Pompey's Pillar
About
A single red-granite column standing 20 meters tall, one of the largest monoliths Roman engineers ever quarried. Raised around 297 CE by the prefect Publius after Diocletian crushed a local uprising — a garbled reading of his name centuries later gave the column its enduring, entirely wrong link to Pompey. It didn't exist yet in 117 CE: this spot, on the old Serapeum precinct, was still nearly two centuries away from getting its column.
What happened here
It was put up to be argued with. Public monuments carry an inscription at eye height naming who paid, what for, and by whose authority, because being read is the whole return on the investment. People meet at them, give directions by them, and shelter under them. Children climb them. The bronze fittings are stolen often enough that they are re-attached with lead. On anniversaries the base is garlanded and the local council makes a short speech nobody listens to. Monuments also date the town for you: a run of them along one street shows which families were rising in which decade, and which ones stopped. When a family falls out of favour, the name is chiselled out and the stone is quietly reused.
Sources
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →