IX. Column of Phocas 29”h., c 1880, giallo antico marble, nero antico marble, bronze mount See Pricing.
The last monument built in the Roman Forum celebrated not a Roman, but a Byzantine emperor – Flavius Phocas, who reigned from 602 to 610. This was a catch-as-catch-can landmark – the column salvaged from another building, built atop the foundation of a previous monument, the dedicatory inscription on the base written over an earlier text. Even the now absent figure atop the Column may have been re-purposed. So why was this monument so often the subject of architectural mementos? Part of the answer may be with that inscription, about which there was a now difficult to understand excitement when it was rediscovered in the early 19th century.
30
