The eroded carvings are hard to make out above the first few twists of the story. Today tourists crane their necks up at it as guides explain its history. Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen photographed at Musei Capitolini, Rome In this marble statue he wears armor typically used in triumphal parades. 98 until 117, when he fell ill and died, expanded the Roman Empire to its farthest boundaries. Completed in 113, the column has stood for more than 1,900 years. Spiraling around the column like a modern-day comic strip is a narrative of the Dacian campaigns: Thousands of intricately carved Romans and Dacians march, build, fight, sail, sneak, negotiate, plead, and perish in 155 scenes.
Towering over it was a stone column 126 feet high, crowned with a bronze statue of the conqueror.
The forum was “unique under the heavens,” one early historian enthused, “beggaring description and never again to be imitated by mortal men.” To commemorate the victory, Trajan commissioned a forum that included a spacious plaza surrounded by colonnades, two libraries, a grand civic space known as the Basilica Ulpia, and possibly even a temple. One contemporary chronicler boasted that the conquest yielded a half million pounds of gold and a million pounds of silver, not to mention a fertile new province. Trajan’s war on the Dacians, a civilization in what is now Romania, was the defining event of his 19-year rule. 101 and 106, the emperor Trajan mustered tens of thousands of Roman troops, crossed the Danube River on two of the longest bridges the ancient world had ever seen, defeated a mighty barbarian empire on its mountainous home turf twice, then systematically wiped it from the face of Europe.
The massive modern monument at right commemorates Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of a united Italy. Peter installed by a Renaissance pope on top, towers over the ruins of Trajan’s Forum, which once included two libraries and a grand civic space paid for by war spoils from Dacia.
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