Great Mainz Jupiter Column
About
A towering, elaborately carved Jupiter column dedicated by the civilian canabae community of Mogontiacum to Jupiter Optimus Maximus for the emperor's wellbeing. Epigraphic and prosopographic evidence — including the tenure of governor P. Sulpicius Scribonius Proculus — dates its erection to c. 65-67 CE, plausibly commemorating Nero's survival of the Pisonian conspiracy. One of the oldest and most elaborate Jupiter columns known from the Germanic provinces; it was eventually toppled and deliberately buried (rediscovered in nearly 2,000 fragments in 1904-05), but nothing points to that happening before 117 CE, so it should still have been standing at the snapshot.
What happened here
A single shaft, standing alone, carrying a statue or a story. The freestanding column is a Roman way of putting one thing above everything else in a crowded skyline, and where it is set matters as much as what is on it. Some carry a spiral relief read from the ground with difficulty and never meant to be read closely — the point is the sheer weight of narrative. Others carry a portrait, and the portrait is replaced when the politics change while the column stays. The drums are hollowed for an internal stair in the ambitious ones. At the base there is usually an inscription and, often enough, a burial. Around it, day to day, people sell things and arrange to meet.
Sources
Nearby
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