Arch of Septimius Severus

About

Septimius Severus elevated Thugga to a municipium, and the town answered in 205 CE with this triumphal arch on its western approach. The dedication doubled as thanks for the town's new civic status. In 117 CE Thugga was still just a civitas of mixed Numidian and Roman citizens, 88 years from that promotion.

What happened here

It carries no gate and defends nothing. An arch marks a threshold — a boundary, a road junction, the entrance to a forum — and it exists to make you look up while you pass under it. The attic carries the dedication in bronze letters set into cut sockets; the letters go missing and the sockets stay. The panels beneath show the campaign being celebrated, arranged so that the version of events the emperor prefers is the one at eye level. Traffic goes through it all day, ox carts scraping the jambs. A triumph passes under it once, if at all; the rest of its working life is as a landmark, a meeting point and a shaded spot for someone selling something.

Sources

• https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2091585

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