 In 1872, excavations in the Roman Forum unearthed two large sculpted marble panels, now referred to as the Anaglipha Triani, and housed in the Curia, the house of the ancient Roman Senate, located in the northwest corner of the Forum Square. Term, Anaglipha, is a lone word from Greek, meaning simply a sculptural relief, literally gliffa carved and ana up. Ascribed at the time of their discovery to the reign of the Emperor Trajan from 98 to 117 AD, opinion is now divided as to whether they belong to that period or to that of his successor Hadrian from 117 to 138 AD. Each one, five and a half meters long and two meters high, the slabs are carved on one side with elaborate figural seams, and on the other, with mirror reliefs depicting a pig, a sheep, and a bull, the three animals sacrificed at the Swalva Terrelia, one of the most solemn of Roman religious ceremonies. Although much about them is debated, most agree that the historical reliefs depict two discrete events, each taking place in the Roman Forum, in identification based on two factors. First, in the upper registers of each panel carved in low relief are a series of arcades, columns, and pediments, which correspond to the basilica, temples, and arches that lined the Forum Square in this period. Second is the inclusion of what we know from the literary tradition to have been for centuries two of the Forum's most important landmarks, a statue of the Cedar Marseus and a fig tree, a pairing that is repeated on both reliefs, once at far right and once at far left. Suggesting, together with the mirroring Swalva Terrelia reliefs on the back, that the two panels were originally set up opposite and facing away from each other, as shown in these two highly speculative reconstructions. The one fully preserved relief is usually seen as a commemoration of the Alimenta, a formal distribution of grain to poor and orphaned children by the Emperor. This interpretation largely derives from the group at center right, a toe gate emperor seated on a throne extending his right arm to a female personification who holds on her left hip a clothed baby and rests her right hand on the head of a child pressed against her, now broken away. Because of the rectangular cornice base by which the figures are elevated from the rest, this must represent a statue group in keeping with the long established Roman iconographic convention. On the far left, a figure identified as a second emperor by his stance and dress, this one living, not a statue, addresses a crowd of citizens from the formal speakers platform or rostra. The second scene, on the relief missing much of its upper register, is more straightforward. Here, against the forum backdrop, a series of soldiers in tunics carry tabuli, that is, records of citizens' debts to the state treasury toward the center. Here, the books are piled up to be burned and act initiated by the Emperor at far right. Scholars have questioned the inclusion of the Marcia statue and even more so the fig tree in the two scenes, wondering whether they, like the buildings in the background, are simply another topographical reference to the forum, or whether the artist intended an ideological connection between the two monuments and the relief's main subjects. This is a good idea of what the Marcius looked like, not only from the anaglipha, which are considerably abraded, but also from the reverse of a coin dated to 82 BC, featuring a ponchi satyr, who stands with his right arm raised, and a wineskin slung over his left shoulder, naked except for a set of boots and a cap. Further confirmation comes from a bronze from Paistum, dated to between the third and first centuries BC, now in the Museo Archeologico, from this and other surviving statue bases. It seems that copies of the Fora Marcius were placed in the Fora of other Roman cities for centuries. From these we can safely say that this sculptural type was distinct from what is today the better known so-called hanging Marcius, a composition originating in the Hellenistic period. Unfortunately the literary sources do not give us a clear idea of what the Fora Marcius symbolized. All we know for sure was that at Rome it was a familiar landmark with a long history often used as a meeting place. As for the tree on the reliefs, it is easily identified as a fig by its flat, lobate, and serrated leaves, and by its round fruit, the distinctive foliage of the common fig, ficus carica. The most likely hypothesis is that it represents the tree known in antiquity as the ficus ruminalis, the fig tree under which, according to Roman legend, the she-wolf had nursed the twins Romulus and Remus prior to the city's founding in the eighth century BC. The problem with this identification is that according to the literary sources, the ficus ruminalis was a real living tree, while our tree is shown as if resting on or growing out of would appear to be a sculpted stone base or pedestal. Indeed it has been observed that the base under the tree is identical to that of the adjacent Marcius statue with the same squared shape, solid top, and cornest edging. Since ancient artists clearly knew how to represent a living tree growing up out of the ground, this aspect of the Anaglipha Triani, although ignored by the majority of scholars, has occasioned some comment. But the only hypothesis put forward until now to explain the stone base suggests the reliefs purport to show a bronze statue of a fig tree made to accompany the Marcius statue. This illusion is unconvincing. We have no evidence for such a statue, and given the existence of a prominent living fig tree in the forum, like the ficus ruminalis, more is needed to prove another, even a bronze one. And there is no obvious connection between the cedar and Marcius, between the cedar Marcius and the fig, that would account for a pairing of their statues. A different approach, of course, is to investigate whether there are any Comparanda either elsewhere in Roman relief sculpture or in painting, where trees are a frequent feature, especially in the genre of so-called sacroidilic landscapes. In these scenes, trees appear in close connection, indeed often intertwined with columns, statues, and architectonic forms. Broadly sketched, the examples fall into three main, sometimes overlapping categories. First, as we see here, is the pairing or entwining of a tree with a column or statue to form a pyramidal arrangement, often at the center of the field that draws the eye to a focal point. Second is the interweaving of a tree and its branches with more complex architectural features, for instance a wall or a gate. And third is the encircling of a tree by means of a low enclosure wall or barrier. This last category seems to militate against another possibility, that the block under the tree on the anaglipha represents a barrier wall around its base, since by comparison with other examples it appears more solid, as well as being much taller and narrower with respect to the tree. If artists knew how to represent a living tree growing out of the ground, they also knew how to represent spatially one growing inside an enclosure, and that does not seem to be what we have here. But we should not, however, rule out a second option. Since the Romans are known to have had a taste for what we call container gardening, the planting of