Drawings of the column of Arcadius. Constantinople, 1574. Paper

The drawings of the column of Arcadius are on three fold-out sheets in a vellum-bound album containing twenty-one drawings of monuments, views, and curiosities of Constantinople. The album is dated by an inscription to January 1575; the inscription also mentions David Ungnad von Zonneck, the imperial ambassador from Vienna to Constantinople.

Arcadius (395-408) was voted an honorific column in 401. Emulating the helical column erected for his father, Theodosius I, built during the 380s, it was based on the columns of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius in Rome set up in the second century. Construction and decoration lasted until 421, when the column was crowned with a statue of the emperor and dedicated by his son Theodosius II. Numerous tremors had caused fissures and cracks, necessitating five iron retaining bands, and it finally fell in 1719 during an earthquake. All that survives today is the core of the base, its winding internal stair reached by a door on the north side; a low relief panel over the door; and a portion of the first spiral. The narrative scenes on the column represent the expulsion of Goths from Constantinople (spirals 2-5), and episodes from the ensuing battles between Gothic and Byzantine forces on both sea and land (spirals 9-12). The narrative is punctuated by several depictions of the emperor receiving reports in camp or holding audiences at the palace in the capital (spirals 6, 10, 13).

This Constantinopolitan monument differed in several basic ways from its Roman precedents. It had fewer spirals, and its overall height was greater. The scenes representing the emperor addressing the army were frontally oriented, static episodes, a trend begun on the Aurelian column, which, by directly engaging the spectator, effectively interrupted the narrative flow of events. A fundamental addition to the traditional military and imperial themes is the Christian imagery, used on the four-registered postament and the undersides of the platforms on top of the column.

On each of the decorated sides of the base, Arcadius is accompanied by his brother Honorius, stressing the unity of the administratively divided imperium. The west side shows the emperors as generals with military escort. They stand beneath a Latin cross-in-wreath supported by Victory angels (nos. 70, 480) flanked by ascendant chariots, symbolizing the two halves of the empire; below are barbarians pleading for clemency and the usual display of war trophies.

The east side shows the emperors as consuls, an office they held jointly in 402; below, the senate presents gold crowns to the co-consuls and is flanked by personifications of Rome and Constantinople (cf. no. 153).

The south, and main, side shows the emperors again as victorious generals, holding victoriolas; the generals are flanked by high court officials and the imperial bodyguard. Below, personifications of captured cities, wearing mural crowns, offer gifts; above, Victories support a laurel wreath enclosing a Chi Rho with subtended Alpha and Omega; trophies stand at either side. The spoils have been transferred to the top register to avoid breaking into the victory wreath by the window.

The religious and allegorical symbolism combined with the military and civil functions of the imperial corporation express the conception of a Byzantine sempiternal and ever-victorious state under divine patronage. The repetitive imagery here confirms, within a Christian context, the metaphor of victory expressed on Theodosius' obelisk base (no. 99). Bibliography: Freshfield, 1922; Becatti, 1960, pp. 151-288, pis. 56-61, 63, 72-76.