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hat't' stadia adnlssct-ntiam alnnt, st'ticctutem
obleclant, stnindas res ornant, advcr^i* pt-rjHgium tit' solatium fraebcnt, dclfctanl domi, non im- pcdiuut foris, f>frnoctant nohiscitm, pfrtgrinantltr, Cic., PRO ARCH., 16.
PRIVATE LIBRARY OF
ED. H. HEFFNER
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THE ROMAN FORVM
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
BY THE SAME AUTHORS
CH. HUELSEN. Bilder aus der Geschichte des Kapitols. Rome, Loescher, 1899.
Topographic der Stadt Rom (Jordan I, 3). Berlin, G. Reimer, 1906.
— La pianta di Roma dell' Anonimo Einsidlense. Rome,
Loescher, 1907.
— La Roma antica di Ciriaco d' Ancona. Rome, Loe-
scher, 1907.
— and H. KIEPERT. Formae Urbis Romae antiquae.
Berlin, D. Reimer, 1896.
— and P. LINDNER, Die Alliaschlacht. Rome, Loe-
scher, 1890.
JESSE BENEDICT CARTER. The Religion of Numa and other essays on the Religion of ancient Rome. London, Macmillan, 1906.
Social Sciences & Humanities Library
University of California, San Diego Please Note: This item is subject to recall.
Date Due
Wl 171996
C\39(2J95)
UCSD it).
1 : HiOO S—
ipzig
100 / CH. HUELSEN
The
ROMAN FORVM
ITS HISTORY AND ITS MONUMENTS
TRANS LATED
BY
JESSE BENEDICT CARTER
DIRECTOR OF THE AMERICAN SCHOOL AT ROME
SECOND EDITION REVISED AND ENLARGED
With 5 plates and 151 illustrations in the texte.
ROME
LOESCHER & C.°
( H '. Reg en berg)
NEW YORK: G. E. STECHERT & Co. 1909
TO
MARIE VON EBNER-ESCHENBACH IN DEVOTION AND GRATITUDE
PREFACE
TO THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION
This little book, which appeared for the first time in June 1904, was accorded a very friendly reception by those for whom it was especially intended, namely the large circle of those, who, although not pursuing special historical and philological studies, desire more detailed information about the Forum than the brief statements of the guide books afford. In less than a year a second German edition has been called for; an Italian edition (// Foro Romano, storia e monumenti) was issued by the original publishers in April of this year. I have tried conscientiously to make use of all that has been added in the past twelve months in the way of new discoveries and investigations: the detailed discus- sion of disputed problems has been excluded by the character of this little book. Whoever is interested in it will find the evidence for some of my own suggestions in my reports on the new excavations in the Forum published in the Mitteilungen des K, D. Archaologischcn Instituts, Romische Abteilung (I. Report on 1898-1902,
— VIII —
Rome 1903; II. Report on 1902-1904, Rome 1905; see below p. 253).
Thanks to the intelligent cooperation of the publi- shers the first edition of this book was copiously illu- strated, but in this second edition the illustrative mate- rial in even more plentiful. The number of illustrations in the text has been increased from 109 to 131 ; and some of the less successful cuts have been replaced by better ones. This second edition has been especially enriched by the picture of the reconstruction of the Fo- rum (pi. IV) for which thanks are due to Dr. Joseph Durm in Karlsruhe. — The plans of the Forum and the Sacra Via are based upon the corresponding plans in Baedeker's "Central Italy". I take this occasion to thank Mr. Fr. Baedeker for his kind permission to use the original plates.
The collection of sources and modern literature, which is printed at the end of the book, aims to give merely the most important references from classic writers and the principal modern investigations relating to the sepa- rate monuments in the Forum ; the most important works treating of the Forum as a whole are given in Part I, Section III (p. 42 ff.).
It has been taken for granted that those who intend to use the book on the spot will make at least two visits to the Forum. It will be found most practical to devote the first visit to the monuments of the Forum proper (no. I-IX, XIV-XIX, XXI-XXVI), and the second to the Sanctuary of Juturna, the church of S. Maria An-
— IX
tiqua, and the Sacra Via from the Temple of Vesta to the arch of Titus (no. XXVII-XLIV). Whoever has time and inclination for a third visit should devote it to the Career (no. XX) and the temples on the Clivus (no. XI-XIII), and attempt at the end to reconstruct in imagination the Forum of the empire, obliterating in thought the monuments of the oldest and the latest periods.
Rome, July 1905.
CH. HUELSEN.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
TO THE FIRST EDITION
Interest in the Roman Forum knows no bounds of nationality or language, and the value of this book for the visitor to the Forum is ample justification for its translation into English. It is for others to estimate the value of this particular translation, but it may be said here that an effort has been made to reproduce the ideas of the author without change, and the phra- seology with as little change as possible. The trans- lator has felt that it would be neither proper nor pro- fitable to give expression to any difference of opinion. Fortunately the temptation to do so has been very slight. The present translation, while based in general upon the second German edition, has been revised and brought up to date by Professor Huelsen: in particular, alterations have been made in the sections relating to the Comi tium, the Middle of the Forum, and the Archaic Ne- cropolis. The number of illustrations has been increased and a new plan has been added; in this connection we are indebted to Mrs. E. Strong-Sellers for the interest- ing and hitherto unedited view of the arch of Severus, after a drawing by Brueghel in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire.
