Trajan\'s Column V Adamklissi

[Nathan Ross]

This is a continuation of some points raised in the 'segmentata use' thread - relatively speaking, how reliable are Trajan's Column and/or the Adamklissi metopes? What can we say about who might have made them, and bearing this in mind what theories can be drawn as to the authenticity of the depictions?

There are always two strains of Roman art, an official high style and a vernacular genre style, the characteristics of both are well known... The column of Trajan has elements of both. The Adamklissi monument has none. It can not be founded in any tradition of Roman Art. It's an isolate. That argues heavily for local workman.

But how widely does the field of 'Roman art' extend? While it might be fallacious of military historians to assume that the only people on the Danube frontier capable of wielding a chisel were Roman soldiers, surely it's not necessary to award the plaudits to the Dacians? Does, for example, this fall into the 'vernacular v official' argument?:



Made by the 20th legion at High Rochester in Britain - a pretty crude bit of carving. Adamklissi is much finer work, but the quality difference between the above and Trajan's Column is so vast that surely the metopes could fall into it somewhere? Or not?

Another consideration is the origin of the soldiers themselves - by the early second century, many of them would have been recruited in Germany or the Danubian provinces anyway, and have a quite different cultural and artistic tradition - quite apart from the column carvers never having seen the army, much of the army may never have seen Rome!

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Whereas Trajan's Column may have been carved by foreign slaves who had never seen a legion in action.


There is, not one iota of evidence for this. This basically grows out of the old canard that Romans were not capable of such a high classical style...

In military history terms, I believe it grows out of the notable mistakes in equipment portrayals on the column, rather than considerations of style.

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There are all kinds of theories about models or sketchbooks that they might have worked from.

Argh! The ghosts of Andre Grabar, Weitzmann and Brilliant follow me even to RAT!!

Basically the whole model/sketchbook theory is just that...theory.

Quite, but what other theories are there to explain the discrepancies in the depictions on the column? I hadn't heard of the gentlemen mentioned above, but they appear (courtesy of Google) to have written largely on late Roman religious art. The 'sketchbooks' theory was, AFAIK, first proposed by Ian Richmond in his 1935 book 'Trajan's Army on Trajan's Column'. A quote:

"The scenes must be the result of working up the contents of an artist's wartime sketchbook... each is based clearly upon a careful sketch, which must have been made in the war area from factual details on the spot, because nowhere else can such things have been seen or imagined in accurate combination."

Disregarding the slightly quaint notion of Roman 'war artists' sitting around sketching as the legions storm the palisades, there is surely too much detail in the column to argue for lack of specialised input, but too many glaring errors to suggest the work of experts. The column must be based on something, surely - why is such a gaffe to assume some sort of 'military advisor' overseeing aspects of the work (with drawings!)?