This is a photograph that I'm incredibly proud of because I took it from on top of the column of Trajan. It's not that difficult to climb the column of Trajan because there's a spiral staircase in the center of it that goes up to the top. The part, the part that's hard is getting permission to get in there. It's always locked and you have to get special permission to do that. So I did it only once, but it was a great thing to do. And you go way up to the top, and you can look down, you can see fantastic views of Rome. But you can also get a very good sense of what the Basilica Ulpia looks like today. Not much, but you can see this central space, you can see some of the columns, we can tell that those columns were grey granite. So again, this interest in contrasting marbles, grey granite with white marble in the Basilica Opia and elsewhere. And you can also see the relationship between modern ground level, which is much higher, and ancient ground level. And the possibilities that still remain, if they want to excavate this part of the city. What more of the forum of Trajan may be able to be seen. Some of it can actually be seen under the street and Packer and others have actually gone in to look at what is there. Which is what has enabled him to make the kind of accurate reconstructions that he has. Everywhere in this monument there are references, yes this is a forum, yes forums have practical purposes. They're a place to to for people to meet and to market and to conduct law cases and so on in the Basilica. But this monument reminds you again, and again, and again, and again, that it is a, a monument in stone to Trajan's victories over the Dacians. And not only do we see those Dacians as we looked at before, but we see lost of other imagery that refers to military victory. This is a fragment of what we think was a frieze in the Basilica Ulpia . That depicts victories, female personifications of victory, winged, either kneeling at candelabra or over here, this woman kneeling on the back of a bull. You can see that she's winged. She's holding the snout of that bull back. She's got a knife in her right hand. And she is about to slit the throat of the bull. And she is doing this to not only to, not only in victory over the Dacians being marked here but she is also representing the sacrifice that takes place in honor of that victory by being shown depicting killing the bull. Back to the plan. Once again. Just to remind you that when we leave the Basilica Ulpia doorway also in it's long side, we end up in this small plaza where the temple, where the column of Trajan is located. Flanked by Greek and Latin libraries, on axis with the equestrian stat, on axis with the entrance way, the equestrian statue of Trajan, the other entrance way, the column, and ultimately, the temple at the very end. The temple ultimately to divine Trajan. This model of what we think the library may have looked like, or both of the libraries may have looked like from the outside. Fairly is, a smallish a square buildings with portico in the front and then most important a balcony over here. Why a balcony? So that you could come out, and look at the column of Trajan and read some of the scenes that encircled it. This is a reconstruction from Packer, again showing what he thinks. The interior of one of these libraries might've looked like, it looks larger here than it actually was. But you can get a sense of it with the reading tables with the scrolls inside these cabinets here. With the statuary and in this case, he believes that it had a vaulted roof as you can see on, on top. The column of Trajan you see it here in two views. An extraordinary work of art extremely well preserved. Why so well preserved? Well, likely because Pope Sixtus the Fifth in the Renaissance used this column and also the column of the later emperor Marcus Aurelius as important nodes in his reconstruction of the city of Rome. What he did, however, at that time, was that he took the statues of Trajan that would have stood on this one, and Marcus Aurelius on the other, and replaced them with statues of Peter and Paul. And it's Peter who's on the column of Trajan, and Paul who is on the column of Marcus Aurelius. But you can see how well preserved they are here. The column shaft rests on the base. Decorated with arms of armor and Dacian arms of armor. With alt, you know with a statue of Trajan up at the bronze statue of Trajan at the upper most part, but what's particularly interesting is the sculpture. I'm not going to go into that in great detail, but I want you to know about it because it does tell us something, about architecture as we'll see. It's a spiral frieze, done all in marble of course, that wraps from the base of the column all the way up to the top. And it tells, in documentary form the exploits, the military exploits of Trajan, in his two Dacian military campaigns. his, his, those two campaigns that I've already mentioned divided in the center by a Victory writing on a shield. one, there's been a lot of speculation. There's nothing like this earlier in Roman art quite like this. And so it is a new innovation probably at the behest of prob, of, possibly out of the mind, the creative mind of a Apollodorus of Damascus. And some scholars have suggested and I think very convincingly, it's an intriguing idea. That because this was located between two libraries, the likelihood and that Romans had scrolls, the likelihood is what we are dealing here, with here, is one of these scrolls, sort of wrapped around the column from base to top. Unfurled and wrapped around the column from base to top with the text removed, with images instead of text. And that, that makes a lot of sense, again, given that you could view it most, best from the two libraries on either side. A detail of the base, just to show you how very well preserved the sculptural decoration is. This is not a course in sculpture. I'm not going to go into this in detail, but I want to quickly show you some of the scenes, because again they can be revealing, from the point of view of architecture. This is at the very base. We see a personification of the Danube River in that part, area up north, in Dacia where the Romans went to conquer those tribes. And you, and this is very important because we know that Apollodorus of Damascus was responsible for building a bridge over the Danube Region, River. It was one of his great engineering feats. And you actually see that bridge located here. Which even increases the likelihood that Apollodorus of Damascus was the designer of this particular structure. You see the Roman soldiers have gotten off