Titus Arch

Who Built the Arch of Titus?

The oldest-known depiction of the menorah and the sacred vessels from the Second Temple in Jerusalem appear on one of the bas-reliefs adorning the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum. This arch was erected in the first century CE to commemorate Titus’s conquest and destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. This past spring, a second Arch of Titus was discovered in Rome. This one stood in the Circus Maximus stadium and it too commemorates the conquest of Jerusalem. This discovery, along with recently completed research confirming that the menorah in the bas-relief originally was painted a golden yellow to emphasize that it had been crafted from pure gold, sheds new light on this distinctive architectural element. > by Yadin Roman

The eve of Hanukka on December 23, 1997, was clear and starry in Rome. A group of people was gathered in the Roman Forum next to the Arch of Titus, which stands on the Via Sacra leading to the Temple of Jupiter on Capitoline Hill. Roman emperor Domitian is credited with erecting this arch in 81 CE to commemorate the deification of his brother Titus and his conquest and destruction of Jerusalem. For hundreds of years, perhaps even since the arch was completed, the rabbis of the Jewish community in Roman strictly forbade their followers from walking under the arch. Anyone who violated this ban was considered to have left Judaism and his or her soul was cut off from the Jewish people.
The group that gathered by the arch on the eve of Hanukka in 1997 included then-Italian prime minister Romano Prodi, then-mayor of Rome Francesco Rutelli, Italian dignitaries, the rabbis of Rome, and the city’s entire Jewish community. In an impressive, joyous ceremony full of light, the ban on walking under the arch was formally revoked in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the State of Israel.
The time has come to remember the tragedy of the Holocaust and reaffirm the right of all people to live in peace and dignity in all places, the Italian prime minister declared in his speech at the ceremony.
“When many people look at the sculpture under the arch,” the mayor said, “they only see the misery inflicted upon a conquered race. But look again. I see not a conquered race, but a monument to one of the greatest modern nations on earth. The conquering Romans are a footnote of history, but the Jewish nation continues to thrive, within and outside the State of Israel. That is what the arch represents to me.”
After the ceremony, some Roman Jews peeked at the reliefs, which are located on the underside of the arch, but could not bring themselves to actually walk through it.
The Arch of Titus is one of the 36 triumphal arches that stood in Rome in the fourth century CE, before the glory of the empire that the city’s sons had established faded. Only three of these arches still are standing today: the Arch of Titus; the Arch of Septimius Severus, which was erected in 203-205 CE; and the Arch of Constantine, which was constructed in 312 CE.
The Roman triumphal arch is one of the innovations that the Romans gave to the world of architecture. Triumphal gates had been known for thousands of years before the days of Rome. Hittite, Assyrian, and Babylonian kings would boast of their victories by building monuments adorned with inscriptions and depictions relating the story of their triumphs. The Etruscans, the ancient tribe that the Romans conquered at the beginning of their rise, would erect such monuments at the entrances to their cities or on central streets as stand-alone elements not connected to a wall or a building.
The Roman triumphal arch was a distinctive development because it brought together two elements that had never been seen together before: a round arch mounted on two columns or piers and a large square assemblage on top of it. These two elements had been used separately in the ancient world for hundreds of years. Arches appeared in canals and water drainage systems and as an engineering element to lower the pressure on openings in a wall such as windows and entranceways. The upper structure of the arch, a beam that connects two columns, could be seen in Greek temples as part of the system that held up the roof and provided a place for reliefs and decorations.
Sculptures of gods or of the emperor were installed above the Roman triumphal arch. The sculptures on the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum disappeared over the ages, but examples of this can be seen in the 40 odd triumphal arches erected in the world’s capitals, almost all of which were inspired by the Arch of Titus. They include the Arc de Triomphe in Paris; the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin; the triumphal arches in Saint Petersburg, Moscow, New York, London, New Delhi, and Brussels; as well as the arches in numerous other countries, such as Hungary, Italy, Iraq, Laos, Macedonia, the Philippines, Portugal, Romania, and Australia, to name a few.
