Trajan’s Forum and the Treadwheel Giants

Marcus Valerius

Ah, by the gods... you-you-you've caught me at a bad time, my friend. Here, take a corner of my wool toga and hold it over your mouth, like this. It-it's the only way to breathe out here today. We are standing just at the edge of the Quirinal Hill, or... well, where the Quirinal Hill used to be. Look at this. It is a absolute chaos of white. A fine, heavy snow of Luna marble dust is falling over everything, covering the street, the market stalls, coating my dark hair, and turning my best tunic a chalky, ghostly white. You can't escape the noise either. It is a-a relentless, grinding roar. Listen. That is the sound of five thousand iron chisels biting into fresh stone, the screech of iron-shod cartwheels, and the shouting of men in ten different tongues. You have Greek architects screaming at Celtic quarrymen, Syrian mule drivers cursing in Aramaic, and Roman overseers bellowing above it all. Rome is not just growing; she is literally carving a new heart out of the earth right before our eyes.

Marcus Valerius

Think about what the Emperor Trajan has ordered here. The ridge of the Quirinal Hill stood over a hundred feet high—a massive barrier of solid rock and earth. And what did he say? He said, "Move it." He didn't want to build around the mountain, he wanted to level it to make room for his new Forum. They are carting away millions of baskets of soil, and in its place, these towering wooden cranes are rising. They look like wooden giants, three, four stories tall, silhouetted against the blue Italian sky. These are the machines that will hoist the massive columns of the basilica, stones so heavy they would crush fifty men like bugs if they tried to lift them by hand. It's terrifying, and-and yet, you can't look away from the sheer, raw power of it.

Marcus Valerius

Come over here, under the shade of this unfinished brick archway. Let me introduce you to someone who actually makes these giants move. This is Faustus. Look at him—his shoulders are as wide as a Tiber barge, and he is absolutely caked in sweat and limestone dust. Faustus is a calcator. That means he is a treadwheel man. While we walk the paved streets, Faustus spends his entire day climbing an endless wooden hill inside the magna rota—the great wheel of the crane. Faustus, tell our friend here... how many miles do you think you walked upward today inside that dark drum? He says he stopped counting at noon, but his calves feel like they've been beaten with clubs. It is pure, brutal physics. Inside that wheel, which is wider than two men are tall, Faustus and three others walk in place, stepping on the slats. Their weight rotates the axle, which winds the thick hemp ropes through a system of brass pulleys—a polyspaston, as the Greeks call it. That little trick of geometry multiplies their muscle power sixty times over. They can lift a six-ton block of marble as if it were a sack of grain.

Marcus Valerius

But, ah... it's a terrifying way to earn a living. If a single hemp rope frays, if a peg slips in the windlass, the wheel can spin backward. It becomes a meat grinder in a split second, throwing the men inside against the wooden ribs. Faustus is showing me his hands—they're nothing but calluses and old rope burns. Yet, he is smiling. He points out toward the center of the construction site, where a massive column of white marble drums is rising, piece by piece. That is the Column of Trajan. Faustus tells me that when they place the very last piece on top, that column will stand exactly one hundred Roman feet tall. Why? Because that is the exact height of the mountain they had to destroy to build this place. Every day he climbs that dark, sweating wheel, he is building a monument to the mountain they conquered. Come, let's get out of this dust before we turn to stone ourselves. Good strength to your legs, Faustus. Let's find some wine.