Right beside the Colosseum stands the Arch of Constantine — the biggest, grandest triumphal arch in Rome, built to celebrate the emperor Constantine winning a civil war. It's covered top to bottom in beautiful sculpture. And most of that sculpture was stolen from other emperors.
Look closely and the arch doesn't quite match itself. Some carvings are crisp and lifelike; others are stiffer and cruder. That's because Constantine's builders raided the monuments of earlier, greater emperors — Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius — and pried off their best sculptures to bolt onto this arch. The good, elegant panels are a couple hundred years older than the arch they're stuck to. Constantine basically decorated his trophy with other people's trophies.
And it gets better. On several of those recycled panels, the sculptors took the faces of the old emperors and recarved them into Constantine's face. So you've got the body of Trajan, the horse of Hadrian, the scene from Marcus Aurelius — and Const
antine's head grafted on top, taking the credit for victories he had nothing to do with. It's the ancient equivalent of photoshopping yourself into someone else's vacation pictures and framing them. The recutting was rushed, too — they reportedly ran out of time on one figure and left it with the previous emperor's nose, a little clue that the whole face was borrowed.
There's a deeper irony burie