The first Roman triumphal arches were erected in the days of the republic by leaders and military commanders who saved the city or presided over important victories. They built monuments to commemorate their valor themselves. However, when the republic became an empire, emperor Augustus ordered that triumphal arches only be built for emperors – and only after the Senate had approved the convening of a triumphal march, known as a triumph, for them. The triumphal arch thus transformed from a personal symbol to a tool of governmental rule.
Rome built imperial arches in public places, such as on main roads, at squares, at the entrances to stadiums, and so on. The goal was for the public to pass through the arch and be impressed by the message that this public monument was intended to convey.
The Triumph
Titus Flavius Caesar rose to power on June 23, 79 CE, following the death of his father, emperor Vespasian. In 67 CE, 13 years earlier, emperor Nero had sent Vespasian to the province of Judea to quell the Jews’ revolt. At the time, Vespasian, then 57, already had retired from public life. He had distinguished himself in his youth as a military commander fighting in Germany and participating in the invasion of England. In 63 CE, Vespasian was appointed governor of Africa. After completing his term in Africa, he returned to Rome. Vespasian was not from a wealthy family; his weak financial position after retiring from public office forced him to earn a living by trading in mules, but his business dealings were unsuccessful. Meanwhile, he was invited to join Nero’s entourage on a trip to Greece. During the visit, Vespasian was caught dozing at one of the mad emperor’s theater or musical performances and was forced to flee for his life. After the revolt broke out in Judea, and the Jewish rebels defeated the Roman governor in Syria, Nero summoned the disgraced Vespasian to duty, handing him command of the legions in the east. Nero did not choose Vespasian by chance: a military commander who was not a member of the Roman nobility was not considered a threat to the emperor. Vespasian had his oldest son, Titus, join his forces.
Two years after the rebellion broke out, in 68 CE, Nero committed suicide. The empire deteriorated during a series of power struggles in a period that became known as the Year of the Four Emperors. The first to take power were the commanders of the western legions. When they did not succeed to stabilize the empire – and were murdered, one after the other – the legions in Alexandria declared Vespasian the new emperor. The legions of the east quickly joined them. Vitellius, the last of the three emperors who preceded Vespasian, was murdered and Vespasian was named emperor on July 1, 69 CE.
The new emperor left his son Titus in Judea to finish the war against the Jews. During 70 CE, Titus conquered the Jordan Valley and the approach to Jericho and the Dead Sea and then set siege to Jerusalem. After a five-month siege, and the death of thousands of the city’s residents in battle and from starvation, Jerusalem fell. The Roman legions slaughtered or enslaved the surviving Jerusalemites, demolished the city’s buildings, and destroyed the magnificent Second Temple that Herod had built.
Titus returned to Rome a hero, accompanied by his Jewish mistress, Bernice, the daughter of king Agrippa I and the great-granddaughter of Herod and Mariamne the Hasmonean, and Josephus Flavius, who was appointed the imperial court historian.
The city honored Vespasian and Titus for the victory in Judea with a grand triumph: a procession of the legions and thousands of Jewish captives as well as a display of the great treasures plundered in the war, including the sacred Temple vessels. At the end of the victory procession, Simeon Bar Giora, who the Romans had identified as the military commander of the rebellion, was executed.
Josephus provides a detailed description of the triumph in his book, The Jewish War (Book VII, 132-162, from H. St. J. Thackeray’s translation from the Greek, Loeb Classical Library, 2004).
“It is impossible adequately to describe the multitude of those spectacles and their magnificence under every conceivable aspect,” Josephus writes before offering a survey of the wealth of gold, silver, and ivory vessels, tapestries dyed with the rare purple dye, precious stones, and sculptures.
