For example, citing writers such as Ovid as well as epigraphic attestations she tries to delineate what the experience of the triumph was for the common and ordinary people of Rome rather than solely the elite.
She also adopts a minimalist position on the question of whether or not triumphs were bound by very detailed and specific rules and regulations, asserting instead that they were somewhat flexible in format and changed over the course of time.
She also breaks down a popular theory such as the idea that the Roman general who was being honoured in the process embodied the god Jupiter Optimus Maximus himself, arguing that there is evidence for this but also counter-evidence.
[1] Beard's analysis cuts through the enormous amount of writing about Roman triumphs to try to ascertain what their reality was as a fixture in Roman life, attempting to demystify them from the large number of what she refers to as 'rituals in ink' that have existed (whereby contemporary writers such as Polybius, Livy or Josephus sought to glorify a particular triumph) and the large amount of secondary historical scholarship on the matter.
Another aspect of the oft-repeated later depiction of the triumph includes stories of harsh treatment of captives, which Beard argues may instead have involved a reality where they were treated relatively mildly before then often becoming citizens.