2)1). Like Elizabeth in an earlier generation, Henrietta Maria personates Bellona. She awards triumphal crowns to Charles and his Romanized commanders, while further victories are prophesied (sig. A2v): Eia age Victrices Carolo jam necte Coronas Stamfordum Hoptono ter debellante superbum Candisio Arctoos jam profligante tumultus, Ruperto profugam per castra rebellia gentem Castigante. Nouas Bellona Britannica laurus Et noua serta parat. [Go now and weave victors' crowns for Charles; for Hopton, who has three times overcome the haughty Stamford; for Cavendish [i.e. Newcastle], who is now crushing the northern rebellions; for Rupert, who is chastizing fleeing forces through the rebel forts. New laurels and new garlands too the British Bellona readies.]

Like Roman triumphs, the triumphs of Epibateria mix rejoicing with violence, but the beasts that were immolated on Rome's sacrificial altars are here transformed into enemy soldiers, who are nevertheless fellow Englishmen. In the bellicose humour of these poems, an end to civil war and its triumphs will be achieved only by the immolation of rebels (sig. B4v): Sat sat triumphi, sat Palatini Duces AgitaÃre turmas hostium; Sat uictimarum: sat rebellium cruor Pacauit aras numinum. Regina tuta est, praeda quamuis hostibus Deuota dudum perditis.





What reads at first as a Horatian prayer for release from civil war so that the queen can return in peace is actually a boast that the royalists have won enough victories so that she return in triumph. The poem contributed by William Cartwright likewise figures the Parliamentary side as the many-headed beast of rebellion and anarchy, which must bleed in a triumphal sacrifice. Cartwright's enthusiastic reconstruction of pagan rituals, and his reverence for the queen's person, in themselves hurl defiance at puritan austerity (sigs. D(2)1v±D(2)2): Hallow the Threshold, Crown the Posts anew; The day shall have its due: Twist all our Victories into one bright wreath, On which let Honour breath; Then throw it round the Temples of our QUEENE; 'Tis Shee that must preserve those glories green. . . . But something yet, our Holy Priests will say, Is wanting to the Day: 'Twere sinne to let so Blest a feast arise Without a Sacrifice. True, if our Flocks were full. But being all Are gone, the Many-headed Beast must fall. There is a degree of wishfulness and bravado in this promise of sacrifice, evident in the allusion to depleted flocks: the food shortages of the royalist capital portend the eventual fall not of the Parliamentary Hydra but of the royalist Hercules.27 Some of the triumphs of Epibateria soften this harshness with the Caroline topoi of the godlike monarch, the blessings of peace, and the exemplary love between king and queen. One refined example of Caroline eroticism commends to the returning queen the king's connubial embraces. Their union harmonizes labour and joy, battles in the field and the sweet warfare of love, triumphs of war and triumphs of peace (sig. B1v): I, thalamis succede tuis, et gaudia carpe Quae Tu firma facis, tanti merx digna laboris



[Enough of triumphs; the royal generals have sufficiently harried the battalions of the enemy; enough victims have been offered up; enough rebel blood has appeased the altars of the gods. Our queen is safe, even if a short time ago she was destined to be the booty of depraved enemies.]


[Go, approach your marriage chamber, and seize its delights. Caesar will be a fitting reward for the labours that you have faithfully performed. War will be banished from his matchless bosom; no disturbance will be visible in his majestic countenance; he will pour forth his radiance unchangingly. He will weave his father's olive together with laurel; in the midst of battle he will shine out a peaceful victor.]

The effortless triumphalism of the Caroline masque maintains a nostalgic presence in the wartime Epibateria. The queen enters Oxford as she might have entered the Banqueting House at the `discovery' of a masque; the `rough accents' and `slaughtred Soules' of war become no more threatening than an antimasque, and they undergo a spectacular transformation at `the sad Scenes change.' The queen enters in the person of Victory, with the triumphal properties of altar and laurels and the cry of Ìo', and her mere entry assures conquest (sig. B(2)4±B(2)4v): We that even now no other language spoke Then Warre's rough accents, that like Thunder broke, Doe now melt into Sonnets, and can sing Nothing but Ios to our conquering KING. . . . 'tis to you We owe the sad Scenes change. Great Queene, you raise A flaming Altar, and a Grove of Bayes, Where Horrour dwelt, and slaughtred Soules did lye, Comming not more your selfe, then Victory. Conquest attends your Presence.28 A similar theatrical assurance marks Robert Herrick's epigram to King Charles for the capture of Leicester in May 1645. As in Roman friezes, and as the maker of a Stuart masque might have devised, the figure of Victory hovers over the triumphator: `Victory do's rest / Enspher'd with Palm on Your Triumphant Crest.' Herrick even claims to free Charles from Fortune's mutability, which always threatened the Roman triumphÂa ator. In another masque-like coup de theÃtre, Fortune itself is revealed as a prisoner in Charles's triumph: `Fortune is now Your Captive; other Kings / Hold but her hands; You hold both hands and wings.'29 Herrick's



Caesar erit, solo cujus de pectore bellum Exulat; omnis abest augusta fronte tumultus, Et nitet usque sui similis, dum Patris Oliuam Contexit Lauro, et media inter praelia fulget Pacificus uictor.

awkward hyperboles suggest a discomfort with the high triumphal mode; they also betray his suppression of historical fact. His stately triumph sanitizes an operation that in fact culminated in one of Prince Rupert's most sanguinary sacks. It also breaches the provision of the ius triumphandi that a triumph should celebrate an irreversible victory. Though the capture of Leicester seemed at the time a major victory and caused alarm in Parliamentary circles, the Royalists lost the city within a month, in the aftermath of Naseby. Herrick published his triumph poem in Hesperides, probably in late 1647, at the beginning of the Second Civil War. The collection is designed to reaffirm royalist ideology, and its appearance coincided with a revival of royalist hopes.30 It also prints `To the King, Upon his welcome to HamptonCourt', an aduentus poem in which Charles is saluted as `Great Cesar' and `Great Augustus', bringing `dearest Peace, after destructive Warre'. In this context, Herrick's triumphal text essays a prophetic role, offering an assurance that the king's reverses and Fortune's disfavour are transient, that the peace procured by a triumph will prevail.

2 As both sides employed the discourse of triumph to memorialize their victories, both also used it in periods of trial. On 21 July 1643, at the moment when jubilant royalists were welcoming the queen to Oxford, Parliament appointed Àn extraordinary day of publik Humiliation . . . that everyone might bitterly bewaile his own sins, and cry mightily unto God for Christ his sake, to remove his wrath, and heale the Land.' On this day, Thomas Hill preached before Parliament a sermon entitled The Militant Church, triumphant over the Dragon and his Angels. Addressing members, with republican zeal, as `worthy Senatours', Hill reassured them at this time of threat that `The name of the Almighty Jehovah, is so much interested in the cause of the true Church, that he will carry it on in a triumphing way.' Seeming defeat at the hands of wicked monarchs will assuredly be converted into triumph: `that which may embolden us to looke for more glorious victories hereafter, we finde in this 12. Chapter of the Revelation, even the infant Primitive Church becomming triumphant, when opposed by the fiercest of those heathenish Emperours.'31 William Whitfield, in Idolaters Ruine and Englands Triumph; or the Meditations of a Maimed Soldier (1645) reminds his readers of how abruptly the triumphator may be overthrown. His exemplum is the Earl of Strafford, whose fall in 1641 traces the classic trajectory:




When I have seen him ride in great pomp and state in Ireland, through the streets of Dublin, I never thought that he which was mounted so high in honour and dignitie there, should ever come to such dishonour as to be mounted upon a Scaffold here in London to be executed as a Traytor: He who no lesse then a whole Kingdome honoured, was by abjects openly cursed and contemned.32 As the war approached its end, it was royalists who took to devising consolatory or vindicative triumphs. Triumph of Loyalty: or the happinesse of a suffering subject commemorates Sir Charles Lucas and Sir George Lisle, who were shot after the surrender of Colchester, at the end of the Second Civil War in 1648. For royalists these executions were evidence that they were defending civility against a barbaric enemy.33 When defeated in war and encompassed by perfidy, uirtus is redefined as performing to the end one's duty to the king, a heroic loyalty that will be rewarded by a heavenly triumph. The pamphlet's description of heavenly joys is coloured by the rich costumes, the music, and the incense that embellished the Roman triumph: `their eyes shall be joyed with the delight of the splendor of their own and all glorified bodies, their eares shall be joyed with the harmony of the heavenly musick, their smelling shall be joyed with the fragrancy of celestiall odours' (20). The heroes assume citizenship of the true caput mundi, the heavenly Jerusalem, whose antithetical earthly city is no longer pagan Rome but revolutionary London: à City (not like London) at Unity in it self; a Kingdome (not like England) governed in the perfection of Monarchy; an House (not like Westminster) where all serve one Lord and Master' (19). Triumph in defeat is awarded in another anonymous pamphlet, The triumph of patience: or, the soveraign power of that now most necessary Grace. Written during the King's imprisonment, and published after his execution, this pamphlet is a triumphal version of the martyrological Eikon Basilike, extolling the virtues of `the great master of Christian patience, Charles King of Great Britain', as he is described on the title page. Like Lucas and Lisle, Charles triumphs for the passive feat of suffering nobly, which enables him to `trample upon all Earthly glory' and to go `riding in Triumph over Death and Hell'.34 Actual earthly triumphs have meanwhile become horrible parodies. It is the wicked and the venal who now ride in ostentatious triumph, hypocritically playing the part of the very prince they have killed. Their triumphal spoils are acquired by pillaging their fellow citizens. In this world turned upside down, true princes walk like the prisoners in a Roman triumph (24±5):




those men whom we heretofore thought eminent for holinesse and Piety . . . have found out as a nest the riches of their Brethren, and robbed their treasures, and by means of sequestred Livings, their wives and children do flaunt it in the street, riding like Princes on Horseback, while the Prince and his Assistants walk as servants on the ground. The most savage and despairing mock-triumph in the royalist writing of defeat is Henry King's Elegy upon the most Incomparable King Charls the First. The poem (first printed in 1659) is dated poignantly `From my sad Retirement March 11. 1648' ± in modern terms, 1649, 40 days after Charles's execution. King gives scant attention to Charles himself, whose death becomes rather the occasion for a history of the Civil War, replete with angry denunciation. For King, Parliament had committed an outrage at once religious and political, the attempt `To take both God's and Caesar's dues away.'35 This outrage is repeatedly represented in terms of impious and barbaric triumphs. As in Triumph of Patience, King's revolutionaries are driven not by principle but by greed; their whole aim is to pillage `the Kingdom's Mines of Treasure' (162).36 When secular sources were exhausted, they stripped the churches: `You now tear down Religion's sacred Hedge / To carry on the Work by Sacriledge' (163±4). In these actions, the Parliamentarians play again the role of the barbarian enemy. They are another in the line of the desecrators of holy places, from the feasting Belshazzar to Mehmed II at Constantinople, but they achieve, quanto magis, the height of impiety: `You have Their greatest ills improv'd by worse' (180). Parliament exceeds even the proverbial impiety of the Munster Anabaptists (195±200): Nor John of Leyden, who the pillag'd Quires

Employ'd in Munster for his own attires;

His pranks by Hazlerig exceeded be,

A wretch more wicked and as mad as he,

Who once in triumph led his Sumpter Moil

Proudly bedecked with the Altar's spoil.

In December 1642, Sir Arthur Hesilrige was second in command to Sir William Waller at the capture of Winchester and of Chichester, King's episcopal seat. At Chichester, where King was `most Barbarously Treated', Hesilrige seized the cathedral's communion plate for Parliament's use.37 At Winchester, according to King, Hesilrige seized `The Carpet belonging





they found great store of popish-bookes, pictures, and crucifixes, which the Souldiers carried up and down the streets and Marketplace in triumph, to make themselves merry; yea, and they for certaine piped before them with the Organ-pipes (the faire Organs in the Minster being broken downe by the Souldiers).39 King too sees Hesilrige's procession, with its `Sumpter Moil', or carrier mule, as a version of a Roman triumph, but for him it is a horrifyingly impious version. At Rome, men and vehicles were laden with triumphal spoils, many of which were deposited in the treasury of Jupiter Capitolinus. Only Lucan's criminal Julius Caesar dared plunder such a sanctuary.40 In plundering the sanctuaries of the Christian church, England's revolutionaries surpass Caesar in impiety, though Hesilrige, a carter with his single mule, is too base to rise to the astounding recklessness of Caesar's criminality. In the Civil War, the pathos of the captive monarch led in triumph has a special poignancy, since Charles is no foreign enemy but (in royalist eyes) the rightful monarch of his captors themselves. It is Charles himself who should occupy the place of godlike triumphator. Instead, the turn of Fortune's wheel displays the body of the king in its human vulnerability (387±96): To Holmby first, whence taken from His Bed,

He by an Army was in triumph led;

Till on pretence of safety Cromwel's wile

Had juggel'd Him into the Fatal Isle,

Where Hammond for his Jaylor is decreed,

And Murderous Rolf as Lieger-Hangman fee'd,

Who in one fatal Knot Two Counsels tye,

He must by Poison or by Pistol Die.

Here now deny'd all Comforts due to Life,

His Friends, His Children, and His Peerlesse Wife.

While bringing down Charles, Fortune's wheel has raised up in his place the crafty Cromwell with his brutal army and sinister jailers. In this triumph of the world turned upside down, even jailers and executioners



to the Communion Table', and his troops destroyed or desecrated treasures like `the Seventh Henry's gilt and curious Skreen,' and `The Chests wherein the Saxon Monarchs lay'.38 Parliamentary sources also record the pillage of Winchester, and write indulgently of a mock-triumph:

achieve fame, through feats that recall the nightmarish intrigues and torments of Stuart stage tragedy.41 Horror at the overthrow of king and church suffuses also Robert Horsmann's Sionis certamina et triumphus, `Sion's struggles and triumph', though in this text the horror is compensated by a vision of the triumphal restoration of the Anglican Sion. Horsmann's book is a paraphrase in epic hexameters of Old Testament prophets and psalms, with shorter pieces in ode metres and an excited apocalyptic summary in elegiacs, `Carmen Threno-thriambeuticum'. Horsmann describes the monstrous events of the 1640s in a vocabulary partly Biblical, partly Roman. The Church of England is Sion and its puritan oppressors are Moabites, but the English nation also contains its plebs and is governed by its senate. Horsmann skilfully mines the prophets for his denunciations: he takes over Hosea's denunciation of the Israelites for assassinating kings; he applies Ezekiel's vision of the valley full of dry bones to England's desolation; he paraphrases with grim satisfaction Zechariah's threat that the Lord will `cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land' (Zechariah 13:2, AV); he enthusiastically embraces the corresponding promise that the `Lord shall be king over all the earth' and `Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited' (Zechariah 14:9, 11, AV). In envisaging this deliverance, Horsmann amalgamates a political restoration and the Last Judgement: for the deprived churchman no less than for millenarian sectaries, or for Spenser in 1590, English politics and Biblical apocalypse are interrelated. In Horsmann's prophecy, the people of God hasten to their fortress of Sion, which is both a restored England and the New Jerusalem. They triumph in transports of joy ± èlatisque triumphans / Plausibus'.42 Christ materializes in the triumphator's terrifying guise: ÌSTE TRIUMPHATOR Rapidus!' (sig. F4v). After his victory over Death, Christ celebrates an apocalyptic triumph, claims his spoils, and startlingly annihilates his opposing general (sigs G5v±G6): Quin ibi clanget ouans, rapientis et omnia Mortis Diripiet spolia ampla, Ipsam insignique triumpho, Vltor inexpletus, rabie absorbebit atroci; . . . Tempore demum illo resonabit et Iste Triumphus; En! NOSTER DEVS HIC! [thereupon he will cry out in triumph; he will plunder all the magnificent spoils of greedy Death; an insatiable avenger, he will in his glorious triumph devour Death itself with terrible fierceness . . . in those days that great triumph will at last ring out: Behold! Our God is here!]




In the darkest days for royalists and Anglicans, Horsmann's discourse of future vindication resembles the discourse of the puritans in their days of disempowerment and repression under Charles I (and to a degree under Charles II ± as shown by the resemblance between Christ's resurrection triumph in Horsmann and in Paradise Lost). Now it is royalists and Anglicans who suffer a Babylonian captivity; it is the puritans who are identified with Leviathan and Hydra (sig. G7). Even the cheap paper and inferior printing of Horsmann's volume attest to this nadir of royalist and Anglican fortunes, though they attest no less to a determination to battle against a powerful enemy and thus to earn a triumph.

3 The Commonwealth and Protectorate produced new versions of triumph, and new contests for its dignity. The Commonwealth, an English republic raised up by God through the uirtus of his people, encouraged a revival of Romanitas. In a passage that recalls Sallust's description of the frugal and public-spirited early Romans, the French resident reported in 1650 that, `though powerful by sea and land', the nation's new rulers lived `without ostentation, without pomp, without emulation with one another, economical in their private expenses and prodigal in their devotion to public affairs.'43 The republican ideals maintained under the Protectorate by Civil War figures such as John Bradshaw and Edmund Ludlow continued to find expression in unadorned godly triumphs, but the new governing circle of the Protectorate gravitated toward monarchical sympathies and imperial ambitions. The Protector himself, modifying his earlier aversion to ceremonial display, developed a more stately style.44 These shifts were manifested in a cultivation of triumph no less assiduous than the Stuarts', though based more securely in martial success. Cromwell intervened in the sale of the royal art collections in order to retain Mantegna's Triumph of Julius Caesar.45 The subject was particularly apt for a leader who had risen through military prowess and was now showing regal aspirations. The poems in which the Protectorate is celebrated by its laureate, Payne Fisher, generate imaginary triumphs of baroque splendour. The reformed universities provided panegyrics of Cromwell the triumphator, as imperial conqueror on the Augustan model or peacemaker on the Stuart. Cromwell aimed to put into practice the long cherished ideal of a militant Protestant foreign policy, directing England's enhanced naval power to the overthrow of the papacy. The enmities of the Armada epoch survive in his speeches: `The Lord himself hath a controversy




with your enemies; even with that Romish Babylon of which the Spaniard is the great under-propper.' He was said to have told his son-inlaw, `Were I as young as you, I should not doubt, ere I died, to knock at the gates of Rome.'46 European politics in the 1650s did not however accommodate itself to these old verities. The Commonwealth's first major war, in 1652±3, was fought over economic issues against the Netherlands, formerly the favoured ally of English Protestants. The war with Spain in 1656±9 was likewise no Crusade but the result of traditional balance-of-power politics: England had earlier offered Spain an alliance against France. Despite these complications, the Commonwealth won England its first significant military victories since the Armada.47 Pamphlet narratives of the Anglo-Dutch War simulate triumphs with a familiar combination of Roman and Christian reference. Battles against a formidable foe result in conclusive victory: they fought like so many Alexanders, Caesars, and Pompey's for many hours together; but at last it pleased God so to dispose of his divine series amongst his weak instruments, that in the end it became an absolute Victory, determinated by a tryumphant possession of divers of their best ships, with a total ruine and dispersing of their whole Armado.48 `Trophies of success', in the form of prisoners and of captured ships with exotic cargoes, are triumphantly displayed in print: `The Church of Gravendick, laden with Salt, Orenges and Lemons . . . St. Peter of Hamburgh, burden 200 tun laden with Nants Wine . . . Lyon of Flushen, laden with silver bars, Cocheneal, and other rich commodities from St. Lucas.'49 As in Rome, victories and their spoils give proof of divine favour toward the infant republic.50 After his installation as Protector in December 1653, Cromwell was given a reception by the City of London, in February 1654. Tensions between Protector and City are evident in the Recorder's treatment of the triumphal theme.51 He pointedly declines to welcome Cromwell as a triumphator. The City authorities leave it to other Nations to salute their Rulers and Victorious Commanders with names of Caesares and Imperatores; and after Triumphs, to erect for them their Arcus Triumphales: But if I mistake not, their end, this day, is not any such outward Pomp or Glory, but that those who have beene delivered together, might rejoyce together; and to express their Desires, That the Civil Sword might be as prosperous for





The Recorder's puritan reinterpretation of triumph redirects the state toward the victories of peace, which for the City of London means commercial prosperity. The Recorder also voices a more radical republicanism: City and Protector have been delivered `together' and rejoice `together'; civil authority has been `placed' in Cromwell's hand. However wonderful Cromwell's rise and success, he is not given the exceptional status of triumphator, because `Governors . . . are not made for themselves, or their own glory, but for the safety and good of Mankinde'. The Recorder's model for the Commonwealth is the Rome of the Decemvirs, who first codified Roman law and ended a patrician and priestly monopoly of power. `The Supremacy of Salus Populi was the conclusion of the Twelve Tables, and will be a prevalent Maxime until the end of the World', declares the Recorder, reminding the Protector of the maxim of Civil War republicanism, salus populi suprema lex.53 Even in the majestic era of the second Protectorate, a dogged republicanism survives in the writings of the soldier-poet, George Wither. A Suddain Flash, Made visible, the fourth day after his Highnesse the Lord Protector had first waved the Title of King (on 8 May 1657) is a visionary celebration of the Protector's humility. Wither casts Cromwell as a Roman soldier, rehearsing his mural crowns and naval trophies, his `Triumphant Laurell' and the spoils he has taken from kings. But, in the classic vein of a puritan triumph, Wither's Cromwell outdoes even his military victories by his conquest of himself and of ambition when he refuses the crown. With this feat he surpasses all previous triumphators: Victorious Cromwell! thou, hast, herein, gone Beyond thy self; and such an Act hast done, As few or none, in this, or forraign Climes, Have equalled, in any former times.54 The cult of the Protector, which the triumphs of the Recorder and of Wither sought to avert, is amply displayed in the poems emanating from the reformed universities to celebrate the end of the Anglo-Dutch War, Cambridge's Oliua pacis and Oxford's Elaiophoria. The university writers invoke nauales triumphi for Cromwell's sea victories.55 They represent Cromwell as a republican worthy like Cato or Fabricius (Oliua, sig. E4) or as pater patriae, like Cicero (Elaiophoria, 16). His triumphs will terrify barbarians ± a gesture toward the imperial ambitions of the Protectorate



