Arch of Titus
About
A single marble archway at the highest point of the Sacred Way, put up by Domitian for his dead brother and inscribed to the deified Titus. Inside the passage two relief panels face each other. On one, soldiers carry the loot of the Jerusalem temple in triumph — a seven-branched lampstand held high, the show-bread table, silver trumpets, placards naming the captured towns. On the other, Titus rides a four-horse chariot with Victory reaching over his shoulder to crown him. In the vault above, an eagle carries him up to the gods. In 117 CE the war it commemorates is still within living memory.
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.
In ancient writing
- Josephus, Jewish War 7.148–152
Describes the triumph of 71 CE and the spoils carried through Rome — the golden table, the lampstand, the Law — the same objects carved on the arch's inner panel.
- CIL VI 945, dedication after 81 CE
The attic text: the Senate and People of Rome dedicate the arch to the deified Titus, son of the deified Vespasian — cut after his death.
Sources
Nearby
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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 →