Base for the column of antoninus pius
Base for the column of antoninus pius ii!
Of Rome’s three major commemorative columns, that of Antoninus Pius is perhaps the least appreciated.
Base for the column of antoninus pius
Why? Like the Column of Trajan before it and the Column of Marcus Aurelius after it, it had a base, shaft, capital, and gilded bronze statue of the emperor whom it commemorated. But unlike those other columns it did not commemorate a military conquest; nor was it decorated with a sensational spiral relief or indeed carving of any kind (and the shaft is largely lost in any case).
Yet it did share with those other columns an important function: it served as an imperial tomb.
While the Column of Trajan was a tomb in the strict sense, housing in its base the cremated remains of the emperor and his wife Plotina in golden urns, the Column of Antoninus Pius, like the later Column of Marcus Aurelius, was a cenotaph located near the spot where the emperor had been cremated, his Ustrinum (funeral pyre).
The model (in the Museo della Civiltà Romana) pictured above shows where in th