The Arch of Constantine, which this piece follows, is the largest triumphal arch Rome ever built — twenty-one metres high and nearly twenty-six wide — and the Senate dedicated it in July 315 to mark ten years of Constantine's reign and his defeat of Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge on 28 October 312. What makes it extraordinary is that most of the sculpture on it is second-hand. Constantine's builders stripped reliefs and statues from monuments to Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, set them into the new arch, and recut the old emperors' heads into his. The round medallions above the side arches show Hadrian hunting and sacrificing, except that Hadrian's face has been carved away and replaced in every one of them. The prisoners standing above the columns are Dacians, taken from Trajan's monuments to a war fought two centuries earlier. It is a victory monument assembled out of other men's victories — and, for a fourth-century empire quoting its own golden age, that was rather the point. King & Country's version is a lighter and sharper remake of their own mid-1990s design, with the three bays, the relief panels, the medallions and the four figures on the column tops all present. At 1/30 it is a backdrop that finally gives a Roman collection somewhere to go: march The New Roman Legions through the central span, put The Marching Optios and Roman Centurion at the head of the column, and bring General Marcus Agrippa up behind them. A triumph is the one diorama where the architecture outranks the figures — build the procession small and let the arch do the talking. Model: SP117 / King & Country / 1/30 (60mm) scale / matte finish / 1 piece set Figures shown for scale purposes only.
