Legal Requirements
In the Republic, the triumph was the highest honour. In order to receive a triumph, the Leader must:
- Win a significant victory over a foreign enemy, killing at least 5,000 enemy troops, and earn the title imperator.
- Be an elected magistrate with the power of imperium, i.e. a dictator, consul, or a praetor.
- Bring the army home, signifying that the war was over and that the army was no longer needed. This only applied with a citizen army. By the imperial period the proper triumph was reserved for the emperor and his family. If a general was awarded a triumph by the emperor, he would march with a token number of his troops.
- In the Republican period, the senate had to give approval for a triumph based on the above mentioned requirements.
Internal conflicts (civil wars) did not, at least in theory, merit triumphs. The defeated enemy had to be of equal status, so defeating a slave revolt could therefore not earn a triumph.
Read more about this topic: Roman Triumph
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“It has come to this, that the friends of liberty, the friends of the slave, have shuddered when they have understood that his fate was left to the legal tribunals of the country to be decided. Free men have no faith that justice will be awarded in such a case.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)