“The Glory of Alexander and Philip Made Spoil by Roman Arms”: The Triumph of Aemilius Paullus in 167 BCE

This contribution focuses on the triumphal procession of the Roman general Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus after the Third Macedonian War (171–168 BCE). In his Life of Aemilius Paullus (31.3), Plutarch states that the main purpose of this triumph was to show to the Roman people ‘the Macedonian king taken alive, and the glory of Alexander and Philip made spoil by Roman arms’. The various spoils presented to the Roman public are indeed all connected to the monarchy of Perseus, the last king of the Antigonid Dynasty, rather than the country of Macedonia as such. They comprise arms and armor, court objects, votive offerings, and human captives. The triumph offers a clear case of objects entering Rome in a conspicuous, meaningful way by means of an orchestrated public event. The article seeks to clarify what these objects signified in their original, dynastic context; and what they came to signify in the new, Roman context into which they were introduced though Paullus’ triumph. It examines the objects through the four stages of appropriation as described by the anthropologist Hans Peter Hahn, and discussed by Versluys in this volume: material appropriation > objectification > incorporation > transformation.