the triumphal process, procession, rites, and their meaning. This scarcity allows only the most tentative and generalised (and possibly misleading) reconstruction of triumphal ceremony, based on the combination of various incomplete accounts from different periods of Roman history. Evolution Origins and Regal era The origins and development of this honour are obscure. Roman historians placed the first triumph in the mythical past; some thought that it dated from Rome's foundation; others thought it more ancient than that. Roman etymologists thought that the soldiers' chant of triumpe was a borrowing via Etruscan of the Greek thriambus (θρίαμβος), cried out by satyrs and other attendants in Dionysian and Bacchic processions. Plutarch and some Roman sources traced the first Roman triumph and the "kingly" garb of the triumphator to Rome's first king Romulus, whose defeat of King Acron of the Caeninenses was thought coeval with Rome's foundation in 753 BCE. Ovid projected a fabulous and poetic triumphal precedent in the return of the god Bacchus/Dionysus from his conquest of India, drawn in a golden chariot by tigers and surrounded by maenads, satyrs, and assorted drunkards. Arrian attributed similar Dionysian and "Roman" elements to a victory procession of Alexander the Great. Like much in Roman culture, elements of the triumph were based on Etruscan and Greek precursors; in particular, the purple, embroidered toga picta worn by the triumphal general was thought to be derived from the royal toga of Rome's Etruscan kings. For triumphs of the Roman regal era, the surviving Imperial Fasti Triumphales are incomplete. After three entries for the city's legendary founder Romulus, eleven lines of the list are missing. Next in sequence are Ancus Marcius, Tarquinius Priscus, Servius Tullius, and finally Tarquin "the proud", the last king. The Fasti were compiled some five centuries after the regal era, and probably represent an approved, official version of several different historical traditions. Likewise, the earliest surviving written histories of the regal era, written some centuries after it, attempt to reconcile various traditions, or else debate their merits. Dionysius, for example, gives Romulus three triumphs, the same number given in the Fasti. Livy gives him none, and credits him instead with the first spolia opima, in which the arms and armour were stripped off a defeated foe, then dedicated to Jupiter. Plutarch gives him one, complete with chariot. Tarquin has two triumphs in the Fasti but none in Dionysius. No ancient source gives a