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A victory title is an honorific title adopted by a successful military commander to commemorate his defeat of an enemy nation. This practice was first used by Ancient Rome and is still most commonly associated with the Romans, but it has also been adopted as a practice by many later empires, especially the Napoleonic, British and Russian. ==Roman victory titles== Victory titles were suffixed to the commander's name and were usually the name of the enemy defeated by the commander. Hence, names like ''Africanus'' ("the African"), ''Numidicus'' ("the Numidian"), ''Isauricus'' ("the Isaurian"), ''Creticus'' ("the Cretan"), ''Gothicus'' ("the Goth"), ''Germanicus'' ("the German") and ''Parthicus'' ("the Parthian"), seemingly out of place for ardently patriotic Romans, are in fact expressions of Roman superiority over these peoples. Literally, this would be akin to calling generals Erwin Rommel "Rommel the African", George S. Patton, Jr. "Patton the German" and H. Norman Schwarzkopf "Schwarzkopf the Iraqi"; however, the real intended meaning would be better expressed as "Rommel of African fame", "Patton of German fame", "Schwarzkopf of Iraqi fame" and so forth. Some victory titles became hereditary ''cognomina'', while others were personal ''agnomina'' and not carried on by later family members. The practice of awarding victory titles was well established within the Roman Republic. The most famous grantee of Republican victory title was Publius Cornelius Scipio, who for his great victories in the Second Punic War, specifically the Battle of Zama was awarded by the Roman Senate the title "Africanus" and is thus known to history as "Scipio Africanus" (his adopted grandson Scipio Aemilianus Africanus was awarded the same title after the Third Punic War and is known as "Scipio Africanus the Younger"). Other notable holders of such victory titles include Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus, who was replaced by Gaius Marius in command-in-chief of the Jugurthine War; Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus, who commanded Roman anti-pirate operations in the eastern Mediterranean (and was father of Julius Caesar's colleague in his second consulate, Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus in 48 BC), and Marcus Antonius Creticus, another anti-piratical commander (and father of Caesar's master of the horse, Mark Antony of Egyptian fame). The practice continued in the Roman Empire, although it was subsequently amended by some Roman Emperors who desired to emphasise the totality of their victories by adding ''Maximus'' ("the Greatest") to the victory title (''e.g.'', ''Parthicus Maximus'', "the Greatest Parthian"). This taste grew to be rather vulgar by modern standards, with increasingly grandiose accumulations of partially fictitious victory titles. * In a broader sense, the term victory title is sometimes used to describe the ''repeatable'' awarding of the invariable style of Imperator (Greek equivalent Autokrator; see those articles), which is the highest military qualification (as modern states have awarded a non-operational highest rank, sometimes instituted for a particular general), but even when it marks the recipient out for one or more memorable victories (and the other use, as a permanent military command for the ruler, became in fact the more significant one), it does not actually specify one. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Victory title」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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