The triumphal arch of Titus, on the heights of the Via Sacra; with one arch broken through the massive walls, ornamented on each side by half-columns; was the first to be decorated with the coarser form of the Roman _composite capital_. The ornamentation keeps within certain limits; the inner side walls of the arch have excellent reliefs, referring to the destruction of Jerusalem. Everything yet enumerated was surpassed in splendour and magnificence by the ‘Forum Trajanum’ (A.D. 98-117), of which Apollodorus, born at Damaskus, was the architect. The great basilica Ulpia, with its _five aisles_, formed part of it. In a small courtyard, surrounded by pillars, rose the gigantic column of Trajan to a height of 92 feet. The reliefs, which in spiral windings surround the richly ornamented column, are a kind of Imperial record, chronicling with historical accuracy and dryness, scene after scene of the Dacian war. The figures are two feet high and not less than 2,500 in number; they are sculptured in a simple naturalistic style, void of all idealisation, and show the artist’s talent for grouping. The heads of the figures, as was generally the case in all sculptures by the Romans, are too small for the bodies. The triumphal arch of Constantine, with three openings, is undoubtedly the most splendid monument of its kind. It was of Pentelic marble, taken from the fragments of an arch in honour of Trajan. The proportions are noble, and the execution is technically precise; the ornamentation, however, is too profuse. The second phase of this period degenerated very quickly. Cornices began to be fluted; triglyphs and indentations were used alternately in endless rows; even the central volutes of the Corinthian capitals (the caulicoli) were over-decorated. Everything ran wild; rosettes, cassettes, shields, consols, stereobates, and stylobates were used abundantly, without sense and reason, to heighten the effect of the horizontal lines of the buildings. Everything was out of shape, out of proportion, and out of place. An eternal repetition of the same forms proclaimed the same desperate _deification_ of the omnipotent power of the theocratic ruler. Hadrian, the emperor, whose position constituted him a _divine_ architect, and who by his very dignity must have known art better than any other mortal, did not share, with many a self-conceited artist of our time, the idea that the ‘work and labour done’ was all that was required in art, and that any knowledge of correct principles, any feeling of beauty, any acquaintance with esthetics or with art-history, was useless, and that money and power of execution were the only things required. On the contrary, though Emperor of the Romans, he diligently studied the antique, and tried to revive classic art.