Looking Past the Armor: 
Using Trajan's Column
in a Course on the Face of Battle

Gregory N. Daugherty (Randolph-Macon College)

During the 2006 NEH Seminar at the American Academy in Rome I developed a powerpoint presentation for my Ancient warfare class entitled: “Battle Scenes on Trajan’s Column: Veristic Details (or Detailed Approximations) of the Realities of Infantry Combat in the Dacian Wars” I had always used illustrations from the monument to discuss Roman military equipment of the second century AD or to tell the story of the Dacian Wars. Since it purports to depict common soldiers in the course of two campaigns and much combat, I wanted to see if it could be used to convey the sense of “The Face of Battle” as conceived by John Keegan and other military historians. The presentation consists of 40 slides which require about two hours of class time.

Of necessity several slides must conveys facts about the column, Trajan, the two Dacian Wars, and the Forum Traiani. I also spend some time also on the propaganda scheme of Trajan, the Forum and the column in general. I also discuss the nature of combat scenes in the few Hellenistic and Republican works, as well as looking at comparanda such as Trophies, Triumphal scenes, the Marcus Column, later sarcophagi and of the contemporary Great Trajanic Frieze and the Adamklisi Tropaeum. I also have to discuss the degree to which the carving represents “veristic details” to borrow a term from Jon Coulston. I will give a brief run through these slides as an introduction.

The last half or second day of the unit concentrates on the types, frequency and distribution of combat scenes. I review some of the observations from the rich body of scholarship on the column, especially what I call the intentional inaccuracies (no evidence of command and control; unit integrity is not always maintained; some use non standard (or heroic) sword and shield positions in inappropriate situations and several acts of individual initiative by soldiers), and the several cases in which the carvers have accurately represented real Roman tactics and military virtues.

I used as my example for most of these considerations a combat scene from 70-71to illustrate these points. In this presentation I will go through this section in more detail in order to show how I demonstrate to my students how this visual narrative can show collectivity of action and disintegration in the simplified and expressionistic style of a “Flock Structure” and still convey a realistic (or veristic) impression of the Face of Battle. These conclusions are not mine but are derived from the works of A. Goldsworthy, J. Coulston, Richard Brilliant, Per Gustav Hamberg, Tonio Hoelsher and others, but I have attempt to synthesize them to provide students of military history with a much need visual representation of Roman combat.