Publick Ends, in the Hand where it is placed, as the Military Sword hath been in the same Hand.52

(Oliua, sig. F2v). These collections declare Cromwell's peace-making superior even to his many military triumphs. The combination of Cromwell's military and civil achievement distinguishes Protectorate from Stuart triumphs, and fulfils the aspiration of his personal motto, pax quaeritur bello. The conceit of Oliver crowned with the oliua of peace rather than the laurel of war, and the poetic title eirenodia, or song of peace, especially mark the Cambridge collection. Even more than with Roman republican worthies, Cromwell is identified with Augustus.56 Like the godlike Augustus, Cromwell puts an end to war and introduces the blessings of peace: `deus nobis haec otia fecit.' He shuts the doors of the temple of Janus and restores the Golden Age. Under Cromwell, Peace herself rides in triumph, leading Mars as her captive, and triumphal incense burns incongruously in the `temples' or churches of puritan England.57 Cromwell's victories receive their most lofty praise in the poetic triumphs of his laureate, Payne Fisher, and his collaborators.58 Casting himself as both the historiographical Livy and the poetic Virgil of the regime,59 Fisher produced a flood of Latin panegyrics, some of them recycled for different occasions and some also issued in English translation. He celebrated the advent of the Protectorate with an Ìnauguratio Oliveriana', its first anniversary with an Òratio anniuersaria', its second with a `Paean triumphalis'. Fisher wrote a `Triumphall Canto for the Victories of the Most Illustrious and Right Honble Oliver Cromwell' which marked their epochal importance by dating itself to `the yeare of our Redemption, 1652; And of Englands Restored Liberty, 4.'60 Fisher's triumphs transform the austerity of Parliament's Civil War thanksgivings into baroque exuberance: `The dancers leap'd, the Musick sweetly playde, / The warlike trumpet too rejoycing made'; `who in such ovations would not even be wrapt beyond himself? Who can contain his joy within bounds . . .?' (sigs B1±B2). In a hyperbole as extravagant as any Stuart masque, Fisher declares that Cromwell's triumphs surpass all the triumphs of ancient Rome (sig. B2): cui saecula nulla stupendis Consiliis, uel Marte parem peperere, sepulti Ignea Fama licet referaret Marmora secli, Totaque Romuleos aperiret Terra triumphos. [No ages have given birth to his equal in amazing wisdom or in war, even though ardent Fame were to bring back the monuments of buried ages and were to reveal the triumphs of the Romans throughout the world.]




Cromwell surpasses, a fortiori, the ancients' decrepit modern successors: `Horatius Cocles, thy report be dumbe, / And wonder at the dotage of old Rome' (sig. E2). As a military prodigy and empire- builder, Fisher's Cromwell is compared to Caesar. In his love of justice, chastity, and religion, he equals Scipio. As the man who has `cast the Kingdome old / Into another Mold', he is another Cicero. Cicero declared himself second founder of Rome by saving the republic: ò fortunatam natam me consule Romam' [O happy Rome, born in my consulate]; Fisher declares that Cromwell too has saved the state and its liberty from internal foes by dissolving the republic and founding the Protectorate: Ò fortunatos te PROTECTORE Britannos!' [O happy British, with you as Protector].61 Despite the public rapture he evokes, Fisher's Cromwell comports himself with the austerity that the Recorder of London desiderated. Though he equals or surpasses the Romans in glory, Cromwell remains also the puritan triumphator who is victor over himself: Blest Hero, whose uprightness all commands,

Whose joy in vertue more then triumph stands,

Thou scorn'st the peoples suffrage, or their praise,

Those airy cracks cannot thy Trophies raise;

Thus doest thou valiant Leader overthrow

Thine enemies, thy selfe thus conquer too.62

Even this model of virtue is not immune from the detraction that visits the triumphator, nor is England free from the dissensions that may visit the victorious state. Fisher's poem for the first anniversary of the Protectorate in 1655 warns him of the menace of new Catilines, and, like Marvell's poem on the same occasion, it shows anxiety about popular political movements. These threaten Cromwell like the hags and the beast that robbed Spenser's Artegall of the triumph he merited (sig. C2): Flaccescent simili Populares lege tumultus; Frustra et Centeno circundata Bellua collo Seditio uesana fremet; . . . tunc Lurida famae Latratrix, ualidisque comes Detractio Gestis Hydra rescindetur, uulsisque uenefica linguis Spicula sublato praetendet uana ueneno. [By the same principle, popular tumults fall away; the frenzied monster Sedition with its hundred heads roars in vain . . . then that ghastly barking





In 1651, Fisher's earliest poem for Lord General Cromwell had identified the hydra with the Laudian church. Then the Herculean Cromwell `strook off the Head of those Hydraes of superstition with his Conquering Sword.'63 By 1655, the laureate of the Protectorate agrees with the royalist poets of Epibateria in identifying the `Many-headed Beast' with the multitude.64 Fisher's Protectorate poems develop the topoi of naval victory and empire that appear in Armada and Caroline writings, but with a less fantastic wishfulness than some of those writings. Fisher's navales triumphi celebrate the impressive actual victories of the Protectorate. The Navigation Act and the Dutch treaty defined the nation's sea boundaries: `grauiore triumpho / Fixit OLIVARUS patrii confinia Ponti' [and by a weightier triumph Oliver defined the limits of the national sea] (sig. D1v). Robert Blake's Mediterranean campaign of 1655 rescued Englishmen from slavery in North Africa ± the most glorious accomplishment of a triumphator (sig. G1). Blake also destroyed the Spanish fleet at Tenerife in 1657. A land victory was added when England and France defeated Spanish and Stuart forces in the battle of the Dunes in 1658, expelling Spain from Dunkirk. Fisher summed up these victories in a grandiose triumph for Cromwell's dominion over both earth and sea: `Surge Triumphator Terrae! domitorque Tyranni/Surge Tridentiferi, geminis redinite Tiaris!' [Arise, triumphator over the earth; arise, subduer of the trident-bearing tyrant, and circle your brows with your dual crowns!]65 The Tagus, Rhone, and Seine, the Baltic Sea and the Alps, all pass by, like the models or paintings of geographical prizes displayed in a Roman triumph. These localities refer to diplomatic rather than military accomplishments: Cromwell's negotiations with the Iberian powers and France, his treaty with Sweden, and his defence of the Waldensians of Piedmont against Romish persecution. Fisher's horizon extends to Russia, where diplomatic missions of 1654 and 1657 defended the interests of the Muscovy Company.66 Like the exotic captives of a triumph, the Tartar submits to Cromwell's yoke; the Sarmatian even discards his distinctive breeches and, in an unpuritan act of conversion, adopts the fashion of the elegant Englishman (`nitidi cultus imitabitur'). Fisher turns finally to Virgilian prophecies of empire, beginning with Cromwell's `Western Design'. He prophesies success for what became in



companion of Fame, the hydra Detraction, will be eliminated by your powerful exploits; with her tongues plucked out and her poison removed, the sorceress will display only harmless barbs.]

fact the only naval failure of the period, the Caribbean expeditions of William Penn and Robert Venables in 1654. He catalogues England's existing presence in Virginia, New England, Bermuda and Barbados. He predicts that South America will be opened up to English trade, that war will flare up in Mexico and Hispaniola, that Peru's mines, the basis of Spanish rule, will fall idle, and that the native Americans will rejoice as the English avenge their defeats and persecutions (sigs F1v-G1).67 Fisher even revives the most tenacious dream of militant Christianity by imagining Cromwell's climactic triumph in Jerusalem. There he will combine the martial traditions of Rome and of Christendom. Like the Roman emperors Titus and Vespasian, he will earn a triumph for a victory in the Holy Land, but like the Christian crusaders he will fight for, not against, God and his people. As Christ's entry to Jerusalem was itself a version of a Roman triumph, so Cromwell's triumph will recall Christ's entry, with its `Judaean palm'. After this sublime triumph, the Cromwellian Caesar will enjoy a global imperium like Rome's, but covering a wider world than the Romans knew, and wider dominions than the Hapsburgs had obtained (sig. G1v): Cum toties emptas Proauorum sanguine laurus Ipse redempturus Solymas lustraueris oras Caesar, Idumaeis circundans tempora Palmis; Tum stratus terrore Tubae Briticique Tridentis Barbarus imposito submittet Colla lupato . . . tandemque trophaeis Mille reportatis victo dominaberis orbi. [Caesar himself, in order to win back the laurels so often purchased with the blood of our ancestors, will traverse the shores of Jerusalem, his head circled with Judaean palm, while the barbarian, cast down by fear of the trumpet and the British trident, will submit his neck to the yoke. . . . and finally, having brought back a thousand trophies, you will rule over the defeated world.]68




9

`that insulting vanity' In a wittily unjust passage of `Tom May's Death', Marvell lampoons the practice of Romanizing English politics and history. Consigned in Elysium to the company of `novice statesmen', May will pursue his deluded and ignorant comparisons: Tell them of Liberty, the Stories fine,

Until you all grow Consuls in your wine . . .

Transferring old Rome hither in your talk,

As Bethlem's House did to Loretto walk.

Foul Architect that hadst not Eye to see

How ill the measures of these States agree.1

Marvell himself was not however immune to the temptation of drawing a `Romane cast similitude'. His `Horatian Ode upon Cromwel's Return from Ireland' (1650, probably the year of `Tom May's Death') and his First Anniversary of the Government under O.C. (1655) assume that the `measures' of England and Rome do àgree' ± enough at least to legitimize Horace's odes and Claudian's anniversary panegyrics as generic models, and the literary triumph as a reward for military and political prowess. In a letter of 1654, Marvell drew an elaborate Roman and triumphal similitude in order to compliment Milton's Defensio Secunda: it seems to me a Trajans columne in whose winding ascent we see imboss'd the severall Monuments of your learned victoryes. And Salmatius and Morus make up as great a Triumph as That of Deceba171



Marvell and Milton


Milton routs his formidable opponents in controversy as the triumphator routs the enemy army. Like the triumphator's conquered kings (and like the legendary victims of Archilochus's satirical pen), they may even be driven to take their own lives. Marvell awards Milton the exceptional triumph that George Marcelline awarded James I, in which victory and triumph are one; the book simultaneously performs a conquest and, like its own triumphal column, memorializes that conquest.3 Marvell's praise of the Defensio Secunda is fitting, since Milton's text itself Romanizes the English republic, endowing John Bradshaw with consular dignity and Cromwell with a resounding series of republican Roman titles, suggestive of the speech in praise of a triumphator: `ciuis maximus et gloriosissimus, dux publici consilii, fortissimorum exercituum Imperator, pater patriae' [greatest and most glorious citizen, director of the public counsels, general of the most gallant armies, father of the fatherland].4 Both writers deploy the Roman triumph, in its original form, as part of a republican discourse endowing the infant English republic with the Roman qualities of conquering vigour and political virtue. Both writers teach that victories in war must be completed by victories in peace, and that the only secure military triumphs are founded on religious faith and ethical virtue. When, in his Restoration epics, Milton emphasized more heavily these last qualities, he did not discard his political commitment. As royalist writers imagined in adversity the vindicatory triumph of Christ, Milton hopes that the godly republic will not be condemned `For ever with corruption there to dwell'.5 As royalist writers had composed triumphs of Christian loyalty and patience, Milton hopes that by following the Son's example of fidelity and patience men will equip themselves for right action and for eventual triumphs modelled on the Son's humble earthly versions: `who best / Can suffer, best can do'.6

1 Roman poets introduced the topoi of triumph into welcomes for returning generals (epibateria) and farewells for departing generals (apobateria).7 Marvell's `Horatian Ode' incorporates both genres, saluting Cromwell as a triumphator as he returns from Ireland and prophesying further triumphs as he departs for Scotland. The poem derives from the triumph and its literature in a more thoroughgoing fashion than has



lus, whom too for ought I know you shall have forced as Trajan the other, to make themselves away out of a just Desperation.2

been recognized. The opening lines, in which the `forward Youth' emerges from the `Shadows' and forsakes his `Numbers languishing', adapt a topos of Roman triumph poetry, in which the poet acknowledges that he has lived in peaceable security while the triumphator has been at war.8 The `poise' often noted by critics in the poem's treatment of Cromwell and King Charles is not a miraculously supra-political attribute, but arises from the complex of attitudes that always attached to the triumph. In Marvell's poem, as in Roman custom, the defeated king is the object of pathos, while the triumphator's feats and godlike stature win admiration together with a recognition of their potential danger to both the triumphator and the state. A similar anxiety marks the pamphlets for Cromwell's Irish conquests, which admire his godly feats but are cautious not to overvalue human prowess. Marvell's wellknown use of Lucan's De bello ciuili in the `Horatian Ode' extends also to his treatment of the triumphator: he positions Cromwell as a publicspirited version of Lucan's destructive triumphator Caesar, and endows both Cromwell and King Charles with attributes of Lucan's noble triumphator Pompey.9 Marvell's poem evokes admiringly the godlike potency of the triumphator and the ideology of emulation that the triumph institutionalized (9±18): So restless Cromwel could not cease In the inglorious Arts of Peace, But through adventrous War Urged his active Star. And, like the three-fork'd Lightning, first Breaking the Clouds where it was nurst, Did thorough his own Side His fiery way divide. For `tis all one to Courage high The Emulous or Enemy. This stupendous energy and emulousness were characteristics noted by Cromwell's contemporaries. They were also characteristics of Lucan's Caesar.10 To be such a man is to be potentially challenging to the gods, or to God, but Cromwell's lightning energy ± `The force of angry Heavens flame' (26) ± acts not in defiance of but as the instrument of a God who recalls Jupiter Tonans. Another of Cromwell's risky and Caesarlike feats has been to reconstitute the English state, to `cast the Kingdome old / Into another Mold' (35±6). But far from accumulating



Marvell and Milton 173


How fit he is to sway That can so well obey. He to the Commons Feet presents A Kingdome, for his first years rents: And, what he may, forbears His Fame to make it theirs: And has his Sword and Spoyls ungirt, To lay them at the Publick's skirt. As in Marvell's `Letter to Doctor Ingelo', his Cromwell is willing `Ducere siue sequi' [to lead or to follow] (104). Cromwell's letters from Ireland are full of deference toward Parliament, but accusations of wilfulness and self-aggrandisement were already being levelled against him, and Marvell's tribute may be designed to contradict them.11 In his double capacity of dynamic leader and humble servant, Marvell's Cromwell displays his credentials as triumphator. He is the military victor, presenting the spoils of a subject kingdom; he is also the citizen who sets aside his military imperium and petitions the senate and people for the right to triumph. Both roles are emphasized in the pamphlets recounting Cromwell's Irish campaign and his return. Both too are played by Lucan's Pompey: `Dic semper ab armis / Ciuilem repetisse togam' [Say that always after warfare he returned to the citizen's toga]; ìnuasit ferrum, sed ponere norat' [he seized the sword, but he also knew when to lay it down] (viii. 813±14; ix. 198). Marvell's `Horatian Ode' endows Cromwell with the qualities of Lucan's demonic Caesar, but tempers them with qualities of his exemplary opposite. Though he acknowledges Cromwell's prowess in the Civil War, Marvell emphasizes the foreign theatres of war that furnished the most fitting grounds for triumph. Like Pompey, who triumphed three times for victories on all three continents known to Roman geography, Cromwell will accumulate a series of far-flung conquests. His recent victory westward in Ireland, his coming victory northward in Scotland, and his eventual victory eastward in `Gaul' and Italy will together cast the old Roman empire itself into the mould of a Protestant English empire (73± 4, 105±6, 101±2): And now the Irish are asham'd To see themselves in one Year tam'd. . . .



personal power, like Caesar, Cromwell acts with scrupulous obedience to the new constitution and the civic authorities (83±90):


By casting Cromwell in the mould of Hannibal, Marvell contributes to the discourse that prophesied England's conquest of Rome itself, a discourse later renewed in the 1650s by Payne Fisher's poems and Cromwell's own utterances. The Irish and Picts are represented as distinct nations, Marvell's version of the barbaric but formidable races that thwarted even Rome's generals.12 In conquering them, Cromwell assumes the Roman mantle and achieves the triumphator's extension of the imperial boundaries. The fact, or the fiction, that the conquered Irish speak admiringly of Cromwell proves that he has also pacified the defeated lands, as a triumphator ideally did. This pacification is not achieved solely by force. As befits a Christian general, Cromwell has won the allegiance of the Irish by a higher form of conquest, the display and exercise of virtue: they `have, though overcome, confest / How good he is, how just' (78±9).13 Marvell's praise momentarily recalls the masquing triumphs of the Stuart court, in which the merits of the monarch magically pacify lesser mortals. Cromwell, however, wins both ethical and martial victories, and each enables and corroborates the other. The tribute of the Irish acknowledges that Cromwell has performed an ethical conquest over himself, the necessary and difficult first achievement of the Christian triumphator. Milton too would apply this topos to Cromwell, and would later develop it in the Son of Paradise Regain'd. Both poets appropriate this praise from Caroline texts such as Albion's Triumph, and in doing so they contrast the actual victories of Cromwell to the notional victories of King Charles. Kings may claim an innate or magical authority, but republican and Puritan heroes earn their eminence, as the First Anniversary will also emphasize. Nevertheless, when Charles enters Marvell's poem, and with him memory of the Civil War, Marvell accords him a triumph of patience that recalls the royalist writing of his imprisonment and death. In his tragic dignity, Charles exemplifies and revises the topos of the captive king who walks in the triumph on his way to death (57±64): He nothing common did or mean Upon that memorable Scene: But with his keener Eye



The Pict no shelter now shall find

Within his party-colour'd Mind. . . .

A Caesar he ere long to Gaul,

To Italy an Hannibal.


In the Roman historians, such a royal figure elicits pathos but not the admiration accorded to kings or queens who take their own lives rather than submit to exposure. In Marvell's Christianized version, the pagan option of suicide yields to the paradoxical triumph of patience that royalists had awarded Charles. Charles dies with dignity and Christian resignation, not calling on the gods in grotesque or vulgar spite, like Jugurtha crying out in the triumph of Marius.14 The paradox of Charles's victory in defeat is confirmed by Marvell's formal positioning of his episode. Charles occupies the poem's centre, the place of the victor in the triumphal procession.15 Marvell's positioning is a gracious tribute to a king who is not a conquered foreigner but England's own former king, albeit one who has surrendered his `helpless right'. The `bloody hands' with which the army applauds Charles's performance recall another aspect of the Roman triumph. On the day of a triumph, Rome ran with blood, as sacrificial beasts, together with the defeated king or general, were put to death, and the triumphator himself was adorned with red paint. These harsh realities of military victory rule over Marvell's poem, but they are also moderated. Charles's performance of patient dignity depends on his being permitted to play his part on the `memorable Scene'. The courteous theatrical opposition between the martial and the patient triumphator contrasts with the final opposition between Caesar and Pompey in Lucan, where Pompey also meets his death by beheading. In a dreadful mock triumph, Pompey's head is paraded through the streets of Alexandria for Caesar's bloodthirsty satisfaction (ix. 137±40): gestata per urbem Ora ducis, quae transfixo sublimia pilo Vidimus, haec fama est oculis uictoris iniqui Seruari, scelerisque fidem quaesisse tyrannum. [the general's head paraded through the city, which we saw held high with a javelin driven through it; kept, it is said, for the eyes of the wicked victor, because the tyrant demanded proof of his crime.]



The Axes edge did try: Nor call'd the Gods with vulgar spight To vindicate his helpless Right, But bow'd his comely Head, Down as upon a Bed.

