Divine Representation in Documentary Style: Gods on the Columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius

Abstract

This article examines the important roles played by gods in the friezes of the Columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius and argues that they are treated in a distinctive ‘documentary’ style, comparable in certain ways to accounts of divine action in Roman historiography and designed to produce a compelling narrative effect. First, the Columns and the deities they depict are discussed. The article then looks at cognate descriptions of gods in historiographical texts. Finally, other contemporary monuments that portray the gods are briefly examined to bring out further the distinctive character of the gods on the Columns. This analysis will be seen to have wider implications for our understanding of ‘historical narrative reliefs’ and imperial representation.

The Columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius are two of the most familiar and intensively researched Roman monuments.¹ Their long spiral friezes represent visual campaign records that are unique among extant imperial reliefs for their scope, historical detail and storytelling sophistication. The style, narrative structure, battle imagery and imperial messages, as well as the historical and architectural contexts of the monuments, have been well studied, but representations of gods on the Columns have received comparatively little dedicated attention. The identifications of the depicted gods have been discussed in general studies of the Columns, but there has been no systematic investigation of the character of the divine representations found on these two distinctive monuments.² The goal of this article is to provide a focused assessment of this issue, and to use points of intersection between the imagery of the monuments and Roman historical texts as a starting point from which to suggest a new model for understanding the deities on the Columns — that of ‘documentary’ divine representation. This analysis will be seen to have implications for our understanding of the Columns and of ‘historical narrative reliefs’ more broadly.

Like many other sets of Roman narrative reliefs, the Columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius depict imperial action that is both real-looking and ideologically charged. Contemporary figures are set within a lifelike scenography, with iconographical and compositional techniques used to throw emphasis on imperial protagonists and to frame and commemorate their exemplary actions. The elements of this type of representational art (‘historical narrative’) are well known, and the role of the gods, who appear as supporting characters on the Columns and on many other imperial reliefs, has been frequently noted.³ What has not been widely recognised, however, is the highly unusual manner in which the gods are treated within the Columns’ friezes, and the revealing ways in which this differs from the standard mode of divine representation found on other imperial narrative reliefs. In contrast to monuments such as the Arch of Titus, the Great Trajanic Frieze and the Arch of Constantine, on which fully visible anthropomorphic gods appear as close supporters of the emperor, the Columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius depict gods primarily as partially concealed nature-related figures, who do not interact directly with the emperor.⁴ This article provides an assessment of the divine representations on the Columns, and argues that their particular character can be better understood when set beside descriptions of divine action in Roman historical texts, in which, as on the Columns, gods do not normally appear as direct or ‘full’ participants in the action. It will be argued that the Columns were involved in documenting imperial conquest in a detailed and sustained manner that called for a specific, qualified style of divine representation: one that could be understood by contemporaries as plausible, convincing and ‘true to life’, and thus complement the documentary and commemorative aims of the monuments.

The four sections of the article discuss the following: (I) the iconography and actions of the gods on the Column of Trajan and (II) on the Column of Marcus Aurelius, in order to determine issues of identification and to provide a coherent basis for discussion in the following sections; (III) the points of contact, and of difference, between the gods on the Columns and accounts of divine action in historical texts, where the literary sources are intended to help enhance our understanding of the deities on the monuments; and, briefly, (IV) the representation of gods on other contemporary sets of imperial reliefs (the Great Trajanic Frieze and the panel reliefs of Marcus Aurelius), in which discussion aims to bring the distinctive character of the gods on the Columns into sharper focus and to set the preceding argument in a wider context.

I GODS ON THE COLUMN OF TRAJAN

The Column of Trajan was dedicated on 12 May a.d. 113 and stood towards the west end of Trajan's new forum complex, where its unprecedented 190 m long spiral frieze provided viewers with an extraordinary visual rendition of the emperor's signature Dacian conquests.⁵ The 155 scenes of the frieze are split roughly equally between the first and second of Trajan's Dacian Wars (a.d. 101–102 and 105–106).⁶ Depicted are varied images of campaigning: troop movements, war councils, sacrifice, construction, battles and the emperor's recurring activity as a military leader and administrator.⁷ The extent and detail of the frieze provide an authentic-looking texture, and the narrative is given a highly developed staging. The frieze has protagonists (Trajan and his generals), antagonists (the Dacian king Decebalus and his collaborators) and a broad range of supporting characters (Roman allies, local citizens, industrious soldiers and powerful gods). The action is set in a varied ‘real-world’ environment and ranges from dense and fast-moving scenes of war action to calmer moments of campaign planning and provincial ceremony. The Column's frieze thus represents the most sophisticated visual narrative we have from the Roman world: a documentary masterwork that functioned simultaneously as a highly detailed war report and as an ideologically filtered political monument.⁸

The Column's frieze includes five gods. Three (the river god Danube, Jupiter and Victory) are securely identified by their characteristic appearances and attributes. The remaining two deities are controversial and are without agreed names: both are goddesses with ambiguous iconography that makes their precise interpretation difficult. I look in this section at the deities individually, in order to establish their identities and roles in the narrative. I aim to show that the gods were shaped by a particular set of representational norms.

