The Roman leaders Aemilius (Lucius Aemilius Paullus) and Anicius (Lucius Anicius Gallus) separately led military victories over Greek peoples about 167 BCE. Both men organized festivals to celebrate their victories. Ancient historians’ descriptions of these festivals contrast the status of Aemilius and Anicius; Greek culture and Roman culture; and competition for acclaim and competition for attention.

Aemilius celebrated his victory with a festival at the center of Greek culture in the Macedonian home kingdom of Alexander the Great. Livy’s account of Aemilius’s festival notes that Greek arts were intended to have enduring value. Greeks made artistic objects “not only for the present appearance, like the things with which the palace of Alexandria was crammed full, but also for permanent use.”^ Other evidence indicates that performances at Hellenstic-era Greek festivals used fifth-century Athenian artistic resources such as dramatic texts and music. Livy seems to interpret that use of established culture as enduring artistic merit. Antiochus IV, the Greek king of the Seleucid Empire, celebrated a festival intended to surpass in magnificence Aemilius’s games. Polybius’s account of Antiochus IV’s festival mentions mimes and musicians entertaining guests at banquets.^ Mimes and performing highlights from fifth-century Athenian drama suggests that competition for attention, not merely artistic merit, shaped Greek festivals in the Hellenistic period.

The historical sources make it difficult to discern the canonical form of a major Greek festival about 167 BCE. Polybius became a tutor and a close friend of Aemilius’s biological son, Publius Scipio. Polybius’s Histories justifies Roman rule of Greece and glorifies Aemilius. Livy and Plutarch base their accounts on Polybius and also have a significant Roman bias. Livy observed, “Romans were not in those days adepts at these exhibitions {spectaculi}.” That observation points to a contrast between Roman games and Greek festivals. Given the sources’ biases, they are likely to push into the background aspects of the events that highlight these differences. In early second-century BCE, Greek festivals probably were more devoted to music, dance, and drama, and less to gladiator shows and chariot races, than were Roman games.

Livy emphasizes that Aemilius had greater social status than Anicius. Livy observed, “The commander {Anicius} himself was the lesser, both in public esteem, as an Anicius {family} compared to an Aemilius {family}, and in rank of office, a praetor rather than a consul.” Anicius conquered Illyria and captured its king Gentius. Aemilus conquered Macedon and captured its king Perseus. The former achievements were less impressive than the latter. Livy rhetorically emphasized the difference: “Gentius could not be compared to Perseus, the Illyrians to the Macedonians, nor the spoils of one to those of the other, nor the moneys, nor the gifts to the soldiers.” Livy records a speech of Marcus Servilius, who had been consul and Master of the Horses, in which Servilius declares:

if while the other commanders were mounting the Capitol in the chariot, arrayed in their gold and purple, from below them Lucius Paulus {Aemilius}, a lone citizen in the crowd of civilians, should ask them, ‘Lucius Anicius, Gnaeus Octavius, do you consider yourselves more worthy of a triumph, or me?’ they would, I believe, yield him their place in the chariot and for very shame hand their regalia over to him.

Anicius, who had conquered Epirus, yielded part of his plunder to Aemilius. The Roman Senate honored Aemilius’s victory with a five-day religious thanksgiving; for Anicius’s victory, the Senate ordered a three-day religious thanksgiving to occur about a month later. Anicius’s triumph in Rome occurred after Aemilius’s. Livy declares, “the previous triumph outshone this one, yet it was also clear to those who contemplated this one on its merits that it was by no means to be scorned.” Aemilius paid his soldiers more than twice as much as Anicius did, and Aemilius’s plunder was worth more than fifty times as much as Anicius’s, according to detailed descriptions of the triumphs that Livy recorded.^

After the establishment of the Roman Republic, competition for attention surely was more intense in Rome than it was in fifth-century Athens. Elite ancient Roman historians were aware of the change from competition for acclaim in fifth-century Athens to competition for attention in the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. The contrasting descriptions of Aemilus’s Greek festival and Anicius’s Roman festival seem in part to be colored through historians’ concerns about the shift in the structure of symbolic competition.