I’m jonesing to write and research and more. My glasses disappeared at an amusement park Thursday and I’m trying to make do with a pair from 2022 until my new ones arrive. I’ve even order clip on readers to try to work. The focal distance was too short. I have to hold a book or a screen far too close to my face to be comfortable. Now I’ve got my font as big as my computer can make it but the stigmatism means it is still blurry and headache inducing. See I really am an addict for my work. That and I have a brace of kittens in my office I’m trying to socialize so I really should be in this room and that means reading and writing. I’m not really over the loss of my old cat but the family was ready and kittens are adorable and who am I to deny my children the experience.
The images of this post were collected from a physical book I held next to my nose.
Colonna Traiana: Atlante fotografico del fregio istoriato (Trajan’s Column: A Photographic Atlas of the Historiated Frieze) published by the Italian Ministry of Culture (specifically the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione – ICCD) in collaboration with Gangemi Editore
This isn’t every woman on the column but it is a fair selection. There are at least a couple more divine manifestations/personifications (including obviously Victory).
The most remarkable scene is the one of women torturing prisoners. While sometimes the prisoners are said to be Roman, this cannot be correct. Clearly the shaggy hair, beards and mustaches are meant to be read as barbarians. The women are often called widows and it is seen as an act of revenge for their dead husbands but that seems over stepping without external evidence to support it.
The other extraordinary figure is in the first image below. See what appears to be a woman in a peplos-like garment with a shield and spear (lost) on the front lines. Of course some my night say this is a male beardless male figure and perhaps but I really wanted at least one female fighter and this is the closest possiblity I spotted in my blind(ish) search.
Another maybe a woman figure is in the Ancona departure scene. Right above the arch and standards two figures wave off the Emperor as he sails away. It seems possible that the one with the larger cloak might be female. What are they holding in their hands, my first thought was torches but I can’t really tell maybe palm branches.
The other female figures (non-divine) seem to fulfill traditional Roman conceptions of gender roles. They are mothers with children or daughters with fathers or they they are girls providing music for religious sacrifice. There are more Dacian women and children but in the Ancona departure scene we do get a few matronae with children at the back of the group coming through the arch.
I was surprised that in the suicide scenes there are no women. We know that that the Romans conceptualized the noble savage as one who would rather kill himself and his kin rather than be taken prisoner and enslaved or executed. And, that includes images of killing ones wife (e.g. Ludovic Gaul in Palazzo Altemps, shown below), but not on the column!
Ok. Here are the kittens.
Liv Mariah Yarrow 