ARCUS TRIUMPHALES
The Triumphal Arches · Public Monuments · Forum Novum, Nova Romae
"Three arches, three emperors, three understandings of what Rome is. The first arch says: this is what was done. The second arch says: this is how large what was done was. The third arch says: this was not done alone. Three different answers to the same question, none of them wrong, none of them complete."
The Forum Novum’s three triumphal arches mark its cardinal points and constitute the most studied architectural monuments in Nova Romae: each a product of a different century, each expressing a different political philosophy of Imperial self-presentation, each currently being read against the backdrop of an approaching Rift XIII that makes their inscriptions simultaneously more resonant and more unsettling than they were in quieter years. The arches are not symmetric in height, style, or decoration. They are not meant to be. They are the accumulated record of three emperors’ decisions about what their rule meant and how it should be remembered, and the asymmetry is the record of how much those decisions differed.
The second arch is currently the most visited, as it has been for most of the past century, because its provincial relief panels constitute the most complete visual survey of Aethermarch’s extent in any public medium. The third arch is currently the most discussed, because its bilingual inscription has become the reference point for every Senate debate about the dwarven partnership and the goblin treaty negotiations: the one state monument that explicitly acknowledges a non-Roman people as equal partners, which was controversial in 780 A.P. and is currently either a precedent or a warning depending on which Senate faction you ask.
Sensory & Appearance
The three arches at different times of day produce different relationships with the Forum’s light. The first arch’s northern position means its inscription faces south, into the Forum’s full light at midday: the two-inch-deep letters cast sharp shadows at that angle, making the text maximally legible when the Forum is most occupied. The fourth arch’s eastern position catches the morning light across its relief panels, which is when the carved figures are most visible in three dimensions; morning is when the arch’s intended visual complexity is most fully apparent. The seventh arch’s southern position puts it in partial shade through most of the day and in full light only at the Forum’s quietest morning hours, which produces in its bilingual inscription a reading condition that requires attention and rewards it — the Dwarvish text’s precision is most apparent at close range and oblique light, both of which the seventh arch’s position encourages.
Architecture
The three arches’ architectural divergence is itself a study in twelve centuries of Roman self-conception. The first arch’s plain severity is the style of a people who had just arrived in a new world and were not yet certain what their architecture should say about them; what they chose was restraint, which is a form of confidence. The fourth arch’s decorated proliferation is the style of an empire that has been here long enough to want to document everything it has built; the impulse is encyclopaedic rather than prideful. The seventh arch’s considered modesty is the style of a ruler who understood that the most significant things he had done required another party’s acknowledgement to be complete, and that the acknowledgement was more important than the monument.
History
The first arch was commissioned by the Senate after the first Emperor’s death in 204 A.P. and completed in 210 A.P. The second arch was commissioned and completed during the fourth Emperor’s lifetime, in 411 A.P., which makes it the only arch built by its subject rather than his successors. The third arch was commissioned in 780 A.P. following the formalisation of the revised dwarven partnership terms and was the subject of the most documented negotiation of any public monument in Nova Romae’s history: seven weeks of discussions about the inscription alone, with representatives from both the Senate and the Thane Council, produced a text that both parties formally ratified before the first stone was cut. For full chronological detail, see: Annales Mundi.
The seventh arch’s Dwarvish inscription was formally ratified by both the Senate and the Thane Council before the arch was built — making it the only public monument in Nova Romae whose inscription has a second party’s formal endorsement. Legally: it constitutes a written acknowledgement by both Rome and the Holds of the partnership’s terms as of 780 A.P. This document status has never been invoked. It is invocable.
Access
Fully public at all times
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