Roman Battle Formations and Legionaries from Trajan's Column, 1722

This is an original antique copper engraving, uncolored, a double page folding plate on the formations of the Roman army, set out in six numbered figures. Across the top, small figures are drawn man by man as diagrams: a lozenge of horsemen with pennants, upright blocks of archers and spearmen in ranks, two columns of foot soldiers above a wedge of horsemen with pennants, and two further blocks. The largest figure, at the lower right, is a great rectangle of soldiers with spears and standards, drawn in ranks one inside another, around a central square holding a tent, a sentry, a fire, a man carrying two buckets on a yoke, chests and carts drawn by oxen. At the left a framed relief shows two legionaries in helmets and banded armor, each with a tall curved shield, standing in gabled sentry niches against a round wall of masonry, while men above them carry timber and one swings an axe. At the lower left are three peaked tents.

The relief at the left is captioned "Trajanc Pillar", spelled so on the sheet. Trajan's Pillar is Trajan's Column in Rome. The figures carry small numbers from 1 to 6. The corners read "Vol IV" at foot left, "Plate 26" at foot right and "Page 75" at top right.

Bernard de Montfaucon (1655 to 1741) was a French Benedictine monk and scholar whose L'Antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures appeared in Paris in 1719. The English translation by David Humphreys, Antiquity Explained, and Represented in Sculptures, was printed in London by J. Tonson and J. Watts in 1722, and this plate belongs to its fourth volume. The volume deals with war, from the dress and arms of the soldier to the camp, the march and battle. Montfaucon drew together figures copied from ancient monuments, coins, gems and the publications of earlier antiquaries, and engraved the name of each source beside its figure.

The formations read almost as a pattern of tiny figures, and the sheet is as much a diagram as a picture.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.