The Monument, or, Christopher Wren's Roman Accent

Abstract

To commemorate the Great Fire, the Corporation of London commissioned Christopher Wren to design the Monument. This article identifies its formal sources in ancient Roman triumphal columns and in a sixteenth-century fluted Tuscan Doric column in Paris, in the inscription on the Column of Trajan, and in a passage from Ammianus Marcellinus. Textual models for the Latin inscriptions on the pedestal include Suetonius's Augustus, Seneca the Younger's Epistle no. 91, and Tacitus's Annals. The political situation in Restoration England cast references to Tacitus into oblivion, yet this commission demonstrates how Wren's knowledge of Latin had a determining effect on his architectural practice.