Trajan's Column (AD 113): The Dacian Wars in Spiral Relief

Trajan’s Column is a marble victory column in Rome, dedicated in May AD 113 in the Forum of Trajan to celebrate the emperor Trajan’s conquest of Dacia. A continuous relief about 190 metres long spirals up its shaft, telling the story of the two Dacian Wars in some 155 scenes. It also served as Trajan’s tomb, and it remains one of the most important sources for the Roman army and one of the most influential monuments of ancient art.

Background

Trajan defeated King Decebalus in two campaigns, in AD 101-102 and 105-106, and turned Dacia (in modern Romania) into a Roman province (see Trajan’s Dacian Wars). The spoils paid for a vast new forum in Rome, the last and largest of the imperial forums, designed by Trajan’s architect Apollodorus of Damascus.

The forum included an open square, the huge Basilica Ulpia, and two libraries, one Greek and one Latin. The column stood in a small courtyard between the libraries, behind the basilica. Its attribution to Apollodorus is likely but not documented.

Structure and dimensions

The column is built of white Luna (Carrara) marble from north-west Italy. Its shaft is made of around 20 huge drums, each weighing roughly 30 tonnes or more, and measures about 3.7 metres in diameter and roughly 30 metres, or 100 Roman feet, in height. With its pedestal the whole monument is about 35 metres tall. The drums were hollowed out to create a spiral staircase of 185 steps, lit by more than 40 narrow slit windows.

An inscription over the door on the pedestal says that the column was set up by the Senate and People of Rome for Trajan, to show how high a hill had stood on the site before it was cleared for the forum. Whether a full hill was removed has been debated, but the inscription confirms that massive earthworks preceded construction.

The pedestal is carved with piles of captured Dacian weapons and armour. The column originally carried a bronze statue of Trajan. This was lost in the Middle Ages, and in 1587-1588 Pope Sixtus V replaced it with the bronze statue of St Peter that stands there today.

The spiral frieze

The relief band winds 23 times around the shaft and grows slightly taller towards the top, partly to help visibility from below. It contains roughly 2,500 figures. In 1896-1900 the German scholar Conrad Cichorius divided it into 155 scenes, a numbering still used today.

The story opens on the Danube, with Roman watchtowers and a river god watching legionaries cross a pontoon bridge. A winged Victory writing on a shield, set between trophies, divides the First War from the Second. Trajan appears about 60 times, addressing troops, sacrificing, receiving embassies and directing operations. The climax shows the fall of Sarmizegetusa Regia and Decebalus taking his own life as Roman horsemen reach him.

Remarkably little of the frieze shows battle. Much more depicts soldiers marching, building camps, roads and bridges, cutting timber and harvesting crops. This emphasis reflects the Roman view that discipline and engineering won wars.

Highlights of the narrative

Among the best-known scenes are Trajan addressing his troops from a platform, a ritual known as an adlocutio, and the purification of the army with a procession of sacrificial animals around a camp. Other scenes show Roman auxiliaries in battle, Dacian embassies kneeling before the emperor, and the great bridge over the Danube built by Apollodorus at Drobeta, depicted with its stone piers and timber arches as Trajan sacrifices before it.

The Dacians are shown as worthy enemies. Their nobles wear soft caps, the common warriors go bareheaded, and they carry curved swords called falces and the dragon-headed standard known as the draco. Near the end, Dacian leaders take poison in their besieged capital rather than surrender, and the final scenes show families driving their livestock away as the Romans take over the land.

How the frieze was carved is debated. Many scholars think the drums were assembled first and the relief carved in place from scaffolding, working from a design drawn in advance, because the scenes run smoothly across the joints between drums.

Value as a historical source

With Trajan’s own war memoirs lost and Cassius Dio surviving only in summary, the column is a central source for the Dacian Wars. Its images of armour, weapons, standards, fortifications, siege methods, medical care and Dacian dress have been used by archaeologists and historians for centuries.

It must be read with care. The sculptors followed artistic conventions, repeated stock figures and simplified landscapes, and the narrative is imperial propaganda in praise of Trajan. Scholars still argue whether it follows a lost written account, perhaps Trajan’s own war commentaries, closely, or tells the story more loosely and selectively. Some episodes known from Cassius Dio cannot be identified on the frieze at all. Traces of paint have been reported, and some think the relief was originally coloured, but this remains uncertain.

Survival through the centuries

The column survived the Middle Ages better than most of Trajan’s Forum. It belonged to the small church of San Nicola de Columna, which collected fees from visitors who climbed the stairs. In 1162 the Roman Senate decreed that the column should never be damaged or destroyed, on pain of death, an early example of a law protecting an ancient monument. The forum around it was gradually buried, and the area around the column’s base was cleared again only from the 16th century onwards.

Trajan’s tomb

Trajan died in Cilicia in August AD 117. Unusually, his ashes were placed inside the city boundary, in a golden urn in a chamber in the column’s pedestal, an exceptional honour. The ashes of his wife Plotina were later added. The urn disappeared long ago, probably in the Middle Ages.

Legacy

The column inspired imitators. The Column of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, completed by about AD 193, copied the spiral format for the Marcomannic Wars. Columns in Constantinople followed the same model, and in modern times Napoleon’s Vendôme Column in Paris (1806-1810) repeated the idea in bronze.

Plaster casts made in the 19th century preserve the frieze in sharper condition than the weathered original. A complete cast, taken from moulds made for Napoleon III, was acquired by the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) in London in 1864, where it is displayed in two halves. Another set is in the Museo della Civiltà Romana in Rome. Since 1980 the column has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of the historic centre of Rome, beside the ruins of the nearby Roman Forum.

Timeline

• AD 101-102: First Dacian War.
• AD 105-106: Second Dacian War; Dacia becomes a province.
• AD 112: The Forum of Trajan and Basilica Ulpia are inaugurated.
• AD 113, May: Trajan’s Column is dedicated.
• AD 117: Trajan dies; his ashes are placed in the pedestal.
• c. AD 193: The Column of Marcus Aurelius copies the design.
• 1587-1588: Sixtus V places a statue of St Peter on top.
• 1864: A full plaster cast is acquired by the South Kensington Museum in London.

Why it matters

Trajan’s Column is a triumphal monument, an emperor’s tomb and a nearly 2,000-year-old documentary in stone. Without it, our picture of how Roman soldiers fought, built and lived on campaign would be far poorer.