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Perry, Walter Copland
Greek and Roman sculpture: a popular introduction to the history of Greek and Roman sculpture — London, 1882

DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14144#0673

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THE ARCH OF TITUS.

637

art to prolong the memory of his w arlike exploits. We cannot, in-
deed, trace the origin of plastic representations of events of Roman
history farther back than the time of the Emperors ; but the practice of
exhibiting pictures of actual battles is of an earlier date. M\ Valerius
Maximus Messala is said to have been the first to set up in the wing
of the Curia Hostilia a picture of his victorious engagement in Sicily
with the Carthaginians and Hiero the Sicilian king1 (a.U.C. 491, b.c.
265). Lucius Scipio celebrated his victor\' over Antiochus of Syriaj
near Magnesia, by exhibiting a picture on the Capitol ; and Lucius
Hpsiilius Afanctnus,1 who was the first to enter Carthage when it
was captured by Scipio (h.c. 146), made use of a picture of the city
and the siege operations to illustrate an account which he gave to
the delighted 1'lebs of the various incidents of the war. By this con-
descension, we are told, he so ingratiated himself w ith the people
that they made him consul in the following year.

Of historical reliefs in sculpture the principal are those which
adorned the triumphal.^ rehesof Claudius and Titus—the Architrave of
the Temple of Minerva in the Forum, begun by Domitian, and finished
by Nerva, and generally called Forum Nervce—the Arch and Pillar of
Trajan—and the Arches of Marcus Aurelius and Septimus Severus.

The Arch of Claudius. Of the reliefs of this arch, which stood in
the Corso near the Pal. Sciarra, there are two fragments in the Villa
Borghese.

The Arch of Titus, in the Yelia at the foot of the Palatine, was
erected in celebration of the taking of Jerusalem (a.I). 70), and
Was consecrated in the reign of Titus' successor Domitian. On both
facades of this arch, which was restored in 1822 by Pope Pius VII.,
runs a narrow frieze, under the Attike, representing the pompa
triumphalis combined with a sacrificial procession—priests and their
attendants, oxen adorned for sacrifice with infulx on their horns and
broad ornamental bands on their backs, and soldiers of the victorious
armj- in civil costume, but bearing their shields and insignia. The
most interesting figure in this group is that of the River God Jordan
under the form of a bearded man borne on a litter. Each figure in

I'lin. a'. II.

CobC L8*« *

I'lin. A'. //. xxxv. 23.
 
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