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XXI
![]() ![]() ![]() | Please add updates or make corrections to the NumisWiki text version as appropriate. Tropaeum. -- Trophy, formed of the spoils taken from the enemy, and set up as a public monument. Trophies, equally by the Romans and the Greeks, were esteemed as the rewards and insignia of victories. In the earlier ages they consisted simply of a trunk of a tree, to which a little below the top another piece of wood was fastened crosswise, and set up on the field of battle immediately after a victory ; this was adorned with spoils, or the armour of the vanquished, customarily a cuirass, a helmet, and a buckler. -- The first trophy of which the Roman history makes mention is the one erected by C. Flaminius, in the year 224 B.C. , it is affirmed to have been of gold, and was placed in the Capitol. -- Florus, in recording this fact, also speaks of two other trophies, raised a hundred years after, in their war with the Allobroges by Domitius Aenobarbus and Fabius Maximus, at the confluence of the Isere with the Rhone. To this day there are to be seen at Rome two trophies in marble, believed to have been erected by Marius, in commemoration of his double victory over Jugurtha and over the Cimbri, of which Suetonius speaks. In the latter period of the republic, the Romans were in the habit of carrying trophies before the car of the triumpher. And when it was the object to render these symbols of victory more durable, they were constructed of stone, marble, brass, and any other solid material, dedicated to some divinity, and inscribed with the details of the victory gained. -- From the time of Augustus, who caused a trophy to the glory of the Roman arms to be raised on the Alps, monuments of this description multiplied greatly. The Trajan and Antonine columns are, in fact, trophies on a grand scale. -- Spanheim, in his notes on the Caesars of Julian, has given a representation (finely engraved by Picard) of one of those magnificient trophies which still exist at Rome, and which are ascribed to Trajan. It is in this example that we see the rough trunk of a tree, surmounted with a helmet, enriched with sculpture, and covered with a chlamys ; it is furthermore decorated with quivers, arrows, and bucklers, held by winged figures of sphinxes, tritons, centaurs, etc. Trophies are frequently represented on denarii of the Roman moneyers. Sometimes these objects are exhibited with other military insignia -- namely, darts, shields, and litui, as may be seen on coins of the Julia moneyer ; at other times they are accompanied with figures of kneeling captives, bound to the same trophies, as in medals of the Cornelia Fundania, Junia, and Servilia moneyers. Again we see trophies crowned by Victory, as in Fundania, and Memmia, or by the Genius of Rome, as in Furia. (Spanheim, Pr. ii. 220). -- For an historical explanation of the trophies engraved on certain denarii of the Cornelia family, see the word Sulla. Trophies are typified on Roman coins, in vast numbers, both of the early and lower empire, from Julius to Gallienus. If the oject were to commemorate a victory over the barbarians, it is signified by the figure of Victory herself adorning the oaken trunk with the arms of the conquered tribes. A trophy formed of a suit of body armour, to which are suspended a buckler and a military lituus, one on the right, the other on the left arm of its cross-piece -- there is an axe and the word CAESAR on the field of a gold coin of Julius Caesar. -- A splendid trophy within a temple of two columns appears on a gold medal of Augustus. -- That trophies were used for ornaments to triumphal arches is shown on a large brass of Nero Claudius Drusus, brother of the emperor Tiberius. -- On medals of Trajan, we see Mars Gradivus carrying a trophy on his shoulder, composed sometimes of a cuirass and buckler, at others simply of a cuirass. -- Two trophies finely decorated with armour of the enemy are seen on coins of Trajan ; in one of these types the emperor stands between them. For an explenation of the trophy and accompanying figures on the reverse of a denarius of the Aemilia family, struck in honour of the Consul Aemilius Paullus : see TER PAVLLVS. |