The Rom an Tr ium ph1 52work of gold and ivory. Each one depicted an episode from the war�from the devastation of the land of Judaea or the demolition of the Jewish fortiations to the deluge of blood and rivers wing through a country that was still in mes. It was here that the Jewish generals were stationed, acting out the moment of their capture. The rest of the spoils (eaps�of them) are passed over quickly, with not even a mention of the alsam tree�that Pliny implies was one of the notable spectacles of the processionxcept for what had been taken from the temple itself.22 Just as the hostile accounts of Marcellus�ovation emphasize his parade of the sacred images of the enemy, here Josephus, the Jewish turncoat, in a disconcertingly deadpan fashion and offering careful explanations for his non-Jewish readers, lists the sacred objects plundered and on display in the procession: the golden Shewbread Table, the menorah ( lamp stand made quite differently from that in general use�, and last of all the Jewish Law. His description matches closely the sculptured panel of just this scene on the Arch of Titus (see Fig. 9).23 Josephus carefully notes the destination of these objects after the triumph. The majority of the spoils, sacred and other, were in due course transferred to Vespasian new Temple of Peace (completed in 75 ce and dedicated to a strikingly appropriater inappropriateeity). ndeed,�as Josephus puts it, nto that temple were accumulated and stored all those things which, previously, people had traveled the world over to see, longing to catch a glimpse of them while they were still in their different countries.�Only the Jewish Law and the purple hangings from the Temple in Jerusalem were treated differently: these, he explains, were kept in the imperial palace itself.24 What happened next, especially to the menorah, has been a subject of modern controversy from at least as far back as the eighteenth century. Various hypotheses have imagined the menorah criss-crossing the Mediterranean in the Middle Ages and falling into the hands of some unlikely ownersoved to Constantinople in 330 at the foundation of the new capital of the Empire and installed in its own shrine in the new imperial palace; robbed from Rome by the Vandal Geiseric in 455 and carted off to Carthage; robbed back by Belisarius and shipped to Constantinople;
