The Gallic Torquatus
The placement of a group of favored officers behind the triumphator 's chariot reflects actual practice. Its significance is easy to read; it corresponds not only to literary descriptions of triumph but to the practice of Roman generals whose dispatches and memoirs (for example, Caesar's Bellum Gallicum ) pointedly made special mention of valor on the part of the regular troops and in particular of centurions, at once commemorating extraordinary behavior and, by mentioning it regularly, making it ordinary: "just what my men typically do." Caesar's war memoirs are well known; compare Velleius' pride in the mention his brother received in Tiberius' dispatches and Augustus' reports to the Senate.[4] The literary topos makes
it legitimate to see similar meaning in the visual commemoration of military achievement; certainly this theme will later dominate in the friezes of Trajan's Column, which single out the ordinary round of legionaries on campaign as worthy of approval.
The torquatus immediately behind Tiberius' chariot is significant (pl. 24). If the torque is supposed to be read as an element of the wearer's normal costume, it identifies him as a Celt, a native commander of Gallic or German auxiliaries who had participated (as we know to have been standard) in Tiberius' campaigns, which took place in northern Europe. On the other hand, this torque may be a military decoration awarded to a Roman officer, rather than an ethnic marker, granted for special performance by this officer in the campaign for which Tiberius was celebrating a triumph.[5]
Contemporary texts confirm that decorated soldiers wore their decorations in their general's triumph; but did they put their torques around their necks? Velleius' description of his brother accompanying Tiberius' triumph of A.D. 8/13 (2.121.3: "adornatus") does not answer this question,[6] nor does the equally vague narration by Appian (Pun. 9; Hist. Rom. 8.66) of the paradigmatic triumph of Scipio Africanus (hoi de aristeis kai ta aristeia epikeintai ). Julio-Claudian grave reliefs from northwestern Europe, however, do show how military decorations were worn: corona on the head, armillae on the arms, phalerae on a leather webbing strapped across the chest to display them—like a scapular—and, finally, the torques, shown as a pair hung from the top of the leather phalera harness at the shoulder. Best known is the grave relief (Bonn) of the Angustan officer M. Caelius who fell with Varus in A.D. 9.[7] This and similar reliefs in Mainz (Cn. Musius)[8] and Verona (Q. Sertorius)[9] portray the officer himself with his decorations on; other reliefs symbolically show just the phalera harness, with a pair of torques attached or in apposition to it.[10] True, if an officer had only one torque,[11] he could not display it in this way; still, this visual evidence does suggest that Romans who received an honorific torque did not wear it as a necklace but hung it on their bodies.
This, and the emphasis of BR I on a cooperative Gallia, suggest that the torquatus of BR II:2 is not a Roman officer but a Gallic officer in the auxiliary troops, like the (Augustan) Gallic officer wearing torques from Vachères (Avignon, Mus. Calvet).[12] Compare the Gemma Angustea (fig. 16), which also commemorates a triumph of Tiberius: in the exergue below the allegory of triumph, auxiliaries in sleeved tunics and brimmed helmets,[13] as well as soldiers in standard Roman equipment, erect a trophy and assemble captives. The cup thus would, like the gem,
credit the part played by loyal non-Roman, but Romanized, allies in the spread of Rome's imperium; BR I:2 puts major emphasis on just this theme. Other early imperial sculptures in the West (Glanum arch, fig. 85; Swiss cuirass statue)[14] have groups similar to that in the Gemma Augustea exergue, that is, "good" non-Roman with "bad" non-Roman prisoner; this shows that the cameo's theme was not invented for this one gem but instead derives with the provincial examples from a convention of commemorative relief in the capital. Such groups are symbolic analogues to the group of officers behind Tiberius' chariot on BR II:2, which contains a prominent Celtic officer as well as (presumably) Roman officers.