Danube (scene III)

The first set piece of the frieze shows the Roman army crossing the Danube river on a pontoon bridge (Fig. 1).⁹ A figure of superhuman size rises from the water below. The figure is characterised as a primordial nature divinity, with a mantle, a wreath of reeds and a long, shaggy hairstyle and beard.¹⁰ In this aquatic setting and northern frontier context this can only be the personified Danube.¹¹ The river god extends his right hand towards the bridge in a gesture of encouragement and functions as a topographical anchor for the narrative and as a divine protector of the Roman army (although he does not interact directly with anyone in the scene).¹² In his description of Trajan's campaigns, Pliny writes that the mountains, the rivers and the seas — ‘the forces of the land itself’ (‘terras ipsas’) — will help to defeat the Dacians.¹³ The same author contrasts this divine assistance with the ‘rejoicing’ (‘gaudebant’) of Danube and other rivers at the sight of Domitian's failures.¹⁴ So, too, on the Column, while Trajan's army is protected, a later scene (XXXI) sees Rome's Dacian opponents founder in their attempted crossing of the same, now turbulent, river.¹⁵ The opening scene and the inclusion of the river god thus serve to highlight key narrative themes: the effective action of the Roman army in foreign lands, their mastery of nature (the bridge) and the enabling support of local deities (Danube).¹⁶

FIG 1. Scene XXXVIII from the frieze on the Column of Trajan in Rome. Marble. a.d. 113. Arachne ID: 984006. D-DAI-ROM-91.147_0003001403.jpg. (Photo: K. Anger)

Jupiter (scene XXIV)

Following the march over the Danube, the opening campaign proceeds through a series of key scenes, culminating in a decisive battle in which Jupiter takes part (Fig. 2). These scenes of strategic planning (VI), sacrifice and omen (VIII, IX), imperial address (X), construction and forest clearing (XI–XII, XV) and the organisation of troops (XXI–XXII) provide a foundation for the war, demonstrating among other things the careful planning of the generals, the piety of the emperor, the good relations between Trajan and his soldiers and the hard-working preparation of the army.¹⁷ Through these actions, the Romans ‘earn’ the intervention of Jupiter, who appears in the most significant episode of the narrative so far: an extended infantry and cavalry battle (XXIV), the first of the frieze, that is watched on one side by Trajan, on the other by the Dacian king Decebalus and at the centre by Jupiter.¹⁸

FIG 2. Scene XXIV from the frieze on the Column of Trajan in Rome. Marble. a.d. 113. Arachne ID: 983986. D-DAI-ROM-91.101_00030014024,03.jpg. (Photo: K. Anger)

Jupiter is shown as a half-figure, as if emerging from or above a cloud.¹⁹ The god is framed by dramatic, billowing drapery that had long been used in this configuration to represent swift-moving divine epiphany and flight, particularly for celestial, aquatic and elemental deities.²⁰ Jupiter is thus depicted above the battle in aerial movement over the landscape. He appears, like Danube, as a divine force that is closely connected with the environment. A forward-flaring section of the drapery is balanced behind by the god's outstretched arm, which probably held a thunderbolt (now lost). Jupiter is thus not merely observing but participating in the battle — though it may be noted that none of the participants on either side react to his presence. Jupiter is positioned over the Romans’ front line and wields his lightning in the direction of their Dacian opponents. The lightning, along with the god's embedded, ‘elemental’ habitus, suggests that Jupiter appears here in his aspect as the thunderer (tonans) and that his intervention was perhaps understood as a ‘weather miracle’, akin to the well-known lightning and rain episodes on the later Column of Marcus Aurelius.²¹ Given the nature-related character of the other gods that participate in the frieze, such as Danube (others are discussed below), a connection between Jupiter's appearance and a beneficent storm is attractive. We will see that gods could function in a broadly similar elemental manner in historical texts.²² Jupiter's intervention thus realises in dynamic form the victory-bringing divine protection that Trajan and his army were imagined to have received.²³ The participation of the supreme god provides an unassailable divine justification for the unfolding war.²⁴

Nox (scene XXXVIII)