The procession also included many species of animals and multitudes of finely dressed people, including the captives, Josephus continues, noting, “the variety and beauty of their dresses concealing from view any unsightliness arising from bodily disfigurement.” Soldiers carried huge mobile stages depicting the story of the war in which “a prosperous country was devastated, … also every place full of slaughter…. The spoils in general were borne in promiscuous heaps; but conspicuous above all stood out those captured in the temple at Jerusalem. These consisted of a golden table, many talents in weight, and a lampstead [the menorah], likewise made of gold, but constructed on a different pattern from those which we use in ordinary life. Affixed to a pedestal was a central shaft, from which there extended slender branches, arranged trident-fashion, a wrought lamp being attached to the extremity of each branch; of these there were seven, indicating the honour paid to that number among the Jews. After these, and last of the spoils, was carried a copy the Jewish Law [a Torah scroll]….
“The triumphal procession ended at the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, on reaching which they halted; for it was a time-honoured custom to wait there until the execution of the enemy’s general was announced. This was Simon, son of Gioras, who had just figured in the pageant among the prisoners, and then, with a halter thrown over him and scourged meanwhile by his conductors, had been hauled to the spot abutting on the Forum, where Roman law requires that malefactors condemned to death should be executed. After the announcement that Simon was no more and the shouts of universal applause which greeted it, the princes [Vespasian and Titus] began the sacrifices, which having been duly offered with the customary prayers, they withdrew to the palace.”
After the triumphal festivities ended, Vespasian built a temple to peace and “Here, too, he laid up the vessels of gold from the temple of the Jews, on which he prided himself; but their Law [Torah scroll] and the purple hangings of the sanctuary he ordered to be deposited and kept in the palace.”
Vespasian used the extensive spoils from the Second Temple to finance building the grand Colosseum stadium. When he died in 79 CE, Titus succeeded him; this was the first time in the Roman empire that a son succeeded his father. Titus ruled for only two years, during which he faithfully dealt with the victims of the eruption of the volcano of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, the great fire that broke out in Rome in 80 CE, and the victims of the plague that swept his empire. He also completed the construction of the Colosseum before his death in September 81 CE.
Domitian, the brother of Titus, succeeded him. Today it is commonly accepted that he erected the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum shortly after his brother’s death. The arch commemorates the deification of Titus – something which happens after his death – and so the accepted explanation is that Domitian built it to reinforce his connection to the acts of valor performed by his father and brother, acts that won him the throne.
The Temple Menorah
The Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum has a monumental inscription on its facade: “The Senate and the People of Rome to the late divine Titus Vespasian, Augustus, son of the late divine Vespasian.” The inscription on the opposite side of the arch was added much later, after the arch was restored in 1882, after having been used for generations as part of the wall surrounding the estate of a wealthy resident of Rome. This inscription describes the restoration work, which was performed at the orders of pope Pius VII.
When one walks under the arch and looks up, there is a relief in the center of the underside depicting the deification of Titus. However, the arch’s main significance comes from two other reliefs, which are located high up on the inner sides of the arch. Both of these reliefs depict the triumph to celebrate crushing the rebellion in Judea. One shows Titus riding a chariot harnessed to four white horses with an eagle, the symbol of Roman power, perched on his shoulder. Soldiers are depicted marching alongside the chariot and in front of it are rows of captives. The second relief shows Roman soldiers carrying the sacred vessels of the Temple, with the golden menorah at the center, surrounded by the table of the shew bread, trumpets, and incense shovels.
This is the oldest known depiction of the sacred Temple vessels, leading researchers to accept it as an accurate depiction of the menorah that stood in the Second Temple. However, as more and more ancient synagogues were dug up by archaeologists, a different kind of menorah came to light, this time depicted on the mosaic floors of these synagogues from the talmudic period. These mosaic menorahs, which were dated to later periods than the Arch of Titus, were shown standing on three legs, not on a base, as it is shown on the Arch of Titus. A very active debate on the topic has been underway for decades – did the Jewish mosaic floor artists get it wrong? Some claim that the base seen on the menorah in the arch is simply a box that was built around the menorah so that it could be carried easily in the triumph.
