Of Rome's three great pompae (triumphalis, funebris and circensis), the circus procession was celebrated most frequently, yet scholars have focused most attention on the triumphal procession. Jacob Latham shines a light squarely on the pompa circensis, illuminating the procession as a ritual performance at once deeply traditional and strikingly open to innovation. Drawing upon literary, epigraphic, archaeological and numismatic evidence, L. argues that the pompa circensis shaped Romans’ conceptions of their city and society — and their place within each.

The book's first part delineates an ‘ideal-type’ of the pompa circensis, that is, the grammar and syntax of the generic procession that shaped the possibilities of each individual (and unique) iteration. Ch. 1 focuses on what L. terms the pompa hominum, the section of the parade populated by mortals such as the praeses ludorum, charioteers and dancers. Ch. 2 explores the pompa deorum, that is, the display and participation of gods and their images in the procession, which L. argues served as a form of religious education and a means to constitute Roman civic religion through performance. Ch. 3 analyses the itinerary of the pompa circensis, from the Capitoline hill through the Roman Forum and into the Circus Maximus. L. relies heavily on the testimony of Dionysius (Ant. Rom. 7.72). This approach is understandable, given the paucity of literary descriptions of the circus procession, but it necessarily risks creating an ‘ideal-type’ that is a ‘Dionysian-type’. As L. intriguingly suggests, however, Dionysius’ description might, in fact, actually have shaped future performances of the pompa circensis.

The book's second part traces the procession's development from Julius Caesar to Late Antiquity. Ch. 4 examines the role of the imperial cult in the procession and argues that the pompa circensis became a substitute pompa funebris for living emperors, a way for them to display their deified ancestors who could no longer feature in the actual funeral procession. Ch. 5 discusses the practicalities of mounting a circus procession — for example, the professionals whose labour the ritual required — and the concomitant risk of ritual failure. Over half the chapter is spent on the pompa theatralis and pompa amphitheatralis, which, though indeed likely to have been derived from the pompa circensis, do not clearly fit into L.’s broader arguments. Ch. 6 traces shifts in the pompa circensis beginning in the fourth century c.e. L. argues that the procession became imperialised and secularised as the pompa and its representations focused more on images of the living emperor and de-emphasised traditional gods and divi. These transformations in turn enabled Christian emperors to insert Christian symbols and valences into the ritual performance.

L.’s discussion of the procession's itinerary can be topographically loose. He glosses over some significant topographical debates (e.g., the precise location of the Temple of Divus Augustus). And although he admits that the route may have shifted to include later temples built for divi and divae, he does not adequately consider the implications of these potentially substantive changes for the ritual's performance. L. also tends to conflate centuries of republican and imperial building, sometimes, if unintentionally, giving the impression that an Augustan circus procession would have passed before Severan arches, for example. A final concern is the stark distinction L. draws between memories of the Republic and the Empire, especially in ch. 6, where he argues that restorations undertaken by senators in the late imperial Forum intentionally emphasised republican cultural memories as a means for the Senate to reassert its power. The Temple of Saturn was indeed renovated (although this act was motivated by a fire, not necessarily by senatorial visions of republican grandeur), but the imperial Arch of Septimius Severus still loomed impressively nearby. Would most Romans really have drawn such clear mental distinctions between the ‘Republican Forum’ and the ‘Imperial Forum?’

Criticisms aside, there is much to admire in L.’s book. While I would have appreciated a more nuanced discussion of memory theory throughout the book, I agree wholeheartedly that the continuing performance of rituals in and around temples and monuments helped maintain those buildings’ place in Roman memory. L. demonstrates persuasively that ritual performances of the pompa circensis had an extraordinary impact on how Romans perceived and remembered their monumental cityscape. L. also rightly highlights the alternation of the pompa circensis between gravity and levity. Scholars of Roman religion sometimes elide the entertainment value that was integral to rituals such as the circus procession and triumph. As L. shows, fun was serious business in Roman pompae; spectacle and pleasure were critical means by which processions represented and reproduced Roman society. L. effectively uses performance theory to elucidate ‘the emotional, physical, sensory, and aesthetic dimensions of processions that may otherwise get lost in a textual analysis’ (49). He also demonstrates how these dimensions generated not only the awe of witnessing a spectacle such as the pompa circensis but also resonances — recollections of other events and places that people could use to integrate the circus procession into their web of memories about the city of Rome.

L.’s book will be of interest to scholars of the Roman circus and Roman processions and to anybody studying the complex interactions between ritual, architecture, memory and identity in Rome. L. is to be commended for contributing to our understanding not only of the pompa circensis but also of the role of the procession and its textual and visual representations in shaping memories and knowledge of metropolitan Rome and its social organisation.