2002/01/01 by Martin J. Beckmann · 11 citations
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Classical Antiquity Studies #Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History #Historical and Religious Studies of Rome #Art #Philosophy
paper · doi:10.2307/1192605
published in Phoenix 56(3/4), 348 (Classical Association of Canada)
openalex publication_date 2002/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/04/04
of buildings and monuments in the imperial capital, compiled region by region, and dating to the late third and early fourth centuries respectively.1 In them, the columns of Trajan and of Marcus Aurelius are called columnae coc(h)lides.2 Coc(h)lis, a very rare word, is defined in the TLL (s.v.) as an adjectival usage of the noun of the same form, derived from the Greek word KoXXL;, which itself is a diminutive form of KO6xXO (LSJ s.v. KOXtiS), meaning a snail-shell. The implication is that the columns are snail-shell-like. Two features of the columns could conceivably have warranted such a description: the external sculpted frieze, which runs up the column in a spiraling manner from bottom to top, or the internal spiral staircase, which runs the height of the column and provides access to a viewing platform on top of the wide capital. There is a trend in recent scholarship to interpret this adjective as referring to both the frieze and the stairs.3 This is contrary to the interpretation of the word current before the twentieth century and, I argue here, mistaken, for an examination of the sources indicates that coc(h)lis refers to the stairway alone. This raises the question of why the stairway was singled out for such attention. The explanation, I suggest, has to do with a number of factors, including admiration of the technical achievement of the columns and the rarity of spiral staircases in Rome in the second century A.D.