By setting Cromwell and Charles directly against one another, Marvell enacts the supreme feat of a triumphator, the winning of opima spolia. This honour was achieved when a general defeated his opposing general in single combat and stripped him of his armour. The `Horatian Ode' is a poetic enactment of this confrontation, which elicits the recognition that the ancient rights `do hold or break / As Men are strong or weak', that Cromwell's overthrow of Charles entails the overthrow of his monarchy. Yet Marvell declines to represent Charles as a tyrannic Tarquin. Instead, in his melancholy and dignified embodiment of a disappearing order, Charles assumes the attributes of Lucan's defeated Pompey. For his part, Cromwell must `March indefatigably on', defending the new state and winning more triumphs. In his stern closing lines, the diffident Marvell who opened the poem is emboldened to address Cromwell with republican directness. Though he recalls the attendant who admonished the triumphator about his mortality, Marvell instead admonishes Cromwell to pursue with unending vigilance his military and political task. The poem's concluding emphasis speaks for a new state whose conquering mission, like that of Spenser's heroes, leaves small leisure to celebrate triumphs. The generic models of Marvell's First Anniversary are the consular panegyrics of Claudian, with their lavish triumphal topoi, but Marvell's treatment of the Protector rejects the hyperbole of a Claudian or a Fisher. He modifies triumphal praise with a sober recognition of the labour needed to build the new state.16 Though Marvell may flirt with the possibility of Cromwell's accepting the crown, he also rejoices in the contrast between the Protector and the kings of Europe. While the `Horatian Ode' accords King Charles a place at its centre, the First Anniversary exiles monarchs to its peripheries. At the poem's beginning, Marvell charges kings with falsely arrogating triumphs to themselves: some more active for a Frontier Town Took in by Proxie, beggs a false Renown; Another triumphs at the publick Cost, And will have Wonn, if he no more have Lost.17 The only wars that kings willingly fight are civil wars against their own subjects. Like Roman emperors, kings are triumphators by proxy, appropriating the victories won by their generals.18 They flout the ius triumphandi by claiming triumphs for merely preserving their territories, not extending them. Marvell may allude to Louis XIV of France or Philip IV of Spain,19 but he may also remember Charles I of England, with his




costly masquing triumphs for dubious allegorical victories, and the actual wars he waged against his own subjects. At the end of the First Anniversary, monarchs reappear, now to prophesy their destiny as tributaries to England and to Cromwell: ` ``Needs must we all their Tributaries be, / ``Whose Navies hold the Sluces of the Sea' (367±8). Like the Irish of the `Horatian Ode', these kings bear reluctant and therefore convincing witness to England's conquest and pacification of foreign lands. As tributaries, they might be displayed in a Cromwellian triumph, but Marvell refuses to accord them even this degree of prominence. In a witty meiosis, he relegates his kings to the position of spectators, viewing England's display of might like the crowd of awestruck citizens in triumphal narratives, or like Marcelline's kings viewing King James's triumph of learning. Their astonishment at England's rapid transformation echoes Sallust's paean to the marvellous feats of the early republic, after the expulsion of the kings: ` `Ìs this, saith one, the Nation that we read / ``Spent with both Wars, under a Captain dead?' (349±50).20 They also admire Cromwell's triumphal decorum: he acts Àbroad a King . . . At Home a Subject on the equal Floor' (389±90), as the imperator had exercised absolute power away from Rome but surrendered it when soliciting a triumph and entering the city. At the centre of the First Anniversary appears the Protector, riding in his coach and white horses, as the triumphator rode in his chariot and white horses at the centre of a triumph (159±220). This episode brings however a minor disaster, when Cromwell's coach overturns, as had occurred in Hyde Park on 29 September 1654. Cromwell's accident teaches the Christian lesson that earthly triumphs are vain and the only certain triumph spiritual and heavenly. But it is not the purpose of Marvell's episode to instruct Cromwell in this truth, like the Roman triumphator's whispering attendant. Cromwell's unassailable virtue needs no such instruction. Had he died in his accident, his earthly `triumph' would have been converted into a heavenly one, like Elijah's (215±18): But thee triumphant hence the firy Carr, And firy Steeds had born out of the Warr, From the low World, and thankless Men above, Unto the Kingdom blest of Peace and Love. Cromwell's misfortune results not from hubris but from the passions of his fellow citizens: Òur brutish fury strugling to be Free, / Hurry'd thy Horses while they hurry'd thee' (177±8). Cromwell's mishap marks the




First Anniversary as a puritan triumph, in which earthly victories are won with difficulty and mingled with setbacks. Marvell oft thinks of the `happy Hour' in which a transformation of men might take place, but unlike the `Horatian Ode', where the Irish are converted and the youthful poet emboldened by the example of Cromwell's virtues, the First Anniversary defers this transformation.21 As in Livy's early Rome, triumphs abroad are easily won, but tuning the instrument or building the edifice of the republican state is problematic.

2 The tensions within the Commonwealth over the correct uses of triumph are re-enacted in Milton's literary uses of the ceremony. Milton travelled in roughly the opposite direction to the Commonwealth, and Marvell. Where the Protectorate more and more adopted a discourse and display of external grandeur, Milton more and more emphasized internal victory.22 It is however possible to oversimplify this trajectory toward spiritual and pacific victories. The question about Milton's uses of triumph is related to the critical question about his later political attitudes generally: does he treat spiritual victories as an alternative to martial and political victories or as their necessary precondition? Milton certainly teaches that worldly triumphs may tempt men to put too much faith in their own strength. To do so is one of the oldest errors of fallen man, and in particular of the ancient Romans. Yet the recognition of this possible error was always written into the ceremony of the triumph; Milton's recognition of it need not entail his rejecting the ceremony entirely. On the other side, the glorious triumph of the Son, as he leads his faithful soldiers into a heavenly city, may offer a model and a promise to the cities of this world. The conjunction of martial action, political power and triumphal celebration demands the continual and careful assay of conscience, Milton's puritan equivalent to the Romans' debates over the right to triumph. In his History of Britain (1648?±1671), Milton applies his conscientious audit to the historical triumphs of Rome. He accepts the legitimacy of the triumph as a reward for merit. Even when compromised by the decline of Roman virtue, it still retained some of its ancient republican lustre: `For that Cittie in reward of vertue was ever magnificent: and long after when true merit was ceas't among them, lest any thing resembling vertue should want honour, the same rewards were yet allow'd to the very shadow and ostentation of merit.'23 Milton cannot bring himself to condemn outright even the corrupted use of the Roman triumph, however sardonically he condemns the imperial corruptors.




Like Marvell's `Horatian Ode', and Spenser's Legend of Justice before it, Milton's sonnet `To the Lord Generall Cromwell May 1652' is shaped by a puritan tension between triumphal celebration and the stern obligation on the triumphator to consolidate, extend, and moralize his conquest. Milton develops Marvell's imperative that `The same Arts that did gain / A Pow'r, must it maintain.' It is now necessary to translate the military victories of the Civil War, Ireland, and Scotland into the civic victories befitting a peacetime Commonwealth: Cromwell, our cheif of men, who through a cloud Not of warr onely, but detractions rude, Guided by faith and matchless Fortitude To peace and truth thy glorious way hast plough'd, And on the neck of crowned Fortune proud Hast reard Gods Trophies and his work pursu'd, While Darwen stream with blood of Scotts imbru'd, And Dunbarr feild resounds thy praises loud, And Worsters laureat wreath; yet much remaines To conquer still; peace hath her victories No less renownd then warr, new foes aries Threatning to bind our soules with secular chaines: Helpe us to save free Conscience from the paw Of hireling wolves whose Gospell is their maw.24 Milton catalogues only Cromwell's most recent battles, fought against a rival nation, Scotland. (He thus positions Charles Stuart as a foreign king, the `declared king of Scots' as Parliamentary writers term him.)25 Cromwell's victories culminate in `Worsters laureat wreath', the decisive final victory that earned him his London triumph. The all-sufficient Cromwell has not only prevailed on the battlefield; he has proved victorious over `detractions rude', proverbially the triumphator's most formidable foe, which overthrew Spenser's Artegall after his Irish conquests and which also threatened Cromwell in Fisher's and Manley's poems of 1652. Cromwell's victories are even more multiform and impressive than is at first apparent. `Crowned Fortune proud' signifies the two Stuart kings Cromwell has defeated. As a metonymy the phrase intimates that kings inherit their crowns through fortune merely, not through the uirtus and piety that mark out Cromwell as deservedly òur cheif of men'. `Crowned Fortune proud' is also an allegoria. Cromwell has conquered Fortune itself, or herself, so that the proud figure now walks as a prisoner




in his triumph. In an arresting version of the captive king's shame, this monarch is forced to bear the trophies that attest to its defeat. On the face of it, the claim to lead Fortune captive partakes of a Tamburlainian insolence, or the grandiose royalism of Herrick's Leicester triumph. It defies the threat always hanging over a triumphator, that Fortune might at any moment turn her wheel. Milton's compliment claims, however, a secure ethical foundation. Cromwell overcomes Fortune through the `faith and matchless Fortitude' that make him immune to the vicissitudes that fortune may bring. In Milton's poem, as in Cromwell's dispatches from Ireland, Cromwell's own conscience fulfils the function of the triumphator's attendant, whispering reminders of humanity and mortality. In Milton's poem, as in Marvell's, Cromwell does not tarry for a ceremonial triumph. The remorseless syntax of the sonnet drives him on to continue his work, like the Cromwell who returned from Ireland and promptly set about his political duties, and entered London after Worcester ìn all meekesse and humility.' Where Marvell's Cromwell marches on to yet more battles, Milton's Cromwell has now won them and arms himself for a new kind of conquest. In puritan and republican ethics, the contentions of civil life have the gravity and the intensity of military engagements, where Cromwell must renew his conquests against the monstrous enemy of ecclesiastical tyranny, and so earn another form of triumph.26 Though Milton's sonnet was a private exhortation, unpublished until 1694, his writings as Latin Secretary to the Commonwealth proclaim to all Europe, in the tongue of universal empire, the martial triumphs of the English nation. The tract for which Marvell awarded Milton a literary triumph, Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Secunda (1654), ends by cataloguing proudly the magna nomina of the English republic, giving pre-eminence to men of military repute ± Charles Fleetwood, John Lambert, John Desborow, Edward Whalley, Robert Overton.27 Nevertheless, as in the sonnet to Cromwell, Milton warns that martial victories are not sufficient. Liberty is guaranteed only when men overthrow the tyrant in their own breasts. One example of this ethical triumphator is Fairfax, living in retirement at Nun Appleton like Scipio at Liternum (216±18), but the principal example remains Cromwell, newly installed as Protector. As in Marvell, Cromwell's military success results from his having first conquered himself: ìn se priuÁs imperator, sui uictor, de se potissimuÁm triumphare didicerat' [commander first over himself, conqueror of himself, he had learnt above all to triumph over himself] (214). The perils that accompany Cromwell's new elevation exercise Milton, as they would exercise Wither when he saluted Cromwell for




refusing the crown. Among these perils is the triumphator's `diuitiarum atque potentiae ostentationem' [display of wealth and power] (228). Mere ostentation without achievement is the characteristic vice of monarchs, of the kings contrasted to Cromwell at the opening of the `First Anniversary', and of the king who would rule England upon a Restoration. Such a king will act out an empty triumphalism, Milton warned in 1660, setting à pompous face upon the superficial actings of State, to pageant himself up and down in progress among the perpetual bowings and cringings of an abject people, on either side deifying and adoring him for nothing don that can deserve it.'28 The triumphs of Paradise Lost (1667) span cosmic history, from the Father's exaltation of the Son at the beginning to the Judgement at the end, by way of the war in heaven, the creation of the world, the earthly triumphs of fallen man, and Christ's resurrection. The Son celebrates a triumph after his victory in the war in heaven; his triumph over death in the resurrection is many times prophesied; and his role as triumphator in the Last Judgement is prophesied more briefly. Though the Son's feats are powerfully agonistic, Milton minimizes their reliance on physical force. Won in the service of God's justice and mercy, the Son's victories always seek the restoration of peace, as (in principle) did the Roman ius triumphandi.29 It is Satan's tyrannical mentality that understands triumph in terms of force alone. Satan makes his own deluded claims to triumph, and he mounts deluded or mendacious challenges to the Son's triumphs. His attempt to enact a masquing `triumph' becomes the occasion of his public degradation. When the Son intervenes in the war in heaven, he rides in a war chariot, `The Chariot of Paternal Deitie' (vi. 750), equipped with his armour Urim and with his bow and thunderbolts. The war chariot is simultaneously a triumphal chariot: àt his right hand Victorie / Sate Eagle-wing'd' (vi. 762±3). The figure that in Roman friezes accompanies the triumphator after battle accompanies the Son even before he joins battle. Even before battle, too, Satan's forces direct at the Son the envy that proverbially detracted from the triumphator's gloria. This envy is the basis of their enmity: at the sight of the Son in his chariot they `Took envie, and aspiring to his highth, / Stood reimbattell'd fierce' (vi. 793± 4). After the Son's terrific assault against the `cursed crew' (the precise nature of which is surprisingly vague for an epic),30 the war chariot does service as triumphal chariot (vi. 880±92): Sole Victor from th' expulsion of his Foes Messiah his triumphal Chariot turnd:




To meet him all his Saints, who silent stood

Eye witnesses of his Almightie Acts,

With Jubilie advanc'd; and as they went,

Shaded with branching Palme, each order bright,

Sung Triumph, and him sung Victorious King,

Son, Heir, and Lord, to him Dominion giv'n,

Worthiest to Reign: he celebrated rode

Triumphant through mid Heav'n, into the Courts

And Temple of his mightie Father Thron'd

On high: who into Glorie him receav'd,

Where now he sits at the right hand of bliss.

As he turns his chariot, the Son makes the transition from war to peace, and the `Saints' who greet him play the role both of the soldiers who salute their general as imperator and of the citizens who applaud his entry as triumphator. The dual role of chariot and soldiers has itself a double significance. On the one hand, a warring heaven seeks to revert to its natural condition of peace, soldiers seek to revert to citizens. On the other hand, in heaven as in early Rome or Machiavelli's ideal republic or a Christian commonwealth, the state is ready to take up arms, citizens to assume their responsibility as soldiers. Like the Roman triumphator riding up the Capitoline hill to the temple of Jupiter, the Son enters the `Temple of his mightie Father'. Here, in a splendid exercise of the trope quanto magis, Milton's triumphator does not offer up sacrifices but takes his place in or next to the godhead. Where the pagan triumphator assumed a divinity that was for Romans perilous and for Christians blasphemous, the Son shares God's throne securely and rightfully. His `Glorie' is God's eternal glory, not the transitory gloria of the earthly victor.31 A striking divergence between the triumph of the Son and its Roman model is the absence of prisoners. Though Satan acknowledges the Son's status as triumphator (i. 123±4), he and his allies are not led as prisoners into heaven; instead, they are consigned to hell, at the farthest possible remove from the Son's triumph. Nevertheless, the fallen angels in a sense play out the role of triumphal captives. The `pit' in which Satan and Beelzebub find themselves at the poem's opening corresponds to the pit in the Tullianum into which Jugurtha was thrown during Marius's triumph. Unlike Jugurtha and other defeated generals, Satan will not however be killed. Beelzebub envisages the defeated angels as the enslaved captives of a triumph, whose fate is to `do him mightier service as his thralls / By right of Warr' (i. 149±50). This does prove to be their function, though not in any fashion that Beelzebub could imagine. God




allows Satan and the fallen angels to act not out of coercion but out of their own vengeful designs. He then incorporates this activity into his own providential design, turning to a merciful end the malevolent labours of his captive: àll his malice serv'd but to bring forth / Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy' (i. 217±18). At the same time, God prepares other and more impressive triumphs. One of these is the Son's return to heaven after the creation of the world, which has some marks of a military triumph, though in function it more closely resembles a civil aduentus. Like a triumph, the Son's return celebrates God's creation as an àddition of his Empire' (vii. 555), and this addition entails a defeat for the enemy: èasily the proud attempt . . . Thou hast repeld' (vii. 609±11). The Son's victory is however achieved not by the destructiveness of warfare but by God's creative power (vii. 604±7): greater now in thy return Then from the Giant Angels; thee that day Thy Thunders magnifi'd; but to create Is greater then created to destroy. The triumph of the Son after his death and resurrection is not part of the action of Paradise Lost, but it is the event to which the action is directed, like Augustus's Actium triumph in the Aeneid. It fulfils the poem's mysterious central `doom', that the woman's seed will bruise the serpent's head. It is accordingly several times prophesied: by the Son himself, when he accepts the role of sacrificial ransom; by the narrator, when he glosses the Son's judgement of Adam and Eve after the Fall; and by Michael, when he instructs Adam in the future history of the world. These prophecies reveal that the Son will triumph Ìn open shew' (x. 187), with the spectacular eÂclat of a Roman triumphator. He will take spoils from potent foes, `Principalities and Powers' (x. 186). In his train of captives, he will lead the most outlandish figures that ever added singularity to a triumphal procession. He will lead captivity itself (x. 188), like a member of an allegorical triumph; he will lead Hell, like a locality painted or modelled in a Roman triumph (iii. 255); he will lead his defeated enemies in person, `The powers of darkness bound' (iii. 256).32 In the closing pages of the poem it is revealed that he will lead in particular the supreme foe (xii. 453±5): there shall surprise The Serpent, Prince of aire, and drag in Chaines Through all his Realme, and there confounded leave.




By leading the chained Satan through his own realm, the air, Christ will announce that he has recovered territory once `lost' to the enemy, a special point of honour for Roman generals. Though Satan is to the end spared or refused death, Death itself will be killed, like the enemy general: `Death his deaths wound shall then receive' (iii. 252). Entering Heaven in Christ's triumph will be the multitude of his redeemed, the citizens of God's kingdom who had been enslaved by the enemy and are now released from captivity (iii. 260), the `most glorious feature' of a Roman triumph. The Son will return to see the Father's face (iii. 262±5), wherein no cloud Of anger shall remain, but peace assur'd, And reconcilement; wrauth shall be no more Thenceforth, but in thy presence Joy entire. The Father takes the role of spectator, his face expressing in transcendent form the joy of the Roman people in their triumphs, just as the Son's victory fulfils in transcendent form the requirement of the Roman ius triumphandi that the enemy be routed, and `peace assur'd'. Christ's resurrection triumph is the supreme enactment of the trope quanto magis: it outdoes any and all earthly triumphs by celebrating an eternal victory and by winning that victory through seeming defeat. As in Petrarch, the Triumph of Death gives place to the Triumph of Eternity. In his battle with Death, Christ will first yield and submit himself to the `loathsom grave', a defeated general consigned to Death's prison. From this abjection, Christ will transform into a victor and triumphator: `But I shall rise Victorious, and subdue / My vanquisher, spoild of his vanted spoile' (iii. 250±1). In order to defeat Death, to bring forth life in spite of Death, it is necessary first to die. Christ's resurrection combines in one awesome event both the victory and the triumphal display of victory. The action of Paradise Lost begins chronologically with Satan's envy at the exaltation of the Son. Satan represents this event as a tyrant's triumph, in which the Son Ìntends to pass triumphant, and give Laws' (v. 693). In his dispute with Gabriel, Satan represents God as a Tamburlaine, who imposes on his angels the shameful task of drawing his `triumphant wheels / In progress' (iv. 975±6). In fact, God's chariot is mysteriously propelled, like the chariot of Ezekiel's vision: Satan's accusation may be deliberately falsified or he may be able to conceive of service only in terms of tyrant and slave, triumphator and prisoner. In either case, Satan takes the role of the triumphator's detractor. Where Christ's seeming defeat turns into a victory with its attendant triumph,




Satan's own seeming victory is deluded and his triumph turns into a grotesque anti-triumph. Throughout Paradise Lost, Satan casts himself as a usurping general, like Caesar, or as a Roman emperor, and he aspires to the gloria of the pagan triumphator.33 With the Fall, he imagines that he has won the decisive victory of the triumphator. Not only is this belief mistaken, but Satan's role in this `battle' is ignominious, consisting merely in his verbal temptation of Eve, an act performed `Without our hazard, labour, or allarme' (x. 485, 491). After his success, Satan acts more like the vanquished than the victor (x. 332±41): Hee after Eve seduc't, unminded slunk Into the Wood fast by . . . but when he saw descend The Son of God to judge them, terrifi'd Hee fled, not hoping to escape, but shun The present, fearing guiltie what his wrauth Might suddenly inflict.34 Though he has actually established the conditions for his eventual defeat, Satan mistakenly assumes the role of victor. His return to Hell parodies the return of the triumphator to Rome. He is met on his approach to Hell not by an expectant multitude but only by Sin and Death, whose arched bridge between Hell and Earth is also the parody of a triumphal arch: `Triumphal with triumphal act have met, / Mine with this glorious work' (x. 390±1; cf. 301). Like a Roman imperator soliciting a triumph from the Senate, Satan delivers to his `Council' the narrative of his exploits. He claims the special honour that was accorded the Roman triumphator who had freed Roman prisoners or slaves: `to lead ye forth / Triumphant out of this infernal Pit' (x. 463±4). He claims to have extended the boundaries of the Ìnfernal Empire': `Now possess, / As lords, a spacious World' (x. 466±7). It has been argued that through Satan's imperialism Milton condemns Cromwell's `Western Design', but Satan's greed for empire need not condemn all empires, any more than his recourse to arms need condemn all martial `vertue'.35 Full of misrepresentations, Satan's speech certainly makes him the first miles gloriosus and the first political propagandist, anticipating false triumphators like Milton's kings, who puts on à pompous face . . . for nothing don that can deserve it.'36 Compared to the Son's tremendous contentions and victories, human warfare and triumphs are a vain thing. Michael dismisses the false glory of `sword-law' as one more consequence of the Fall (xi. 691±5):





This repudiation of military uirtus appears yet more uncompromising in Paradise Regain'd (1671). The poem opens and closes with versions of triumph for the Son's victories, and closes also with the thwarting of Satan's hopes for a triumph. But the Son's spiritual victory over Satan consists partly in rejecting military action, and his version of triumph rejects external display; solitary and modest, it befits his `deeds / Above heroic, though in secret done' (i. 14±15). Nevertheless, even these austere triumphs have features in common with earlier examples of the English puritan and republican triumph, and Milton does not exclude the possibility of a revived national valour based on ethical reformation.37 As the Son ventures on his spiritual warfare, heavenly choirs expound the unmilitary nature of its uirtus or `Vertue' (i. 173±7): Victory and Triumph to the Son of God Now entring his great duel, not of arms, But to vanquish by wisdom hellish wiles. The Father knows the Son; therefore secure Ventures his filial Vertue, though untri'd. This prayer for victory is simultaneously a triumphal acclamation before the event. It avoids the hubris usually associated with celebrating a triumph before battle because its confidence is based on the ethical self-mastery of the Son. This has made him, like the Cromwell of the Defensio Secunda, `commander first over himself, conqueror of himself', and able àbove all to triumph over himself'. After victory has been won, it is celebrated by the godly version of triumphal songs and feasting ± heavenly anthems, celestial food, ambrosial drink (iv. 586±95). The Son celebrates in the fashion of Spenser's puritan heroes, feasting temperately like Redcrosse, and with the sole purpose of recovering his strength, like Arthur and Artegall. The anthems acclaim the Son's feat in appropriating the triumph that Satan expected to celebrate: `thou . . . hold'st in Hell / No triumph' (iv. 621±4; cf. iv. 578). This is the peculiarly satisfying triumph that Queen Elizabeth snatched from the overconfident Philip of Spain in the Armada campaign and King James



To overcome in Battle, and subdue Nations, and bring home spoils with infinite Man-slaughter, shall be held the highest pitch Of human Glorie, and for Glorie done Of triumph, to be styl'd great Conquerours.


