Trajan's Column tells a war story almost nobody could actually read
A stone ribbon 190 metres long spirals 23 times around Trajan's Column in Rome, packed with 2,662 carved figures. Yet tall libraries hemmed it in so tightly that no Roman could follow the story from bottom to top, which has left historians arguing about what the monument was really for.
Dedicated on 12 May 113 AD in Trajan's Forum, the column celebrates the emperor's two campaigns against the Dacians, in 101 to 102 and 105 to 106. It was probably overseen by the architect Apollodorus of Damascus on the Senate's orders. The shaft stacks 20 drums of Carrara marble, each about 32 tons, and stands roughly 30 metres tall, or 35 with its pedestal. A staircase of 185 steps climbs inside to a viewing deck, and the capital alone, at 53.3 tons, had to be hoisted about 34 metres.
The frieze holds 155 scenes, with Trajan appearing 58 times. The first war fills the lower half and the second the upper. Surprisingly, fighting is a minority subject: soldiers mostly build forts, hold ceremonies, listen to speeches and fell trees, 48 of the 224 trees shown being cut down. Some scholars think this reassured a Roman public wary of the army; others link the clearing of forest and the Danube bridge to a message of total conquest. Trees follow 37 distinct stylised types, and weapons, ships and costume are so carefully shown that the column serves as a reference for Roman military kit.
Visibility is the puzzle. Greek and Latin library wings stood on two sides, the Basilica Ulpia on a third, blocking any wide view, and following the spiral would mean circling with your head tilted. Upper floors of the libraries may have given closer looks, and archaeologist Paul Veyne argued the emperor could be picked out reading vertically, band by band. The later Column of Marcus Aurelius, lacking such platforms, uses deeper and simpler carving.
After Trajan died in 117, his ashes and those of his wife Plotina were placed in golden urns inside the base, since lost. A statue of the emperor once topped the shaft but vanished in the Middle Ages. On 4 December 1587 Pope Sixtus V installed the bronze Saint Peter that still crowns it.
Source: Trajan's Column
