Together with three panels now in the Capitoline Museum, the reliefs were probably taken from a triumphal monument commemorating Marcus Aurelius' war against the Marcomanni and the Sarmatians from 169 – 175, which ended with his triumphant return in 176.
On 3 August 178, Praesens was one of those who accompanied Marcus and the young Commodus on the so-called 'expeditio Germanica secunda' against the Quadi, Iazyges and Marcomanni, and received military decorations for his part in the campaign.
Dio Cassius first reports that Domitius, "while still governing the districts along the Ister Danube, had intercepted the Hermunduri, a tribe which for some reason or other had left their own land and were wandering about in quest of another, and he had settled them in a part of the Marcomannian territory".
In the summer of 166, while the Romans were tied down in a war with Parthia, the peoples north of the Danube, the Marcomanni, the Naristi, the Vandals, the Hermanduri, the Lombards and the Quadi, all swept south over the Danube to invade and plunder the exposed Roman provinces.
By that time the Suebi, Marcomanni and Quadi had moved southwest into the area of modern-day Bavaria and Swabia.