Access to the second level is by stairs at either end of the hemicycle, not in the middle. The split approach is borrowed from the exedra of Terrace VII at Praeneste. (It was brick stamps in these stairs that enabled Bloch to date this complex in the first decade of the second century A.D.). The second-floor shops open onto a semicircular vaulted corridor with windows opening on the Forum. On the third level variety within unity, plus ease of access for wagons, is achieved by a semicircular street on which the third level shops face. A straight stretch of paving running north and south, called the Via Biberatica--“Pepper or Spice Street”--and concealed by the façade, contains shops with balconies, as at Ostia. Stairs ascend from this level to a great rectangular cross-vaulted basilical hall, with shops opening off it at two levels. Some archaeologists think this was the place where the dole was distributed; others see in it ancient Rome’s wholesale grain, oil, and wine market, like the Pit in Chicago where bidding fixes the day’s commodity prices. The interconnecting suites of rooms on the fifth and sixth levels are clearly not shops, but offices for administrative personnel. One large centrally-located room, with a view over the whole complex, would be a good place for the office of the superintendent of the entire affair, the _praefectus annonae_. Trajan’s Market did not let his people forget his generosity. Trajan’s Column did not let them forget his prowess in war. Though casts have often been made of the reliefs on the column--the earliest to the order of Francis I of France, in 1541--the best photographs were not taken until 1942, when a scaffolding erected around the column to protect it from air attack made close-ups possible. The _optimus princeps_ appears more than fifty times, larger than life. He dominates the sea voyages (he handles the tiller personally), the marches, the river-crossings, the councils of war, the reviews, the encounters in the open field, the sieges, the sacrifices, the submissions of enemy chiefs. Because of the fascinating detail of the reliefs, Trajan’s Column tells us as much about the Roman army and navy as Pompeii and Ostia do about civilian life. Nor is this all: we learn a great deal, too, about provincial and native customs and culture. Most important, the unknown sculptor has impressed his personality and his feelings upon what he carved. There is an occasional touch of rough humor--a slave falling off a mule, a Dacian ducked in the Danube--and a scene or two in which Trajan, deprecating the humility of submissive native chiefs, seems to be following Vergil’s advice to spare the meek. But the dominant note is Vergil’s, too: the horror of war. Some of the detail is worth recording.