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187 chapter nine VIEWING THE COLUMN U p to this point, I have concentrated on questions related to how the Column of Marcus Aurelius was created.This last chapter has a different focus and asks a more problematic question: what did the column mean? For the modern viewer, the main message of the column at first seems to be contained in the frieze: a vast expanse of detailed images, inviting equally detailed interpretation. But the frieze is a frustrating artwork, full of contradictions. It appears to tell a story, yet very few of its scenes are historical. It is detailed, but many of the details are wrong. It was on prominent display yet shows many signs that great care was not lavished on it by its carvers. It is apparently intended to give the impression that it chronicles Marcus’s campaigns yet contains substantial elements copied directly from Trajan’s Column. And the frieze is never mentioned in any of our ancient sources. All of this suggests that we should not assume that the frieze of the Column of Marcus Aurelius had the same degree of prominence in the minds—or eyes—of the ancient Romans who created or viewed the monument as it does in ours today. But, at the same time, the frieze represents the investment of an undoubtedly large amount of time and effort. What was its purpose? Surely it must have been intended to contribute something important to the external appearance of the monument. This chapter begins by asking the question of what, exactly, an ancient visitor to the column would have seen. Viewing the frieze would have been very difficult , and I argue that many features that other scholars have interpreted as innovations to aid visibility were not that at all. I then turn to the content of the frieze. Regardless of how difficult they may have been to see, the fact remains that many scenes differ sharply in the tone of their content from those on Trajan’s Column. This new tone—harsher and more violent—has been seen as reflecting a change in mentality, or as intended to project a reassuring message of Roman power in times of increased uncertainty. 188 · VIEWING THE COLUMN But our sources tell us that this violent tone is not new at all, that it had been used before and is exactly what we would expect to find on the column given the nature and goal of Marcus’s wars. Finally, I suggest that the challenge of interpreting the helical frieze has drawn attention away from a much more prominent and visible component of the column’s decoration : the pedestal relief.When interpreting the column’s overall decoration, the pedestal relief’s simple yet powerful message must be considered along with—or even before—that of the helical frieze. What the Viewer Saw To begin with, an ancient Roman would not have had to approach the column closely to be able to see it. Unlike its position today, so hemmed in by tall buildings that it is hardly visible from anywhere outside the Piazza Colonna, in the year 193 it would have dominated the Campus Martius from the Hadrianeum to the Mausoleum of Augustus. Standing so close to the Via Flaminia, it would have been the most impressive single monument that a visitor—or an inhabitant—entering the city from the north would have seen.Trajan’s Column, in comparison, was largely hidden, tucked into its little courtyard behind the Basilica Ulpia. To see the Column of Marcus Aurelius up close a visitor would have had to ascend a series of steps from the Via Flaminia. The initial view of the column would have been dominated by the pedestal, its door (perhaps invitingly open), and its busy decoration. A visitor’s eyes would have travelled quickly up the column to the statue of the emperor, a larger-than-lifesize image in gilded bronze. Of the statue, nothing remains today except (perhaps) the first two joints of the middle finger of one of its hands: this broken bronze finger was found in 1873 under the Palazzo Ferrajoli on the south side of the Piazza della Colonna. It is about twice life-size, and Petersen believed that it may have broken violently from Marcus’s statue when it tumbled to earth in one of the quakes that shook the column.1 After admiring the statue of Marcus, our visitor may then have noted the fenced-in capital, his eye perhaps...

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