Thus they the Son of God our Saviour meek Sung Victor, and from Heavenly Feast refresht Brought on his way with joy; hee unobserv'd Home to his Mothers house private return'd. This modest triumphator recalls Cromwell on his return from Ireland, `still in the Republick's hand', when he met his wife like a private man and rejected `great Pomp and Glory,' or on his entry to London after Worcester, when he `chose . . . to come in as privately as he could'. The Son in Paradise Regain'd exemplifies both the ethical qualities that are the necessary basis for victory and the appropriate means of celebrating victory. The Romans too are not entirely unworthy models for this reformed triumph. Endowed with no supernatural powers that would make victory certain, the Son plays the role of a young Roman, sent out to learn `the rudiments / Of his great warfare,' in training for his combat with the challengers for empire, Sin and Death. The father commits his son to the battlefield like a Roman paterfamilias, who `Ventures his filial Vertue, though untri'd'. The Romans are however far from sufficient models. Satan urges the Son to emulate the military triumphators Scipio, Pompey and Caesar (iii. 34±42), and his offer of the kingdoms of the world includes imperial Rome, magnificent in its `Legions and cohorts' and `triumphal arcs' (iv. 66, 37). To overthrow Tiberius would moreover liberate the Roman people from tyranny and thus merit the supreme triumphal honour of rescuing enslaved Romans (iv. 90±102). In rejecting Satan's offers and the false glory of the Rome that Satan shows him, the Son adopts the Romans' own historical myth, according to which their pristine virtue degenerated through ambition and luxury. The Romans, ònce just, / Frugal, and mild, and temperate, conquer'd well' (iv. 133±4). These admirable conquests may have been solely the self-conquests of ethical virtue, but the text leaves open the possibility that were also the early territorial conquests of a Roman state founded on ethical temperance. Though the Son admires the uirtus of early Rome, he condemns the excesses of its ceremonial triumphs. The Romans began the descent into their present servility precisely when they became `first ambitious grown / Of triumph that insulting vanity' (iv. 137±8). This ambition originated, as Milton would certainly have remembered, under the early kings: ìt is a matter of history that Tarquin, the son of Demaratus,



claimed from his self-congratulatory papist opponents in controversial warfare. Yet the Son shuns earthly glory (iv. 636±9):

was first of the kings to lift triumphs to such pomp and ceremony'.38 It may be that Milton condemns also the conquests that Rome's triumphs celebrated, that he admired Rome as an example of Machiavelli's republican `commonwealth for preservation' but not of his imperial `commonwealth for expansion'. This cannot have been his view in 1659, however, when he wrote of England as ànother Rome in the West'.39 As Virgil sums it up, and as the Roman historians demonstrate in detail, Rome's history, from the beginning of the republic, is the record of its triumphal expansion: Milton cannot have envisaged his other Rome as Evander's pastoral proto-commonwealth on the banks of the Tiber (Aeneid, viii. 337±69). The Son's history of decline is based on the tyrannical potential rather than the imperial character of the triumph. The decline has descended to the luxury and cruelty of Tiberius's empire. In these conditions, political activity and martial triumph are impossibly compromised, as they were for the early Christians. The enslaved Roman people ± and the subjugated people of Restoration England ± can re-establish a worthy military valour only by winning first the ethical victory of self-mastery, the sole basis for worthy political and martial victories (iv.143±5): What wise and valiant man would seek to free These, thus degenerate, by themselves enslav'd, Or could of inward slaves make outward free? The victory over inward slavery includes the victory of patience. The Son evinces the true and invincible uirtus of `Humiliation and strong Sufferance' (i. 160). He thus wins a version of the `triumph of patience' traditionally claimed for Christian martyrs, and claimed by royalists for their martyr King Charles.40 Like Spenser in 1596, Milton in 1671 holds out no immediate expectations for English triumphs, but neither does he exclude the possibility that a spiritually renovated people might justly take up arms, and celebrate their victories with reformed and worthy triumphs.41




1 Introduction 1 For a summary, see H.H. Scullard, Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic (London: Thames and Hudson, 1981), pp. 213±18. The most recent È nzl, Der roÈmische Triumph (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1988). major study is Ernst Ku 2 Òf Masques and Triumphs', in Francis Bacon, Essayes, ed. Michael Kieran (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 118. 3 William V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, 327±70 B.C. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 9±53. 4 Roy Strong, Splendour at Court: Renaissance Spectacle and Illusion (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), pp. 79±119; Marie Tanner, The Last Descendant of Aeneas: the Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 131±9; Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: an Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 66±7, 75±81, 363±71. 5 Tanner, Last Descendant, pp. 103±7, 113. 6 For example, on the Hapsburg side, Rubens's Pompa introitus Ferdinandi (Antwerp, 1641) celebrates the Antwerp entry in 1635 of Ferdinand of Hungary, shortly to succeed as emperor, and incorporates a triumph for his È rdlingen (1634). On the republican side, Willem victory over Sweden at No Buytewech (c.1591±c.1624) painted a Triumph of William of Orange; in the Huis ten Bosch, The Hague, are frescoes by Jacob Jordaens (1593±1678), Triumphal March of Prince Frederic Henry after Conquering Bois-le-Duc, and Theodor van Thulden (1606±69), Vanguard of a Triumph with Spanish Prisoners. 7 Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations . . . of the English Nation, 12 vols (Glasgow: James MacLehose, 1903±5), vol. IV, pp. 233±4; Payne Fisher, Ànniversarium; In Diem Inaugurationis Oliuari', in Poemata (1656), sig. F2v. 8 Frances A. Yates, Astraea: the Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1975), pp. 51±9; Roy Strong, Gloriana: the Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987), pp. 103±7. 9 Wallace T. MacCaffrey, Elizabeth I: War and Politics, 1588±1603 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 222. 10 Lodowyck Lloyd, The Triplicitie of Triumphes (1591), sig. C4. 11 Michael Roberts, The Military Revolution, 1560±1660 (Belfast: Marjory Boyd, 1956); I.A.A. Thompson, `The Impact of War', in The European Crisis of the 1590s: Essays in Comparative History, ed. Peter Clark (London: Allen and Unwin, 1985), pp. 261±84; Michael Mallett, `The Theory and Practice of Warfare in Machiavelli's Republic', in Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Gisela Bock, Quentin Skinner and Maurizio Viroli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 173±80. 12 Cf. Richard Eden, Decades of the Newe Worlde or West India (1555), whose title page shows a triumph with an elephant, recalling the elephants displayed in Rome's triumphs over Carthage (Livy, xxvi. 21; Appian, Punica, 66). 190



Notes

13 `N. Eleutherius', ed., Triumphalia de uictoriis Elisabethae (1588), pp. 21, 64; Fisher, Poemata, sig. G1. 14 Lodowick Lloyd, Diall of Daies (1590), sig. Cc1. 15 The spiral reliefs on Trajan's column at Rome `represent the unrolling of two scrolls (volumina) which formed a marble record of his warlike exploits'. The reliefs include à figure of Victory in the act of writing on her shield `Ènse et Ã me Carcopino, Daily Life in stylo'', . . . ``By the sword and by the pen'' ', JeÂro Ancient Rome, trs. E.O. Lorimer (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1956), p. 19. 16 On textuality and national identity, see Richard Helgerson, Forms of Nationhood: the Elizabethan Writing of England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 1±18. R.M. Smuts's study of the royal entry seeks to recover the actual conduct of those events, rather than the often notional record: `Public Ceremony and Royal Charisma: the English Royal Entry in London, 1485±1642', in A.L. Beier, David Cannadine and James M. Rosenheim, eds, The First Modern Society: Essays in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 65±93. Printing, in the form of woodcuts and engravings, disseminated visual representations of the triumph, such as the imaginary triumphs of the Emperor Maximilian I, È rer and others (1517, 1526), and Titian's Triumph of Christ produced by Du (1508±15?), based on Savonarola's Triumphus crucis (Plate 5). 17 Nigel Brooks, `triumphs', in The Spenser Encyclopedia, gen. ed. A.C. Hamilton (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990), pp. 700±1. 18 Cf. Tanner, Last Descendant, p. 119. 19 The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, in The Works of John Milton, gen. ed. F. Allen Patterson, 18 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931±8), vol. VI, p. 118; David Armitage, `The Cromwellian Protectorate and the Languages of Empire', Historical Journal, 35 (1992), 537. 20 Historia Regum Britanniae, ed. Jacob Hammer (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1951), iv. 1. 21 Historia, ix. 12±14, x. 6±13; Lucan, De bello ciuili, ii. 572. 22 Remains concerning Britain (London: John Russell Smith, 1870), pp. 11±12. 23 Britannia, trs. Philemon Holland (1610), pp. 87±8. 24 The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, ed. George Townsend, 8 vols (London: Seeley, Burnside and Seeley, 1843±9), vol. I, pp. xxvi, xxxix±xliv. 25 Acts, vol. I, p. 312. 26 Acts, vol. IV, p. 78, vol. VIII, pp. [811±12]; Historia, iii. 9. 27 Patrick Collinson, Èngland and International Calvinism, 1558±1640', in International Calvinism, 1541±1715, ed. Menna Prestwich (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 203. Cf. Wallace T. MacCaffrey, Queen Elizabeth and the Making of Policy, 1572±1588 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 217±42, 267±347; Simon Adams, `Spain or the Netherlands: the Dilemmas of Early Stuart Foreign Policy', in Before the English Civil War, ed. Howard Tomlinson (London: Macmillan Press ± now Palgrave, 1983), pp. 79±102; Roger Crabtree, `The Idea of a Protestant Foreign Policy', in Cromwell: a Profile, ed. Ivan Roots (London: Macmillan Press ± now Palgrave, 1973), pp. 160±89. I use the term `militant Protestant' rather than `puritan' for proponents of this policy. There is no necessary connection between the fundamental puritan concern, church reform, and the militant policy of protecting or extending Protestantism by arms, though the same people often supported both.



Notes 191

28 Elizabetha Triumphans, pp. 2±15, 23; Albions England, p. 78. See Michael Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints: a Study in the Origins of Radical Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965), ch. 8; Patrick Collinson, The Religion of Protestants: the Church in English Society, 1559±1625 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 177±88. Walzer's general argument has not won acceptance, but his location of the English Protestant militants in the context of late sixteenth-century continental Calvinism remains the most comprehensive discussion. 29 There is no major scholarship in early modern England on the Roman triumph. The two short books by Lodowick Lloyd, Diall of Daies (1590) and The Triplicitie of Triumphes (1591), and the long book by Sir William Segar, Honor Military and Civill (1602), all derive their treatment of the triumph from continental sources: see Anthony Miller, À Source for Segar's Honor Military and Civill', Notes and Queries, 242 (1997), 516±19. The first substantial English contribution is Thomas Lydiat, Series summorum magistratuum et triumphorum Romanorum (Oxford, 1675), compiled between 1612 and 1646. 30 Richard Jenkyns, ed., The Legacy of Rome: a New Appraisal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 2. Major surveys of early modern ceremonies are: FeÃtes de la Renaissance, 3 vols (Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1956±75); David M. Bergeron, English Civic Pageantry 1558±1642 (Columbia SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1971); Mitchell Bonner, Italian Civic Pageantry in the High Renaissance: a Descriptive Bibliography of Triumphal Entries and Selected Other Festivities for State Occasions (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1979); Lawrence M. Bryant, The King and the City in the Parisian Royal Entry Ceremony: Politics, Ritual and Art in the Renaissance (Geneva: Droz, 1986). 31 Sydney Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); Gordon Kipling, The Triumph of Honour: Burgundian Origins of the Elizabethan Renaissance (The Hague: Leiden University Press, 1977). 32 The major recent study is Helen Watanabe-Kelly, Triumphall Shews: Tournaments at German-speaking Courts in their European Context 1560±1730 (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1992). 33 Munday, Chruso-thriambos. The Triumphes of Golde (1611), ll. 1±7, 145±50, in Pageants and Entertainments of Anthony Munday, ed. David M. Bergeron (New York: Garland, 1985); Dekker, Britannia's Honor (1628), ll. 23±5, in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, ed. Fredson Bowers and Cyrus Hoy, 6 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953±74), vol. IV. 34 Important contributions are: James Knowles, `The Spectacle of the Realm: Civic Consciousness, Rhetoric and Ritual in Early Modern London', in Theatre and Government under the Early Stuarts, ed. J.R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 157±89; Raymond D. Tumbleson, `The Triumph of London: Lord Mayor's Day Pageants and the Rise of the City', in The Witness of Times: Manifestations of Ideology in Seventeenth Century England, ed. Katherine Z. Keller and Gerald J. Schiffhorst (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1993), pp. 53±68; Rostovsky Sergei Lobanov, `The Triumphs of Golde: Economic Authority in the Jacobean Lord Mayor's Show', ELH: English Literary History, 60 (1993), 879±98. 35 Michael McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge: Cambridge University



192 Notes

36

37 38

39 40 41

42

Press, 1986), p. 17; Randolph Starn and Loren Partridge, Arts of Power: Three Halls of State in Italy, 1300±1600 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 157±62. For example, Juvenal, x. 36±46. Even Virgil discreetly sets a distance between his treatment of Actium and its triumph and the Augustan myth: see The Cambridge Companion to Virgil, ed. Charles Martindale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 178±9, 199±202. Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals, 1450±1650 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 1984), pp. 44±50. On Venice, see Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981). Art and Power, p. 45; Charles L. Stinger, `Roma Triumphans: Triumphs in the Thought and Ceremonies of Renaissance Rome', Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s. 10 (1981), 189±92. It is perhaps not coincidental that the distinguished scholar coexists in Strong with the deferential courtier revealed in The Roy Strong Diaries, 1967±1987 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997). `Murdering Peasants: Status, Genre, and the Representation of Rebellion', in Representing the English Renaissance, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 15, 11. Lucan, De bello ciuili, i. 2±4. A countervailing trend to the work of Strong and the new historicists has been the study of popular and local festivities, which mediate or resist official festivities: for instance, David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). Like Cressy's festivities, the triumph could occasion `disputes about what exactly was being commemorated, and about the behaviour appropriate to it' (p. xiii). Sharpe and Lake, Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press ± now Palgrave, 1993), pp. 12, 13.

2 Roman models 1 Virgil Aeneid, viii. 626; Cicero, In Verrem, II. v. 66. 2 Valerius Maximus, ii. 8; H.S. Versnel, Triumphus: an Inquiry into the Origin, Development and Meaning of the Roman Triumph (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970), ch. 5; Valerie A. Maxfield, The Military Decorations of the Roman Army (London: Batsford, 1981), pp. 101±3. 3 Livy, v. 23, xxviii. 9, xlv. 35. 4 Plutarch, Aemilius Paullus, 32. 5 Josephus, Bellum Judaicum, vii. 120; cf. Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica, ix. 9; Appian, xii. 116. 6 Livy, xxxix. 7. 7 Plutarch, Caesar, 49. 8 Diodorus Siculus, iv. 3; cf. ii. 65; Pliny, Naturalis historia, vii. 56. 9 Plutarch, Aemilius Paullus, 32. 10 Diodorus Siculus, xxxi. 8; Livy, xxvi. 21, xxxiii. 23, xxxiv. 52, xxxvii. 46, xxxix. 7; Josephus, Bellum Judaicum, vii. 148±51; Plutarch, Flamininus, 14, Aemilius Paullus, 32, Lucullus, 37; Appian, xii. 116±17. 11 Livy, xxxix. 7, 52, xlv. 40; Plutarch, Pompey, 45, Lucullus, 37, Caesar, 55.



Notes 193

12 Livy, xxxiv. 52, xlv. 39, 40; Josephus, Bellum Judaicum, vii. 153±5; cf. Versnel, Triumphus, pp. 391±2. 13 Plutarch, Aemilius Paullus, 33, Marius, 12; Dio Cassius, li. 21. 14 Plutarch, Flamininus, 13; cf. Livy, xxxiii. 23, xxxiv. 52. 15 Versnel, Triumphus, ch. 9. 16 Livy, xlv. 35. 17 Pliny, Naturalis historia, xxxiii. 36. 18 In Pisonem, 57; cf. 62. 19 Plutarch, Romulus, 16. 20 Livy, v. 23; Plutarch, Camillus, 7. 21 Livy, xxviii. 9. 22 Plutarch, Marius, 12. 23 Tertullian, Apologeticus, 33; cf. Pliny, Naturalis historia, XXVIII. vii. 39. 24 Livy, xlv. 40±1. 25 Appian, viii. 65. 26 Livy, xxxviii. 50; cf. xlv. 38. 27 Plutarch, Pompey, 46; cf. Tacitus's Germanicus (Annales, ii. 41). 28 The Oxford History of the Classical World, ed. John Boardman, Jasper Griffin and Oswyn Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 590. 29 Diodorus Siculus, xxxi. 6. 30 T. Corey Brennan, `Triumphus in monte Albano', in Transitions to Empire: Essays in Greco-Roman History, 360±146 B.C., ed. R.W. Wallace and E.M. Harris (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), pp. 315±37. 31 Plutarch, Pompey, 45; cf. Pliny, Naturalis historia, vii. 26. In early modern Europe, the claim of Philip II to rule territory in four continents remembered and outdid Pompey's conquests. 32 Suetonius, Iulius, 37. 33 Suetonius, Augustus, 22. 34 Plutarch, Pompey, 45, Caesar, 55; cf. Jean GageÂ, `Les ClienteÁles Triomphales de la ReÂpublique Romaine', Revue Historique, 218 (1957), 1±31; Stephan Weinstock, Julius (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 71±5. 35 Dio Cassius, li. 21. 36 Suetonius, Augustus, 94. 37 Tacitus, Annales, i. 8; Suetonius, Augustus, 100; cf. Jean GageÂ, `La TheÂologie de la Victoire ImpeÂriale', Revue Historique, 171 (1933), 1±43; Werner Eck, `Senatorial Self-Representation: Development in the Augustan Period', in Caesar Augustus: Seven Aspects, ed. Fergus Millar and Erich Segal (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp.138±43; Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. Alan Shapiro (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988), ch. 1; R.A. Gurval, Actium and Augustus: the Politics and Emotions of Civil War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), pp. 1±85. 38 Concetta Barini, Triumphalia: Imprese ed onori militari durante l'impero romano (Turin: SocietaÁ Editrice Internazionale, 1952); J. B. Campbell, The Emperor and the Roman Army, 31 BC ± AD 235 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 133±42, 358±62. 39 Suetonius, Claudius, 24, Nero, 15. In Ammianus Marcellinus, the noble monuments of the city awe the unworthy triumph of the emperor Constantius (xvi. 10). 40 Suetonius, Nero, 25.



194 Notes

41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48

49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

65 66

Apologeticus, 30±3.

Tertullian, De corona militis, 12.

Apologeticus, 50.

Eusebius, De laudibus Constantini, i. 3.

Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica, IX. ix. 9±11.

