Stefan Faust, Schlachtenbilder der römischen Kaiserzeit. Erzählerische Darstellungskonzepte in der Reliefkunst von Traian bis Septimius Severus (Tübinger Archäologische Forschungen 8), Rahden 2012

Almost every examination of the Roman army provides references to and comparisons with the battle pictures of Roman Imperial Time in varying degrees of intensity. The authors use these war-related images in a variety of ways to classify and confirm their research results. This applies, for example, to the equipment and outfitting of the Roman army, its formations and tactical procedures, the depiction of Roman enemies, but also the changing ideas of victory.

Stefan Faust deals with the concepts of representation and the narrative strategies that stand behind these images of war and deals with selected media of various object types. All descriptions of the image-bearing monuments and objects follow the same chapter structure. After a brief presentation of the monument, its state of preservation and the necessary research literature, Faust devotes himself extensively to an image description geared to his question, which offers little new to experts, but focuses on the narrative strategies to be observed in the image and the effects they had (or were supposed to have) on the viewer.

After a brief but concise introduction to the field of battle pictures (1 – 8), Faust first deals with the city Roman state monuments and begins with the “Great Trajan Battle Frieze”, which was later used on the Arch of Constantine (9 – 34). Faust then treats the Trajan column (35-91) and the Marcus column (92-120). The Arch of Septimius-Severus (121 – 142) forms the end of the Roman monuments. This chapter is followed by two honorary monuments from the Roman Provinces, the so-called “Parthian Monument” by Ephesus from Asia Minor (143-167) and the Severan Quadrifons from Lepcis Magna in North Africa (168-176). Faust concludes his material collection with selected battle sarcophagi (177 – 211). From the early Hadrian phase onwards, sarcophagi began to play a major role in Roman sepulcral culture and battle images were also used in their design, which was influenced by the radiance of imperial state monuments. The collection of sources complete, Faust analyses the presentation concepts and narrative strategies that are visible in the various reliefs in a short, concise form.

Faust succeeds in using the selected monuments to illustrate how certain political, social and cultural circumstances influenced the depictions and their narrative strategy. The book is an excellent study on the pictorial expression of  historical and cultural change that goes further than usual lines of interpretation. In Roman antiquity in particular, pictures had an essential meaning, since they were an expression of Roman thought created in stone. It is not new to the expert reader that these images are based on identity-oriented and thus moral- and value-creating ideas of ​​the prevailing zeitgeist. The book is not really useful as an introduction for the layperson, since certain points in the individual chapters require prior knowledge that is not explained in detail (e.g. chronology of the Dacian Wars , individual discussions about dating / context / style / etc.). But for the expert, who knows his way around the Roman world of images, this work by Stefan Faust should represent a real reading treasure – after all, it connects the Roman world of images with war and the military and embeds this in a refreshing way on the level of narrative representational concepts and narrative strategies.