Following the appearance of Jupiter and the Romans’ first victory (XXIV), the Dacians carry out retaliatory raids on Roman fortifications (XXXII). These attacks precipitate a Roman counter-offensive (XXXVI), in the course of which the gods intervene for a second time to help the Romans in battle (XXXVIII: Fig. 3).²⁵ In this scene, Romans and Dacians fight before a rock face. In the background are loaded wagons, which are marked as Dacian by the dragon-headed object on the central cart. The barbarians defend themselves and their cargo by forming a semi-circular line through the middle of the scene. The Romans move in from all sides in a corresponding semi-circular attack ring, of which the participating goddess is compositionally and conceptually a part.²⁶ The deity emerges from behind the rock face on the left edge of the scene as a half-figure. She wears a classical-style peplos and holds a mantle with both hands above her head. There has been some debate over her identity, but the figure is most often and probably best taken as Nox, the goddess of night.²⁷ The figure's integration with the landscape suggests a nature divinity (in line with many of the other gods in the frieze), and the way the goddess holds her mantle evokes a protective or celestial canopy. The fact that the Dacians are backed into a corner may indicate a surprise attack, and the most logical reading of the scene is that the Romans are executing a stealthy, night-time assault, aided by the darkness of Nox.²⁸ As with the Danube crossing, this episode shows the Romans to be protected by divine forces of nature.²⁹

FIG 3. Scene XXXVIII from the frieze on the Column of Trajan in Rome. Marble. a.d. 113. Arachne ID: 983941. D-DAI-ROM-89.758_00030014038,02.jpg. (Photo: K. Anger)

Victory (scene LXXVIII)

After an extended sequence of battles and advances, the narrative reaches its half-way point at the end of the first war (LXXVIII), where Victory appears flanked by trophies in an emblematic scene that proclaims Roman success and connects the two (chronologically distinct) halves of the frieze (Fig. 4).³⁰ The goddess is depicted in a modified Capuan Aphrodite figure type and is writing on a shield which she supports on a pillar.³¹ Trajanic conquest is validated by the gods. Strikingly, the goddess fills the full height of the frieze (in all the other scenes the figures are smaller, allowing for landscape). Victory's superhuman scale suggests her action takes place in a separate or higher zone. Together, Danube, Jupiter and Victory articulate the opening, high point and conclusion of the first war.

FIG 4. Scene LXXVIII from the frieze on the Column of Trajan in Rome. Marble. a.d. 113. Arachne ID: 3873198. D-DAI-ROM-41.1480_00030014078.jpg. (Photo: Fr W. Deichmann)

‘Final’ goddess (scene CLI)

The final deity in the frieze is an enigmatic goddess who highlights the end of the narrative. The scene (CLI) takes place at the close of the second war after the decisive action of Decebalus’ suicide (CXLV) and depicts the extinguishing of remaining Dacian resistance in a wild, mountainous setting that was probably intended to represent the extreme edge of the Roman world (Fig. 5). The goddess emerges from behind a mountain ridge surrounded by an impressive circular veil and turns sharply to look at the action below, where captured Dacians are being seized by Roman soldiers and led towards a small building or forest hut. The exact meaning of the scene is not certain — the Romans are perhaps taking captives to a prison or clearing the woods of an enemy outpost — and the precise role and identity of the goddess are also unknown.³² The deity's veil and her connection with the landscape suggest, respectively, a celestial and a natural or geographical character, and Nox, Dacia, a forest goddess, the personified far north and various combinations of these deities have been suggested by scholars with equal confidence.³³ The goddess’ open-ended iconography makes a firm identification difficult, but her range of meaning can probably be narrowed down. The point of the final scenes is not just battle and victory, but military action in the depths of the new province. Even the emperor is not depicted travelling this far (his final appearance occurred at scene CXLI). The goddess, then, perhaps served to highlight this aspect of the narrative, and may have been intended as an unnamed(?) geographical deity inhabiting the limits of the empire, balanced by the topographical figure of Danube at the start of the frieze.³⁴ The goddess may show that the pioneering efforts of the legions in new lands continue to operate under a horizon of divine protection. The gods would then mark the auspicious beginning, the victorious mid-point and the far-reaching end of the narrative.

FIG 5. Scene CLI from the frieze on the Column of Trajan in Rome. Marble. a.d. 113. Arachne ID: 983654. D-DAI-ROM-89.28_000300140150,01.jpg. (Photo: F. Schlechter)

Apart from Victory, whose appearance takes place on a different level to the rest of the narrative, the gods on the Column of Trajan were all portrayed in a distinctive representational style. Danube, Jupiter, Nox and the final goddess each emerge from the landscape and intervene in the narrative without interacting directly with the mortal participants.