The latest of the many studies of the menorah on the Arch of Titus was conducted in June 2012 by a team of archaeologists from Yeshivah University in New York, US, working with archaeologists from Rome. They performed high-resolution, three-dimensional scans of the reliefs of the menorah and the deification. One of their most interesting findings was the discovery of traces of yellow ochre on the menorah’s base and arms. It turns out that the menorah was painted a golden yellow, including the base, as befits an item made of pure gold.
Who Built the Arch of Titus?
There is no doubt that the Arch of Titus was erected in the Roman Forum after the death of Titus. The emperor was deified only after his death and the inscription in the arch refers to “the divine Titus Vespasian” as does the relief in the ceiling of the arch showing the deification of Titus. Many concluded that the other Arch of Titus, the one that had stood at the great Circus Maximus arena, was the one dedicated to Titus during his lifetime. In the Middle Ages, it still was possible to see this arch and an anonymous source who visited ancient Rome preserved the inscription that was carved on it:
“The Senate and the People of Rome dedicate this arch to the emperor Titus Caesar, son of the divine Vespasian, Augustus, the high priest, holding authority in the tenth tribune, the seventeenth emperor, the eighth consul, father of the homeland, ruler of the nation, since according to his father’s command and the advice of fate he subdued the Jewish people and destroyed the city of Jerusalem, a city that was assailed in vain before him by military commanders, kings, and nations.”
In this inscription, Vespasian is divine, while Titus is the emperor, which could be a hint that the arch was built during the lifetime of Titus and by Titus.
Until recently, it was assumed that this arch had been completed destroyed and its stones were looted to be used in other structures. However, this year, the base of an arch was found three meters below ground level on the eastern side of the Circus Maximus, which archaeologists believe is the missing second arch. Over 300 fragments of marble that had been part of the arch were scattered across a large area surrounding the foundation. Some of these fragments are several meters long. Judging by the foundation, this arch was 17 meters wide and 15 meters long. There is no doubt that emperors and military commanders once walked under this arch in triumphal processions on their way to the temple on Capitoline Hill. This arch too most likely was adorned with reliefs depicting the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple.
If Titus built the arch in the Circus Maximus to commemorate his victory over the Jewish people and the destruction of Jerusalem, it is not clear why another arch was constructed after his death commemorating the same exact event.
Like most historic dilemmas, there is not a simple, obvious answer. Donald McFayden of the University of Chicago in the US wrote one of the few studies that addresses when the arches were constructed. It was published a century ago, in 1915, in The Classical Journal. McFayden notes that the list of buildings mentioned as being constructed by Domitian in Latin sources makes no mention of these arches. Furthermore, in one of the writings of the Roman poet Martial from 85/86 CE, he explains to a servant the route from his home to the home of a friend on Capitoline Hill. Martial describes all the buildings that the messenger must pass on the way to his friend’s home. The route goes right by the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum, but he does not mention the arch. The Roman historian Suetonius, who wrote in the second century CE, also hints that Domitian did not build the arch.
Since the arch expresses the sorrow of the people of Rome and the Senate over the death of Titus, who was one of the most beloved of the Roman emperors, researchers assumed that it was only logical that it had been built immediately after his death, when the mourning for him was assumed to be strongest. However, that does not take into account Domitian’s personality.
Suetonius explicitly writes that Domitian was jealous of his father and Titus for their military achievements, which he was not a partner to. Domitian tended to play down the importance of the victory in Judea, claiming that Vespasian and Titus actually owe their ascent to power to him because while they were in the east, he remained in Rome and worked to have power transferred to Vespasian. If he hated his brother, it does not make sense for him to erect an arch to commemorate his achievements.
The inscriptions on the arches also raise another problem. The inscription on the arch in Circus Maximus mentions that Titus only completed the work that his father began before him. The arch in the Roman Forum, however, only mentions Titus in the inscription and he is depicted riding alone in the triumphal carriage and being honored for his triumphs. Titus was only his father’s representative (legatus) when he conquered Jerusalem. In Roman law, a triumph achieved by a representative is considered the triumph of the person who sent him into battle. In other words, Vespasian was the great victor of the war in Judea and only he deserved to receive a triumphal parade for it.
