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Title: The Man who Outstrips All Others
Subtitle: Trajan's Column and Senatorial Remembrance Culture
Author(s): DANNER, Marcel
Journal: BABESCH
Volume: 98    Date: 2023   
Pages: 75-99
DOI: 10.2143/BAB.98.0.3291703

Abstract :
Most scholars regard Trajan’s Column and in particular its spiral relief as a medium of imperial self-representation. My article analyses the Column, moreover, as an honorific monument that had been decreed by the senate and that should be seen, thus, also as an expression of aristocratic ideas. It will be established that its architecture and décor as well as the sepulchre in the pedestal draw upon republican traditions and relate Trajan to renowned figures of the past. These ideas find several parallels in the senatorial literature of Trajan’s reign and fit at best into the emperor’s representation as a restorer of republican ideals and of the senate’s liberty after recent dark ages.

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