PILIER, Fr. a buttress.
PILLAGE, (pillage, Fr.) The act of plundering.
To PILLAGE, to spoil, to waste, to plunder.
Pillager, a plunderer; one who gets a thing by violent or illegal means.
PILLAR, in a figurative sense, support. A well disciplined army may be called the pillar of the state; an ill disciplined one, the reverse.
PILLARS, and ARCHES. It was customary among the ancients, particularly among the Romans, to erect public buildings, such as arches and pillars, for the reward and encouragement of noble enterprise. These marks were conferred upon such eminent persons as had either won a victory of extraordinary consequence abroad, or had rescued the commonwealth from any considerable danger. The greatest actions of the heroes they stood to honor, were curiously expressed, or the whole procession of a triumph cut out on the sides. The arches built by Romulus were only of brick, those of Camillus of plain square stones; but those of Cæsar, Drusus, Titus, Trajan, Gordian, &c. were all entirely marble. As to their figure, they were at first semicircular; whence probably they took their names. Afterwards they were built four square, with a spacious arched gate in the middle, and little ones on each side. Upon the vaulted part of the middle gate, hung little winged images, representing victory, with crowns in their hands, which when they were let down, they put upon the conqueror’s head as he passed under the triumph.—Fabricii Roma, cap. 15.
The columns or pillars were converted to the same design as the arches, for the honorable memorial of some noble victory or exploit, after they had been a long time in use for the chief ornaments of the sepulchres of great men, as may be gathered from Homer, Iliad 16.
The pillars of the emperors Trajan and Antoninus, have been extremely admired for their beauty and curious work. We find them thus particular described in page 53, of Kennett’s Roman Antiquities.
The former was set up in the middle of Trajan’s forum, being composed of 24 great stones of marble, but so curiously cemented, as to seem one entire natural stone. The height was 144 feet, according to Eutropius, (Hist. lib. 8.) though Martian (lib. iii. cap. 13.) seems to make them but 128. It is ascended by 185 winding stairs, and has 40 little windows for the admission of light. The whole pillar is incrusted with marble, in which are expressed all the noble actions of the emperor, and particularly the Dacian war. One may see all over it the several figures of forts, bulwarks, bridges, ships, &c. and all manner of arms, as shields, helmets, targets, swords, spears, daggers; belts, &c. together with the several offices and employments of the soldiers; some digging trenches, some measuring out a place for the tents, and others making a triumphal procession. (Fabricus, cap. 7.) But the noblest ornament of this pillar, was the statute of Trajan on the top, of a gigantic bigness, being no less than 20 feet high. He was represented in a coat of armor proper to the general, holding in his left hand a sceptre, in his right a hollow globe of gold, in which his own ashes were deposited after his death, (Casalius, par. I. c. 2.)
The column or pillar of Antoninus, was raised in imitation of this, which it exceeded only in one respect, that it was 176 feet high; (Martian, lib. vi. cap. 13.) for the work was much inferior to the former, as being undertaken in the declining age of the empire. The ascent on the inside was 106 stairs, and the windows in the inside 56. The sculpture and the other ornaments were of the same nature as those of the first; and on the top stood a colossus of the emperor naked, as appears from some of his coins. See Martian idem.