“They say you have abandoned the idea of transporting Trajan's Column? To tell the truth, the undertaking would have cost us very dear”
«They say you have abandoned the idea of transporting Trajan's Column? To tell the truth, the undertaking would have cost us very dear»
It beggars belief, but the French really did intend to carry Trajan's pillar off from Rome to Paris as a trophy during the Napoleonic wars. And this despite the fact that each of its segments weighs more than 30 tonnes!
Erected in 113, Trajan's Column was originally executed in colour, but like all monuments of antiquity it has lost its bright pigments over the centuries without renewal. Yet modern museum curators do not do very much to form an idea of the monument's true original appearance.
The 38-metre column of Carrara marble is adorned with a relief of scenes of the Emperor Trajan's triumph over the Dacians, containing images of 2,500 warriors building roads and bridges, besieging cities, marching and fighting, women torturing soldiers with torches, and vanquished Dacians, but, it seems, not a single image of the Emperor Trajan himself.
The inscription on the pedestal reads:
The Senate and People of Rome [erected this column] to the Emperor Caesar Nerva Trajan Augustus, son of the divine Nerva, Germanicus, Dacicus, Pontifex Maximus, holding tribunician power for the 17th time, Imperator for the 6th time, Consul for the 6th time, Father of the Fatherland, to show how high a hill was cut away to make room for the building of these so considerable works