Jean GageÂ, `La Victoire ImpeÂriale dans l'Empire ChreÂtien', Revue d'Histoire et

de Philosophie Religieuses, 13 (1933), 370±400; Michael McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 35±130. Epodes, ix. 23±6. Lindsay Watson, Èpode 9, or the Art of Falsehood', in Homo Viator: Classical Essays for John Bramble, ed. Michael Whitby, Philip Hardie and Mary Whitby (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press, and Oak Park, IL: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1987), pp. 119±29. Odes, I. xxxvii. 6±8, 30±2; cf. Propertius IV. vi. 65±6. For other admirable suicides, see Livy, xxvi. 13, xxxvii. 46; for the king who fails to take his life, see Plutarch, Aemilius Paullus, 34. Philip R. Hardie, Virgil's Àeneid': Cosmos and Imperium (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 346±75; Gurval, Actium and Augustus, pp. 232±47. Cf. Horace, Odes, III. iii. 9±16, III. xiv; Pliny, Naturalis Historia, xxxiv. 16. Plutarch, Marcellus, 22. Amores, II. xii. 1±2. Cf. Propertius, II. xiv, xv. Ars amatoria, ll. 213±14. For further variations on the triumphal theme, see Amores, I. xv, II. ix. 15±18, II. xviii. 17±18. See also Elizabeth Thomas, `Variations on a Military Theme in Ovid's Amores', Greece and Rome, 2nd Series, 11 (1964), 151±65; Karl Galinsky, `The Triumph Theme in the Augustan Elegy', Wiener Studien, 82 (1969), 75±107; Leslie Cahoon, `The Bed as Battlefield: Erotic Conquest and Military Metaphor in Ovid's Amores', Transactions of the American Philological Association, 118 (1988), 293±307. For a reworking of triumphal convention hardly less brilliant than Ovid's, see Propertius, III. iv. Metamorphoses, i. 560±5; Augustus, Res gestae, xxxiv. 2. Tristia, IV. ii; cf. Ex Ponto, III. iv. 39±44. Ex Ponto II. i. 29±30, 41±2. Tristia, IV. ii. 74. Cf. Ex Ponto, II. v. 27±32. Shadi Bartsch, Ideology in Cold Blood: a Reading of Lucan's `Civil War' (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 73±100. De bello ciuili, x. 151±4. i. 286±7, vii. 254±6; cf. H.H. Scullard, From the Gracchi to Nero, 5th edn (London: Methuen, 1982), p. 112±14. Pollio among the ancients and Syme among the moderns both began their classic histories of the end of the republic with the refusal of Caesar's triumph. For the more sceptical view of Lucan's Pompey prevalent in contemporary criticism, see Matthew Leigh, Lucan: Spectacle and Engagement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 143±57. Julius Caesar, III. i. 259±75, in The Riverside Shakespeare, textual ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974); Abraham Cowley, The Civil



Notes 195

67 68 69 70 71

72

War, ed. Allan Pritchard (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), p. 73; The Triumph of Patience (1648), pp. 3±4. De consolatu Honorii, ll. 405±6. De consolatu Stilichonis, i. 373±4, 384±5. De consolatu Honorii, ll. 560±8. In Eutropium, i. 252±71. See p. 68, and Plate 6. Claudian is the main ancient source for the coronation `triumph' of Charles II in 1661: The Entertainment of His Most Excellent Majestie Charles II . . . by John Ogilby, ed. Ronald Knowles (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1988), p. 50. Cf. Randolph Starn and Loren Partridge, Arts of Power: Three Halls of State in Italy, 1300±1600 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 163.

3 Humanist transmission 1 Angelo Mazzocco, `The Antiquarianism of Francesco Petrarca', Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 7 (1977), 203. Cf. Cicero, Academica, I. iii. 9; Arnaldo Momigliano, The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 55±79; Eric Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1981), pp. 423±44. 2 The Tempio (c.1450) incorporates a triumphal arch motif in its facade and contains bas-relief triumphs of Mars, Diana, and Scipio. See Charles Hope, `The Early History of the Tempio Malatestiano', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 55 (1992), 51±154. 3 De re militari (Paris, 1532), p. 351. 4 P.J. Jones, The Malatesta of Rimini and the Papal State: a Political History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974); Michael Mallett, Mercenaries and Their Masters: Warfare in Renaissance Italy (London: Bodley Head, 1974). 5 Ellen Callman, `The Triumphal Entry into Naples of Alfonso I', Apollo, 109 (1979), 24±31. 6 Piero probably made use of Valturio's study: Ronald Lightbrown, Piero della Francesca (New York: Abbeville Press, 1992), pp. 239±43. 7 Jones, Malatesta, p. 231. 8 Sergio Bertelli, ed., NiccoloÁ Machiavelli: Arte della guerra e scritti politici minori (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1961), p. 313. 9 Bartolomeo Nogara, ed., Scritti inediti e rari di Biondo Flavio (Rome: Tipografica Poliglotta Vaticana, 1927), p. clv; Angelo Mazzocco, `Rome and the Humanists: The Case of Biondo Flavio', in Rome in the Renaissance: the City and the Myth, ed. P.A. Ramsey (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1982), pp. 185±95; R. Fubini, `Flavio Biondo', in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. X (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1968), pp. 536±59. 10 Charles L. Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), p. 158; Eugenio Marino, Èugenio IV e la storiografia di Flavio Biondo', Memorie domenicane, n.s. 4 (1973), 241±87.



196 Notes

11 De Roma triumphante (Basle, 1531), p. 204. Biondo's gloss on Cicero itself became a commonplace: cf. FrancËois Modius, Pandectae triumphales (Frankfurt, 1586), p. 2. 12 Biondo does not know of, or ignores, the numerous triumphs of the Roman emperors at Constantinople: Michael McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium, and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 35±130. 13 For Byzantine and medieval versions of Biondo's programme, see Marie Tanner, The Last Descendant of Aeneas: the Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), ch. 2; cf. Andrea Fulvio, De urbis antiquitatibus libri quinque (Brescia, 1545), pp. 408±9. 14 Cf. his address to the emperor Frederick III and Alfonso of Aragon in March± April 1452: Scritti, ed. Nogara, pp. 107±14. 15 Stinger, Renaissance, p. 224; cf. Plate 1. Panvinio took further the Christianization of the triumph of Titus and Vespasian: the unique spectacle of a father and son riding in a single triumphal chariot had an apt symmetry, since they had defeated a people who had offended against the heavenly Father and Son (Fasti, p. 460). 16 De mirabilibus nouae et ueteris urbis Romae (Rome, 1520), sigs B1v, T4v. 17 Opera omnia, 10 vols (Leiden, 1703±6), vol. VI, p. 455; vol. IX, p. 361; Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi, ed. P.S. Allen et al., 12 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906±58), vol. VI, p. 1756. 18 Fubini, `Biondo', p. 553. 19 Roma triumphans, pp. 15, 18, 28, 31 ff., 117, 120. 20 A. Degrassi, `Le sistemazioni dei Fasti Capitolini', Capitolium, 18 (1943), 327± 35. 21 G.B. Marliani, Consulum, dictatorum censorumque Romanorum series (Rome, 1549; enlarged edition, 1560); C. Sigonio, Regum, consulum, dictatorum, ac censorum Romanorum fasti (Venice, 1555; enlarged edition, 1556); F. Robortello, De conuenientia supputationis Liuianae ann. cum marmoribus Rom. quae in Capitolio sunt (Padua, 1557); O. Panvinio, Fasti et triumphali Romanorum (Venice, 1557; enlarged edition, 1558). 22 Davide Perini, Onofrio Panvinio e le sue opere (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta della Propaganda Fidei, 1899), pp. 189±213. 23 Quoted by Perini, Panvinio, p. 50. 24 See Cochrane, Historians, p. 426. 25 Randolph Starn and Loren Partridge are therefore not correct in contrasting Panvinio's ahistorical `liberal interpretation' of the triumph to Marliani's more scrupulously historical `strict construction': Arts of Power: Three Halls of State in Italy, 1300±1600 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 159±60. 26 Maurice Aymard and Jacques Revel, `La famille FarneÁse', in Le Palais FarneÁse, 6 vols (Rome: Ecole francËaise de Rome, 1981±), vol. I, part ii, pp. 695±715; Clare Robertson, Ìl Gran Cardinale': Alessandro Farnese, Patron of the Arts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). 27 Zanobio Cessino, La triomphante entrata di Carlo V imperatore Augusto in l'alma cittaÁ di Roma (Rome, 1536); Loren W. Partridge, `Divinity and Dynasty at Caprarola: Perfect History in the Room of Farnese Deeds', Art Bulletin, 60 (1978), 494±530.



Notes 197

28 Stinger, Renaissance, p. 262. 29 On the politics of the abdication, see M.J. Rodriguez-Salgado, The Changing Face of Empire: Charles V, Philip II and Habsburg Authority, 1551±59 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 30 Mazzocco, Àntiquarianism', pp. 213±14. 31 Francisci Petrarchae opera (Basle, 1554), vol. III, pp. 1324, 1329. Petrarch imitates Lucan, iii. 154±68, where Caesar pillages these treasures, many of them the spoils of Pompey's triumphs. See also Paul Colilli, `Scipio's Triumphal Ascent in the Africa', in Petrarch's `Triumphs': Allegory and Spectacle, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler and Amilcare A. Iannucci (Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1990), pp. 147±59. 32 Triumphus Fame, i. 28±31, in Francesco Petrarca, Triumphi, ed. Marco Ariani (Milan: Mursia, 1988). 33 Triumphus Cupidinis, i. 13±18, in Triumphi, ed. Ariani. 34 Triumphus Pudicitie, ll. 124±5, 146±7, in Triumphi, ed. Ariani. 35 Hieronymi Sauonarolae opera (Basle, 1540), p. 117. The major modern study is D. Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence: Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). For Titian's Triumph of Christ, probably based on Savonarola, see Plate 5. 36 Du Bartas His Divine Weekes, and Workes, trans. Joshua Silvester (1633), p. 249. 37 Stanford Shaw, History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976±7), vol. I, p. 177. 38 Silvester was a member of the household of Henry, Prince of Wales, a centre of the militant Protestant cause. Though Du Bartas's hero, Henri IV of France, deserted Protestantism, he retained his stature as a warrior prince and an opponent of Spain. After his assassination in 1610, Silvester's translation of one of Du Bartas's elegies appeared in The Parliament of Vertues Royal (1614±15), which was dedicated to the English patrons of militant Protestantism, the Earls of Southampton and Essex. 39 The Faerie Queene, I. xii. 8, in Spenser's Faerie Queene, ed. J.C. Smith, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), vol. I.

4 Elizabethans and the Armada 1 Popish Kingdome, p. 5. Googe's poem is a translation of Thomas Kirchmeyer, Regnum Papisticum (Basle?, 1553). 2 Centurie, Sonnet 74. 3 Livy, xxx. 12±15; Odes, I.xxxvii. 25±32; Annales, xiv. 37. On the indecorum of a woman sharing in triumphal dignity at Rome, see Annales, xii. 37. 4 BL Royal MS XII. A. xlvii, fol. 8±8v; see also fol. 3. 5 Wallace T. MacCaffrey, Queen Elizabeth and the Making of Policy, 1572±1588 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 164±80, 191±6. 6 By the date of his second book, Lloyd's orientation will have changed from bellicose to pacific: see above, pp. 3±4. 7 Triumphs, ll. 5±8, 171±4, in Certaine Englishe Verses, presented unto the queenes most excellent Maiestie, by a Courtier (1586). 8 The Shepheards Holidaie, ll. 208±11, 216±21, in Day, Daphnis and Chloe (1587).



198 Notes

9 Leicester, almost 55, and a year away from death, was not `youthfull', but members of his court-like entourage fitted the description: R.C. Strong and J.A. van Dorsten, Leicester's Triumph (Leiden: Sir Thomas Browne Institute, 1964), pp. 32±3. 10 MacCaffrey, The Making of Policy, pp. 384±99. 11 David Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 110±29; Carlos GoÂmez-CenturioÂn JimeÂnez, `The New Crusade: Ideology and Religion in the Anglo-Spanish Conflict', in England, Spain and the `Gran Armada', ed. M.J. Rodriguez-Salgado and Simon Adams (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1991), pp. 278±83; Bertrand T. Whitehead, Brags and Boasts: Propaganda in the Year of the Armada (Stroud, Glos.: Alan Sutton, 1994). 12 Colin Martin and Geoffrey Parker, The Spanish Armada (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988), pp. 251±3; Cressy, Bonfires, pp. 114±17. 13 J.E. Neale, Essays in Elizabethan History (London: Jonathan Cape, 1958), p. 104. 14 See James Aske, Elizabetha Triumphans (1588), ll. 769±72, 786±90; `N. Eleutherius', ed., Triumphalia de uictoriis Elisabethae (1588), pp. 10, 37±8. 15 Miller Christy, `Queen Elizabeth's Visit to Tilbury in 1588', English Historical Review, 34 (1919), 55; cf. Susan Frye, `The Myth of Elizabeth I at Tilbury', Sixteenth Century Journal, 23 (1992), 95±114. 16 Elizabetha, ll. 670±2, 678±81. See Carole Levin, The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 143±5. 17 De tertio consolatu Honorii, ll. 96±8. The immediate source is probably Augustine's quotation of Claudius, City of God, v. 26. The lines are resuscitated for the coronation `triumph' of Charles II in 1661: The Entertainment of His Most Excellent Majestie Charles II . . . by John Ogilby, ed. Ronald Knowles (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1988), pp. 34±6. 18 A MS draft, with corrections in Burghley's hand, survives in BL Lansdowne MS 103, fols 134±63v. In response to the Spanish propaganda, Italian, French, German, and Dutch translations were published in London and the Netherlands. See Conyers Read, `William Cecil and Elizabethan Public Relations', in Elizabethan Government and Society, ed. S.T. Bindoff, J. Hurstfield and C.H. Williams (London: Athlone Press, 1961), pp. 21±5; Whitehead, Brags, pp. 146±56. 19 Copie, sigs E3v±E4v. 20 Martin and Parker, Armada, pp. 242±9. 21 Cf. K.R. Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering: English Privateering during the Spanish War, 1585±1603 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), pp. 134±49, 233±8. Even if Burghley's account of the origin of this triumph is not true, the fiction still creates its impressive spectacle of triumphal enthusiasm governed by prudence. 22 Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations . . . of the English Nation, 12 vols (Glasgow: James MacLehose, 1903±5), vol. IV, pp. 233±4. Other accounts of the Armada triumph: John Stow, The Annales, or Generall Chronicle of England (1615), sig. Rrr2v; William Camden, The History of . . . Princess Elizabeth (1688), sig. Hhh4v; William Segar, Honor Military and Civill (1602), pp. 244±7; The



Notes 199

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

Fugger News-Letters, 2nd Series, ed. Victor von Klarwill and trans. L.S.R. Byrne (New York: Putnam, 1926), pp. 184±5. Daniel Archdeacon, A True discourse of the Armie which the King of Spaine caused to bee assembled in the Haven of Lisbon (1588), sig. A6. Archdeacon, Discourse, sigs A6±A6v; cf. TheÂodore de BeÁze, Ad Serenissimam Elisabetham, in Hakluyt, Navigations, vol. IV, p. 235. Hakluyt, Navigations, vol. IV, p. 234. Robert Humston, A Sermon Preached at Reysham (1588), sig. C8v. Martin and Parker, Armada, p. 253. The Holy Bull, And Crusado of Rome (1588), esp. sig. A3. Archdeacon, Discourse, sig. C2. Certaine Advertisements out of Ireland (1588), sigs A3±B5v. Bull, sig. A4. The Latin texts are given also by Archdeacon and in Eleutherius's Triumphalia. Copie, sig. F2. Camden, History, sig. Hhh4v. See Leicester Bradner, `Poems on the Defeat of the Spanish Armada', Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 43 (1944), 447±8. The place of publication of Triumphalia is unknown, but was probably not England. Triumphalia, p. 41. Triumph of the Lord, ll. 1±2, 5±8, in The Poems of Alexander Hume, ed. Alexander Lawson (Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1902). Triumphalia, pp. 28, 30, 34. Naumachiae, pp. 57, 59. Triumphalia, p. 16. Elizabeth is also saluted as `clarum Regina triumphum' and `digna tribus Mulier triumphis' (Triumphalia, pp. 21, 61). Triumphalia, pp. 28, 57, 53. Camden, Britannia (1594), p. 259; R.G. Collingwood, The Archaeology of Roman Britain (London: Methuen, 1930), pp. 62±3 (fuller on Elizabethan knowledge of the pharos than is the rev. edn, 1969); Ivan Green, The Book of Dover (Chesham, Bucks.: Barracuda, 1978), p. 14. Naumachiae, pp. 56±7; Triumphalia, p. 26. Naumachiae, p. 61; cf. ìllic res Italas Romanorumque triumphos / haud uatum ignarus uenturique inscius aeui / fecerat ignipotens', Aeneid, viii. 626±8. Aeneid, viii. 721±8; Naumachiae, p. 59. Aeneid, vi. 794±5, 853; Naumachiae, pp. 56, 64. Strong and van Dorsten, Leicester's Triumph, pp. 54, 61; cf. Virgil, Eclogues, iv. 6. Thomas Churchyard's propempticon casts Essex as a Scipio: The Fortunate Farewell to the most forward and noble Earle of Essex (1599), l. 1. Peele, An Eglogue Gratulatorie to Robert Earl of Essex (1589), ll. 87±9, 94±7, 109. Pricket, Honors Fame in Triumph Riding, ll. 1±2, 337±9, 343±4, 445±6, 505±8. Storer, The Life and Death of Thomas Wolsey Cardinall. Diuided into three parts: His Aspiring, His Triumph, and His Death (1599), ll. 323±31, 1247. Thomas Rogers, Leicester's Ghost, ed. Franklin B. Williams, Jr (Chicago: Newberry Library and University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. xiv. Leicester's Ghost, ll. 316±19, 323±9; cf. 1283±1300.



200 Notes

Notes 201

1 Tamburlaine the Great, ed. J.S. Cunningham (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981), Part I, III. iii. 126±9, 272±3; cf. III. iii. 40±3, 159±61. 2 Part II, III. v. 103±5, 146±8, 164±6; IV. iii o.s.d. 3 For related discussions, see Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 193±221; Richard Wilson, `Visible Bullets: Tamburlaine the Great and Ivan the Terrible', in Christopher Marlowe and English Renaissance Culture, ed. Darryll Grantley and Peter Roberts (Aldershot, Hants: Scolar, 1996), pp. 51±69; John Gillies, `Marlowe, the Timur Myth, and the Motives of Geography', in Playing the Globe: Genre and Geography in English Renaissance Drama, ed. John Gillies and Virginia Mason Vaughan (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998), pp. 212±16. 4 For Roman comparisons in Marlowe's sources, see Una Ellis-Fermor, ed., Tamburlaine the Great, 2nd edn (London: Methuen, 1951), pp. 298, 305. 5 Part I, .I i. 120; Part II, I. ii. 35. 6 Part I, III. iii. 215±17, IV. iv. 7; Part II, III. v. 168±9; cf. Livy, v. 23, xlv. 40; Plutarch, Aemilius Paullus, 30. 7 Part I, II. i. 54±60, II. ii. 59±67, III. iii. 261±2. It is Tamburlaine who successfully uses gold as a weapon, dazzling and winning over Theridamas at their first meeting, Part I, I. ii. 123±40. 8 Bellum Catilinae, 7.

9 Roberto Valturio, De re militaria (Paris, 1532), p. 353.

10 Plutarch, Aemilius Paullus, 33. Tamburlaine's captive monarchs may also recall the noble, pathetic, and dangerous figure of Mary Queen of Scots, executed in 1587: Emily C. Bartels, Spectacles of Strangeness: Imperialism, Alienation, and Marlowe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), p. 64. 11 Phyllis Pray Bober and Ruth Rubenstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture: a Handbook of Sources (London: Harvey Miller, 1986), pp. 200±3. 12 Cf. Part II, III. v. 93, V. i. 31±3. 13 Oratio M. Ant. Mureti . . . post Turcas nauali praelio uictos, in Orationes gratulatoriae (Hanover, 1613), p. 433; Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Navigations . . . of the English Nation, 12 vols (Glasgow: James MacLehose, 1903±5), vol. V, p. 177. 14 The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, ed. George Townsend, 8 vols (London: Seeley, Burnside and Seeley, 1843±9), vol. IV, p. 28. Cf. Roy W. Battenhouse, Marlowe's `Tamburlaine' (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1941), pp. 108±13; Cunningham, Tamburlaine, pp. 71±81; T. MacAlindon, English Renaissance Tragedy (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press ± now Palgrave, 1986), pp. 85±92. 15 Townsend, Acts, vol. IV, pp. 81±2. 16 Cf. Simon Shepherd, Marlowe and the Politics of Elizabethan Theatre (Brighton: Harvester, 1986), pp. 142±56. 17 Richard Bonney, The European Dynastic States 1494±1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 139±40, cf. p. 292. 18 Daniel Archdeacon, A True discourse of the Armie which the King of Spaine caused to bee assembled in the Haven of Lisbon (1588), sig. A4v. Cf. William S.



