Arch of Antoninus Pius
About
A triple-arched gateway framed the entrance to Sufetula's forum, dedicated in 139 CE to Emperor Antoninus Pius and his adopted sons Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. Stonecutters left its four Corinthian column shafts unsmoothed, evidence the arch was never fully finished. It is the one structure at Sufetula whose date historians can fix with certainty, thanks to its own inscription. In 117 CE Antoninus Pius was an unknown senator, and this arch was 22 years from being built.
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
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 →