Runaway horses at Trajan's Column in Rome in a painting by Giacomo van Lint

As Your Literature Teacher Would Say, Here the Bolter Bolted.

I love this genre scene by Giacomo van Lint, set by Trajan's Column in Rome. The horses have bolted and cannot now be stopped without a coachman's help. But there are no coachmen on the box. One has been flung onto the paving; two run after the carriage, already lurching from its furious pace, in which we glimpse a passenger. Presumably some lady of quality, who had plainly not planned to be dashed to pieces during a daytime errand.

Let us see what the people in the square are up to. They scatter in all directions. The cleverest has thought to climb over the railing round Trajan's Column. Men wave hats and cloaks, planting themselves in the horses' path to halt them. A little dog has sprung up and is yelping. A woman flees in hysterics with her daughter. Onlookers lean out of windows. Passers-by peer from the side streets at the commotion. A couple hurries along, eager to catch the denouement.

The action takes place in the mid-eighteenth century. Trajan's Forum is still built over with housing for the poor and public buildings, which would be demolished, and even then not entirely, only in the twentieth century, when archaeological excavations freed a considerable part of the historic site from the earth, with its columns, ruins and the foundations of ancient buildings.