Memento Mori

A triumph was granted by the Senate to a commander who had won a major victory. The procession wound through the city, along the Sacred Way through the Forum and up the Capitoline to the Temple of Jupiter, where the general offered sacrifice. Before him went the spoils, the captives and the sacrificial bulls; behind him marched his soldiers, who by custom sang mocking songs about their commander.

The general wore a purple toga embroidered with gold over a tunic decorated with palms, and carried an ivory scepter topped with an eagle. Pliny the Elder says a golden Etruscan crown was held over his head from behind. Juvenal, describing a magistrate in the same dress, says a public slave rode with him to hold it. The reminder of mortality is attested only later. Epictetus, early in the second century AD, alludes to men who stand behind triumphing generals to remind them they are human, and Tertullian, near the end of that century, gives the words. The Latin phrase memento mori, remember that you must die, appears in no ancient account of the triumph; it became a motto much later.