The Mysterious Trophy of Trajan

That terrible excavation of the tomb was recent by the look of the loose sides. Someones likely had an excavator in there. A real shame on Rumania.

So stoked you found the time to visit some of the Roman vestiges from my home country of Romania.
Have been following you for a long while and I never thought you would make it this far into the outskirts of the Roman world. I hope you enjoyed Romania.
I find it interesting that this particular monument was erected in a different Roman province than Dacia. Nowadays both the conquered province of Dacia and the monument are geographically situated in the same country of Romania so we tend to think of them as a common Roman legacy.
But back then what is nowadays Dobrogea, România (where the monument is) used to be part of Moesia Inferior and had been part of the Roman Empire for quite a while when Dacia was conquered.

Thanks. "Tramples the foe underfoot." At least today's sculptures usually don't have that, but we still have far to go.

Thank you for this. It's something I'd never get to see on my own.

Kind of looks like bellows linked together for air or water 🤔

I heartily recommend the TRILOGIA DE TRAJANO by SANTIAGO POSTEGUILLO.
Posteguillo writes quite a few historical novels, and his triology on Scipio (Africanus) is also brilliant. As far as I can tell, they are so far all in Spanish, but if you know the language at at least an intermediate level, give them a try. The man does his research very well, and can tell an engaging story. His books max out on the number of rating stars from the reading public.

Amazing.

This is astonishing! I never knew of it before. I’m beginning to realize that there is a lot to see in Romania for those who are interested in Roman history. Incidentally, were there no inscriptions on the monument? (I am not referring to the altar with the names of the dead.)

Please do Termessos

Love your channel, man, recently started a begginers corse for sculpting, this stuff makes my pp feel thingly.

I didn't know about this at all! How amazing. Thanks for posting

Thank you.

A monument inscribed with the name of 4 000 soldiers who died in the Dacian wars ! The ancient version of Vietnam memorial !

So that’s where Rome 2 got that hairstyle for the Germanics! Haha

What was so mysterious about the trophy?

And that trophy at the top is in the form of a cross. ✝️

I didn't know there were German tribes in 102 in Dacia ?!!!

4000 casualties? That’s almost a whole legion.

Why is it mysterious? Its a stamp. A stamp of power on the land. Vini vidi vici

The lorica segmentata doesn't seem to appear anywhere in those scenes, unlike in Trajan's column, where it was widespread.

For people who don't know, "trophy" means "turning point". They were erected by Greeks, where the enemy dropped their weapons and fled, using captured equipment. Don't know if that was the case here.

"Everybody gets a trophy." But Trajan gets a BIG trophy. 🙂

The sculpture is very crude compared to the ARch of Galerius ,a much later build. Cruder than Trajans column in Rome. Its a spectacular monument despite that. The Dacians fought without armor evidently. They seem to have resisted the Romans quite well.

The Romans never ran out of enemies

That was great. Many thanks.

The Roman Empire at its peak covered almost 2-million square miles!

The difference in war between armies back then was fought eyeball to eyeball... Nowadays,wars are fought with machines and at a long distance.... Same results, just different methods....☠️☠️☠️

First time hearing of this monument. Awesome.

Romania actually re-constructed the monument, it was partly destroyed, but archeological research has made it possible to give an idea how the monument actually looked like. If it wasn't for us to conquere back a historical Latin province like Dobrogea in the Second Balkan war, we can surely say no one would have made any efforts to re-make this gift the Roman's have left us.

are the roman wearing chain mail armor in those panels?

There is nothing mysterious about it. It is war memorial as well as a tropaeum, placed at the site of an earlier Roman defeat under Domitian in the First Dacian War.

Amazing video. Never knew about this

I have always wondered why Roman art - I mean the ability to depict the human form naturalistically and convincingly - declined so very rapidly. Within just over a century, they went from classical Greek perfection to crude naive depictions devoid of perspective and subtlety.

Would it have been painted?

Thank you for making this video.

Thank you!

Thanks 😊so much for sharing this. I'm seeing things here I've never seen before or even knew about!!!😊

Notice through history the elite destroy monuments? It's like they are a cult who like to erase history repeatedly. Ironically, every time a society rises up to find peace and prosperity, they are destroyed and erased by the elite. And what do we see going on today? The same thing. The elite spreading hate and destroying history while they claim people have no rights and brainwash people into some community slavery society ideology.

Fun fact: most of the original monument is still there... the reconstruction is basically a protective shell. The tower and the bas-reliefs had fallen during an earthquake but the mount survived. It's very hard to get a permit but you can go inside and visit (not much to actually see, bricks and mortar) and actually climb to the top, dangerous and scary. Anyway, I think the city built near the battlefield is much more interesting... it's huge and pretty well preserved, it can be seen from the top of the monument or from the edge of the cliff.

I hope you visited the nearby ruins of the Civitas Tropaensium castrum.

Most fascinating: 1. the ROMANS wearing MAIL over plate armor for the protection of body, arms, neck. 2. the wearing of FULL HARNAS OUT OF LORICA SEGMENTATA/ PLUMATA by Roman shock-troops 3. the DACIAN WARRIORS WEARING TWO BRANCHES ON THEIR BACK, to look like a DEMON OF THE WOODS and scare of Romans.

Grave robbers.....the scourge of history ? Excellent video, thx. 👍

What a stunning monument this must’ve been at the time of its construction

I m romanian,iwas there when i was a child ,we did a school trip

what in the name of the place in Romanian? I do not understand from the video. Maybe because of the American pronunciation.

Trajan is dardan ilirian pellazgia pellazgian

Excellent video - thank you for sharing. Personally, I think the battle scenes are heavily biased towards the Romans, which is normal for they built the monument. Dacians, my ancestors, and Germans for that matter, were not pushovers.

I live near the Trophy of Pompee in the Pyreneese. Not much is left, but I would love for you to do a chapter on it.

Well done, excellent overview of events and interpretation of the trophy.