5 Marlowe and Spenser

19 20 21 22 23

24 25

26 27 28

29 30

31 32

Maltby, The Black Legend in England: the Development of Anti-Spanish Sentiment, 1558±1660 (Durham, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), pp. 17, 25. Robert Humston, A Sermon Preached at Reysham (1588), sig. C8v. Cf. Part I, V. i. 252±4; Part II, I. ii. 40±53. On the similarly self-cancelling effect of the play's arithmetic, cf. Bartels, Spectacles, pp. 73±4. Flavio Biondo, De Roma triumphante (Basle, 1531), p. 205; FrancËois Modius, Pandectae triumphales (Frankfurt, 1586), fol. 2v. Though there is evidence that The Faerie Queene was well advanced by 1588, it is not known to have reached its first published form before October 1589. Spenser's dedicatory sonnet in the 1590 edition to the victorious Lord High Admiral, Baron Howard of Effingham, promises that the poem will commemorate the Armada campaign: Spenser's Faerie Queene, ed. J.C. Smith, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), vol. II, p. 495. As with Marlowe, the relationship between Spenser's text and the Armada celebrations does not however need to be conceived in strictly chronological terms: literary texts and historical celebrations mutually inscribed one another. Alastair Fowler, `Spenser and War', in War, Literature and the Arts in SixteenthCentury Europe, ed. J.R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press ± now Palgrave, 1989), p. 156. Friedrich Heer, The Holy Roman Empire, trans. Janet Sondheimer (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), p. 163; Marie Tanner, The Last Descendant of Aeneas: the Hapsburgs and the Mythic Image of the Emperor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 191±2, 204; cf. Fowler, `Spenser and War', p. 157. The Armada is represented as a dragon in a painting of c. 1610: M.J. Rodriguez-Salgado et al., Armada: 1588±1988 (London: Penguin Books / National Maritime Museum, 1988), p. 281. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, trans. William Granger Ryan, 2 vols (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), vol. I, p. 209. As well as the various Saracens and their gods Mahoun and Termagaunt (II. viii. 30, 33; IV. viii. 44), Corflambo rides a dromedary (IV. viii. 38) and Radigund wields a scimitar (V. v. 3). E.H. Gombrich, `Celebrations in Venice of the Holy League and of the Victory of Lepanto', in Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Art Presented to Anthony Blunt on His 60th Birthday (London: Phaidon, 1967), p. 62; Iain Fenlon, `Lepanto: The Arts of Celebration in Renaissance Venice', Proceedings of the British Academy, 73 (1987), 207. Tomaso Costo, Dell rotta di Lepanto (Naples, 1573), fols 4v, 11. Cf. the Armada verses of TheÂodore de BeÁze, Ad serenissiman Elizabetham Angliae Reginam (1588): `Quam bene, te ambitio mersit uanissima, uentus: / Et tumidos tumidae, uos superastis aquae!' [how apt that the wind caused you to drown, insubstantial ambition, and that you, swollen waters, overcame those puffed-up ones], Hakluyt, Navigations, vol. IV, p. 235. `To the right honourable the Lo. Ch. Howard', line 7, in Faerie Queene, ed. Smith, vol. II, p. 495; cf. The Faerie Queene, ed. A.C. Hamilton (London: Longman, 1977), III. iii. 49 and note. Townsend, Acts, vol. IV, pp. 451±2; cf. Maltby, Black Legend, pp. 37±8.



202 Notes

33 On the politico-religious character of the Orgoglio episode, see Anthea Hume, Edmund Spenser: Protestant Poet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 92±6. 34 In Du Bartas's triumph for Henri IV's victory at Ivry, which also appeared in 1590, Henri likewise represents reformed Christianity, and his arch-enemies are `fatall Philip' and `Romes Vatican': The Battail of Yvry, in Du Bartas His Divine Weekes, and Workes, trans. Joshua Silvester (1633), pp. 552±3. 35 Onofrio Panvinio, Fastorum libri V (1558), p. 456; cf. the Latins viewing the dead Cacus, slain by Hercules, Aeneid, viii. 265±7. 36 The correspondence between fictional and historical events and persons in The Faerie Queene continues to be debated. Arthur's victories in Belge have been identified with the campaigns of Leicester in 1585±7, of Vere in 1589± 94, and of the Dutch Republic at large. In his victory over the Souldan, Arthur has been identified with Leicester, with Howard of Effingham, and with the English nation at large. In the Renaissance practice of allegorical reading, such interpretations would not have been mutually exclusive. A recent assessment of Spenser's political allegiances, confirming his links to Leicester, is Vincent P. Carey and Clare L. Carroll, `Factions and Fictions: Spenser's Reflections of and on Elizabethan Politics', in Spenser's Life and the Subject of Biography, ed. Judith H. Anderson, Donald Cheney and David A. Richardson (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), pp. 31±44. 37 Jane Aptekar, Icons of Justice: Iconography and Thematic Imagery in Book V of `The Faerie Queene' (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), ch. 10±12. 38 For Charles V and Philip II as Hercules, see Roy Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals, 1450±1650 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 1984), pp. 84, 88; Tanner, Last Descendant, p. 139. The Geryon legend is invoked for Augustus's Spanish conquests in Horace, Odes, III. xiv, and for the Armada in Eleutherius's Triumphalia, p. 4; the English Hercules slays the Roman Hydra in Kuehn's Naumachiae, p. 62. 39 On the sense of decline in The Faerie Queene of 1596 and on Mercilla's problematic status, see Thomas H. Cain, Praise in `The Faerie Queene' (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1978), pp. 131±6, 140±6. 40 Cf. ReneÂ Graziani, `Philip II's impresa and Spenser's Souldan', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Intitutes, 27 (1964), 322±4. 41 Dictionary of National Biography, vol. VI, p. 119. 42 In V. viii. 45, Arthur hangs the armour on a tree, re-enacting the invention of the triumphal trophy: Plutarch, Romulus, 16. 43 Cf. Michael F.N. Dixon, The Polliticke Courtier: Spenser's `The Faerie Queene' as a Rhetoric of Justice (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996), pp. 138±41. 44 Richard Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors, 3 vols (London: Longmans, Green, 1885±90), vol. III, pp. 65±78; Steven G. Ellis, Tudor Ireland: Crown, Community and the Conflict of Cultures, 1470±1603 (London: Longman, 1985), pp. 281±4. 45 See, e.g., V. xii. 3±4, 27; Richard A. McCabe, `The Fate of Irena: Spenser and Political Violence', in Spenser and Ireland: an Interdisciplinary Perspective, ed. Patricia Coughlan (Cork: Cork University Press, 1989), pp. 109±25; Walter S.H. Lim, `Figuring Justice: Imperial Ideology and the Discourse of Colonialism in Book V of The Faerie Queene and A View of the Present State of Ireland', Renaissance and Reformation, 19 (1995), 45±70; Gregory Tobias,



Notes 203

`Shadowing Intervention: on the Politics of The Faerie Queene Book 5 cantos 10±12', ELH: English Literary History, 67 (2000), 365±97. For the use of Roman models in the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland, see F.J. Levy, `Spenser and Court Humanism', in Anderson et al., Spenser's Life, pp. 77±8. For contrary views: T.K. Dunseath, Spenser's Allegory of Justice in Book Five of `The Faerie Queene', (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), pp. 47±59; Kenneth Borris, Spenser's Poetics of Prophecy in `The Faerie Queene' V (Victoria, BC: University of Victoria, 1991). 46 Letters from Ireland, Relating the several great Successes (1649), p. 9. 47 In some versions, Hercules's last labour was to slay the Hydra, a figure associated with slander (and with the Blatant Beast); in other versions, slander is the enemy that even Hercules cannot slay: Horace, Epistulae, II. i. 10±12; Dunseath, Allegory of Justice, pp. 231±3; Aptekar, Icons, pp. 206±12. 48 Diodorus Siculus, xxxi. 8.

6

The Stuart Peace

1 For the `triumphalism' of the Stuart Banqueting House, see Per Palme, Triumph of Peace: a Study of the Whitehall Banqueting House (London: Thames and Hudson, 1957) pp. 124±8. 2 For the paucity of public, as distinct from court, ceremonies under Charles I, see Malcolm Smuts, `The Political Failure of Stuart Cultural Patronage', in Patronage in the Renaissance, ed. Guy Fitch Lytle and Stephen Orgel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), pp. 165±87. 3 Among many studies, see David M. Bergeron, English Civic Pageantry 1558±1642 (Columbia SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1971), pp. 71±89; Graham Parry, The Golden Age Restor'd: the Culture of the Stuart Court, 1603±42 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981), pp. 1±21. 4 Rowlands, `Stay Sorrowes there about Elizaes Tombe', ll. 43±6, in Aue Caesar (1603). 5 Petowe, Englands Caesar (1603), ll. 144±54. 6 John Davies, Bien venu: Greate Britaines welcome to hir greate friendes, and deere brethren the Danes (1606), ll. 65±6, 161±2, 165±6, 234±6. 7 As King of Scotland, James the poet had won him a `secund Croune' of laurel that `dois bring / Moir hich triumphe' than his `Croune Imperiale': `To His Maiestie the Day of His Coronation with Laurell', ll. 7±8, in Poems of John Stewart of Baldyneiss, ed. Thomas Crockett (Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1912±13). 8 Marcelline, Triumphs of King James (1610), sig. B3v. This book was first published as Les trophees du Roi Iacques I (London?, 1609). 9 The iconography described by Marcelline appears on the title page of his book, and in the statue at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, where the enthroned James holds a book in each hand: cf. David Howarth, Images of Rule: Art and Politics in the English Renaissance, 1485±1649 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press ± now Palgrave, 1997), pp. 120±2. 10 See W.B. Patterson, King James VI and I and the Reunion of Christendom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 31±123.



204 Notes

11 Thomas Dekker, The Magnificent Entertainment: Given to King James, ll. 698±9, in The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, ed. Fredson Bowers and Cyrus Hoy, 6 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953±74), vol. II. 12 Threnothriambeuticon (Cambridge, 1603), sig. C2. 13 Samuel R. Gardiner, History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 3rd edn, 10 vols (London: Longmans, Green, 1889), vol. II, pp. 161±3; David Norbrook, `The Masque of Truth: Court Entertainments and International Protestant Politics in the Early Stuart Period', Seventeenth Century, 1 (1986), 81±110. 14 John Gell, Epithalamium et gratulatio (Heidelberg, 1613), sig. D2v. 15 Peacham, Prince Henrie revived (1615), ll. 592±603. On Henry, Prince of Wales, see Roy Strong, Henry Prince of Wales and England's Lost Renaissance (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), pp. 71±85; J.R. Mulryne, ` ``Here's Unfortunate Revels'': War and Chivalry in Plays and Shows at the Time of Prince Henry Stuart', in War, Literature and the Arts in Sixteenth-Century Europe, ed. J.R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press ± now Palgrave, 1989), pp. 165±89. Peacham, like Gell, visited Heidelberg, and he was present with the continental army of Sir John Ogle in 1613±14. 16 Peacham may allude to Cornelius Vroom's Armada tapestries, bought by James I in 1616: J.S.A. Adamson, `Chivalry and Political Culture in Caroline England', in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press ± now Palgrave, 1993), p. 173. 17 Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic: its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477±1806 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 244±7, 405±7. 18 Shute, The Triumphs of Nassau (1613), sigs D2±D2v. The French text (with Dutch title) is Jan Orlers and Henrik van Haestens, Nassauschen laurencrans (Leiden, 1612). 19 L.J. Reeve, Charles I and the Road to Personal Rule (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 9±57; Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Reign of Charles I (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 3±70. 20 Holland, Heroologia Anglica (Arnhem, 1620), sig. 6v. 21 Crosse, Belgiaes Troubles, and Triumphs (1625), sig. F3v. 22 Blunt (or Blount) is the name of several soldiers and several recusants of the period, but I have been unable to identify Crosse's `Philippicke' Blunt. 23 Van Baerle, Britannia triumphans (Leiden, 1626), p. 18. 24 Laude, The Scottish souldier (Edinburgh, 1629), ll. 320±4. Buckingham was assassinated in August 1628, raising hopes of peace with France and a concentration on war with Spain. Peace with France was concluded in April 1629, with Spain in December 1629. Lauder's poem may have been published in the middle of the year, when negotiations with Spain were at an impasse. On Buckingham's style, see Roger Lockyer, Buckingham (London: Longman, 1981), pp. 20, 236, 470. 25 Laude, The soldiers wishe (Edinburgh, 1628), ll. 120±35. When his wish was thwarted by the peace of 1629, Lauder followed Ogle into the military service of the Princes of Orange. 26 Soldiers wishe, ll. 70±2, 152, 173±4. For similar urgings to a crusade, see Sir John Stradling, Beati Pacifici (1623), pp. 16±17. 27 Scottish souldier, ll. 285±8. 28 Belgiaes Troubles, and Triumphs, sigs E4v I4V; cf. sig. K1v.



Notes 205

29 Gardiner, History of England, vol. VII, pp. 384±6; Sharpe, Personal Rule, pp. 97±104; B.W. Quintrell, `Charles I and His Navy', Seventeenth Century, 3 (1988), 159±79. 30 Andrew Martindale, The Triumphs of Caesar by Andrea Mantegna (London: Harvey Miller, 1979), pp. 56±74, 134, 159, 171±2. 31 Martindale, Triumphs, pp. 42±6. 32 Martindale, Triumphs, pp. 59±60. 33 Parry, Golden Age Restor'd, pp. 215±16; Howarth, Images of Rule, pp. 252±3. 34 Oliver Millar, Van Dyck in England (London: National Portrait Gallery, 1982), pp. 50±2; John Peacock, `The Politics of Portraiture', in Culture and Politics, ed. Sharpe and Lake, p. 226; Howarth, Images of Rule, pp. 141±4. 35 Gardiner, History of England, vol. VIII, pp. 269±81; Sharpe, Personal Rule, pp. 717±30; Martin Butler, `Reform or Reverence? The Politics of the Caroline Masque', in Theatre and Government under the Early Stuarts, ed. J.R. Mulryne and Margaret Shewring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 146±51. 36 Albion's Triumph, l. 131, in Stephen Orgel and Roy Strong, Inigo Jones: the Theatre of the Stuart Court, 2 vols. (London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1973), vol. II. 37 Orgel and Strong, Inigo Jones, vol. II, pp. 453, 462±8. 38 On the Roman-English continuity, see Jerzy Limon, The Masque of Stuart Culture (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990), pp. 82±5. 39 See Orgel and Strong, Inigo Jones, vol. I, p. 61; Erica Veevers, Images of Love and Religion: Queen Henrietta Maria and Court Entertainments (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 177±8. 40 Sharpe, Personal Rule, pp. 77±8, 84, 90±1. 41 For poetic treatments of Gustavus, see James Loxley, Royalism and Poetry in the English Civil Wars: the Drawn Sword (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press ± now Palgrave, 1997), pp. 23±7. 42 Èlegy on the death of the King of Sweden', ll. 33±40, in The Poems and Masques of Aurelian Townshend, ed. Cedric C. Brown (Reading: Whiteknights Press, 1983); Kevin Sharpe, Criticism and Compliment: the Politics of Literature in the England of Charles I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 173±6; Loxley, Royalism and Poetry, pp. 25±7. 43 Orgel and Strong, Inigo Jones, vol. I, p. 59; cf. p. 71.

44 Sharpe, Personal Rule, pp. 97±104.

45 See also Butler, `Politics of the Caroline Masque', pp. 133±7. On the ways in

which royal authority was `negotiated rather than simply affirmed' in Stuart masques, see Butler, `Courtly Negotiations', in The Politics of the Stuart Court Masque, ed. David Bevington and Peter Holbrook (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 20±40; for a persuasive treatment of war, peace and `Platonic politics' in the 1630s, see R. Malcolm Smuts, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), pp. 247±62.

7 Shakespeare and Stuart Drama 1 Titus Andronicus, I. i. 18±38, in The Riverside Shakespeare, textual ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974).



206 Notes

2 Ruines, xiv. 11±14, in Spenser's Minor Poems, ed. Ernest de SeÂlincourt (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910), p. 241. 3 On civility and barbarism in this text and its Elizabethan context, see Francis Barker, `Treasures of Culture: Titus Andronicus and Death by Hanging', in The Production of English Renaissance Culture, ed. David Lee Miller, Sharon O'Dair and Harold Weber (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 226±61. The dialectic between triumphal victories abroad and perturbing tumults at home was always a theme of Roman history: see for example Livy, ii. 31, ii. 54, and esp. iii. 8. 4 See Mark Rose, `Conjuring Caesar: Ceremony, History, and Authority in 1599', English Literary Renaissance, 19 (1989), 291±304. 5 John Guy, Tudor England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 440. 6 Anthony Miller, `Domains of Victory: Staging and Contesting the Roman Triumph in Renaissance England', in Playing the Globe: Genre and Geography in English Renaissance Drama, ed. John Gillies and Virginia Mason Vaughan (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1998), pp. 277±83. 7 The prominence of triumph and its irreverent variations may recall the ceremonies for the visit of Christian IV of Denmark in 1606: see p. 109, and H. Neville Davies, `Jacobean Antony and Cleopatra', Shakespeare Studies, 17 (1985), 123±58. The play's triumphs are well studied in Russell Jackson, `The Triumphs of Antony and Cleopatra', Jahrbuch der Shakespeare-Gesellschaft West, 1984, 128±48. 8 For the ancients, see, e.g., Livy, xxxvii. 60, xlv. 42; cf. Helen Morris, `Queen Elizabeth I ``Shadowed'' in Cleopatra', Huntington Library Quarterly, 32 (1969), 271±8. 9 Coriolanus calls the entry a triumph, II. i. 177. Shakespeare's description, II. i. 205±21, like those in Henry V and Julius Caesar, vies with the virtuoso descriptions in humanist studies. 10 Among many studies of the Jacobean Coriolanus, see R.B. Parker, `Coriolanus and ``th'interpretation of the time'' ', in Mirror up to Shakespeare: Essays in Honour of G.R. Hibbard, ed. J.C. Gray (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), pp. 261±76; Leah S. Marcus, Puzzling Shakespeare: Local Reading and its Discontents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 202±11. 11 The Tragedie of Bonduca, iv. 62, ed. Cyrus Hoy, in The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, gen. ed. Fredson Bowers, 10 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966±96), vol. IV. 12 Cf. Paul D. Green, `Theme and Structure in Fletcher's Bonduca', Studies in English Literature 1500±1900, 22 (1982), 309±10. 13 Annales, xii. 37. 14 The play dates from either 1609±11 or 1613±14: E.K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols (London: Oxford University Press, 1923), vol. III, p. 228. 15 For contemporary controversies on the historical Boudicca and submission to Rome, see Malcolm Smuts, `Court-Centred Politics and the Uses of Roman Historians, c. 1590±1630', in Culture and Politics in Early Stuart England, ed. Kevin Sharpe and Peter Lake (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press ± now Palgrave, 1993), p. 40. 16 The Bond-Man, I. i. 47±8, in The Plays and Poems of Philip Massinger, ed. Philip Edwards and Colin Gibson, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), vol. I. 17 Plays and Poems, vol. V, p. 130.



Notes 207

18 Cf. the further triumphal references at I. iii. 296, 366±8, II. i. 89±93. 19 G.E. Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, 7 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1941±68), vol. IV, p. 766. 20 `Prerevolutionary Drama', in The Politics of Tragicomedy, ed. Gordon McMullan and Jonathan Hope (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 136±7. 21 Margot Heinemann, Puritanism and Theatre: Thomas Middleton and Opposition Drama under the Early Stuarts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 136. 22 Benjamin Townley Spencer, ed., The Bondman: An Antient Storie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1932), pp. 28±43. 23 Dictionary of National Biography, vol. IX, p. 659. 24 S.R. Gardiner, `The Political Element in Massinger', The New Shakspere Society's Transactions, Series 1, No. 4 (1875±6), 316±19. 25 Hannibal and Scipio, II. i. p. 209, in The Works of Thomas Nabbes, ed. A.H. Bullen, 2 vols. (1882±9, repr. New York: Benjamin Blom, 1964), vol. I. 26 Nabbes's sources are Livy and Plutarch, and he appears to allude to Petrarch's Africa in acknowledging `the singer of the Punick warr': R.W. Vince, `Thomas Nabbes's Hannibal and Scipio: Sources and Theme', Studies in English Literature 1500±1900, 11 (1971), 328±36. 27 Works, vol. II, p. 260. 28 Corneille's career began in 1629; Le Cid would appear in 1636. Hannibal too is capable of the CorneÂlien recognition, `Hang beauty: that and ease are th' onely engines / To ruine vertue' (I. v; p. 205); his shortcoming is in moderating `vertue' and its dreams of triumph.

8 Civil War and Commonwealth 1 Bulstrode Whitelocke, Memorials of the English Affairs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1853), vol. I, p. 355; B. Capp, Cromwell's Navy: the Fleet and the English Revolution 1648±1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 52±3. 2 The Civil War, ed. Allan Pritchard (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), p. 73; cf. Epibateria (1643), sigs B(2)2, B(2)3. 3 T. Manley, Veni; Vidi; Vici (1652), sig. C4v; Aeneid, vi. 129. 4 S.R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, 1642±1649, 2nd edn, 4 vols, (London: Longmans, Green, 1893), vol. I, pp. 14±15; Sean Kelsey, Inventing a Republic: the Political Culture of the English Commonwealth, 1649±1653 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), ch. 2. 5 Thomas Hill, The Militant Church, triumphant over the Dragon and his Angels (1643), sig. B4v.

6 Proclamation of 21 March 1645.

7 W.I., The Jubilie of England (1646), pp. 5±6.

8 Cf. Gardiner, Civil War, vol. I, pp. 187, 256±7.

9 A more exact and perfect Relation Of the great Victory (1645), p. 4.

10 A Glorious Victorie Obtained By Sr. Thomas Fairfax (1645), sigs A3v±A4. 11 An Ordinance of the Lords and Commons . . . Together with two exact Relations (1645), p. 4. Many of the alleged whores were soldiers' wives: Peter Young and Richard Holmes, The English Civil War: a Military History of the Three Civil Wars, 1642±1651 (London: Eyre Methuen, 1974), p. 250.