II GODS ON THE COLUMN OF MARCUS AURELIUS

An examination of the gods on the Column of Marcus Aurelius will sharpen our understanding of the Columns’ unusual style of divine representation. The Column stood in the northern Campus Martius and was dedicated at some point between the emperor's northern triumph of a.d. 176 and a.d. 193, when an inscription referring to a curator of the Column was set up, providing a terminus ante quem for its construction.³⁵ The frieze displays a detailed and dramatic representation of Marcus Aurelius’ German campaigns (a.d. 168–175).³⁶ Marches, speeches, battles, barbarian submissions and wartime executions and destruction are depicted.³⁷ The systematic organisation and thematic variety found on Trajan's Column are subordinated to a heightened message of Roman superiority: the proportion of the frieze dedicated to battle scenes has doubled, and the emperor's visibility and bold images of barbarian punishment and defeat are privileged over historical-looking detail and narrative structure.³⁸ That the designers of the frieze were willing to reformulate their Trajanic model in these ways makes the similarity of the gods on the two monuments striking.³⁹ The role of the gods in extended campaign narratives seems to have been governed by a firm set of expectations.

The frieze contains four scenes of divine action: (1) the crossing of the Danube under the protection of the river god (scene III); (2) the destruction of a barbarian siege engine by a miraculous thunderbolt, sent by an (unseen, assumed) Jupiter (XI: the ‘lightning miracle’); (3) the defeat of a barbarian army by a divine storm, represented in the form of a much-disputed winged rain god (XVI: the ‘rain miracle’); and (4) the appearance of the goddess Victory at the end of the first half of the frieze (unnumbered, between LV and LVI).⁴⁰

The gods follow the same logic as those on the Trajanic Column. The scene with the river god Danube (Fig. 6) is essentially a re-staging of the same episode on the Column of Trajan. There are minor adjustments, such as the placement of the deity's left hand, but overall the two scenes are remarkably alike. The river god is again situated beneath a pontoon bridge and once more gestures for the Roman army to enter barbarian territory. The representation of Victory is likewise almost a reproduction of its Trajanic antecedent.⁴¹ The goddess’ pose, action and position half-way along the frieze all recall her depiction on the Column of Trajan.

FIG 6. Scene III from the frieze on the Column of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. Marble. a.d. 176–193. Arachne ID: 463275. D-DAI-ROM-43.93_0002930703,01.jpg. (Photo: J. Felbermeyer)

The other scenes of divine action, the so-called lightning and rain miracles, have their own iconography, but their basic narratives follow the pattern set by the Trajanic Column.⁴² On both monuments, elemental deities assist the Romans in two important early battles. The lightning miracle (Fig. 7) does not include a deity as such, but a divine interpretation of the scene is suggested by a passage in the Historia Augusta, which reports that Marcus Aurelius ‘by his prayers summoned a thunderbolt from heaven against a war engine of the enemy’ (‘fulmen de caelo precibus suis contra hostium machinamentum extorsit’).⁴³ The shared defining features of this passage and the scene on the frieze (the dramatic lightning strike and the presence of a barbarian siege engine) indicate that the episode was a known event in which the (unseen) gods were held to have delivered a miraculous weather-related victory.⁴⁴

FIG 7. Scene XI from the frieze on the Column of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. Marble. a.d. 176–193. Arachne ID: 463507. D-DAI-ROM-89.196_00029307011,02.jpg. (Photo: F. Schlechter)

The rain miracle develops these themes and provides a striking vision of divine assistance in battle. The scene (Fig. 8) is at a basic level a typical juxtaposition of the well-ordered Roman army with defeated barbarians. The cause of this defeat, however, is a colossal, primeval, winged rain god, who flies across the scene unleashing a storm that drowns the German forces. The identification of the deity is controversial,⁴⁵ but the iconography suggests that the figure in question is a rain or weather god, and the closest parallel is perhaps found in Ovid's description of the wind god Notus (Met. 1.264–269):

madidis Notus evolat alis,

(265) terribilem picea tectus caligine vultum;

barba gravis nimbis, canis fluit unda capillis;

fronte sedent nebulae, rorant pennaeque sinusque.

utque manu lata pendentia nubila pressit,

fit fragor: hinc densi funduntur ab aethere nimbi.

Forth flies Notus with dripping wings, his awful face shrouded in pitchy darkness. His beard is heavy with rain; water flows in streams down his hoary locks; dark clouds rest upon his brow; while his wings and garments drip with dew. And, when he presses the low-hanging clouds with his broad hands, a crashing sound goes forth; and next the dense clouds pour forth their rain. (trans. Miller 1916)

FIG 8. Scene XVI from the frieze on the Column of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. Marble. a.d. 176–193. Arachne ID: 463516. D-DAI-ROM-89.206_00029307016.jpg. (Photo: F. Schlechter)

Ovid's Notus and the Aurelian divinity share several features.⁴⁶ Both possess streaming wings, a thick beard, wild saturated hair and severe meteorological power — and the frieze clearly represents a carefully characterised punishing god of rain. The deity is merged with the downpour he generates and appears like other gods on the Columns as a ‘half-figure’ nature divinity.

