Spolia opima e trionfo

The ceremonies of the spolia opima and triumph are closely linked, and share a partially common history. The study of the sources suggests various stages of development: (i) during the first royal age (8th-7th century BC), they were part of the same ceremony, segmented into three stages corresponding to the deities of the pre-Capitoline triad; (ii) in the second royal age (7th-6th century BC), the rise to power of the Etruscan king brought about the unification of the ceremony into the rite of triumphus, and the abandonment of the spolia opima; (iii) during the early Republican age (5th-3rd century BC) both the pre-Etruscan forms of the triumph (ovatio) and the spolia opima were recovered – the rules of the latter being reconstructed by the priests in the text called lex Numae; (iv) in the second Republican age (3rd-1st century BC), the rules for bestowing the triumph changed, while those relating to the spolia opima probably remained the same, as the ceremony was abandoned until its theoretical recovery by Caesar and Augustus, to which the interpretations of the lex Numae by Varro and (perhaps) Labeo were probably related.