“There were monuments all over the city that either were torn down, falling down, or were never completed,” says Rose. Repurposing pieces of architecture or architectural sculptures, often called spolia, or spoils, in new buildings was extremely common in ancient Rome. How they solved this problem and created a uniquely Constantinian space is a testament not only to their skill, but also to their understanding of the complex realities of the late Roman Empire, where awareness of the past was one way to ensure success in the future. By Constantine’s time, Rome had a 1,000-year history, and very little space remained in the city center for his architects to honor him. In reconsidering the monument’s creation, scholars are also investigating how ancient viewers would have experienced it, and indeed this entire quarter of the city, which was packed with monuments dating from all periods of Rome’s past. “The more I read, the more interested I became and the more I thought these reliefs must be reused elements from some other monument.” This would, says Rose, mean rethinking more than a century of scholarship and creating a new biography of the arch. “I always wanted to look into the problem of why the emperor’s heads were clearly re-carved and why the legs and feet of so many people depicted on the frieze are missing,” he says. But University of Pennsylvania archaeologist C. Scholars have always believed that the six slabs of the frieze, which are above the two small arches at both the monument’s front and back, as well as on each of its two sides, are also Constantinian-era components. The monument was topped by a gilded bronze statue of the emperor in his chariot. These include the dedicatory inscription along the top of both sides of the structure, as well as the winged victory figures flanking the central passageway and several reliefs inside the central passageway, some of which depict the sun god, Sol. Other decorative elements of the arch were created at the time it was built. It has long been clear to scholars that much of the arch’s sculpture came from monuments dedicated to the earlier emperors Trajan (r. The monument rises 69 feet high and measures 85 feet wide, and its decorations represent three centuries of imperial history. Sole rulership of the Eastern Empire would come 12 years later, at which time he became the ruler of the entire empire. This battle brought an end to nearly a century of civil war and cemented Constantine’s place as the sole ruler of the Western Roman Empire. For six years, the two had reigned as co-emperors. 306–312) at the Milvian Bridge just outside Rome on October 28, A.D. 306–337) victory over the usurper Maxentius (r. The arch celebrates the emperor Constantine’s (r. Only three of the city’s triumphal arches still exist, the largest of which is the Arch of Constantine. Yet little is known about the vast majority of these monuments from contemporaneous or later sources, and no remains of them survive. There were once 57 triumphal arches in Rome and more across the empire. On occasion, the Senate also voted to build a monumental arch to celebrate the commander’s conquests. Celebrating great military victories did not always end there. He was followed by his troops, whom ancient sources describe as singing loudly and shouting victory chants. People craned their necks as the victorious general rode by in a four-horse chariot covered in laurel, the symbol of victory, holding a scepter and wearing a purple tunic, a decorated gold toga, a laurel wreath, and a gold crown. Shackled prisoners, many of whom would later be executed, were hauled through the city, and heaping mounds of booty-gold and silver, marble statues, and more-were piled high on wagons pulled by draft animals. During these grand spectacles, Romans watched as senators clad in brilliant white togas trimmed in purple made their way through crowded, noisy streets, followed by trumpeters and scores of other musicians, bulls to be slaughtered for feasts, and exotic animals captured in far-off conquered lands. The pinnacle of an ancient Roman general’s or emperor’s military career was to be awarded the right to parade through the streets of Rome to celebrate his victories on the battlefield and flaunt the spoils of war in an extravagant display known as a triumph. For the Emperor Caesar Flavius Constantine the Greatest, pious blessed Augustus, because by inspiration of divinity, in greatness of his mind, from a tyrant on one side and from every faction of all on the other side at once, with his army he avenged the republic with just arms, the Senate and Roman People (SPQR) dedicated this arch as a sign for his triumphs.-Dedicatory inscription, Arch of Constantine, Rome
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