The friezes of both Columns, then, open with a divinely sanctioned crossing of the Danube, proceed through a series of key battles in which elemental deities intervene at two decisive points, and conclude their opening sections with emblematic depictions of Victory.⁴⁷ The behaviour of the gods throughout is remarkably consistent: all the deities that participate appear as ‘emerging’ weather- or nature-related figures that are often only covertly involved in the action.⁴⁸ Their interventions are never directly or physically associated with the emperor, and in many cases Trajan and Marcus are not involved in the scenes at all. This conception of divine action, in which nature divinities influence events independently of (that is, without being physically close to) imperial protagonists, differs from that found on the majority of imperial narrative reliefs (as we will see in Section IV). The distinctive character of the gods on the Columns suggests we are dealing with a specific strand of imperial visual narrative that had its own expressive concerns. Literary evidence can help us to interpret this phenomenon.

III DIVINE ACTION AND HISTORICAL TEXTS

The Columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius are shaped by documentary concerns to a greater degree than any other imperial monument.⁴⁹ The friezes provide detailed commentarii-style representations of the emperors’ northern wars and, as has been noted by many scholars, their campaigning themes and continuous narrative structures recall historiography.⁵⁰ This was a new narrative conception designed for an imposing new monument category — the relief-decorated imperial column — and the extraordinary scale and painstaking elaboration of the friezes aimed to convey the concrete significance and reality of the emperors’ unprecedented but otherwise distant military achievements.⁵¹ The kinds of cognate literary expression require attention. For example, Amanda Claridge suggested that ‘both the narrative style and the artistic vocabulary used on the Column [sc. of Trajan] can be matched to the rhetorical language of contemporary panegyric’ (my emphasis), and the gods have sometimes been seen by other scholars as elevating deviations from the real-looking texture that otherwise marks the friezes.⁵² In this section, I would like to argue that the representations of gods on the Columns were in fact carefully designed, not to match the elevated language of panegyric, but to enhance the documentary aims of the monuments; I will use the evidence provided by historiographical texts as a contemporary reference point for the discussion. I begin by briefly outlining the character of the gods as presented in Roman historical texts, before turning to explore the relationship between descriptions of gods in these texts and the deities on the Columns.

Gods in Roman historiography are defined by three main features: (1) they are always invisible, imperfectly perceived, or referred to as a divine collective; (2) they become manifest primarily through natural events, such as storms and eclipses; and (3) they intervene only occasionally, without interacting physically with mortals, but usually appear in significant episodes.⁵³ These characteristics are well known, and they were rarely deviated from by Roman authors. The historians of course had a range of aims, styles and reference points, but describing the gods in anonymous, ‘natural’ terms was on one level an ingrained component of historical writing designed to reinforce its authenticity. Personalised description of the gods was the responsibility of poets, not recorders of historical truth.⁵⁴

The impersonal nature of historiographical divine action becomes clearer when compared with descriptions of the gods in other types of writing. Panegyrical texts, for example, described divine influence on events in greater detail, and the close, collaborative relationship between the emperor and the gods was a key concern of the genre.⁵⁵ The emperor, for instance, was said to be chosen ‘by Jupiter himself’ (‘ab Iove ipso’), and had the privilege of interceding and acting with the gods (‘apud deos adesse consuesti’) on behalf of the empire.⁵⁶ In panegyrical terms, the gods were ‘companions’ (‘comites’) and ‘guardians’ (‘conservatores’) of the emperor.⁵⁷ We will see (in Section IV) that imperial reliefs frequently deployed the gods in an analogous ‘panegyrical’ manner, to celebrate the emperor's actions within a higher, legitimising system of divine protection. The portrayal of the gods in epic texts also differed significantly from historiography.⁵⁸ Epic gods — revealed in their full richness and intensity only to inspired poets — had highly specialised appearances, continually involved themselves in human affairs (and were seen to do so) and were capable of powerful, kinetic interventions.⁵⁹ We may say broadly then that, among many other shades of representation, gods could act at the level of unseen ‘naturalistic’ historical involvement, have an elevating ‘panegyrical’ relationship with leading individuals, or influence events in a vivid and direct ‘epic’ manner.

Among these modes of divine behaviour, the gods on the Columns are closest to what could be called a realist or indirect manner of representation.⁶⁰ We have seen, for example, that the deities all have naturalistic elemental effects. Danube's aquatic sanction, Jupiter's thundering assistance, Nox's protective darkness, the rain god's devastating storm and the forest goddess’ beneficent presence could each be compared loosely with miraculous weather events reported in Tacitus or Cassius Dio.⁶¹ In addition, the participating deities are all depicted as half-figures who emanate from the natural environment — from rivers, trees, mountains and the sky. These qualified epiphanies can be thought of as a visual interpretation of the kind of meditated divine invisibility that is also found in historical texts: the gods appear to be conceived across the Columns as an unseen presence. They are not witnessed or interacted with by any of the mortal participants, and they often appear in the background or at the edge of the scenes in which they act.

