Triumphal Elephants and Political Circus at Plutarch, Pomp. 14.6

In March 81 B.C. Gnaeus Pompeius, recently returned to Rome from a lightning African campaign against the recalcitrant Marian Domitius Ahenobarbus and his Numidian ally Iarbas, celebrated the first of his three triumphs; he was a mere twenty-five at the time.¹ In truly grand style, the victorious general intended to parade in a chariot drawn by four elephants, but when the porta triumphalis proved too narrow to allow the show to proceed in its full splendor, he continued in the more conventional quadriga (Plut. Pomp. 14.6). Even if the extravaganza did not go quite as planned, the original intention is certainly noteworthy and has been related, via the triumphal elephants, to Pompey's distinctive imitatio Alexandri.² The gesture was evidently an attempt by Pompey to control the way he was perceived-but what exactly would have been the point of advertising the Alexandrian connection on this particular occasion, what was the ideological tertium comparationis? For even after his impressive successes in Sicily and Africa he was still very much an aspirant Alexander, not yet the full-blown Roman Alexander. A more spectacular gesture did indeed follow when at his third triumph in 61 he wore a cloak, found among the possessions of Mithridates, that had reportedly belonged to Alexander himself.³Si non è vero, è ben trovato-for that pageant was a very different affair from the first: there Pompey's eastern victories completed a series of triumphs over three continents, there the carefully staged synkrisis, a climactic moment in his Alexandrian self-fashioning, might legitimately be construed as signaling the transition of world power from Macedon to Rome.⁴ But conquest on this scale was not an issue in 81: that qualitative distinction is crucial and could serve as a guide in parsing the respective poses. Nor was Pompey heedless of public opinion, as demonstrated in his cautious approach in adopting the cognomen Magnus to avoid exciting envy;⁵ at the triumph of 81, too, he will have been mindful of this dimension. The elephant-drawn chariot, it is proposed, was indeed intended as a programmatic and self-promoting gesture whose significance, at least in part, can be recovered from Plutarch's surrounding narrative: in contrast to the grand entry with the chlamys (cloak) that advertised the full-fledged Roman Alexander in 61, the elephants of 81 were meant to showcase rather the triumphator as incipient Alexander, the youthful hero in the ascendant-in a manner, moreover, itself intended to score a political point against the irascible old Sulla.

Two themes feature prominently in the surrounding chapters 12 through 15 in Plutarch's narrative: Pompey's imitatio Alexandri and his cooling relationship with Sulla. A correlation is implied throughout, and at the triumph the two strands conjoin in ironic climax. The autocrat's simmering resentment comes out after the triumph of 81, when Plutarch notes that "he was annoyed at seeing how Pompey's reputation and power were growing" ( μὲν εἰς ὅσον δόξης πρόεισι καἲ δυνάμεως, 15.1); and omission of Pompey's name from Sulla's will was later taken as a clear sign of ill feeling (ὅτι πρὸς Πομπήιον οὐκ , 15.3). But the fault lines go back further to the time of Pompey's African adventure, where the general's youthful flair, his popularity, and taste for δόξα seem already to have caused Sulla some annoyance. Pompey, who because of a supposed resemblance to the statues of the great conqueror had in early youth been called "Alexander"⁶-a name much to his liking-in Africa begins to act out that role in a process of conscious political self-fashioning. Hailed by the army as imperator during operations against Domitius (12.4), he is subsequently acclaimed also as Magnus in clear allusion to his Greek exemplar (13.7-8).⁷ The Alexandrian connection also gives point to Pompey's hunting safari at the conclusion of military operations:

He marched through the country for many days, conquered all with whom he came into contact, and made the natives feel again what they had almost forgotten, a healthy fear and respect for the Romans. The very animals, he...