The title of this stimulating volume establishes both the scope and the limits of its inquiry. The editors present their subject, the ‘public triumph’, as ‘the greatest honour and the grandest spectacle that the Senate and the People of Rome could award to their victorious military commanders’ (p. 9); in moving ‘beyond the spectacle’, the editors intend ‘to bring back Roman military history to the forefront of the study of the Roman triumph’ (p. 10). The proper subject of ‘military history’ has expanded significantly over the past decade, but while the editors agree that ‘the Roman Republican triumph can never be understood merely as the result of battlefield action and military victory’, they also contend that its study ‘should nonetheless never be divorced from the actual battlefield’ (p. 11). Thus this volume is about the historical relationships between triumphs and the practice of war and politics in the Roman Republic. Although each of the twelve chapters can stand alone, the introduction frames the whole as a series of interrelated case studies in response to recent approaches to the Roman triumph and ancient military history more broadly.

The volume is divided into five sections. The first, ‘Triumphal Conventions’, opens with C. Lundgreen's chapter on the vexed question of the ius triumphandi. Lundgreen applies a distinction between ‘rules’ and ‘principles’, and extends his earlier, important argument that triumphal criteria were deliberately uncertain and that this supported the flexible application of senatorial authority. In the second chapter, R. Westall explores the triumph's role in articulating closure, both in terms of the historical resolution of military campaigns and, to the extent the fragmentary remains of Roman historical epic allow, as a literary device. As such, triumphs within historical writing might be deployed or withheld for narrative effect, and historical actors, such as Julius Caesar, might apply this device in their public relations. The third chapter, co-authored by C.J. Dart and V., considers the evidence for the ‘principle’ that a commander must have increased Roman territory (as opposed to recovering previously acquired land) in order to be awarded a triumph. Dart and V. suggest that the particular nature of Roman relations with allied communities in Italy informed the flexible application of precedent, with implications for our understanding of the one triumph awarded during the brutal and controversial Social War (that of Pompeius Strabo, in 89).

The second section, ‘The Middle Republic’, moves the subject of inquiry to two related issues: alternatives to the triumph and the use of spoils. L. proposes that triumphs on the Alban Mount, celebrated without the authorisation of the Senate and People of Rome, functioned as rare acts of protest. Their representation on inscribed lists of triumphs would thus represent an Augustan-era reimagining of Republican precedents, creating the appearance of uniformity from a more complicated history. M. Cadario addresses the logistics of a successful commander's preparations for his potential triumph, and focuses upon the example of L. Mummius’ disposition of spoils after his defeat of Corinth. Cadario presents a detailed discussion of the evidence for Mummius’ activities, and considers similar relationships between triumphing commanders and (specifically) Greek works of art in the examples of Scipio Aemilianus and Octavian.

In the third and longest section, ‘The Late Republic’, four chapters each address a specific case study. J. Carlsen examines the military activities and subsequent triumph of Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus (cos. 122); despite the brevity of this chapter, this example shows well what can be gained from the close consideration of an individual commander's strategies of self-representation. J.M. Madsen presents a detailed study of the triumphs celebrated against Mithridates in the early first century, and the evolution and negotiation that triumphal awards underwent (particularly when men like Sulla were involved). V. assesses Pompey's particular contribution in this area; Pompey's three triumphs, each of ascending magnificence, demonstrate the failure of flexibility in the face of those who played a less subtle game. J. Osgood focuses on Julius Caesar's Spanish campaigns (in 61), and the ways in which Caesar's ‘hunt’ for a triumph, and his lack of success, informed his subsequent pursuit of war and politics in Gaul and at Rome. Osgood brings into focus the potential for exploitation created by varying and flexible representations of triumphal criteria, and the escalating stakes of both procedural and triumphal precedents in this context.

The fourth section, ‘Civil War and Triumph’, comprises two chapters on the recognition of the victories of Romans over Romans. W. Havener discusses how Sulla, Pompey, Caesar and Octavian represented their defeats of Romans, and how the contexts of production for the evidence informs, and distorts, contemporary acts of civil war commemoration. I. Östenberg argues that the triumph was ill-suited to such subjects, and that commanders and the Senate experimented with alternative strategies of recognition throughout the first century. Her chapter highlights the multivalence of the triumph as a mechanism for display; while it commemorated victory over outsiders, it was itself an act within the drama of Rome's internal political competitions.

The volume is dedicated to J. Rich, as ‘one of the world's leading Roman historians’ (p. 13). Rich's splendid chapter, ‘The Triumph in the Roman Republic: Frequency, Fluctuation and Policy’, represents the volume's fifth section, and over one-fifth of the book's total length. Rich first provides an assessment of the reliability of the inscribed triumphal lists (often called the Fasti Triumphales, which he avoids), which will become required reading on the topic, and establishes patterns in quantities of triumphal awards over time. He then considers triumphal frequency in light of broader shifts in war-making and the practice of politics from the fourth to the first century. The result is a nuanced and comprehensive assessment of the relationship between the triumph and its actors; though this chapter comes last, one might do well to read it first.

For a volume dedicated to the Republic, the first century exercises a significantly centrifugal pull. One of the central themes emerges as, not the Republican triumph itself, but the use of the triumph in the destruction of Republican ideals of consensus by warlords and autocrats. Hence the focus is often how the idea of the triumph – as an occasion for debate, a moment of reckoning, even as a symbol of the Republic itself – was ruthlessly exploited by men who saw it as a tool for their own glory. Perhaps the most important point to come from the volume as a whole is the scale of these men's failure, and the complexity of the institution that they so carelessly broke as they pursued their individual trajectories. This is a conclusion that provokes more questions than it resolves, which is not a criticism, but which moves the volume's subject not only ‘beyond the spectacle’, but also, at times, beyond the sense of the Roman triumph as an object deserving of study in its own right. This, coupled with a focus on challenges to the role of the triumph in Republican politics, may make the volume more rewarding for readers already invested in the questions at issue than to newcomers to the subject (which, again, is not a criticism).

All chapters are in English, and each begins with an abstract in English and has its own bibliography. There is no index and only occasional cross-referencing, but each chapter's ample footnotes allow the reader to trace concordance and debate among the contributors in a manner more satisfying than reading an index (useful as such things are). That aside, the quality of the individual chapters and the sum of its parts commends this volume to scholars and students of Roman military and political history.