boats. They're walking through a an Archway. Here you see the Roman soldiers. The Roman soldiers did not only do battle, but they also Romanized the areas that they went. We've talked about this a lot. The colonization of the Roman world. Trajan extending the borders to their furthest most points. The Romans get there, what do they do? They start to build architecture. They start to build walls with headers and stretchers. They start to build forts and, and city walls, in which they put buildings with Roman amenities. Remember after wars, after the war is over, they're often given land by the general or the emperor to, to, it, it becomes theirs and where they can live from that point on. So they had every reason to want to fill these towns with Roman amenities. And we see the Roman soldiers building cities in many of these scenes. This is the most famous scene from the column, in which we see a battle between the Romans, inside one of these forts that they've built. They are all with helmets and shields. They have their hands around something. We think these were probably spears that were added in metal, originally. The Dacians down below; you can identify them by their leggings and tunics and scraggly hair and beards here. They are attacking the camp. The Romans are of course going to be victorious. But the Dacians are shown as heroic and valiant and enemies who are pretty much the equals of the Roman, Romans in strength which only underscores that the Romans were stronger still to have conquered them. And then over here, if you've ever wondered where the term battering ram came from, you can see it right here. Told you the Romans invented everything. You can see it right here this pole, with a ram's head at the end which is serving, again, as a battering ram, as they try to tear down the walls of the Roman fort. perhaps, perhaps the most poignant and interesting scene happens way up at the top of the column. Where the leader of the Dacians, Decebalus, D-e-c-e-b-a-l-u-s, is shown kneeling, almost like one of those victories on the on the bull. He has a a knife in his hand. What is he doing? He is kneeling here. He has decided, you can see the Romans. He's got Romans to the left of him, Romans to the right of him. He's about to be taken prisoner by them and paraded in a triumphal procession in Rome, in honor of Trajan. He doesn't want to do that. So he heroically, valiantly takes his own life. He is about to plunge that knife into his heart so that he doesn't have to be taken by the Romans. It's very interesting to see them depicting Romans depicting the Dacians in such a in such a heroic way on this column. I mentioned the museum in Rome that is located in EUR, the Museo della Civiltà Romana, the Museum of the of Roman Civilization, that has casts and models. I mentioned that they had casts of all the scenes from the Column of Trajan. I show you a view that I took in that museum, just to give you a sense of, of how one can see those, and how one can see those at eye's level to get a good sense of them. In antiquity, they would have been harder to read, but I should point out that the background was likely painted blue. And there probably would have been some additions, like the metal spears, that might have made it easier to read. Almost like Wedgewood, might have made it easier to read in antiquity. And I also thought I would mention, I'm sure all of you have been down to ground zero. But if you go a block or two away from ground zero itself, there's a firemen's memorial there that was put up to many of the firemen who sadly lost their lives fighting those fires in the Twin Towers. We see this here, dedicated to those who fell and to those who carry on, here. And what's interesting about this, if you look, if you Google this and look at the website for the fireman's memorial in Rome. In, in New York, you will find out that the designer for this talks unabashedly of his admiration for the Column of Trajan in Rome. And that he used, as an artistic model, for the way in which he massed figures here, showing them in relationship to buildings. He used, as his model the figures on the column of Trajan in Rome. At the end, again, the column surrounded by the Greek and Latin libraries. The temple, over here at the end. You can see it's a conventional Roman temple, deep porch, freestanding columns staircase, one staircase facade orientation, just as we saw elsewhere. Here we see an engraving showing the the Spiral staircase that leads from bottom to top. And over here, that the staircase also goes down below into a burial chamber. Two urns were found in that burial chamber, the urns of Trajan and Plotina, which tells us of course that this also served as Trajan's tomb. So, victory on, not only his great, one of his great victories, military victories, but also victory over death. And then at the apex, we see a good view of the top with the statue of Saint Peter, but we have coins, depicting a Trajan on, but depicting the original statue. The base, the shaft, co a portrait of Trajan naked portrait of Trajan. A heroized portrait of Trajan, depicted after death. Divinized at the apex of the column. And if you read the inscription on the coin you see it refers to Trajan as Optimus Princeps. Trajan received many titles, one was Dacicus, D-a-c-i-c-u-s for his victories over the Dacians. But at the end of his life, Optimus Princeps, the greatest princeps of all time. The implication, greater than Augustus. And it is arguable, I think, probably correct that Trajan was the even greater of the two. This is a restored view, a spectacular restored view, of the building complex, where you can see again, the entrance way over here, the equestrian statue, everything that we've described. But I think it's interesting, if you think of yourself having entered into this forum, standing here, looking back at the basilica bearing Trajan's name, looking towards the column in the temple. What you would have likely seen when you stood here, was only the uppermost part of the column because most of that would have been blocked by the very tall Basilica Ulpia. So it's a very theatrical representation in the sense that you would be you know, standing here with Trajan during life, looking back toward that column. Looking back at the divinization of, of Trajan bronze statue which would have seemed as if it was floating on top of the Basilica Opia. This is a very dramatic tableau created here by Apollodorus of Damascus. And I think it was not equal, equaled until the seventeenth century by architects like Gian Lorenzo Bernini who also created such spectacular tableaus.
