Triumph Songs, Reversal and Plautus' Amphitruo

Abstract

Partout dans la pièce on sent frémir la vie romaine. (Henri Janne) This paper aims to read Plautus' Amphitruo in the light of the Roman triumph. Local references and allusions to the triumph in the Amphitruo have often been pointed out, but only rarely has the play as a whole, with its story of the arrival home and treatment of a returning victorious general, been seen as reflecting the triumph. However, Mary Beard, in the recent collection Rome the Cosmopolis , has made this connection, seeing in the Amphitruo a theatrical and metatheatrical parody of the triumphator . For Beard, the triumph is a ceremony which problematises issues of mimesis and representation. The triumphator , dressed and painted to imitate perhaps Jupiter himself, perhaps a statue of Jupiter, or perhaps the Etruscan Kings, exemplifies this problem. As Beard says, just as the tableaux vivants , carried at triumphs, with their depictions of the triumphator 's various achievements, can be seen as replications of reality, as artifice, or as pure and simple sham, so the general can be seen as Jupiter's double, as a living statue, or as an actor making a fool of himself at a costume party. According to Beard, what is at stake in the triumphator 's performance is the hermeneutic question of how can one tell the difference between ‘being’, ‘playing’ or ‘acting’ god. It is in this light that Beard locates the Amphitruo , reading the play as a parody of triumphal mimesis. Whereas the triumphator usually imitates Jupiter at the triumph, here Jupiter imitates the triumphator .