DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5253#0722
684
SCULPTURE UNDER ROMAN DOMINION.
cities accompany the sacrifice ; only one, however, appearing in the picture.
To the emperor's left, we see the beasts for offering. A broad-backed vic-
timariits, armed with his hatchet, leads the ox, decked with a wide band ;
and camilli (one only appearing in the cut) are busy with the other animals.
Although in many types resembling figures in the sacrificial scenes from
Augustus' altar, yet how tame the dealing with the animals here, when com-
pared with those earlier reliefs! In the remaining scenes, we find camps being
fortified, while Dacians look on ; villages being sacked; hand-to-hand battles
being fought ; and a storm raging, indicated by Jupiter in the clouds, hurling
thunderbolts at the enemy. Again,
a spy is led before the emperor;
Trajan inspects the forts, addresses
the assembled army, or listens to
the women with their children, who
plead for their land. Again, Roman
soldiers care for a wounded com-
rade, or push along the wagons
bearing heavy catapults (Fig. 287),
from which missiles are to be dis-
charged; while Trajan, on the hill
above, receives Dacian princes sent
by their king. Trajan, the moving
spirit, appears at least fifty times
in these scenes, which are usually
marked off by a tree, reaching from
the bottom to the top of the relief.
Sometimes the details show power-
ful rendering of minutiae ; yet these
realistic records are prosaic and
wearisome from their general lack
of nobility of style and subject.
Once, a nocturnal battle is poetically indicated by the presence of the goddess
of Night with drapery on her head ; and, in another place, the pleasant form of
the goddess of Victory appears. She is surrounded by trophies of war, rests
one foot on a helmet, and with the left arm poises on an altar at her side a
shield, upon which she records the emperor's deeds.128* This figure is clearly
taken from some great original with which the sculptor of the column was famil-
iar, since it closely resembles the colossal Victory of Brescia (Fig. 288),—a
work probably of the latter half of,the first century A.D., and one of the most
beautiful bronzes preserved from Roman times. I2S5 This statue, in the Museo
Patrio in Brescia, a more than life-size bronze (1.95 meters high), was found in
1826, in a pit to the west of the Temple of Vespasian in that city. With it were
Fig. 287.
Portion of Relief on Trojan's Column.
Catapults.
Moving the
SCULPTURE UNDER ROMAN DOMINION.
cities accompany the sacrifice ; only one, however, appearing in the picture.
To the emperor's left, we see the beasts for offering. A broad-backed vic-
timariits, armed with his hatchet, leads the ox, decked with a wide band ;
and camilli (one only appearing in the cut) are busy with the other animals.
Although in many types resembling figures in the sacrificial scenes from
Augustus' altar, yet how tame the dealing with the animals here, when com-
pared with those earlier reliefs! In the remaining scenes, we find camps being
fortified, while Dacians look on ; villages being sacked; hand-to-hand battles
being fought ; and a storm raging, indicated by Jupiter in the clouds, hurling
thunderbolts at the enemy. Again,
a spy is led before the emperor;
Trajan inspects the forts, addresses
the assembled army, or listens to
the women with their children, who
plead for their land. Again, Roman
soldiers care for a wounded com-
rade, or push along the wagons
bearing heavy catapults (Fig. 287),
from which missiles are to be dis-
charged; while Trajan, on the hill
above, receives Dacian princes sent
by their king. Trajan, the moving
spirit, appears at least fifty times
in these scenes, which are usually
marked off by a tree, reaching from
the bottom to the top of the relief.
Sometimes the details show power-
ful rendering of minutiae ; yet these
realistic records are prosaic and
wearisome from their general lack
of nobility of style and subject.
Once, a nocturnal battle is poetically indicated by the presence of the goddess
of Night with drapery on her head ; and, in another place, the pleasant form of
the goddess of Victory appears. She is surrounded by trophies of war, rests
one foot on a helmet, and with the left arm poises on an altar at her side a
shield, upon which she records the emperor's deeds.128* This figure is clearly
taken from some great original with which the sculptor of the column was famil-
iar, since it closely resembles the colossal Victory of Brescia (Fig. 288),—a
work probably of the latter half of,the first century A.D., and one of the most
beautiful bronzes preserved from Roman times. I2S5 This statue, in the Museo
Patrio in Brescia, a more than life-size bronze (1.95 meters high), was found in
1826, in a pit to the west of the Temple of Vespasian in that city. With it were
Fig. 287.
Portion of Relief on Trojan's Column.
Catapults.
Moving the