On the Featured Image
Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus. c. 359 CE. Marble, 142.2 x 243.8 cm. Museo Tesoro della Basilica di San Pietro (Treasury of Saint Peter’s Basilica), Vatican City.
Rhetorical device that begins the book was known to both Roman rhetoricians and Jewish scholars.
Doubling
Procession into Jerusalem on a donkey. Carnivalesque of the triumphator?
Primary sources for triumphators
Livy, Ab Urbe Condita (History of Rome), 30.15.12 and 45.35–39
Livy. History of Rome, Volume VIII: Books 28-30. Translated by Frank Gardner Moore. Loeb Classical Library 381. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949.
Livy. History of Rome, Volume XIII: Books 43-45. Translated by Alfred C. Schlesinger. Loeb Classical Library 396. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1951.
Plutarch, Life of Aemilius Paullus, 32–34.
Plutarch. Lives, Volume VI: Dion and Brutus. Timoleon and Aemilius Paullus. Translated by Bernadotte Perrin. Loeb Classical Library 98. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, 2.34.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Roman Antiquities, Volume I: Books 1-2. Translated by Cary Earnest. Loeb Classical Library 319. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937.
Appian, The Punic Wars (The Foreign Wars), 8.66.
Appian. Roman History, Volume III: The Punic Wars. The Numidian War. The African War. The Illyrian War. The Syrian War. The Mithridatic War. Translated by Brian McGing. Loeb Classical Library 4. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019.
The Fasti Triumphales (Triumphal Lists).
Degrassi, Attilio. Inscriptiones Italiae, Vol. XIII, fasc. 1: Fasti Consulares et Triumphales. Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1947.
Here in the Gospel of Luke we get the visual of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on a donkey or two.
To be enthroned in Jerusalem, the location accords with Jewish tradition. However, why would a Jewish King arrive in a Roman way, that’s weird.
And what would a Roman think and feel? The triumphator the deification that had been witness stirred feelings related to civic religion. What feelings did this stir? A donkey is not a horse like in the triumphator. Why would a poor criminal be riding in like a consul. Is it a sick joke? The low is being made high.
Fast forward to Mikhail Bakhtin
Entry into Jerusalem. c. 1140–1170. Gold and glass mosaic. Cappella Palatina (Palatine Chapel), Palazzo dei Normanni, Palermo, Sicily, Italy.
Giotto di Bondone. The Entry into Jerusalem. c. 1303–1305. Fresco, 200 x 185 cm. Scrovegni Chapel (Arena Chapel), Padua, Italy.
Botticelli, Sandro. The Virgin Adoring the Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist. c. 1490. Tempera, oil, and gold on wood, diameter: 115.3 cm. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
