The Roman Legacy of Triumphal Arches

For thousands of years, the arch was first and foremost an engineering solution—a way to span an opening, distribute weight and create larger, stronger structures. Archaeological evidence suggests that builders at a tomb in Helwan, Egypt, were experimenting with arching techniques as early as 3000 B.C. Over the following centuries, the arched shape appeared throughout Egypt and Mesopotamia, supporting gateways, passageways and chambers.

Over time, arches transitioned from hidden structural elements to prominent features of public architecture. Around 1700 B.C., builders at Tel Dan, in present-day Israel, erected three towering mud-brick arches. Yet for all their grandeur, the celebrated arches were still part of a larger structure: the seven-meter-tall defensive gateway to one of the region’s fortified cities.

The Romans then did something no earlier civilization had done. “Earlier architectural traditions used arches as part of other structures, but it was the Romans who took the arch and made it a freestanding monument,” says Maggie Popkin, professor of art history at Case Western Reserve University and author of The Architecture of the Roman Triumph. “The triumphal arch is a uniquely Roman invention.”

In Roman hands, the arch ceased to be merely structural and became a landmark in its own right. Often adorned with gilded statues, inscriptions and reliefs, it became an embodiment of what Popkin calls Rome’s “abiding interest—one might even say obsession—with militarism, memory and political competition.”

According to the ancient Roman historian Livy, in 196 B.C., the general Lucius Stertinius used the spoils from his military campaigns in Spain to erect three freestanding arches, which many scholars regard as the earliest known examples of the triumphal arch.

Although the structures have long since disappeared, Livy records that two stood in the Forum Boarium, Rome’s bustling cattle market, while a third rose in the Circus Maximus, the city’s vast chariot-racing stadium. “These were important junctures along the path followed by triumphal processions,” says Popkin, referring to the elaborate parades authorized by the Senate to celebrate Rome’s greatest military victories.

During a triumphal procession, a victorious general rode through the city in a chariot, displaying captured treasure and enemy prisoners before offering a sacrifice on the Capitoline Hill. Curiously, the surviving sources make no mention of a triumph for Stertinius. His arches, however, ensured that his victories were commemorated even without one.

As Rome expanded across the Mediterranean during the Punic Wars (264-146 B.C.), triumphs grew increasingly common, celebrating victories won in distant lands such as Carthage, Spain, Gaul and Greece before a Roman audience. Yet even though a triumph was among the highest honors a Roman general could receive, the spectacle itself was fleeting, usually lasting only a day.

While Stertinius’ arches might have stood in for a triumph, for other commanders an arch extended the glory of victory after the procession had ended. Some historians believe triumphal arches were even inspired by a specific element of the ceremony itself: the porta triumphalis, the ceremonial gateway through which victorious generals entered Rome at the start of a triumph.

Around 190 B.C., Scipio Africanus erected an arch on the Capitoline Hill that many historians see as a monument to his earlier victories in Spain and Carthage. Nearly seven decades later, Quintus Fabius Maximus raised another at the eastern end of the Roman Forum to commemorate his victory over the Allobroges of southern Gaul.

“Triumphal arches served as impressive, public, enduring monuments that brought glory to individual men and their families and that advertised Rome’s perceived superiority over the cultures and peoples it conquered on its march to empire,” Popkin says. “In a time before anything like our modern news media, they were almost like billboards that spread the word of Roman military achievement to the inhabitants of Rome.”

The rise of the Roman Empire transformed who could claim credit for military victories—and who could commemorate them. “In the republican period, generals from different families competed for the honor of leading Rome’s army and building victory monuments,” Popkin says. “In the empire, the emperor monopolized all that glory.”

“Ironically, even though many more triumphal processions were celebrated in the republican period, far more arches were built in the imperial period, as emperors eagerly tried to aggrandize their military accomplishments, legitimize their own rule and dynasties and outshine their predecessors,” Popkin adds.

Imperial arches became increasingly grandiose and were built for permanence, typically constructed from stone, Roman concrete or marble rather than the mostly wooden arches of the Republic. Dedicated in A.D. 81, the Arch of Titus—the oldest surviving imperial triumphal arch in Rome—commemorated the emperor’s victory in Judaea. Rising roughly 50 feet high, it would have approached the height of many of Rome’s taller apartment buildings and was adorned with richly carved reliefs depicting Roman soldiers carrying spoils from the Temple in Jerusalem.

By the early third century, arches had become powerful instruments of imperial propaganda. The Arch of Septimius Severus, erected in A.D. 203 and towering roughly 75 feet above the Roman Forum, proclaimed the emperor’s victories against the Parthians. Yet the campaigns themselves produced few lasting gains, yielding little territory, wealth or strategic advantage for Rome. According to Popkin, the monument reveals how imperial arches could transform ambiguous victories into enduring symbols of military success.

The triumphal arch has proved remarkably durable, not just as an architectural form but as a political symbol. From Napoleon’s Arc de Triomphe in Paris to Pyongyang’s Arch of Triumph, rulers have repeatedly borrowed the Roman model to celebrate military victories, legitimize regimes and shape public memory.

“Arches, in Rome and today, have the power to present a particular narrative about rulers and nation-states, and not necessarily ones that adhere closely to historical fact,” says Popkin.