A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volume 1, 3rd ed. / From the Earliest Times to the Present Day

by James Fergusson

Columns of Victory.

Columns of Victory are a class of monuments which seem to have been used in the East in very early times, though their history it must be confessed is somewhat fragmentary and uncertain, and they seem to have been adopted by the Romans in those provinces where they had been employed by the earlier inhabitants. Whatever the original may have been, the Romans were singularly unsuccessful in their application of the form. They never, in fact, rose above the idea of taking a column of construction, magnifying it, and placing it on a pedestal, without any attempt to modify its details or hide the original utilitarian purpose for which the column was designed. When they attempted more than this, they failed entirely in elaborating any new form at all worthy of admiration. The Columna Rostrata, or that erected to celebrate naval victories, was, so far as we can judge from representations (for no perfect specimen exists), one of the ugliest and clumsiest forms of column it is possible to conceive.

Of those of Victory, one of the most celebrated is that erected by Diocletian at Alexandria. A somewhat similar one exists at Arsinoë, erected by Alexander Severus; and a third at Mylassa in Caria. All these are mere Corinthian columns of the usual form, and with the details of those used to support entablatures in porticoes. However beautiful these may be in their proper place, they are singularly inappropriate and ungraceful when used as minarets or single columns.

222. Column at Cussi. (From Laborde’s ‘Monumens de la France.’)

There are two in Rome not quite so bad as these, both being of the Doric order. Had the square abacus in these been cut to a round form, and ornamented with an appropriate railing, we might almost have forgotten their original, and have fancied that they really were round towers with balconies at the top. The great object of their erection was to serve as vehicles for sculpture, though, as we now see them, or as they are caricatured at Paris and elsewhere, they are little more than instances of immense labour bestowed to very little purpose. As originally used, these columns were placed in small courts surrounded by open porticoes, whence the spectator could at two or perhaps at three different levels examine the sculpture at his leisure and at a convenient distance, while the absurdity of the column supporting nothing was not apparent, from its not being seen from the outside. This arrangement is explained in woodcut No. [200], which is a section through the basilica of Trajan, showing the position of his column, not only with reference to that building, but to the surrounding colonnade. The same was almost certainly the case with the column of Marcus Aurelius, which, with slight modifications, seems to have been copied from that of Trajan; but even in the most favourable situations no monuments can be less worthy of admiration or of being copied than these.

A far better specimen of this class is that at Cussi, near Beaune, in France. It probably belongs to the time of Aurelian, but it is not known either by whom it was erected or what victory it was designed to celebrate; still that it is a column of victory seems undoubted; and its resemblance to columns raised with the same object in India is quite striking.

The arrangement of the base serving as a pedestal for eight statues is not only elegant but appropriate. The ornament which covers the shaft takes off from the idea of its being a mere pillar, and at the same time is so subdued as not to break the outline or interfere with constructive propriety.

223. Supposed Capital of Column at Cussi.

The capital, of the Corinthian order, is found in the neighbourhood used as the mouth of a well. In its original position it no doubt had a hole through it, which being enlarged suggested its application to its present ignoble purpose, the hole being no doubt intended either to receive or support the statue or emblem that originally crowned the monument, but of that no trace now remains.

There cannot be a more natural mode of monumental expression than that of a simple upright stone set up by the victors to commemorate their prowess and success. Accordingly steles or pillars erected for this purpose are found everywhere, and take shapes as various as the countries where they stand or the people who erected them. In Northern Europe they are known as Cath or battle-stones, and as rude unhewn monoliths are found everywhere. In India they are as elegant and as elaborately adorned as the Kutub Minar at Delhi, but nowhere was their true architectural expression so mistaken as in Rome. There, by perverting a feature designed for one purpose to a totally different use, an example of bad taste was given till then unknown, though in our days it has become not uncommon.