English

Alternative forms

• trophaeal, trophaeall, tropheal

Adjective

trophæal ‎(not comparable)

1. (obsolete) Pertaining to a trophy or to trophies.
   • 1646: John Gregory, Notes and Observations upon some Passages of Scripture, page 163

     He stiled himself thus Augustus Cæsar Octavianus Trophaeall.

2. (obsolete) Adorned with trophies.
   • 1660: Character of Italy, by an English Chyrurgion, page 6

     Her streets of old did shine with trumphing Cæsars and Consuls in their trophæal Chariots.

3. (Roman antiquity, of a monument or memorial) Erected without Senatical grant by a prevailing general as a trophy (or tropæum) commemorating a battle in which he was victorious; compare triumphal.
   • 1788?: Tobias George Smollett [ed.], The Critical Review: or, Annals of Literature, volume 65, page 454

     This place contains ſo many remarkable remains, and collections ſo curious, that we are ſorry to paſs by it curſorily. We adviſe the reader and the traveller to be leſs haſty. The trophæal arch and the ſepulchral monument, at Glanum Livii, a colony probably eſtabliſhed by M. Livius Druſus Libo, afford alſo ſeveral circumſtances, which will intereſt the attentive traveller.

   • 1795: Thomas Pownall, An Antiquarian Romance, Endeavouring to Mark a Line, by Which the Most Ancient People, and the Processions of the Earliest Inhabitancy of Europe, May Be Investigated, page 197

     […H]e would have ſeen with what an endeavour at accuracy (in pages 36, 7, 8) I have diſtinguiſhed trophæal monuments, erected on the fields of battle by the generals and their armies, from triumphal arches, erected by the authority of government, after theſe generals had been admitted to the honour of a triumph.

4. Exhibited as a trophy of victory in war.

Quotations

• 1788: Thomas Pownall, Notices and Descriptions of Antiquities of the Provincia Romana of Gaul, now Provence, Languedoc, and Dauphine, pages 37⁽¹⁾–38⁽²⁾

  ⁽¹⁾ By what can be collected from ſome of the remains of the Trophæal Towers in different parts, it appears, that they were either ſmall round columnal towers on ſquare ſolid baſes; or ſquare, and ſometimes pyramidical buildings, raiſed on baſes pierced by one direct arch, or with two croſſing each other at right angles, and ſo ſupported on four impoſts. Theſe introduced what were afterwards called Trophæal and Triumphal Arcs. There were monumental arcs of both ſorts, which were very different in their purpoſe, as I ſhall mark upon a following occaſion. Theſe buildings, however, here under conſideration, when firſt erected, were expreſſly Saxeæ Turres, as Trophæal not Triumphal Monuments. The remains of the baſe of Marius’s monument, an edifice erected on the river Arc, eighteen years poſterior to this of Fabius, ſhew, that that was of the firſt ſort a Saxea Turris. Columnal Towers and Trophæal Arcs were erected alſo as monuments in honour of the dead.

  ⁽²⁾ Theſe Stone-Towers of Ænobarbus and Fabius could only be Trophæal. None could preſume to erect a Triumphal Arc until he had obtained the honour of a triumph, which he could not obtain but on his return, before he entered the gates of Rome, by order of the Senate. Domitius, indeed, preſumed to make a military proceſſion through the Province, imitating the ſolemnities of a Triumph; but it gave great offence at Rome, and was the occaſion of preventing his obtaining honours which he aimed at. [¶] If I might be permitted to indulge my conjectures, I would ſuppoſe, firſt, that the two monuments erected by Ænobarbus and Fabius were, as L. Florus deſcribes them, ſimply Saxeæ Turres. Next, that theſe being in decay, the inhabitants of the Province in the time of Auguſtus, according to the ſpirit of his court, and according to what he actually recommended to all his friends, and at the time when he made his Imperial progreſs through the Province, repaired theſe ſeveral Trophæal Towers in the form of Trophæal Arcs, ſuch as that at Carpentras; but that this of Orange, through which Auguſtus was to paſs, was revived in the form of a Triumphal Arc.

References

• “†troˈphæal, a.” listed in the Oxford English Dictionary [2^nd Ed.; 1989]
  Lists only the two obsolete senses, combined as one.