Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of ancient warfare answers.

I dare call it Murray's ancient warfare answers because I'm again on my own.

So here we are.

We're answering one of your questions.

This one's from Bruce via email.

And you, of course, can ask us a question too.

And this will be your weekly 10-minute ancient warfare fix.

The question today is, what do the columns of Trajan, Antoninus Pais, and Marcus Aurelius tell us about the wars depicted?

Are they reliable narratives?

Narratives at all, question mark.

Well, this is fascinating.

Because obviously one of the most dominating landmarks in Rome is Trajan's column.

And of course, one of the others is the column of Marcus Aurelius, even though

it's not in the Forum of Rome. It is outside the Palazzo Kiji, which is the formal

residence of the Italian Prime Minister. So, interestingly, the column of Marcus Aurelius is probably

more prominent than being in the Roman

Forum, but of course as tourists of Rome, we will tend to go to the Roman Forum one and look

at Trajan's column. And certainly Trajan's column is the model, certainly the model for Marcus Aurelius's

column. Now, the interesting thing there, of course, is that there have been columns erected for famous and successful generals for quite some time throughout antiquity.

But the figured scenes that you get on Trajan's column and the column of Antoninus Pius and

then Mark Cyrillus are different in the sense that they are incredibly complex. They

tell a story and seem to be a narrative of a particular set of events.

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