To a degree, the Columns are also reminiscent of historical conceptions of the gods in the density of their divine representations. Of the hundreds of scenes on the Columns, only nine have a divine element.⁶² The gods nevertheless help to structure the narratives (as they do in historiography) and are concentrated around significant episodes — campaign beginnings, decisive battles and the closing sections of the wars.⁶³ Some other sets of imperial narrative reliefs, by contrast, insert gods into the majority of their scenes.⁶⁴ The economical divine deployment of the Columns aligns with other ‘realistic’ aspects of the friezes, such as Trajan's and Marcus’ mundane military roles. As in real life, neither emperor physically leads troops in battle.⁶⁵ Apart from Jupiter on the Column of Trajan, the absence of a significant Olympian presence is also notable. The frequent intervention of major gods would shift the tone of the narratives into a different register and was perhaps thought inappropriate for the realist campaigning vision of the Columns.

Alongside these points of similarity, the divine representations of the Columns and historical texts also had many important differences, primarily in terms of their cultural situation and audience, their relationship with the regime and their animating ideas and intentions. For example, the Column narratives are different from those of the historians in that their divine interventions are overwhelmingly positive for the Romans. Historians, on the other hand, often recorded dramatic details and other aspects of events which would be out of place on an official monument. Cassius Dio, for instance, writes that, when the Romans were attacking the city of Hatra during Trajan's Mesopotamian campaigns: ‘There were [sc. divinely inspired] peals of thunder, rainbow tints showed, and lightning, rain-storms, hail and thunderbolts descended upon the Romans as often as they made assaults’ (ἐγίνοντο δὲ βρονταί, καὶ ἴριδες ὑπεφαίνοντο, ἀστραπαί τε καὶ ζάλη χάλαζά τε καὶ κεραυνοὶ τοῖς Ῥωμαίοις ἐνέπιπτον, ὁπότε προσβάλοιεν).⁶⁶ This idea of countervailing divine forces is not allowed to intrude on the monuments’ shared agenda of positive imperial commemoration.⁶⁷

The historians also often frame the intervention of the gods in terms of belief, perception or rumour.⁶⁸ The monuments, on the other hand, assert unequivocally the reality of the emperors’ divine support. The gods are revealed clearly to viewers, even if they are conceived as unseen from the perspective of the mortals within the friezes. This contrast is related to the different models of divine understanding at play within textual historical and visual imperial narratives. For historical actors, historians, and their readers, the will of the gods was part of a complex discourse of interpretation. Historical portents, omens and consultations of the gods through practices such as augury were filtered into the often equivocal reportage of the historian and then received by (critical) readers.⁶⁹ At every stage there was room for debate and evaluation, with a picture of the gods’ actions built out of multiple incomplete impressions of their historical behaviour.⁷⁰

The gods on the Columns worked within a different system of attribution. Texts gave writers the ability to present different views about the same subjects and to explore religious ambiguities.⁷¹ Image-making, on the other hand, was to a large extent a selective mode of signification. A narrative relief must make a concrete choice about which version of a deity it represents, and the visual medium and ideological priorities of the Columns called for more directly intelligible depictions of divine presences. The unseen deity behind the lightning miracle is perhaps the closest the friezes come to the indirect style of the historians. But even here the representation of the divine is adapted to suit the agenda of the monument. In contrast to the other scenes we have discussed, no divine figure is represented. The thunderbolt simply appears from the sky (‘de caelo’). Although the lightning would naturally be associated with Jupiter, the visual anonymisation of the event allows the emperor to assume greater prominence in the scene and, as in the passage from the Historia Augusta (‘precibus suis … extorsit’), to appear as the primary visible protagonist.⁷² The significance of the emperor here matches the increased visibility of the emperor generally on the Aurelian Column when compared with its Trajanic predecessor, and complements contemporary coins showing Marcus holding a thunderbolt while being crowned by Victory, which perhaps also celebrated this event.⁷³ The frieze maintains a close positive connection between the emperor and the lightning miracle, but naturalises the event to fit the real-looking narrative programme of the monument. The scene thus represents a thoughtful combination of imperial praise and mediated documentary-style divine assistance.

Finally, the scenes of the goddess Victory constitute particularly visual narrative manipulations not found in historical texts. The goddess has both a structuring role within the narratives as a marker of their central points and, through her larger scale, stands outside the narratives as an emblematic legitimising divinity visible to viewers on the ground.⁷⁴ The gods on the Columns thus embody a more accessible and explicitly positive view of divine action than do the texts, while still drawing on certain shared ideas about the proper relation of the gods to historical action.

