Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/247

 Roman Sculpture. 217 branched candlestick ; and on the other the Emperor is seen in his triumphal car, drawn by four horses, and surrounded by Roman warriors. The Trajan column — a cast of which is now in the South Kensington Museum — erected before the time of Hadrian, stands on a pedestal covered with bas-reliefs of weapons, etc., and the pillar itself is enclosed in a spiral of bas-reliefs forming a con- tinuous representation of the triumphs of the Emperor, beginning with the passage of the Danube, and going through all the events of the Dacian war. The column was originally surmounted by a colossal statue of Trajan (replaced in the seventh century by one of St. Peter), and contains no less than 2500 human figures and a great number of horses (Fig. 28 and 92). Third Period. From the time of Hadrian (A.D. 138) to the Decline of the Roman Empire. After the time of Hadrian, very few fine sculptures of any kind were produced. With the decline of the empire a corresponding decline in all the arts was inevitable. Strange to say, there was for a time an inclination to go back to Eastern types in statuary. Once more the Egyptian Serapis appeared in monuments, whilst the worship of Isis led to the production of numerous statues of that goddess. The liberal patronage of Marcus Aurelius was the cause of a brief revival, when the fine equestrian statue of that emperor on the Capitol was executed,, but it was only a late effort of an art doomed to speedy destruction. Before its final decay, however, Roman sculpture produced some fine bas-reliefs on sarcophagi, remarkable for artistic