e state. Cicero went so far as to state that the pursuit of gloria was the prime impulse behind all human activity. His explanation has significance not only for Roman political affairs but also for the historical paintings commissioned by aristocrats. Military success was the single most important way to achieve laus and gloria. Not only was such achievement highly advantageous to the Roman State, it held vital importance to the personal aims and interests of Roman aristocrats. Ambitious young men of the Roman elite were obliged to undertake military service, and had to complete ten annual military campaigns as a junior officer before they could seek election to even the lowest position in Rome's hierarchy of magistracies; inscriptions (epitaphs and elegy) indicate that during the Republic a normal part of the successful young aristocrat's career centered on warfare. Triumphal paintings became an integral part of this didactic display. The main purpose of triumphal paintings was to advance the personal prestige of the triumphator by documenting those achievements that had led to his triumphal celebration. They were primarily propagandistic, often with political and electoral ends in mind. L. Hostilius Mancinus, for example, used a painting commemorating his victory over Carthage as a successful polemic against his political rival, Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus. Triumphal paintings utilized diverse modes of representation. They were sometimes executed on large panels, called tabulae, which could be easily carried in the procession. In his reconstruction of Caesar' s triumph, however, Andrea Mantegna drew on references that describe vast paintings on cloth, works that sources claim could sometimes reach three to four stories in height paintings of such magnitude, however, were probably displayed on large wheeled processional floats (pegmata). After using their paintings in the procession, triumphatores often exhibited them in publi...
