This detailed study examines the role of the triumph in Roman Republican society, and more specifically the competition inherent in the processes by which they were awarded. Pittinger meticulously analyses several of the set piece triumphs in Livy, and the debates in the senate which led to their award. She emphasises the importance of the triumph in forming a symbolic occasion for Rome's elite to perpetuate itself, and the triumph as the pinnacle of those occasions when the glories of Rome's foremost families could be ritualised, memorialised and performed.