The Torah Atlas

event · E0455

Circus Maximus Arch of Titus Inscription כתובת שער טיטוס האבוד בקירקוס מקסימוס

Condemned and lost — this object no longer exists to be examined, so its testimony carries no evidentiary weight; its story does. It appears on no map and counts in no evidence statistic — the confidence stars below grade the documented history, not the object.

The dedicatory inscription of Rome's OTHER Arch of Titus — a second, larger triumphal arch erected in 81 CE at the curved eastern end of the Circus Maximus. The arch itself is destroyed: its text (CIL VI 944) survives only because an anonymous pilgrim copied it into the Einsiedeln itinerary around 800 CE, and its foundations and marble fragments were located under the Circus in excavations from 2015. The Senate's text credits Titus with subduing "the people of the Jews" (gentem Iudaeorum) and destroying Jerusalem — a city, it boasts, that "all generals, kings, and peoples before him had either attacked in vain or left entirely unattempted." It is Rome's most explicit surviving official statement about the churban. As a lost monument known from transmission, it carries the atlas's lost-monument status and does not render on the map.

Broken fluted column drums and marble fragments of the lost Arch of Titus, unearthed in 2015 at the eastern end of the Circus Maximus in Rome, laid out at the excavation site.
Photo: Carole Raddato, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I. Who

Hebrew
כתובת שער טיטוס האבוד בקירקוס מקסימוס
Also known as
CIL VI 944, Lost Arch of Titus dedication, Second Arch of Titus
Era
tannaim

II. When

Traditional
3841 AM — eleven years after the churban of 3830
Civil (computed)
3841 AM · 81 CE
Academic
81 CE, dated internally by consular and tribunician year
Date range
81 CE — dedicated in the first year of Domitian, dated by Titus's titles
Precision
exact

IV. What

Events
Arch of Titus Menorah Relief, Destruction of the Second Temple

Why it matters

The surviving Arch of Titus on the Via Sacra shows the churban — the menorah on Roman shoulders (Arch of Titus Menorah Relief) — but says almost nothing in words. Its lost twin in the Circus Maximus said everything: here the Senate and people of Rome state, in a formal public dedication, that Titus destroyed Jerusalem, and frame it as an achievement beyond every conqueror before him. The boast is false as history — Nevuchadnetzar burned the city and Pompey took it — and that is what makes it precious: Rome needed the destruction of one provincial city to be unprecedented, because a new dynasty's legitimacy stood on it. The stone is gone, dismantled centuries ago; the words survive because one anonymous medieval pilgrim copied them down. An empire's proudest monument now exists only in a tourist's notebook — while the people it commemorated crushing still reads the words.

V. How do we know

ClaimEvidenceConfidenceSources
The arch was erected by the Senate in 81 CE — the dedication dates itself by Titus's titulature — at the center of the curved eastern end of the Circus Maximus, and was a triple-bay arch larger than the surviving Arch of Titus on the Via Sacra. It was dismantled in the middle ages; the text survives solely through the Einsiedeln itinerary, a pilgrim's syllogue of around 800 CE. Excavations by the Sovrintendenza Capitolina from 2015 located its foundations in situ, with fragments of columns, marble architecture, and cuttings for large bronze letters. CIL VI 944 is the inscription's corpus number in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum — there is no object and no museum inventory number.
Authenticity is graded "lost" per the atlas convention for lost monuments known from transmission: the text is genuine and its transmission secure, but the physical monument no longer exists, so it never renders on the map and counts nothing toward object statistics.
archaeology external ★★★★★
The transmitted text credits Titus: "quod praeceptis patris consiliisque et auspiciis gentem Iudaeorum domuit et urbem Hierusolymam, omnibus ante se ducibus regibus gentibus aut frustra petitam aut omnino intemptatam, delevit" — "because, by his father's instructions, counsel, and auspices, he subdued the people of the Jews and destroyed the city of Jerusalem, which all generals, kings, and peoples before him had either attacked without success or left entirely unattempted." It is the most explicit official Roman statement of the destruction — and its central boast is historically false, since Jerusalem had fallen to Nevuchadnetzar and to Pompey; the exaggeration measures how much the Flavians needed this victory to be unprecedented. external ★★★★★
The Circus arch belongs to the same Flavian program as the surviving Via Sacra arch with its menorah relief (Arch of Titus Menorah Relief), the Judaea Capta coinage, and the Templum Pacis where the Temple vessels were displayed: a capital-wide commemoration of the destruction of the Second Temple (Destruction of the Second Temple) as the founding victory of the dynasty. Where the surviving arch shows the spoils, this one supplied the official words — together they are Rome's statement of the churban in image and text. external reconstruction ★★★★☆
The AM placement (3841) is the arithmetic mapping of 81 CE onto the traditional count (CE + 3760), eleven years after the churban of 3830 AM — in the era after 70 CE the traditional and academic chronologies run together year for year.
Arithmetic mapping only; no schematic chain is involved for post-churban dates.
tradition reconstruction ★★★☆☆