We may say, then, that the Columns aimed to project, in Roman thinking, a relatively ‘realistic’ conception of divine action. The gods do not appear as elevating or panegyrical figures, but as potent elemental forces, whose unseen interventions were tailored to and expressive of a compelling documentary narrative fabric. This ‘true-to-life’ treatment of the gods helps to anchor the action of the friezes in the here-and-now and will have enhanced the credibility and effectiveness of the monuments as visual memorials. The Columns use a specific conception of divine action to articulate persuasively the ‘historically real’ aspects of imperial war.⁷⁵ Other welcome yet potentially conflicting ideas about the emperor and the divine, such as the emperor's special personal relationship with the gods, were visualised on other monuments, and we turn now to look at how deities were depicted on two very different sets of imperial reliefs.

IV DIVINE REPRESENTATION ON CONTEMPORARY RELIEFS

The Great Trajanic Frieze and the panel reliefs of Marcus Aurelius depict scenes of northern campaigning in which the emperor is assisted by the gods, but do so in a way that diverges from the manner of divine representation we have observed on the Columns. They exemplify a separate mode of divine representation in imperial war narratives.

The Great Trajanic Frieze

The Great Trajanic Frieze (a.d. 106–117) survives in eight main consecutive slabs, which were re-used on the Arch of Constantine, and a number of fragments.⁷⁶ We have around 20 m of a minimum original total of at least 40 m, but there was perhaps much more.⁷⁷ This length, combined with an impressive height of nearly 3 m and an explosive artistic style, makes the Frieze one of the largest and most powerful sets of imperial reliefs to have survived. Like the emperor's Column, its main subject was Trajan's Dacian Wars, but, as many scholars have noted, this theme is presented in a strikingly different way. Trajan leads his army in the style of a dynamic warrior-king, mixes freely with the gods and is inserted into a thundering sculptural narrative: the bird's-eye perspective of the Column is replaced by over-life-size figures that dominate the visual field in the manner of a Hellenistic gigantomachy.⁷⁸ The Frieze can thus be thought of as a vivid, heroic counterpart to the detailed and down-to-earth narrative of Trajan's Column.⁷⁹

The main surviving section of the Frieze shows two overlapping scenes: on the left, an imperial arrival or adventus, and a long battle.⁸⁰ The rapid shift between urban arrival and frontier warfare suggests the Frieze employed an elevated technique of narrative elision. The methodical unfolding of the Column is replaced by a seamless vision of decisive scenes. Comprehensive historical-looking documentation becomes selective panegyrical-style celebration.

The gods appear in the adventus scene (Fig. 9) and surround the emperor in a constellation that by the Trajanic period had become well established for imperial reliefs, that of Virtus, Honos and Victory.⁸¹ The scene is not complete — the shoulders of figures who continued onto the next, now lost section can be seen at the left edge of the slab — and we are left with the right half of the scene.⁸² The emperor is framed by gods and soldiers and is shown arriving at an urban location, probably Rome, indicated by an arch carved across the background. Virtus and Honos stand to the left of the emperor to lead him into the city. Victory hovers behind to crown the emperor.⁸³ Trajan's military success is thus directly authenticated by the gods.⁸⁴ The pragmatic campaigning actions that were illustrated on the Column have been re-imagined. The emperor is visualised here as a direct collaborator of the gods, who are presented as prominent, guiding participants in the narrative. This approach is greatly developed on the panel reliefs of Marcus Aurelius.

FIG 9. A section of the Great Trajanic Frieze on the Arch of Constantine in Rome. Marble. a.d. 106–117. Arachne ID: 2405963. D-DAI-ROM-37.329A_29209,05.jpg. (Photo: C. Faraglia)

The panel reliefs of Marcus Aurelius

A group of eleven panel reliefs (a.d. 176–180) survive from a lost monument of Marcus Aurelius (most probably an arch).⁸⁵ These reliefs translate the emperor's northern campaigns and the celebratory activities that followed his victories into a series of focused ceremonial scenes. In place of the unfolding, matter-of-fact presentation on Marcus’ Column, we see a selection of key events excerpted from a larger story for special emphasis: imperial departure, sacrifice, campaign address, barbarian submissions, arrival back in Rome, triumphal procession, sacrifice on the Capitol and a cash handout to the Roman people.⁸⁶

Gods participate in four of the scenes (the departure, arrival, triumph and Capitoline sacrifice) and, as on the Great Trajanic Frieze, are depicted as prominent supporting characters, always near the emperor. For example, the arrival panel (Fig. 10) shows the emperor returning to Rome escorted by a protective entourage of five gods: Victory, Mars, Virtus, Felicitas and (probably) Aeternitas.⁸⁷ The emperor is presented as an impassive, divinely guided figure. Marcus Aurelius stands at the centre of the relief and wears travelling dress. He has just returned from the front. Flanking the emperor are two military gods (Mars⁸⁸ and Virtus⁸⁹), who have accompanied him home, and in the background stand a pair of female deities (probably Aeternitas, on the left, and Felicitas, with her characteristic caduceus and cornucopia, on the right), who act as welcoming divine companions.⁹⁰ Victory flies above the main group and carries a garland, showing that the emperor's actions on the frontier have been successfully completed.⁹¹ Together, the surrounding gods set the emperor in a legitimising framework of explicit divine support. The divinities in the departure, triumph and Capitoline sacrifice panels are presented in a similar way.

