It is one of the most famous monuments in Rome.
It is over 40 meters high and has remained intact from its inauguration in 113 AD until today.
It was built to celebrate the glorious military campaign conducted by Trajan in Dacia.
And here are represented the various stages of the war.
The reliefs are carved around the column in a spiral which is almost 200 meters long that reaches the top.
Over there stood the bronze statue of the emperor, now replaced by that of St. Peter.
Marcus Ulpius Trajan became emperor because he was the right man in the right place. The old emperor Nerva needed a strong leader. Trajan was an excellent general, and he commanded the legions in Germany. So he was adopted by Nerva, and for the first time, a non-Italian – a Hispanic to be precise – was on the throne of Rome. Trajan decided to spend two years pacifying the borders and entered Rome only in 100 AD. When he arrived, it was immediately time to leave again, this time for Dacia.
The column is the book (volumen, a Roman book, which they unrolled). This is an exceptional document. It’s like the BBC of the Roman times showing us all the war.
It shows the places, the people, the weapons, and the phases in detail.
The Dacian women tortured the Roman soldiers, the villages set on fire, the barbarians who ask for mercy, a Roman soldier who fights holding the severed head of an enemy between his teeth, King Decebalus, who commits suicide.
The perfection of this artistic masterpiece contrasts with the atrocity and the violence of war.
The column, at a closer look, seems alive. Stendhal said of the reliefs, “It is a perfect portrait that the Romans have left us of themselves.” Yet, for the contemporaries, it was something ordinary.
Who knows what wonders ancient authors were accustomed to in order to afford the luxury of not being surprised by such splendor.
It was here that the ashes of the emperor and his wife Plotina lay for centuries before disappearing.
With Trajan, died the dream of Caesar to win the Parthians.
With him died, the Optimus princeps as he was named by the Senate, the only emperor to be considered equal to Augustus.
He was buried here, but the urns with the ashes disappeared and disappeared the bronze statue that depicted the emperor on top, as shown by many coins of the time.
The Trajan Column is a book, a book to read, full of many, many stories … Come to Rome to explore it!
