277.
Column of Trajan, Rome. 106—13
A.D.
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Just how incompatible the purposes of Imperial art,
narrative or symbolic, could sometimes be with a realistic
treatment of space becomes fully evident in the Column of
Trajan, which was erected between 106 and 113 A.D. to
celebrate that emperor's victorious campaigns against the
Dacians (the ancient inhabitants of Romania). Single,
freestanding columns had been used as commemorative
monuments from Hellenistic times on; their ultimate source
may have been the obelisks of Egypt. The Column of Trajan is
distinguished not only by its great height (125 feet,
including the base) but by the continuous spiral band of
relief covering its surface (fig. 277) and
recounting, in epic breadth, the history of the Dacian wars.
The column was crowned by a statue of the emperor (destroyed
in the Middle Ages), and the base served as a burial chamber
for his ashes. If we could unwind the relief band, it would
be 656 feet long, two-thirds the combined length of the
three friezes of the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and a good
deal longer than the Parthenon frieze. In terms of the
number of figures and the density of the narrative, however,
our relief is by far the most ambitious frieze composition
attempted up to that time. It is also the most frustrating,
for viewers must "run around in circles like a circus horse"
(to borrow the apt description of one scholar) if they want
to follow the narrative, and can hardly see the wealth of
detail above the fourth or fifth turn without binoculars.
One wonders for whose benefit this elaborate pictorial
account was intended. In Roman times, the monument formed
the center of a small court flanked by public buildings at
least two stories tall, but even that does not quite answer
our question. Nor does it explain the evident success of our
column, which served as the model for several others of the
same type. But let us take a closer look at the scenes
visible in our figure 277. In the center of the
bottom strip, we see the upper part of a large river-god
representing the Danube. To the left are some riverboats
laden with supplies, and a Roman town on the rocky bank,
while to the right, the Roman army crosses the river on a
pontoon bridge. The second strip shows Trajan addressing his
soldiers (to the left) and the building of fortifications.
The third depicts the construction of a garrison camp and
bridge as the Roman cavalry sets out on a reconnaissance
mission (on the right). In the fourth strip, Trajan's foot
soldiers are crossing a mountain stream (center); to the
right, the emperor addresses his troops in front of a Dacian
fortress. These scenes are a fair sampling of the events
depicted on the column. Among the more than 150 separate
episodes, actual combat occurs only rarely, while the
geographic, logistic, and political aspects of the campaign
receive detailed attention, much as they do in Julius
Caesar's famous account of his conquest of Gaul.
Only at one other time have we seen this matter-of-fact
visualization of military operations—in Assyrian reliefs
such as that in figure 104. Was there an indirect
link between the two? And, if so, of what kind? The question
is difficult to answer, especially since no examples of the
Roman antecedents for our reliefs survive: the panels
showing military conquests that were carried in triumphal
processions. At any rate, the spiral frieze on the Column of
Trajan was a new and demanding framework for historic
narrative which imposed a number of difficult conditions
upon the sculptor. Since there could be no clarifying
inscriptions, the pictorial account had to be as
self-sufficient and explicit as possible, which meant that
the spatial setting of each episode had to be worked out
with great care. Visual continuity had to be preserved
without destroying the inner coherence of the individual
scenes. And the actual depth of the carving had to be much
shallower than in reliefs such as those on the Arch of
Titus. Otherwise the shadows cast by the projecting parts
would make the scenes unreadable from below.
Our artist has solved these problems with great success, but
at the cost of sacrificing all but the barest remnants of
illusionistic spatial depth. Landscape and architecture are
reduced to abbreviated "stage sets," and the ground on which
the figures stand is tilted upward. All these devices had
already been employed in Assyrian narrative reliefs. Here
they assert themselves once more, against the tradition of
foreshortening and perspective space. In another 200 years,
they were to become dominant, and we shall find ourselves at
the threshold of medieval art. In this respect, the relief
band on the Column of Trajan is curiously prophetic of both
the end of one era and the beginning of the next.
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