Detail of standard and soldier.
This is one of the points on the Column where an element of the frieze crosses right across the border between spirals. A slight area of rough stone can be seen around the top of the standard which indicates that when it was carved the details of the spiral above had not yet been carved. This shows again that work on the frieze progressed from bottom to top. The location of the border between spirals was not decided by the individual carving the standard, then, but by the carver of the figure above, who decided to push the border down, presumably to allow more space for the scene above, and positioned the soldier in this image so that he would fit above this standard. This is another example of the flexibility of the frieze which seems not to have been planned out in all of its details before to work on the carving began.
