01-17-2006, 05:04 PM
Quote:I am surprised by some details... Specifically the chain on one
Well, I suppose if the sculptors were indeed Dacian prisoners of war or somesuch they would have a pretty thorough knowledge of Roman chains!
Curious that you should pick on this detail, however - there are several other things depicted on the metopes that could surely only have been known about by direct observation - the aforementioned manicae, for example, which as far as I know are represented in few other places (Alba Julia relief springs to mind - not much else). If remains of segmented arm armour had not been found, we might disbelieve the representations of them on the metopes - vice versa, were it not for the metopes we might think the fragments were from gladiatorial armour! Whoever carved these scenes, I think it's surely true that they must have seen the Roman army in the field - although I'm interested to know which details you think are 'off'. The theory about the sculptors being unencumbered by classical archetypes is also telling, and quite believable IMHO...
Quote:The bridges and earthworks are certainly not so inaccurately rendered as to justify the statement tha they 'would fall down'. That's a purely subjective statement, as subjective as suggesting that they got the scale wrong because the walls of Roman fortifications are not 4 ft tall or that legionnaires were not 40 ft tall.
I'm at risk of talking out of my hat (again) here, since I don't have the relevant books with me, but the point about the bridge is, I think, an objective one - the structure is depicted in great detail, with the support struts clearly portrayed. One strut, however, is upside down, and would not support the weight of the bridge above it. The detail must mean that the sculptor was working from a drawing, plan or model of some kind, but the upside-down strut means that in some way the source was misinterpreted - a bit like somebody asked to draw a complicated bit of flat-pack furniture with only a set of unlabelled assembly plans to guide them (!!). This may seem a small point (the rampart turfs are another) but these things add up, I think.
In the past I've been at pains to give credence to the details of some Roman sculptural art - the Arch of Constantine, for example, which interestingly is very much in the 'vernacular' style - although this is mainly in cases (third century, for instance) when other evidence of military matters is scant or non-existent. Trajan's Column, however, perhaps for reasons of groundless prejudice ( :wink: ) I find less convincing. One reason for this is the existence of the Adamklissi carvings - both they and the column ostensibly depict the same army on the same campaign, but depict them in quite markedly different ways. The one must surely give the lie to the other (to be reductive about it!) - or perhaps both are faulty, but I still remain unconvinced that the style alone of the Adamklissi carvings debars them from consideration.
Nathan Ross