208 Notes

12 A More Particular and Exact Relation of The Victory (1645), p. 2. 13 S.R. Gardiner, History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 1649±1656, 2nd edn, 4 vols (London: Longmans, Green, 1903), vol. I, pp. 21±8, 178±81. 14 Letters from Ireland, Relating the several great Successes (1649), p. 10. 15 The last great and Bloudy Fight in Ireland (1649), p. 4. 16 A Letter from Windsor, printed with A Speech or Declaration of the Declared King of Scots (1650), pp. 4, 5. 17 Letter from Windsor, pp. 5±6. 18 Remarkable Observations of Gods Mercies towards England (1651), p. 5. 19 A Letter from the Lord General Cromwel . . . Touching the taking of the City of Worcester (1651), p. 3. 20 A Perfect Relation of his Excellency the Lord Generall Cromwells Reception . . . in and about the City of London, printed with Another Victory in Lancashire Obtained against the Scots (1651), p. 3; cf. Gerald M. MacLean, Time's Witness: Historical Representation in English Poetry, 1603±1660 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), pp. 230±1. 21 A Perfect Relation, p. 2. 22 A Perfect Relation, p. 3. Standards captured in Cromwell's Scottish campaign were hung in Westminster Hall: Gardiner, Commonwealth, vol. II, p. 1. 23 William was son of Prince Maurits, hero of the militant Protestants in earlier decades; by the 1640s, dynastic interest allied the house of Nassau-Orange with the Stuarts rather than with Parliament. 24 Gardiner, Civil War, vol. I, pp. 36±7, 93±5, 160±6. 25 See C.V. Wedgwood, Poetry and Politics under the Stuarts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), pp. 76±9; Raymond A. Anselment, `The Oxford University Poets and Caroline Panegyric', John Donne Journal, 3 (1984), 196±7; MacLean, Time's Witness, pp. 199±202; James Loxley, Royalism and Poetry in the English Civil Wars: the Drawn Sword (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press ± now Palgrave, 1997), pp. 81±4. 26 Musarum Oxoniensium Epibateria (1643), sig. A4v; cf. Marvell, `Horatian Ode', ll. 1±8. 27 Gardiner, Civil War, vol. I, p. 353; vol. II, pp. 114, 180, 231. 28 Cf. the masque-like treatment of the meeting of the King and queen in Cowley's Civil War, i. 207±50. 29 The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick, ed. L.C. Martin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956), p. 271. 30 Thomas N. Corns, Uncloistered Virtue: English Political Literature, 1640±1660 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), pp. 94±102. 31 The Militant Church, triumphant, sigs D3v, B4, B2. Another example of the genre is John Bewick, Confiding England under conflicts Triumphing in the Middest of her Terrors (1644). 32 Whitfield, Idolaters Ruine (1645), sig. E1v. 33 Triumph of Loyalty (1648), pp. 17±18. See Daphne Woodward and Chloe Cockerill, The Siege of Colchester, 1648: a History and Bibliography ([n.p.]: Essex County Library, 1979). 34 Triumph of patience (1649), pp. 3, 4. On the conventions and iconography of the triumph of patience, see Gerald J. Schiffhorst, ed., Triumph of Patience: Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Orlando: University Presses of Florida, 1978).



Notes 209

35 King, Elegy, l. 166, in The Poems of Henry King, ed. Margaret Crum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965). For poems on Charles's execution, see MacLean, Time's Witness, pp. 214±19. 36 Cf. Herrick, `The Plunder', and Corns, Uncloistered Virtue, pp. 92±3. 37 Hesilrige was widely accused of profiting excessively from the confiscations: Dictionary of National Biography, vol. IX, p. 745. 38 Elegy, ll. 200 (marginal note), 173, 175. Cf. Barbara Carpenter Turner, Winchester (Southampton: Paul Cave, 1980), pp. 109±13; John R. Phillips, The Reformation of Images (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), ch. 9; C. Carlton, Going to the Wars (London: Routledge, 1992), ch. 11. 39 John Vicars, Jehovah-Jireh . . . or England's Parliamentarie-Chronicle, Parts I and II (1644±6), p. 227. 40 De bello ciuili, iii. 155±68. 41 Hammond was Cromwell's cousin, which adds to the persuasiveness of King's tragedy of intrigue, though his charges are historically dubious: Gardiner, Civil War, vol. IV, p. 131, n. 2. On representations of the captive king, see Loxley, Royalism and Poetry, pp. 147±55. 42 Horsmann, Sionis certamina et triumphus (1651), sig. G5. 43 Gardiner, Commonwealth, vol, I, pp. 312±13; cf. MacLean, Time's Witness, pp. 214, 219. 44 Antonia Fraser, Cromwell: Our Chief of Men (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), pp. 455±63; Roy Sherwood, The Court of Oliver Cromwell, 2nd edn, (Cambridge: Willingham, 1989). 45 Robin Simon, ''Roman-cast similitude'': Cromwell and Mantegna's Triumphs of Caesar', Apollo, 134 (1991), 111±22. The republican Council of State had taken similar steps: Kelsey, Inventing a Republic, p. 39. 46 Charles Wilson, Profit and Power: a Study of England and the Dutch Wars (London: Longmans, Green, 1957), p. 79; Christopher Hill, God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970), p. 155. 47 Gardiner, Commonwealth, vol. II, pp. 153±220; vol. III, pp. 28±60; vol. IV, pp. 146±76; Charles Harding Firth, The Last Years of the Protectorate, 1656±1658, 2 vols (London: Longmans, Green, 1909), vol. I, pp. 1±11. Caspar Staphorst's triumph of peace laments the spectacle of Protestants at war with one another: Carmen . . . de bello Britannico et ejusdem per Dei gratiam foelici exitu, qui est triumphus pacis (Dordrecht, [1656]). 48 The Full Particulars of the last great and terrible Sea-Fight (1653), p. 6. 49 Another great Victorie Obtained by Vice-Admiral Pen against the Hollanders (1653), pp. 3, 5. 50 An Exact and True Relation of the great and mighty Engagement between the English and Dutch Fleets (1653), pp. 1, 2. 51 Maurice Ashley, Financial and Commercial Policy under the Cromwellian Protectorate, 2nd edn (London: F. Cass, 1962), p. 3. 52 Mr. Recorders Speech to the Lord Protector (1654), pp. 4±5. 53 Mr. Recorders Speech, p. 2; cf. Perez Zagorin, A History of Political Thought in the English Revolution (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1954), p. 5. 54 Wither, A Suddain Flash (1657), p. 9. 55 Oliua pacis (Cambridge, 1654), sig. Dlv; Elaiophoria (Oxford, 1654), p. 34.



210 Notes

56 Elaiophoria, pp. 7, 18, 48. In John Locke's Oxford contribution, Cromwell surpasses both Caesar and Augustus: Elaiophoria, p. 45. On `Protectoral Augustanism and its critics', see David Norbrook, Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627±1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), ch. 7. 57 Oliua, sigs G1v, A2v. 58 On Fisher's career, see Norbrook, Republic, pp. 231±8; on interregnum panegyric in general, Nigel Smith, Literature and Revolution in England 1640±1660 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 277±86. I believe that Smith underrates Fisher's technical competence as a Latinist (p. 285). The 1650s saw a corresponding vogue for literary triumphs in other fields, e.g., the Protestant translation of Savonarola, The Triumph of the Crosse (1651); R. Boreman, Triumph of Learning over Ignorance (1653) and Triumph of Faith over Death (1654); R. Fletcher, Èaster Day', in Ex otio Negotium (1656). 59 Fisher, Poemata (1656), sigs a1, b1. Parenthetical references are to this edition. 60 T. Manley, Veni; Vidi; Vici: The Triumphs of the Most Excellent and Illustrious, Oliver Cromwell (1652), sig. B1. Manley's poem is a translation of Fisher's Irenodia Gratulatoria (1652). 61 Poemata, sig. D2v. Fisher's book has two consecutive gatherings with the signature D. References to sig. D in this chapter are to the second of these gatherings. 62 Veni; Vidi; Vici, sig. C4. 63 Veni; Vidi; Vici, sig. B2. 64 Malice and detraction against Cromwell take the form of the dog Cerberus in Wither, Suddain Flash, p. 10. Both versions recall the Envy and Detraction that assailed Spenser's victorious Artegall. 65 Fisher, Paean Triumphalis (1657), fol. 14. 66 Gardiner, Commonwealth, vol. IV, pp. 159±213; Ashley, Financial and Commercial Policy, pp. 118±19. 67 Cf Oliua, sig. H2; Elaiophoria, p. 100. On the continuity between Elizabethan and Cromwellian imperialism, see Hill, God's Englishman, pp. 158±60; on the debate over imperialism in 1654±6, see David Armitage, `The Cromwellian Protectorate and the Languages of Empire', Historical Journal, 35 (1992), 531± 55. 68 Cf. Elaiophoria, pp. 7, 9, 66. In fact, Cromwell refused to join in a war against the Ottoman empire: Hill, God's Englishman, p. 165.

9 Marvell and Milton 1 `Tom May's Death', ll. 44±5, 49±52, in The Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, ed. H.M. Margoliouth, 3rd edn, rev. Pierre Legouis and E.E. Duncan-Jones, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), vol. I, p. 95. 2 Poems and Letters, ed. Margoliouth, vol. II, p. 306. 3 The scrolling form of Trajan's column itself resembles the form of a Roman book: see above, p. 5, and Poems and Letters, ed. Margoliouth, vol. II, pp. 378±9. 4 Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio Secunda, in The Works of John Milton, gen. ed. F. Allen Patterson, 18 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931±8), vol.



Notes 211

5 6 7 8

9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20

VIII, pp. 158, 222. Milton's sonnet to Sir Henry Vane (1652) also praises him as a Roman Senator. On Milton's republicanism and Romanitas, see Edward B. Benjamin, `Milton and Tacitus', Milton Studies, 4 (1972), 125±30. Paradise Lost, iii. 249, in Works, ed. Patterson, vol. II, part i. Paradise Regain'd, iii. 194±5, in Works, ed. Patterson, vol. II, part ii. Cf. Christopher Hill, Milton and the English Revolution (London: Faber and Faber, 1977), p. 352. Tibullus, i. 7; Propertius, iii. 4. Àn Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland', ll. 1±4, in Poems and Letters, ed. Margoliouth, vol. I, pp. 91±4. See Francis Cairns, Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Poetry (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1972), p. 167; David Norbrook, `Marvell's ``Horatian Ode'' and the Politics of Genre', in Literature and the English Civil War, ed. Thomas Healy and Jonathan Sawday (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 147±69; cf. the opening of Du Bartas, The Battail of Yvry, trans. Joshua Silvester in Du Bartas His Divine Weekes, and Workes (1633), p. 551. Cf. Poems and Letters, ed. Margoliouth, vol. II, pp. 295±6; Nigel Smith, Literature and Revolution in England 1640±1660 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), pp. 277±8. Important discussions of the poem's Romanitas in general, and its relation to Lucan in particular, are: A.J.N. Wilson, Àndrew Marvell, An Horatian Ode upon Cromwel's Return from Ireland: the Thread of the Poem and its Use of Classical Allusion', Critical Quarterly, 11 (1969), 325±41; David Norbrook, Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627±1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 243±71, especially pp. 261±3. Antonia Fraser, Cromwell: Our Chief of Men (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), pp. 93±4, 139, 141, 152±3, 387±90; Lucan, i. 125±6, 146±50. Fraser, Cromwell, pp. 140, 152. Cf. Tacitus, Agricola, 11, 17, 29. The conquest of the Scots and Picts and eventually of Rome had all witnessed to England's imperial destiny in Kasper van Baerle, Britannia triumphans (Leiden, 1626), sigs A6±A7. In `N. Eleutherius', Triumphalia de uictoriis Elisabethae (1588), the virtues of Queen Elizabeth similarly draw praise from Medina Sidonia, the conquered commander of the Armada (p. 9). Livy, xxxiv. 52, xlv. 39, 46; Josephus, Bellum Judaicum, vii. 153±5; Plutarch, Aemilius Paullus, 33, Marius, 12; Dio Cassius, li. 21. Alastair Fowler, Triumphal Forms: Triumphal Patterns in Elizabethan Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 78±81. Cf. Derek Hirst, ` ``That sober liberty'': Marvell's Cromwell in 1654', in The Golden and the Brazen World: Papers in Literature and History, 1650±1800, ed. John M. Wallace (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), esp. pp. 21±6, 32±41. The First Anniversary of the Government under O. C. (1655), ll. 23±6, in Poems and Letters, ed. Margoliouth, vol. I, pp. 108±19. Òn the Victory obtained by Blake', a poem not unanimously attributed to Marvell, does award to the Protector the navalis triumphus earned by the admiral (145±8). Poems and Letters, ed. Margoliouth, vol. II, p. 321. Cf. Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, 7.



212 Notes

21 Cf. Steven N. Zwicker, Lines of Authority: Politics and English Literary Culture, 1649±1689 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 87±9. 22 Milton's uses of triumph are studied with reference to Restoration spectacle by Laura Lunger Knoppers, Historicizing Milton: Spectacle, Power, and Poetry in Restoration England (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1994), ch. 4. See also Stevie Davies, Images of Kingship in Paradise Lost: Milton's Politics and Christian Liberty (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1983), pp. 110±26. 23 The History of Britain, in Works, ed. Patterson, vol. X, p. 57. On Milton, war, and triumphal celebration, see James A. Freeman, Milton and the Martial Muse (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), esp. pp. 216±23; J.P. Rumrich, Matter of Glory (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987). 24 Works, ed. Patterson, vol. I, part i, p. 65. 25 The exiled Tarquin likewise sought to regain his throne at the head of a foreign army and was defeated by the triumphator Publius Valerius Publicola: Livy, ii. 1±6. 26 Cf. Ruth Nevo, The Dial of Virtue: a Study of Poems on Affairs of State in the Seventeenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), pp. 88±92. 27 Defensio Secunda, in Works, ed. Patterson, vol. VIII, pp. 232±4. 28 The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660), in Works, ed. Patterson, vol. VI, p. 121. On the reservations about the Protectorate inscribed in the Defensio Secunda, see Norbrook, Republic, pp. 331±7. 29 For versions of Christ the triumphator in Roman humanist writings, see Charles L. Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), pp. 241±3. 30 Physical assault is suggested by iii. 392±6 and vi. 834±55. 31 This triumph is the fulcrum on which the action of Milton's epic turns, being the event that has just occurred as the poem opens in medias res. 32 `The Messias came down from heaven to triumph over Satan, death and sinne, and led them as prisoners and slaves, which before were conquerors and kept all in subiection': Ephesians 4:8, Geneva gloss. 33 Cf. Davies, Kingship, pp. 99±108; for comparisons with Lucan's Caesar, see Norbrook, Republic, pp. 438±67. 34 Satan's anti-triumph for the seduction of Eve resembles Tarquin's for the violation of Lucrece: Shakespeare, Lucrece, 1593±4. 35 David Armitage, `John Milton: Poet against Empire', in Milton and Republicanism, ed. David Armitage, Armand Himy and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 206±25. J. Martin Evans, Milton's Imperial Epic: `Paradise Lost' and the Discourse of Colonialism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996) argues for a conflicted relation between the poem and English empire-building. 36 For Satan's return as a Stuart court masque, see John G. Demaray, Milton's Theatrical Epic: the Invention and Design of `Paradise Lost' (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 31±9, 71±2. See also Stevie Davies, `Triumph and Anti-triumph: Milton's Satan and the Roman Emperors in Paradise Lost ', Etudes Anglaises, 34 (1981), 385±98. Satan's return recalls in particular the masquing language for the return of Queen Henrietta Maria in the Oxford Epibateria. 37 For a cognate discussion of Paradise Regain'd, emphasizing the Son's classical virtues of magnanimity and Stoic heroism, see Richard Strier, `Milton against



Notes 213

38 39 40 41

Humility', in Religion and Culture in Renaissance England, ed. Claire McEachern and Debora Shuger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 258±86. Plutarch, Romulus, 16.

See p. 8.

Gerald J. Schiffhorst, `Patience and the Humbly Exalted Heroism of Milton's

Messiah: Typological and Iconographic Background', Milton Studies, 16 (1982), 97±113. Stella P. Revard, `Milton and Classical Rome: the Political Context of Paradise Regained', in Rome in the Renaissance: the City and the Myth, ed. P.A. Ramsey (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1982), pp. 409±19; Christopher Hill, The Experience of Defeat: Milton and Some Contemporaries (London: Faber, 1984), pp. 313±19.



214 Notes

Texts are published in the Loeb Classical Library unless otherwise stated.

Ammianus Marcellinus. Trans. J.C. Rolfe. Rev. edn, 3 vols, 1950.

Appian. Punica [Roman History], trans. Horace White. 4 vols, 1912±13.

Augustine. De civitate Dei [City of God ], trans. G.E. McCracken et al. 7 vols,

1957±72. Augustus. Res gestae Divi Augusti. In Velleius Paterculus, Res gestae Divi Augusti, trans. F.W. Shipley, 1924. Cicero. Academica. In De Natura Deorum, Academica, trans. H. Rackham, 1933. Cicero. In Pisonem. In Pro Milone, [etc]., trans. N.H. Watts. Rev. edn, 1953. Cicero. In Verrem [Verrine Orations], trans. L.H.G. Greenwood. 2 vols, 1928±35. Claudian. Trans. M. Platnauer. 2 vols, 1922. Dio Cassius. Roman History, trans. E. Cary. 9 vols, 1914±27. Diodorus Siculus. Trans. C.H. Oldfather et al. 12 vols, 1933±67. Eusebius. De laudibus Constantini. In Praise of Constantine: a Historical Study and New Translation of Eusebius' Tricennial Orations, ed. H.A. Drake. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. Eusebius. Historia ecclesiastica [Ecclesiastical History], trans. Kirslop Lake and J.E.L. Oulton. 2 vols, 1926±32. Horace. Epistulae. In Satires, Epistles, Ars Poetica, trans. H.R. Fairclough. 1926. Horace. Odes and Epodes, trans. C.E. Bennett. 3rd edn, 1968. Josephus. Trans. H. Thackeray et al. 9 vols, 1927. Juvenal and Persius. Trans. G.G. Ramsay, 1918. Livy. Trans. B. O. Foster at al. 14 vols, 1919±67. Lucan. Trans. J. D. Duff, 1928. Orosius. Historiarum aduersos paganos libri VII, ed. M.-P. Arnaud-Lindet. Paris: Collection des UniversiteÂs de France / Association Guillaume BudeÂ, 1990±1. Ovid. Heroides, Amores, trans. Grant Showerman, rev. G.P. Goold, 1977. Ovid. Remedia amoris. In Art of Love, [etc.], trans. J. H. Mozley, rev. G. P. Goold, 1979. Ovid. Tristia, Ex Ponto, trans. A.L. Wheeler, rev. G.P. Goold, 1988. Plautus. Trans. Paul Nixon. 5 vols, 1916±35. Pliny. Naturalis historia [Natural History], trans. H. Rackham, W.H.S. Jones and D.E. Eicholz. 10 vols, 1938±80. Plutarch. Vitae Parallelae [The Parallel Lives], trans. B. Perrin. 11 vols, 1914±26. Propertius. Trans. H.E. Butler, 1990. Sallust. Trans. J.C. Rolfe. Rev. edn, 1931. Suetonius. Trans. J.C. Rolfe. Rev. edn, 2 vols, 1997±8. Tacitus. Agricola, Germania, Dialogue on Oratory, trans. W. Peterson and Maurice Hutton, rev. R.M. Ogilive et al., 1970. Tacitus. Histories and Annals, trans. C.H. Moore and J. Jackson. 4 vols, 1925± 37.

215



Bibliography of Classical Texts

Tertullian. Tertullian: Apologia, De Spectaculis; Minucius Felix, trans. T.R. Glover and G.H. Rendall, 1931. Tertullian. De corona militis. In Tertulliani quae supersunt omnia, ed. F. Oehler. 3 vols, Leipzig: T. O. Weigel, 1853. Tibullus. In Catullus, Tibullus, Pervigilium Veneris, trans. F.W. Cornish, J.P. Postgate and J.W. Mackail. 2nd edn, rev. G.P. Goold, 1988. Valerius Maximus. Factorum et dictorum memorabilium libri nouem, ed. C. Kempf. Leipzig: Bibliotheca Teubneriana, 1888. Virgil. Trans. H.R. Fairclough. Rev. edn, 2 vols, 1934±5.