shrubs, herbs, trees, and vegetables in terracotta or stone pots, such as the ones here, as well as in window boxes. This of course is something we are familiar with, and it is worth noting that the common fig is a tree often grown in planters today. In urban environments, planters have a role beyond simply the aesthetic, ensuring the soil needed for a tree to grow amid the surrounding hardscape and protecting it from encroachment or damage, which I think is not the intent of the woman in the modern picture. Large planters by elevating the trees they contain create a visual effect that is not wholly unlike what we see with the Ficus Rominalis on the anaglipha. Given that the floor of the forum had been successively paved over and built up for centuries, it is certainly possible that some kind of planter was used to ensure soil for a tree considered vital to the city's myth history. As well as to elevate and protect it from the crowds and activity of the forum, such as those featured on the tour. If that were the case, we need it to pose that the anaglipha perfectly represent a potted tree, but that the form of an actual planter may have suggested to the artist a visual equivalence between it and the base of the Marcia statue, which he employed to tie the two monuments together. I want to leave this aside for one moment, however, and turn to two sets of visual comparanda for a tree which have never previously been adduced. First, at least two relief types dating originally to the Hellenistic period but copied well into Imperial times, on which we see again a tree growing out of or on top of a rectangular block. Here, however, the blocks are molded so as to suggest natural rock. In one case, a single piece of modelled stone. In the other, a series of smaller stones stacked in rows. Both are draped with a garland. The subjects of the two reliefs, at left a possession of nymphs and at right a satyr and minad with a small statue of Priipus propped up against the tree, both demand an outdoor rustic location. These trees and their naturalistic bases, which at once manage both to evoke and highly schematize a wooded, bounted setting, reinforce the very opposite effect of the anaglipha where the tree on its architectonic pedestal underlines the urban-ness of its setting. Our tree and its base have more in common with at least two other images. In 27 BC, the Emperor Augustus was on tour of the Roman provinces and to commemorate his stay and recovery from illness in the Spanish city of Taraco, an altar was erected in his name. Some years later, a delegation from the city travelled to Rome to announce that a palm tree had seeded into and was now growing out of the altar, which the Taraconensians had proudly interpreted as an auspicious presage of victory for the emperor. Augustus was not impressed, apparently quipping in reply to the effect, well, now we know how often you use it. Still, the people of Taraco continue to celebrate this palm and minted coins like the one we see here, long after Augustus's death. Closer to the date of our reliefs are my final examples, a series of medallions produced under Antoninus Pius around 147 AD, commemorating the 900th anniversary of Rome's foundation. On those showing the Aeneas myth, the medallions are a composite of several episodes in the legend, but focus on the famous scene in which the Trojan prince discovered a white sow in her litter of 30, an omen of the prosperous city that was yet to come, although this medallion appears to collapse the difference in time between the discovery of the sow and the building of the city by the addition of the city wall and gate that enclosed the scene. In the background is the figure of Aeneas carrying his father Ankaizes on his shoulder, the posture in which they were said to have fled the sack of Troy, flanked on the left by a round building and on the right by a small cylindrical shape, typically identified as an altar, but which in fact appears much more like a base for the living tree which we see above. The same combination is repeated on a medallion showing a different composition of the same city foundation myth. It's difficult to tell what foliage and therefore what kind of tree this is on the medallions, but it is certainly possible that we have here another version of the Ficus Rominalis akin to the representation on the Anaglipha Triani. This is supported by a comparison of the two trees on the second medallion. The one at bottom left is clearly a landscape feature which in conjunction with a rocky overhang frames the sow and piglets and assigns them to the rural sphere. By contrast, the sculpted base under the tree above or rather in the background seems to elevate this tree to greater symbolic status. The identification as the Ficus Rominalis would also make perfect sense in this context as the medallions could then be seen to excerpt all the major components of the myth history attached to the city's foundation. Agnus' flight from Troy and landing in Italy, but also the fig tree under which the she-wolf nursed Romulus and Remus, and even if we accept this identification for the round building on the left, the Casa Romuli, Romulus' shepherd hut in which he lived as the city's founder. In fact, these three components are precisely those that enjoyed a long and monumentalized life at Rome and its environs. As we have seen, the Ficus Rominalis, but also the Casa Romuli were preserved in Rome for centuries, while a bronze statue of the sow and her litter had been installed at nearby Lavinium since the first century BC. Ultimately, I think there are two conclusions we can draw from this material. First, that it is reasonable to suppose that because of its urban and busy location in the Forum, the real Ficus Rominalis was contained in a planter. Indeed, 150 to 200 years before the Anaglipha, the poet Ovid reported that the Ficus Rominalis in his day was a stump, having already died before the turn of the millennium. And this reminds us of the biological fact that fig trees have a limited lifespan conceivably 200 years, but perhaps much less. The Ficus Rominalis, therefore, was by the historical period certainly not an original 8th century tree, but a succession of trees that had to be replanted every so often. In this case, the base on the representations such as the Anaglipha might both reflect the reality of a planter, as well as imbue a living mortal tree with a sense of immutability and permanence. My second observation is that the architectonic and sculpted, as opposed to naturalistically treated, bases under a tree, appear exclusively in context where the tree is located in an urban, or in the case of the medallions, a proto-urban setting. In this context, they monumentalize what would otherwise be a simple landscape feature, ascribing it a status equal to that of the human and animal figures. This is particularly clear on the Anaglipha's Alimenta relief, in which we see an elaborate interplay between monuments and living figures. Just as the rostrum activates the emperor addressing the crowd at left, so the pedestals activate the statue group of the former emperor, the fig, and the Marcia statue. Together they monumentalize the city of Rome and the activities that take place in its urban context, ensuring them a lifetime beyond their natural span.