It does not seem logical that Domitian would agree to give Titus all the credit for the victory in Judea, mainly because he did not deserve it. At the very least, if he had completed the arch in the Roman Forum that Titus had started to build, he would have corrected this disregard for protocol in its inscription.
Domitian’s sole claim to the throne was that he was the son of the Flavian family, a family which was not part of Rome’s nobility. For Domitian, the only way to justify his rule was deifying his family. Domitian asserted that his family was worthy to rule due to its divine origins, not due to the victory in Judea. He reinforced his understanding of divinity by cultivating the cult of the emperor, building two temples in Rome dedicated to this cult and founding a priestly order whose purpose was the worship of the Flavian emperors.
Historians of the time describe Domitian as one of the most hated emperors by the residents of Rome and the empire. Romans would secretly express their loathing of Domitian by praising his brother Titus, the benevolent and loved emperor. Meanwhile, opposition to Domitian grew stronger among circles in the Roman nobility, which gave rise to several attempts to assassinate him. Domitian responded by executing and exiling the suspects and confiscating their property. The last three years of his rule were characterized by severe persecution of the nobility and the senators. They finally rebelled against the emperor and assassinated him in 96 CE.
Following Domitian’s death, the Senate selected Nerva to serve as the new emperor. A member of the Senate and the scion of a noble family, Nerva needed to calm the army, which was loyal to the Flavian family, and strengthen his rapport with the most respected commander in the army in those days, Trajan. When Nerva died only two years later in 98 CE, Trajan succeeded him as emperor.
In the years following Domitian’s death, the Senate destroyed all traces of the dark days of his rule. His statues were removed from public squares and his name was removed from inscriptions. Historians of the time, such Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, Juvenal, and Suetonius, joined the campaign, painting a dark picture of Domitian. With time, Domitian became known as a cowardly, cruel, and perverse tyrant, though modern historic research has found he was an effective administrator and that the empire actually flourished during his reign.
Expressing hatred of Domitian by presenting his brother Titus as the “darling of the human race,” in the words of Suetonius, also continued during this time. Worship of Titus, which had been neglected during his brother’s reign, was renewed and he was considered the one who stood at the head of the Flavian dynasty. Since it was possible to credit Titus, and only Titus, with the great victory over the Jews during the reign of Nerva or the beginning of the reign of Trajan, that may be when the triumphal arch in the Roman Forum that praises only Titus, and not Vespasian, was erected.
Amnon and Ruth in the Jezreel Valley
The Hanukka ceremony in 1997 completed a process that began when the Jewish Brigade of the British Army, made up of soldiers from the Land of Israel, arrived in Rome in 1944. Its soldiers marched under the Arch of Titus as a group, in defiance of the ban. That same year, Isaac Ben Israel, a member of the Jewish Brigade, wrote the Hebrew poem, “All Roads Lead to Rome.” Zvi Ben Yosef put it to music and Hannah Meron and Yossi Yadin, who were indeed “a couple in love” then, performed it, singing:

“A couple in love, two Sabras from Canaan,
Ruth and Amnon from the Jezreel Valley
Take a trip never taken before
To the Arch of Titus at midnight!
And under the Arch of Titus, in the shadow of the antiquities
Kisses bloomed – what else is there to wait for
Oh Titus, Titus, if you had seen,
To who is the triumph, to who are the songs of praise
By the arch that you built
A couple in love from the land of Israel
By the arch that the respected emperor built then
A pair of soldiers from the Land of Israel.”

The day that the State of Israel was established, May 15, 1948, the Jews of Rome also flouted the ban and marched under the Arch of Titus in the opposite direction of the triumphal procession, from the Roman Forum towards the Land of Israel.
The following year, brothers Gabriel and Maxime Shamir designed the official symbol of the new state. At its center is the seven-branched menorah, as it appears on the Arch of Titus. The menorah that was taken to Rome and that symbolized the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE thus returned symbolically to Israel upon the renewal of the Jewish people in its land.