+TRIUMPHAL ARCHES AND COLUMNS.+ Rome and the provincial cities abounded in monuments commemorative of victory, usually single or triple arches with engaged columns and rich sculptural adornments, or single colossal columns supporting statues. The arches were characteristic products of Roman design, and some of them deserve high praise for the excellence of their proportions and the elegance of their details. There were in Rome in the second century A.D., thirty-eight of these monuments. The +Arch of Titus+ (71-82 A.D.) is the simplest and most perfect of those still extant in Rome; the arch of +Septimius Severus+ in the Forum (203 A.D.) and that of +Constantine+ (330 A.D.) near the Colosseum, are more sumptuous but less pure in detail. The last-named was in part enriched with sculptures taken from the earlier arch of Trajan. The statues of Dacian captives on the attic (_attic_ = a species of subordinate story added above the main cornice) of this arch were a fortunate addition, furnishing a _raison-d’être_ for the columns and broken entablatures on which they rest. Memorial columns of colossal size were erected by several emperors, both in Rome and abroad. Those of +Trajan+ and of +Marcus Aurelius+ are still standing in Rome in perfect preservation. The first was 140 feet high including the pedestal and the statue which surmounted it; its capital marked the height of the ridge levelled by the emperor for the forum on which the column stands. Its most striking peculiarity is the spiral band of reliefs winding around the shaft from bottom to top and representing the Dacian campaigns of Trajan. The other column is of similar design and dimensions, but greatly inferior to the first in execution. Both are really towers, with interior stair-cases leading to the top. [Illustration: FIG. 63.--ARCH OF CONSTANTINE. (From model in Metropolitan Museum, New York.)] +TOMBS.+ The Romans developed no special and national type of tomb, and few of their sepulchral monuments were of large dimensions. The most important in Rome were the pyramid of +Caius Cestius+ (late first century B.C.), and the circular tombs of +Cecilia Metella+ (60 B.C.), +Augustus+ (14 A.D.) and +Hadrian+, now the Castle of S. Angelo (138 A.D.). The latter was composed of a huge cone of marble supported on a cylindrical structure 230 feet in diameter standing on a square podium 300 feet long and wide. The cone probably once terminated in the gilt bronze pine-cone now in the Giardino della Pigna of the Vatican. In the Mausoleum of Augustus a mound of earth planted with trees crowned a similar circular base of marble on a podium 220 feet square, now buried.