There are three columns more celebrated than the rest. These are, the pillars of Trajan, of Antoninus, and of Phocas. The first of these was set up in the middle of Trajan’s Forum; being composed of twenty-four great stones of marble;[163] but so curiously cemented, as to seem one entire natural stone. The height was one hundred and forty-four feet, according to Eutropius; though Marlian seems to make them but one hundred and twenty-eight: yet they are easily reconciled, if we suppose one of them to have begun the measure from the pillar itself, and the other from the basis. It is ascertained on the inside by one hundred and eighty-five winding stairs, and has forty little windows for the admission of light. The noblest ornament of this pillar was the statue of Trajan at the top, of a gigantic height; being no less than twenty-five feet high. He was represented in a coat of armour, proper to the general, holding in his left hand a sceptre; in his right a hollow globe of gold, in which his ashes were deposited after his death. The subjects of the bas-reliefs, as we have already stated, are the victories of Trajan, in his Dacian campaign[164]. The whole number of figures sculptured is about 2,500; and the figure of Trajan himself is repeated more than fifty times. At the lower part of the column, the human figures are about two feet high; as they ascend, and thus become further removed from the eye, their size is increased, till, at the top of the column, they have nearly double the height that they have below. These bas-reliefs are executed with great delicacy and spirit; but they possess a higher value of a different kind. “The Roman dress and manners,” says Dr. Burton, “may receive a considerable light from them. We find the soldiers constantly carrying their swords on the right side. On a march they are generally bare-headed; some have no helmets at all; others wear them suspended to their right shoulder; each of them carries a stick over the left shoulder, which seems to have been for the purpose of carrying their provisions. We may observe also a wallet, a vessel for wine, and a machine for dressing meat.”