TROPAEUM
TROPAEUM (
τρόπαιον), a trophy, a
sign and memorial of victory, which was erected on the field of battle where
the enemy had turned (tre/pw, troph\) to flight, and, in case of a victory
gained at sea, on the nearest land. The expression for raising or erecting a
trophy is
τροπαῖον στῆσαι or
στήσασθαι,to which may be added a genitive with
or without
ἀπὸ or
κατά. The trophy was often left standing for a number of
years (see
Thuc. 4.67,
5.10; and the passages of Pausanias cited below).
When the battle was not decisive, or each party considered it had some claims
to the victory, both erected trophies (
Thuc.
1.54,
105;
2.92). Trophies usually consisted of the arms, shields, helmets,
&c., of the enemy that were defeated; and from the descriptions of
Virgil and other Roman poets, which have reference to the Greek rather than
to the Roman custom, it appears that the spoils and arms of the vanquished
were placed on the lopped trunk of a tree, which was fixed on an elevation
(
Verg. A. 11.5; Serv.
ad loc.;
Lucan 1.135;
Stat.
Theb. 3.707;
Juv. 10.133; Mayor
ad loc.). It was consecrated to some divinity with
an inscription (
ἐπίγραμμα), recording the
names of the victors and of the defeated party (
Eur. Phoen. 583; Schol.
ad
loc.;
Paus. 5.27.7;
Verg.
A. 3.288; Ovid,
As. Am. 2.744;
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Trophy of Augustus. ( Mus. Capitol. i. tav.
v.)
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Tac. Ann. 2.22); whence trophies were
regarded as inviolable, which even the enemy were not permitted to remove
(
D. C. 42.58). Sometimes, however, a people
destroyed a trophy, if they considered that the enemy had erected it without
sufficient cause, as the Milesians did with a trophy of the Athenians (
Thuc. 8.24). That rankling and hostile feelings
might not be perpetuated by the continuance of a trophy, it seems to have
been originally part of Greek international law that trophies should be made
only of wood and not of stone or metal, and that they should not be repaired
when decayed (Plut.
Quaest. Rom. 100.37, p. 273
c;
Diod. 13.24). Hence we are told that the
Lacedaemonians accused the Thebans before the Amphictyonic council, because
the latter had erected a metal trophy (
Cic.
de Invent. 2.2. 3, 69). It was not, however,
uncommon to erect such trophies. Plutarch (
Plut.
Alc. 29, p. 207 d) mentions one raised in the time of Alcibiades,
and Pausanias (
2.21.9;
3.14.7;
5.27.7) speaks of several
which he saw in Greece. (Wachsmuth,
Hell. Alt. vol. ii. pt.
i. p. 424, 1st ed.; Schömann,
Ant Jur. Publ. Graec.
p. 370; Droysen,
Gr. Kriegsalterth. p. 94.)
The trophies erected to commemorate naval victories were usually ornamented
with the, beaks or acroteria of ships [ACROTERIUM;
ROSTRA]; and were generally consecrated to Poseidon or Neptune.
Sometimes a whole ship was placed as a trophy (
Thuc.
2.84,
92).
The Macedonian kings never erected trophies, for the reason given by
Pausanias (
9.40.4), and hence the same writer
observes that Alexander raised no trophies after his victories over Dareius
and in India. The Romans too, in early times, never erected any trophies on
the field of battle (Florus,
3.2), but carried
home the spoils taken in battle, with which they decorated the public
buildings, and also the. private houses of individuals. [
SPOLIA] Subsequently, however,
the Romans adopted the Greek practice of raising trophies on the field of
battle: the first trophies of this kind were erected by Domitius Ahenobarbus
and Fabius Maximus in B.C. 121, after their conquest of the Allobroges, when
they built at the junction of the Rhone and the Isara towers of white stone,
upon which trophies were placed adorned with the spoils of the enemy
(Florus,
l.c.;
Strabo iv. p.185). Pompey also raised
trophies on the Pyrenees after his victories in Spain (
Strabo iii. p.156;
Plin. Nat. 3.18;
D. C.
41.24; Sall. ap. Serv.
in
Verg. A. 11.6); Julius Caesar did the same
near Zela, after his victory over Pharnaces (
D. C.
42.48), and Drusus, near the Elbe, to commemorate his victory
over the Germans (
D. C. 51.1; Florus,
4.12). Still, however, it was more common to erect
some memorial of the victory at Rome than on the field of battle. The
trophies raised by
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Coin of M. Furius Philus.
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Marius to commemorate his victories over Jugurtha and the Cimbri and
Teutones, which were cast down by Sulla and restored by Julius
[p. 2.901]Caesar, must have been in the city (
Suet. Jul. 11). In the later times of the
Republic, and under the Empire, the erection of triumphal arches was the
most common way of commemorating a victory, many of which remain to the
present day. [
ARCUS] We find
trophies on the Roman coins of several families. The above coin of M. Furius
Philus is an example; on the reverse, Victory or Rome is represented
crowning a trophy,
[
W.S] [
G.E.M]
