The Arch of Titus

The Arch of Titus stands at the eastern end of the Roman Forum, on the highest point of the Via Sacra as it leads up toward the Palatine. Erected by the emperor Domitian around AD 81-82 to honor his deceased brother Titus, the single-bay marble arch commemorates Titus's military achievement: the suppression of the First Jewish Revolt and the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in AD 70. The arch is the earliest known surviving example of the single-fornix triumphal type that became standard in later Roman architecture. Two great relief panels carved on the inner walls of the passageway tell the story. The southern panel depicts the triumphal procession through Rome with the spoils of the Temple being carried in: the seven-branched menorah, the showbread table, the silver trumpets, placards naming the conquered cities. The northern panel shows Titus himself in his chariot, crowned by a winged Victory, with the Roman people and the gods accompanying him. The vault ceiling shows an apotheosis scene of Titus being borne to heaven on an eagle's back. The menorah relief is the single most important visual document of the Second Temple's appearance. The seven-branched lampstand carried in the triumph is the menorah of the Holy Place described in Exodus 25:31-40 and 1 Kings 7:49, the same lampstand whose oil miracle is commemorated at Hanukkah, and the form that has shaped the visual representation of the menorah in Jewish art ever since. The trumpets and showbread table are likewise the literal furnishings of the Holy Place. The relief is a Roman victory monument; it is also, incidentally, the most direct physical record we possess of what stood inside Herod's Temple. The theological weight of the arch is considerable. Jesus, sitting on the Mount of Olives in Matthew 24:1-2, told his disciples that not one stone of the Temple would be left upon another. Luke 21:20-24 records the same prophecy in more direct historical terms: Jerusalem would be surrounded by armies, her people would fall by the sword, the city would be trodden down by the Gentiles. Within forty years the prophecy was fulfilled exactly, and the Romans themselves built a permanent monument in their capital city to record that it had happened. The arch through which Roman generals continued to ride for centuries afterward was built on the wreckage of a prophecy fulfilled. By long tradition, observant Jews would not walk under the Arch of Titus while it stood as a symbol of Jerusalem's defeat. After the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, that custom was reversed: Jews now walk through the arch in the opposite direction, marking the survival of the people the arch was built to commemorate as conquered. Sources: Michael Pfanner, Der Titusbogen (1983); Steven Fine, The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel (2016); Louis H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World (1993); Josephus, The Jewish War, Books V-VI.