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X.—A Revised History of the Column of Phocas in the Roman Forum

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2012

F.M. Nichols
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Extract

It may be of interest to the Society if I submit to its notice some observations made last year, which render it necessary to re-write the history of one of the best known monuments of Rome.

The monument, which for fifty-six years has been called the Column of Phocas, was formerly, when nothing but the pillar itself was seen above ground, the subject of much curiosity and speculation among the visitors of the Forum. The “nameless column with the buried base” was thought by some to be the sole relic of a great temple or other public building. By others it had been conjectured to be part of the famous bridge by which Caligula united his palace on the Palatine with the temple of Capitoline Jupiter. In the early years of the century, among other works of the same kind, it was resolved to clear away the soil and débris from the substructure of this column; and on the 13th of March, 1813, the inscription of its pedestal, which had remained for centuries a few feet below the level of the ground, was uncovered, and revealed the fact that it had supported a statue dedicated by the exarch Smaragdus to the honour of a Caesar, whose name had been erased, but who, by other indications, could be no other than Phocas, an emperor of evil reputation, but to whom Rome and the world owe some gratitude for having been instrumental in dedicating the Pantheon to Christian worship, and so preserving from ruin one of the noblest and most original architectural works of antiquity.

Type
Research Article
Information
Archaeologia , Volume 52 , Issue 1 , 1890 , pp. 183 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Antiquaries of London 1890

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References

page 183 note a Byron, , Childe Harold, canto iv. bGoogle Scholar

page 183 note b I copy the restorations from Jordan's Sylloge of Inscriptions of the Forum (Ephemeris Epigraph. iii. 299); but I believe the words are the same as those restored by Fea in 1818 on the monument itself, the holes being filled up with stucco. Nibby, , Roma Antica, ii., 151Google Scholar.

page 185 note a Quando questa colonna sara tntta isolata fino al piano antico e alia proporzionata distanza, saremo persuasi clie in quel tempo, già creduto barbaro e senza arti, questi ancora avevano de' buoni scultori e incisori di caratteri, e architetti che sapevano secondare le idee bastamente grandiose di clii poteva comandare e spendere. Fea, , Varietd di Notizie, 67Google Scholar.

page 185 note b Una piramide di gradini, ornati di goffa modinatura, che contrastano mirabilmente collo stile della colonna e mostrano come miserabile fosse lo stato delle arte sul principio del secolo settimo. Nibby, , Roma Antica, ii., 152Google Scholar.

page 185 note c Die Phocas-säule, das mühsam und erbärmlich zusammengeraubte Denkmal eines der fluchwürdigsten Tyrannen von Bysanz. Bunsen, , Beschreibung der Stadt Rom, iii., 2, 116Google Scholar.

page 190 note a Of course I speak here of tho Hooks of marble properly belonging to the monument. The place of the missing steps is now in a great measure filled up with blocks of stone taken from other ruins.

page 194 note a See this bull in the English translation of the Miralilia, Marvels of Rome, p. 181.

page 194 note b I hear from M. Grueber, that there is a small medal of Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire, upon which the Column of Phocas is represented, with the inscription, COL. FOC. MOKVMENTA. DETECTA.