Trajan 's Column is a Roman triumphal column in Rome, Italy, that commemorates Roman emperor Trajan 's victory in the Dacian Wars. Trajan is the “first of the series of emperors that came outside of Italy” as stated by the movie Rome: Engineering an Empire. In the movie, it also stated that Trajan in order to be a “Roman, appealed to the unyielding sense of supremacy”. He started by launching a mass building campaign beginning with the nation’s infrastructure. He repaired roads, harbors, public buildings, and baths. All that needed a great deal of money, and in Roman terms that meant conquest. He, after years of bitter war, was able to conquer Dacia, an elusive region between Romania and Hungary, that fended of the Romans for several generations. With 10 tons of gold at his disposal, he spent his capital on a new public space in order to stop congestsion in other regions of Rome. With Trajan as the emperor, Roman empire was at its highest peak of power. In order to celebrate that power, Trajan commissioned a forum bigger that any of the forums that previous emperors built, combined. In the center of that forum was a column praising Trajan and achievements of the Romans. Around the façade of the column there is a spiraling helical frieze that portrays the success of the Trajan in the combat against Dacia. This directly connects to the national pride of Romans because what it meant to be a Roman at the time is to …show more content…
Instead they will try to argue the point that the Roman art was created in order to beautify and decorate the grand empire. That however, is wrong. If the art was indeed created to beautify, then the art from the Republican period should also be made for decorations. But that is not the case; the heads of prominent patricians were made for individual purposes rather than ornamenting. By referring to the Republican packet, on page three, paragraph two it stated that the people of Rome commissioned the heads to be made “ to commemorate their status as Roman citizens”, for the ones with”a long and distinguished genealogy” were the most respected. The ones without that lineage that the Romans were so “fiercely proud of” were ridiculed and humiliated. Therefore the purpose of art in Republican Rome served as a symbol of pride not an object of