FIG 10. The adventus relief from the panel reliefs of Marcus Aurelius. Marble. Now on the Arch of Constantine, Rome. a.d. 176–180. https://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Marcus_Aurelius_relief,_Adventus,_Profectio.jpg. (Photo: D. Castor: Public Domain Creative Commons: Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication)

Where the partially concealed deities on the Columns appeared natural and ‘realistic’, the prominent, emperor-supporting gods on these reliefs and on the Great Trajanic Frieze echo the more elevated portrayal of imperial-divine relations found in panegyrical texts, such as Pliny the Younger's Panegyricus, where the emperor is cast as a partner of the Roman pantheon.⁹² Early in Pliny's speech, for example, the emperor is hailed as a ‘gift of the gods’ (‘munus deorum’) and is said to have been chosen to rule ‘by Jupiter himself’ (‘ab Iove ipso’).⁹³ Pliny further declares that the emperor has a ‘pact with the gods’ (‘pacisceris cum dis’), that he rules according to ‘divine consensus’ (‘consensu deorum’) and that the emperor's achievements are grand occasions witnessed by ‘assemblies of both men and gods’ (‘contione hominum deorumque’).⁹⁴ This framework of direct divine protection is absent from the Columns, but finds parallels in the images of god-supported emperors on the Great Trajanic Frieze and the panel reliefs of Marcus Aurelius. The types of divine figure that participate in the two categories of relief are also different: in place of the primarily nature-related or ‘elemental’ gods on the Columns, the deities on the other sets of reliefs (Virtus, Honos, Victory, Mars, Felicitas and Aeternitas, among others) have powers that relate mainly to protection in war or to the blessings of imperial peace.⁹⁵

The gods are treated in a comparably direct, emperor-supporting manner on a range of other imperial monuments, including the Arch of Titus, the Flavian Cancelleria Reliefs, the Arch of Trajan at Beneventum, the Arch of Septimius Severus in Leptis Magna, the recently discovered tetrarchic reliefs from Nicomedia and the Arch of Constantine.⁹⁶ Among surviving imperial monuments, then, the Columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius stand out. They offer their own unusual interpretation of divine intervention in imperial action, one that avoids the standard panegyrical style of divine representation in favour of a true-seeming, documentary portrayal of the gods as they could be imagined to act in the historical world.⁹⁷ Where the panegyrical mode was impressive and explicit, but on some level ‘un-real’, the documentary style enabled the presentation of a compelling and verifiable campaigning account of the emperor's achievements that drew narrative authority from the ‘realism’ of its naturalistic divine representations. Both categories of relief thus provided imperial events with an enduring aesthetic existence while emphasising different aspects of political legitimacy. The style of the Great Trajanic Frieze and the panel reliefs of Marcus Aurelius was much preferred and may have been attractive to commissioning groups as a highly charged manner of visual praise that focused on the person and deeds of the emperor. The advantage of this approach was that it enabled the clear communication of important conceptual content, such as the emperor's unique relationship with protective deities. The relatively prosaic style of the Columns, on the other hand, lacked some of this symbolic potential. But its authentic visual character, with its careful, ‘lifelike’ handling of the gods, helped to increase the commemorative power of the monuments and persuasively to bring achievements won outside Rome into view for a metropolitan audience, whose relative unfamiliarity with the events may have encouraged the use of an informative and seductively realist narrative style.⁹⁸

V CONCLUSION

There were, it has been argued, multiple discrete ways of depicting the gods on imperial monuments. The Columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius deploy a category-specific documentary style of divine representation, which has some similarities with descriptions of divine action in contemporary history writing, where gods could also be presented ‘realistically’ as unseen natural forces. On the Great Trajanic Frieze and the panel reliefs of Marcus Aurelius, on the other hand, we saw that the gods operated under a different set of norms — as active imperial companions — in a way that is broadly comparable to the elevated relationships between rulers and gods presented in contemporary panegyric.⁹⁹ These differences, it has been suggested, can be understood by thinking about the diverse roles of the gods in imperial reliefs as part of a multi-layered system of dramatic representation, in which distinct ideas about the gods, their relationship with the emperor, and how these themes should be realised artistically were in play in different contexts.¹⁰⁰