216 Bibliography of Classical Texts

Actium, 22, 23, 25±8 aduentus, 2, 159, 184 Aemilius Paullus, 19, 20, 34, 74, 119 Aeneas, 8, 27, 30, 54, 76 Alberti, Leon Baptista, 42 Albertini, Francisco, 45 Alexander the Great, 3 Alfonso I, of Naples, 40 Americas, 3, 4, 66, 77, 121 Anglo-Dutch War, 165±70 Anne of Denmark, 109 Antony, Mark (Marcus Antonius), 26, 28, 36, 132, 133±6 Antwerp, 190 n.6 apobateria, 172 Apollo, 1, 43, 92, 103 Aratus, 110±11 Armada, Spanish ceremonial triumphs for, 3, 19±20, 66±70 English writers and, 88, 92±4, 101±3 literary triumphs for, 11, 67,71±8 and revival of triumph, 4, 5, 27, 28, 46, 61 see also Spain; Hapsburg, house of Arthur, 8, 10, 20, 95, 99±103 Aske, James, 11, 67±8 Augustine, St, 46, 52±3 Augustus continental writers and, 54, 75, 77, 79 English writers and, 108, 134±6 in Roman history and poetry, 13, 22±3, 25±8, 30, 32 Aurelian, 53 Babington plot, 64±5, 100 Bacchus, see Dionysus Baerle, Kasper van, 119±20 Barnes, Barnabe, 62±3, 73 Basel, Council of, 42

Bellarmine, Roberto Cardinal, 110 Bergen-op-Zoom, 115 Biondo, Flavio compared to other writers and artists, 57±8, 61, 62, 94, 97, 122 writings of, 38, 42±7, 51 Blake, Robert, 169 Boudicca, 63, 67, 140±2 Bourbon, house of, 39 Bracciolini, Poggio, 42, 90 Brunswick, Christian of, 118 Brute, 8 Buckingham, first duke of, 116, 143, 145 Burghley, first baron, 3, 69±70, 72, 104 Burgundy, 2, 12 Buytewech, Willem, 190 n.6 Caesar, Julius English writers and, 3, 80, 121, 130±3, 173±4, 176, 188 historical triumphs of, 16±17, 22 Italian culture and, 45, 54, 55, 122±3 Roman poets and, 8, 26, 32, 33±6, 162 Cambridge University Oliua pacis, 166±70 Threnothriambeuticon, 111±13 Camden, William, 8±9 Camillus, 19, 22, 41, 53, 79, 119, 154±5 Campo Morto, 41 Capitol, Roman, 5, 35, 40, 52, 53, 54, 111 Capitoline tables, 38, 47 Caratacus, 140±2 Carthage, 26, 44, 52, 66, 112, 143, 146 Cartwright, William, 157 Charlemagne, 114, 120±1

217



Index

218 Index

Cupid, 31 Cyprus, 9 Davenant, Sir William, 124 David, 28, 54, 55±6, 59, 60, 74 Davies, John, 109±10 Day, Angell, 65±6, 112 Diodorus Siculus, 21 Dionysus, 17, 28, 53, 98 Dover, 76 Du Bartas, Guillaume, 11±12, 39, 58±61, 65, 203 n.34 Du Bellay, Joachim, 90 Dunes, battle of the, 169 È rer, Albrecht, 13±14, 191 n.16 Du Dutch republic, see Netherlands Dyck, Sir Anthony van, 123 Elizabeth, Princess, consort of Frederick V, 113, 142, 143 Elizabeth I and English empire, 10 later monarchs and, 108, 110, 117, 119, 156 in Shakespeare and Spenser, 99±101, 132, 138 triumphs of, 3, 19±20, 63±8, 70, 114, 142 Empire, Holy Roman, 50±1 see also Hapsburg, house of epibateria, 172 Erasmus, Desiderius, 45±6, 62, 107, 110 Essex, second earl of, 6, 21, 78±81, 132 Eugenius IV, pope, 42 Fabricius, 74, 166 Fairfax, Sir Thomas, 150, 152, 155, 181 Famagusta, 60 Farnese, Alessandro Cardinal, 49±51 Farnese, house of, 49 Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, 50 Fisher, Payne, 164, 167±70 Flamininus, 34 Fletcher, John, 6, 129, 140±2



Charles I in Civil War, 7, 27, 81, 160±3, 173±8 early reign, 107, 116, 119±21, 147 personal rule, 6, 122±7, 147±8 and Roman models, 149, 159, 177 Spanish match, 142, 143 Charles II, as Prince of Wales, 147 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, 2, 49±50 Chichester, 161 Christian IV, of Denmark, 109, 124 Cicero defence of republic, 166, 168 on triumph, 16, 19, 33, 42, 90, 97 Civil War, English, 149±64 representation of enemies, 27, 28, 59 and revival of triumph, 4, 6 Claudian, 26, 36±7, 68, 171, 177 Claudius, 23 Cleopatra English writers and, 75, 95, 128, 133±6 Roman writers and, 18, 26±7, 30, 63, 89, 129 Cohen, Walter, 145 Colchester, 160 Constantine, 10, 13, 24±5, 79, 111, 121 Constantine, arch of, 49 Constantinople, 41, 42, 44±5, 197 n.12 Cowley, Abraham, 36, 150 Cromwell, Oliver Christian and puritan triumphs, 20, 25, 98, 152±5 and English conquests, 3, 8, 11, 61 in Marvell and Milton, 171±9, 180±2 as Protector, 6, 20, 164±70,177±9 Roman models for, 149, 166±9, 175 compared to Stuart monarchs, 155, 162±3, 175, 177±8 Cromwell, Thomas, 81 Crosse, William, 117±19, 121

Foxe, John, 10±11, 88, 96 Frederick V, elector Palatine, 4, 107, 113, 116, 143 Gell, John, 113 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 8, 10 Gonzaga family, 122 Googe, Barnabe, 62 Greenblatt, Stephen, 13±14 Grey de Wilton, fourteenth baron, 7, 21, 98, 104±6 Guise, third duc de, 66, 76 Gustavus Adolphus, of Sweden, 4, 6, 126 Hampton Court, 114 Hannibal, 21, 26, 82, 146±7, 175 Hapsburg, house of Elizabethan writings and, 73, 78, 94, 99 English rivalry with, 3, 51, 107, 119±20, 122, 170 and revival of triumph, 2 as successor to Rome, 47, 49±51 see also Spain Hawarden, Samuel, 111±13 Henri IV, of France, 66, 108, 119± 20 Henrietta Maria, 7, 116, 125±6, 155±8 Henry, Prince of Wales, 114, 119, 147, 198 n.38 Henry V, 79±80, 108, 114 Henry Frederick, son of Frederick V, 114, 120 Hercules English uses of, 95, 98, 103, 114, 157, 169 pillars of, 76 as triumphator, 28, 53, 65 Herrick, Robert, 158±9 Hesilrige, Sir Arthur, 161±2 Hill, Thomas, 159 Holland, Henry, 116±17 Horace, 25±7, 63, 128, 133±4, 171 Horsmann, Robert, 163±4 Hume, Alexander, 73 insignia triumphalia, 23

Ireland, 4, 104±6, 152±3 Islam, 2, 44±5, 50, 58, 60, 61 see also Ottoman empire, Turkey Israel, 68 ius triumphandi and conclusive victory, 57, 96, 100, 142, 159, 182, 185 disallowal of triumphs, 29, 59, 149±50 and extending empire, 177 and formidable enemy, 71, 104 James I peace policies and triumphs, 6, 61, 107±19, 142 and other rulers, 3, 27±8, 108, 110, 111 Shakespeare and, 128±9, 138±9 and Spain, 107, 112, 113, 116, 142 Jenkyns, Richard, 12 Jerusalem, 4, 23, 45, 56, 94, 121, 170 Jones, Inigo, 124±7, 148 Jordaens, Jacob, 190 n.6 Josephus, 18 Jugurtha, king of Numidia, 18, 26, 176, 183 Julius II, pope, 13, 45±6 Juno, 68 Jupiter, 1, 19, 23, 43, 54, 92, 173 Jupiter Capitolinus, temple of Christian and English versions, 73±4, 114, 183 destination of triumph, 1 treasury of, 34, 51, 95, 103, 162 Juvenal, 38 King, Henry, 161±3 Lake, Peter, 15 Lauder, George, 120±21, 123 Leicester, city of, 158±9 Leicester, first earl of Governor-General of Netherlands, 11, 65, 66, 82 Spenser and, 98, 100±2 uses of triumph, 6, 78±80, 82 Lepanto, 46, 87, 88, 94±5



Index 219

220 Index

Machiavelli, NiccoloÁ, 41 Malatesta, Roberto, 41 Malatesta, Sigismondo, 39±42, 115 Manlius, 16 Mansfeld, Ernst Count, 116, 118 Mantegna, Andrea, 122±3, 126, 164 Marcelline, George, 110±11, 172, 178 Marcellus, 82 Marius, 19, 176 Marliani, Giovanni Bartolommeo, 38 Marlowe, Christopher compared to other writers, 128, 137, 185 Tamburlaine, 5, 7, 32, 36, 83±92 Mars, 113 Marvell, Andrew, 6, 27, 168, 171±9 Mary Queen of Scots, 64±5, 100, 201 n.10 masques, 123±7, 157±9, 209 n.28 Massinger, Philip, 6, 129, 143±6 Maurits of Nassau, Prince of Orange, 6, 114±15, 143 Mehmed II, of Turkey, 41, 161 Milton, John, and Rome, 8 uses of triumph, 6, 7, 20, 179 other writers and, 57±8, 180, 185, 187, 189

prose writings, 171±2, 179,

181±2, 187

Paradise Lost, 164, 182±7

Paradise Regain'd, 24, 187±9

Modius, FrancËois, 12 Montefeltro, Federigo da, 40 Montgomery, first earl of, 145 Nabbes, Thomas, 6, 129, 146±8 Naseby, 3 Nero, 23±4 Netherlands Anglo-Dutch War, 165±70 and revival of triumph, 2 war with Spain: English role in, 61, 64, 65, 111, 115, 117±19; Armada triumphs and, 73; Spenser and, 95, 100±1 new historicism, 13±15 Norbrook, David, 36 Ogle, Sir John, 117 Orosius, 46 Ostend, 115 Ottoman empire, 4, 41, 51, 73 see also Islam, Turkey ouatio, 29, 137 Ovid English writers and, 84, 91±2, 130, 133, 144, 152

Petrarch and, 52, 56

writings, 26, 28±33, 36

Oxford University Eliaphoria, 166±80 Epibateria, 155±8 Panvinio, Onofrio, 38, 47±51, 124, 125, 197 n.15 Paul III, pope, 49±50 Paul IV, pope, 50 Paul V, pope, 110 Peacham, Henry, 114, 122 Peele, George, 80±1 Pembroke, third earl of, 145 Perseus, king of Macedon, 18, 20 Petowe, Henry, 108±9 Petrarch, Francesco Du Bartas and, 58 English writers and, 91, 130, 144, 146, 185 writings of, 11, 36, 38, 51±6, 81, 90 Pharsalus, 34



Lisbon, 81 Lisle, Sir George, 160 Livy, 21, 63, 136, 140, 146, 167, 179 Lloyd, Lodowick, 64±5, 192 n.29 Low Countries, see Netherlands Lucan De bello ciuili, 8, 14, 26, 33±6, 38, 198 n.31 English writers and, 36, 84, 100, 131, 147, 150, 162, 173±7 van Baerle and, 119±20 Lucas, Sir Charles, 160 Luther, Martin, 14 Lydiat, Thomas, 192 n.29

Philip II, of Spain, 2, 50±1, 66±7,

89, 95, 99, 104

Piombino, 40±1

Pius II, pope, 40

Pius V, pope, 104

Plutarch, 17, 21

Pompeius, Sextus, 26

Pompey

English writers and, 131, 173±4,

176±7, 188

in Roman history and poetry,

21, 22, 33±6, 53

possesso, 2

Pricket, Robert, 81

Protectorate, 4, 6, 164±70

quanto magis

Christian use, 9, 73, 183, 185

defined, 9

English use, 9, 12, 64, 124, 161

reditus, 2

Rogers, Thomas, 82

Rome

English kinship and rivalry

with: Stuart kings and, 113,

118, 121; Cromwell and,

164±5, 167±8, 174±5; in

English writers, 8±11, 104,

130, 135, 141±2

England as successor to: 4, 7, 46;

in Armada triumphs, 68,

72±8; Charles I and, 123,

125; in Milton, 189

imperial triumphs, 1, 23±4, 179

papacy, 7, 36, 41±6, 62, 95, 112,

164±5

republican triumphs, 1±2,

16±21, 179

see also translatio imperii

Romulus, 19

Rowlands, Samuel, 108

royal entry, 5, 13

see also aduentus

Rubens, Peter Paul, 190 n.6

St James's Palace, 123

St Paul's Cathedral, 3, 19, 69, 70,

109

St Paul's School, 64

St Peter's basilica, 43

Sallust, 136, 164, 178

Savonarola, Girolamo, 10, 11±12,

38±9, 56±8, 60, 65, 73

Scaeua, 34

Scipio

English writers and, 138, 146±8,

188

model for English rulers and

soldiers, 65±6, 111, 119,

168, 181

Petrarch and, 52, 53, 55

Roman writers and, 20±21, 26, 36

Segar, Sir William, 12, 192 n.29

Selim II, of Turkey, 60

Shakespeare, William,

dramatizations of triumph, 6, 32

Antony and Cleopatra, 128,

133±6, 140, 146

Coriolanus, 128±9, 136±40

Cymbeline, 142

Henry V, 79±80

Julius Caesar, 128, 130±3

Titus Andronicus, 128, 129±30,

131

Sharpe, Kevin, 15, 127

Shute, William, 115±16

Sidney family, 115

Sigonio, Carlo, 38

Silvester, Joshua, 61

Sixtus IV, pope, 45, 95

Smerwick, 104

Spain

barbarian character of, 70, 71, 89

English enmity toward, 9, 20,

65, 164±5

English writers and, 11, 89,

92±103, 130

and Farnese ambitions, 50±1

James I and, 107, 112, 113, 116,

142

see also Armada; Hapsburg,

house of

Spenser, Edmund,

treatments of triumph, 5±6, 7,

11, 20, 28, 58, 61

The Faerie Queene, Books I and V,

92±106



Index 221

Stilicho, 26, 36 Storer, Thomas, 81 Strafford, first Earl of, 159±60 Strong, Sir Roy, 13±15 Suetonius, 17 Tacitus, 63, 79, 136 Tarquin (Tarquinius Priscus),188±9 Tarquin (Tarquinius Superbus), 149, 177 Tempio Malatestiano, Rimini, 39, 196 n.2 Tenerife, 169 Tertullian, 24, 46, 56 Thirty Years' War, 4, 107, 116±21 Thulden, Theodor van, 190 n.6 Tiberius, 188±9 Tilbury, 67±8 Titian, 123, 191 n.16 Titus, arch of, 49 Titus and Vespasian, 4, 18, 23, 45, 109, 125, 170, 197 n.15 Townshend, Aurelian, 124±7, 148 Trajan's column, 171, 191 n.15 Trent, Council of, 4 translatio imperii, 7, 51, 60, 75, 114 triumphalism, 13±15, 36, 39, 93, 182 in court masques, 107±8, 126, 147 triumphator, 19, 27±8 at centre of procession, 19, 176, 178 chariot of: drawn by horses or exotic beasts, 23, 31, 58, 123; Christian versions, 43, 56±7, 182±3, 185; variations of, 68, 81, 102±3, 136 Christ as, 24, 56±7, 63, 163±4, 170, 182, 185 detraction of: historical figures, 80, 168, 180; Hercules, 99; literary versions, 103±6, 131, 137±8, 182, 185 fortune and mortality of, and attendant's warning: at Rome, 1, 20±1; in continental writings, 52, 53, 54, 59; Elizabethan versions, 65, 81±2; in

Marlowe, 83, 86±7; in Shakespeare, 129, 130±1, 136, 139; Charles I and, 123, 162; Cromwell and, 153, 177, 178, 180±1 as god-king: at Rome, 1; Christian versions, 25, 56±7, 59; in English writers, 95, 102±3, 136, 173, 183 self-conquest of, 125, 166, 172, 175, 181, 187±9 subordinate to the state, 22, 35, 104, 174, 178, 188 Triumph of Loyalty, 160 Triumph of Patience, The, 160±1 triumphs anti-triumphs or mocktriumphs: defined, 6±7; in Lucan, 35, 176; Cleopatra, 75; in Marlowe, 84, in Spenser, 92, 95, 105; in Shakespeare, 129, 132, 133; Civil War, 160±3; in Milton, 185±6 captives displayed and executed in: Roman versions, 1, 14, 18, 27, 31±2, 33±4; continental versions, 53±5, 57, 59±60; Elizabethan versions, 71, 85±7, 94±5; and James I, 109; in Stuart drama, 125, 129, 134±5, 141±2, 146; in seventeenthcentury poetry, 162, 175±6, 181, 183±5 and carnival, 1, 16, 135 Christian: defined, 2; Constantine and, 24±5; continental versions, 42±6, 56±61; English versions, 6, 73±5, 163±4, 178 and Roman civil wars: triumphs not awarded, 3, 6, 14, 18, 59, 149±50; in Lucan, 33±6; in Shakespeare, 131±3 described or characterized: 1, 5, 37; in Roman writings, 16±21; in humanist studies,



222 Index

39, 42, 48; in English writings, 79, 135, 143±4 distinguished from cognate ceremonies, 2, 12±15 and empire: at Rome, 1, 17, 27±8, 36; Elizabethan versions, 4, 76±8, 84, 98±9; Stuart versions, 108, 121, 123; Civil War and Protectorate versions, 3, 150, 152, 169±70, 174±5; in Milton, 184, 186 female: Elizabeth and, 6, 7, 63, 75±6; Henrietta Maria and, 7, 125; in continental writings, 53, 55±6, 59; in English writings, 128, 133±6, 139±40, 142, 143 freed prisoners in, 18, 45, 87±8, 96, 169, 185±6, 188 jubilation in: Roman versions, 16, 32, 35; in Biondo, 57; in English writers, 100, 101, 104, 139, 183; and Charles I, 119, 123; and Cromwell, 154, 167 literary versions, 4±5, 11, 110±11, 173 of love: 7, 17; in Ovid, 29±32, 52; in Petrarch, 52, 53±5; English versions, 91, 125±6, 130, 133, 157±8 naualis triumphus, 46, 74, 136, 166, 169, 212 n.18 legendary origin of, 19 of patience or martyrdom, 149, 175±6 of peace, 2, 108±11, 126, 167, 210 n.47 political contentions for, 21, 78, 87, 99, 137±9, 173 protestant: 4, 10, 36; continental writings and, 46, 58±9, 61; Armada period, 61, 62±3, 72±6, 78; Stuart versions, 113±14 puritan: continental versions, 12, 38±9, 46; English

versions, 98, 101, 151, 178±9, 181, 187±8 spoils displayed and distributed: at Rome, 17±18, 22, 32; opima spolia, 74, 82, 177; Elizabethan versions, 70, 71, 80, 85±6; seventeenthcentury versions, 113, 121, 152, 162, 165, 184 weapons displayed in, 17, 36±7, 42±3, 71, 75, 96, 152 see also ius triumphandi; ouatio; Rome; triumphalism; triumphator; events, places and persons commemorated; writers and artists Tullianum, prison of, 1, 55, 94, 183 Tunis, 49 Turkey continental writers and, 44±5, 58, 60±1 English writers and, 87±9, 94, 101 European enmity toward, 4, 9, 20, 46, 49 see also Islam, Ottoman empire Valois, house of, 49, 122 Valturio, Roberto, 38±42, 51, 85±6, 115, 122 Varro, 38, 47 Venice, 9, 13, 45 Venus, 29, 55, 76, 92, 136 Vere, Sir Horace, 116, 118 via triumphalis, 49 Virgil Armada triumphs and, 5, 76±8 and Augustus, 12, 25±8, 30 English writers and, 128, 134±6, 150, 167, 170, 184, 189 on triumphs, 16 Vroom, Cornelius, 205 n.16 Warner, William, 11 Whitfield, William, 159±60 Winchester, 161±2 Wither, George, 166 Wolsey, Thomas Cardinal, 81±2 Worcester, 3, 154±5



Index 223

Roman Triumphs and Early Modern English Culture

Rogues and Early Modern English Culture

Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture

Heresy, Literature and Politics in Early Modern English Culture

Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture (Early Modern Literature in History)

Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Early Modern Cultural Studies)

Women's Work in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Early Modern Cultural Studies)

Triumphs in Early Autism Treatment

Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture

Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture

Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture

Triumphs in Early Autism Treatment

Digressive Voices in Early Modern English Literature

Digressive Voices in Early Modern English Literature

Digressive Voices in Early Modern English Literature

Moral Identity in Early Modern English Literature

Medical Writing in Early Modern English

Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe

English: Meaning and Culture

Working Subjects in Early Modern English Drama (Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama)

Performances of Mourning in Shakespearean Theatre and Early Modern Culture (Early Modern Literature in History)

Roman officers and English gentlemen

English epicures and stoics: ancient legacies in early Stuart culture

Religion, Government and Poltical Culture in Early Modern Germany: Lindau, 1520-1628 (Early Modern History)

Lovesickness and Gender in Early Modern English Literature

Widows and Suitors in Early Modern English Comedy

Teaching Shakespeare and Early Modern Dramatists (Teaching the New English)

Women and Islam in Early Modern English Literature

Renaissance and Reformations: An Introduction to Early Modern English Literature

Roman Triumphs and Early Modern English Culture

Rogues and Early Modern English Culture

Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture

Heresy, Literature and Politics in Early Modern English Culture

Diplomacy and Early Modern Culture (Early Modern Literature in History)

Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Early Modern Cultural Studies)

Women's Work in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Early Modern Cultural Studies)

Triumphs in Early Autism Treatment

Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture

Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture

Cupid in Early Modern Literature and Culture

Triumphs in Early Autism Treatment

Digressive Voices in Early Modern English Literature

Digressive Voices in Early Modern English Literature

Digressive Voices in Early Modern English Literature

Moral Identity in Early Modern English Literature

Medical Writing in Early Modern English

Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe

English: Meaning and Culture

Working Subjects in Early Modern English Drama (Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama)

Performances of Mourning in Shakespearean Theatre and Early Modern Culture (Early Modern Literature in History)

Roman officers and English gentlemen

English epicures and stoics: ancient legacies in early Stuart culture

Religion, Government and Poltical Culture in Early Modern Germany: Lindau, 1520-1628 (Early Modern History)

Lovesickness and Gender in Early Modern English Literature

Widows and Suitors in Early Modern English Comedy

Teaching Shakespeare and Early Modern Dramatists (Teaching the New English)

Women and Islam in Early Modern English Literature

Renaissance and Reformations: An Introduction to Early Modern English Literature

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