The first of many facts that this reader gleaned from Peter Howell’s The Triumphal Arch (see ‘Further reading’ on p.38) is that the English name is a misnomer. ‘Triumphs’ were rare under the Roman Empire (as Mary Beard has shown in her 2007 book, The Roman Triumph), only held in Rome and only by emperors, whereas arches are found throughout the Empire. The German term Ehrenbogen and the Italian arco onorario, both meaning ‘honorific arch’ are more correct, and that certainly fits with the erection of such arches in more recent times as memorials commemorating the collective war dead rather than an individual’s victories. Second, there is no doubt that, for once, this arch was a Roman invention: every attempt to find a Greek prototype, so often the source for ‘Roman’ architectural and artistic productions, has failed.
Triumphs and victories
Although we have literary references to earlier commemorative arches, the first visual record comes in the form of a coin minted in 16 BC. Arches that pre-date this were erected, according to Livy’s History of Rome (written between 27 and 9 BC), by Lucius Stertinius in 196 BC. He put 50,000 pounds of silver into Rome’s treasury (out of the booty he acquired as proconsul of south-east Spain) to pay for the erection of two arches in front of the Temples of Fortuna and Mater Matuta, and their decoration with gilded bronze statues.
Next in chronological order was the arch erected ‘opposite the road by which one climbs to the Capitolium’ by Scipio Africanus. This might have been connected to his defeat of the Carthaginians under Hannibal, but that took place in 201 BC and the arch was erected in 190. Livy tells us that it was decorated with seven gilded statues, two horses, and two marble basins, and it was sited ‘opposite’ rather than across the road.
Recognising historic landscapes