25 centuries of triumphs plus one day

Back in the days before the pandemic, when sports events with public attendance were the norm, it was common to see an athlete who had just perform a remarkable feat to publicly celebrate their success and invite the audience to join in his celebration. The procedure is very similar regardless of the sport: the performer stands in front of the crowd in a triumphant pose, such as Usain Bolt's famous "To Di World", displays their joy with a signature movement, like Cristiano Ronaldo's "Knee Slide", or, in many racing sports, the winner takes victory lap (at a fairly low speed) around the circuit for all the spectators to see. In fact, we are so used to this kind of victory celebrations that nowadays the word triumph is used to refer precisely to the victory itself. But it has not always been like that.

The origin of the word dates back to the Roman Republic, where a victorious general upon returning to Rome, would be offered a civil and religious ceremony called triumphus, in which he would have a chance to parade across Rome presenting to the citizens the slaves and spoils collected in the war, thanking the gods (and in particular Jupiter) for their support in the battles, all the while basking in the popular recognition and boosting their popularity. In fact, many generals were, at the same time, politicians, and coming home with a significant victory could launch their senatorial or even consular career.

Photo: GPA Photo Archive

It is remarkable that, contrary to the present version of spontaneous celebration, Roman triumphs had to be requested by the victor and had to be approved by the senate and the popular assembly. In the end, the whole celebration was paid from the city coffers and, even if it provided entertainment for the general public, the first beneficiary of these events was indubitably the recipient of the triumph. In fact, it was more similar to a medal or trophy award ceremony, as it could take days or weeks after the feat was achieved. In fact, the most similar modern-day event would be a ticker-tape parade, like the one celebrated in New York on August 13, 1969 to celebrate the safe return of the Apollo 11 astronauts (and many others, of course).

The background for this kind of celebrations is quite simple: there is a limit to just how happy one can be of achieving a success, but exposing the winner to the public, especially to an excited crowd, seems to add the joy of each individual spectator to the joy of the celebrated person. In fact, it links back to potentially unlimited recognition that a group of people can provide. For instance, in classical musical events such as concerts and operas, the ovation at the end widely exceeds the usual duration: for outstanding performances people would stand up, clapping uninterruptedly for minutes on end, frequently prompting the performing artists to an encore. 

But in the end, triumph boils down to a shared recognition of one's success. As in Roman times one would not start a celebration unless they are satisfied with their achievement in the first place, and then the public joining in the festivities just confirm that the perception of success was shared by the rest of the people. This is the part that has brought me today to think about triumph.

This morning I was in a discussion with the Human Resources department about possible future arrangements to enable home office for most of the workers at the institute. In the end, anyone with a laptop and an internet connection has mostly kept working through the pandemic with minor losses or even with gains in efficiency. The workers' representatives were willing to automatically accept anyone taking up to 50% of their time in home office, but insisted on having a look at anyone asking for more than that to prevent abuses (both on the worker and on the management side). The HR people argue that that would expose the direction to the free discretion of the workers' representatives, and that was too much of a risk. There were some comings and goings, with each side defending their point of view, and then it hit me: the workers'  representatives are recognized in our by-laws to have the right to approve or deny any change in the working conditions of any worker, so technically they would have to sign on every home office agreement, so waiving the signatures for up to 50% was already a gesture of good will that should not be taken lightly (or could otherwise be withdrawn). The HR team caved in shortly after that and the meeting did not last much longer.

After the meeting, I drop a line to the workers' representatives to check on their impression and they were amazed: "You torpedoed them!" and "What a nice turn!". I do not need to tell you that I was indeed feeling triumphant. Twenty five centuries later the public recognition of our achievements is still very powerful, even if it brings no other benefit than pumping our ego. Have a nice week.