[103 A.D.]
“The bas-relief” representing the first campaign against the Dacians begins at the base by a representation of the banks of the Save, down which the Roman army passed, and shows military storehouses, piles of wood, stacks of hay, and wooden huts. Then follow forts with soldiers on guard, and boats carrying barrels of provisions. The river god Danube then appears and looks on with astonishment at the bridge of boats over which the Roman army is passing. The baggage of the soldiers on the march, tied to the top of the vallum or palisade which they carry, and the different military standards, are very distinctly shown. Many of the men are without covering on their heads, but some wear lions’ skins. The emperor and his staff are then introduced. He is sitting upon a suggestus or platform, and Lucius, the prætorian prefect, sits beside him. The suovetaurilia, a grand sacrificial celebration, is the next scene, with priests in the cinctus gabinus and trumpeters. After this the emperor is seen making a speech to the army, and a little farther on the building of a stone encampment enclosing huts is being carried on with great vigour, and bridges are being thrown across a river, over which cavalry are passing.
“A battle seems then to take place, and the heads of two enemies are being brought to the emperor. The Dacian army with the dragon ensign and the Dacian cap, the symbol of superior rank, seen upon the statues of the Dacian prisoners on the Arch of Constantine, appears. Jupiter gives the victory to the Romans, the Dacian camp is burned, and the Dacians fly. Numerous representations of forts, boats, different kinds of troops, skirmishes, and sieges follow, ending with the surrender of Decebalus and the return of Trajan to Rome, where a great festival is celebrated. The arrival at Rome, and the crowd of Romans going to meet the great conqueror, are very vividly drawn. An immense number of bulls for sacrifice, altars, camilli, and half-naked popæ are introduced into the triumphal rejoicings, and the first campaign ends with the figure of Trajan offering incense on the altar of Jupiter Capitolinus.
[113 A.D.]
“A somewhat similar series of scenes are represented in the sculptures which depict the second campaign. Perhaps the most interesting is that of the great bridge over the Danube, made of wood supported on stone piers, the foundations of which may still be seen in the bed of the river. Apollodorus, the architect of the Forum, designed this immense work, which crossed the Danube at a spot where it is not less than 1300 yards wide, near the village of Gieli. A permanent road into Dacia and secure communications with his basis of operations having thus been secured, Trajan gradually advanced from post to post, driving the Dacians into the mountainous parts of the country. The sculptures represent a number of skirmishes and assaults upon fortified places, but no regular pitched battle. At last the ghastly spectacle of the head and hands of Decebalus is exhibited on a board by two soldiers in front of the Prætorium. This disgusting scene is followed by a representation of the storming of the last strongholds of the enemy in the mountains, and a mournful procession of fugitives carrying away their goods and driving their cattle into exile forms the close of the sculptured history of the Dacian campaigns of Trajan.
“In these curious bas-reliefs,” Burn continues, “we have a treasury of information on the religion, the military science, the habits and dress of the Romans of the empire far more valuable than ten thousand pages of descriptive writing. The lover of Roman antiquities will learn more by studying Fabretti’s engravings of these reliefs, or the casts at the French Academy at Rome, and at the Kensington Museum, than by much book-labour. The descriptions of Livy and Polybius, Cæsar and Tacitus, receive life and movement and interest as we look at the actual figures (oculis subjecta fidelibus) of the general and his staff; the Prætorian guards marked by their belts over the left shoulder; the fierce-looking standard-bearers and centurions with their heads covered by lions’ skins, the shaggy manes of which stream down their backs; the rank and file carrying enormous stakes; the master masons, sappers, and pioneers, with their axes and crowbars; the lancers, heavy and light cavalry, and royal chargers; the Sarmatian horsemen clothed, both riders and steeds, in complete scale armour, and the Moorish cavalry, riding without reins.
“Bridges are constructed, Roman causeways laid, forts attacked with all kinds of military engines; the charge of cavalry, the rout and confusion of a defeated army, are all most vividly depicted. Trajan in person traverses the ranks on foot, or mounts the suggestus and harangues his men, or receives with simple dignity the submission of the enemy, or marches with all the pomp of a Roman procession under the triumphal arch. The soldier-like simplicity of the great military emperor is strikingly portrayed. There is no silken tent, or richly decorated chariot, or throne, or canopy of state to be seen. His colonel of the guards sits beside him, as an equal, on the suggestus. In the midst of a battle the emperor tears up his robe to bind the wounds of his soldiers; he is present everywhere, wearing a sword and fighting in person. Nothing could be more illustrative of the state of Roman affairs in that iron age, when again, as in the olden times, a rough and unlettered warrior, fresh from the camp, swayed the destinies of the empire.”[k]
A Soldier
(From Trajan’s Column)