IX. Column of Phocas

from Remembering the End of Eternity: 19th Century Architectural Mementos of Ancient Ruined Rome, 2021

XXII. Cleopatra’s Needles, New York

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.

IX. Column of Phocas

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XXII. Cleopatra’s Needles, New York

IX. Column of Phocas

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This article is from:

Remembering the End of Eternity: 19th Century Architectural Mementos of Ancient Ruined Rome, 2021