Special thanks are due to Mr. Albert W. Van Buren for great assistance in the reading of the proofs. Rome, December 1905.
JESSE BENEDICT CARTER.
PREFACE
TO THE SECOND EDITION
The three years which have elapsed since the pu- blication of the first edition have witnessed no very large number of discoveries in the Forum. Nevertheless re- search has progressed and made necessary certain mo- difications in this book, whereby we have conscientiously tried to make use of the modern literature. In several much discussed problems the author has not seen fit to modify his views, for instance regarding the history of the construction of the Rostra. In another place he hopes to explain his reasons.
The number of illustrations has been increased: in- stead of 139 this second edition contains 151, and in other cases cuts have been revised and corrected. We are especially indebted to Major M. Moris of the Bri- gata Specialist del Genio for the kind permission to reproduce, in part, two of his interesting photograph taken from a balloon.
Mr. Albert W. Van Buren has in this second edition renewed his kindness in the reading of proof. We are glad to express our thanks for his valuable cooperation.
Rome, December 1908.
JESSE BENEDICT CARTER. CH. HUELSEN.
CONTENTS
I. Historical Introduction.
I. The Forum in Antiquity p. 1-26
I. Origin and Meaning p. i. — 2. The Forum as a Market-place. The Comitium p. 4. — 3. The Forum as the centre of the life of the city. The Basilicas p. 8. — 4. The Forum as the scene of political events p. 14. — 5. The Forum as a place of memorial monuments. The imperial Fora p. 19. — 6. The Forum of the late empire. Destruc- tion and ruin p. 23.
II. The Forum in the Middle Ages p. 26-36
Reign of Theoderic p. 26. — Christian churches in the Forum p. 28. — Time of Charlemagne p. 29. — Rules for processions in the xn. century p. 32. — The Mirabilia p. 33. — Cola di Rienzo p. 35.
III. The exploration of the Forum since the Renais- sance p. 36-57
Excavations in the xv. and xvi. centuries p. 36. — Hypotheses of an- tiquarians concerning the site of the Forum p. 42. — Scientific in- vestigations since the end of the xviu. century p. 48. — The excavations since 1898 p, 54.
II. The monuments of the Forum p. 58-217
General orientations: Monuments and Streets . . . . 58
I. The Basilica Julia 61
II. The Arch of Tiberius 68
III. The Schola Xantha 69
IV. The so-called rostra vetera 70
V. The Rostra ; 72
VI. The Temple of Saturn 79
VII. The Milliarium Aureum . . 81
— XIV
VIII. The Umbilicus Urbis Romae 8t
IX. The Volcanal 82
X. The Arch of Severus 84
XI. The Portico of the Dei Consentes 90
XII The Temple of Vespasian and Titus 91
XIII. The Temple of Concord 93
XIV. The Column of Phocas 96
XV. The monuments of Diocletian and Honorius . . 97
XVI. The marble balustrades of Trajan 100
XVII. The Niger Lapis and the Grave of Romulus . . 105
XVIII. The Comitium 113
XIX. The Curia Julia . . 116
XX. The Career 123
XXI. The Basilica Aemilia 127
XXII. The Sacellum Cloacinae 136
XXIII. The middle of the Forum 138
The Janus p. 138. — The Equus Constantini p. 140. — The Equus Domitiani p. 141. — The Lacus Curtius p. 144. — The Tribunal Praetorium p. 149 — The Cuniculi p. 152. — The Brick-bases p. 153. — The pavement of the Forum p. 154. — The late build- ings on the East side p. 1 54. — The so-called Equus Tremuli p. 155.
XXIV. The Temple of Divus Julius 156
XXV. The Arch of Augustus 159
XXVI. The Temple of Castor 161
XX VII. The Lacus Juturnae 164
XXVIII. The Oratory of the Forty Martyrs 170
XXIX. S. Maria Antiqua. The Library of the Temple of
Divus Augustus 172
XXX. The Temple of Divus Augustus 190
XXXI. The Regia 192
XXXII. The Temple of Vesta 197
XXNIII. The House of the Vestals 204
The Sacra Via 218
XXXIV. The Temple of Antoninus and Faustina .... 220
XXXV. The archaic Necropolis (Sepulcretum) 222
XV
XXXVI. The private buildings on the Sacra Via . .p. 230
XXXVII. The Fornix Fabianus 231
XXXVIII. The Temple of Divus Romulus 232
XXXIX. The so-called Templum Sacrae Urbis .... 236
XL. The Clivus Sacer 237
XLI. The Basilica of Constantine 239
XLII. The Temple of Venus and Roma 243
XLIII. The Arch of Titus 247
XLIV. The Temple of Juppiter Stator 250
Sources and recent Literature 253
List of illustrations in the text 261
List of Plates 266
Index 267
ERRATA
p. 197, 1. 12, read XXXII instead of XXXIII.
p. 208, 1. ij, read Lucus Vestae instead of Locus Vestae.
I. HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.
I. The Forum in Antiquity.
i. Origin and Meaning. The word Forum has been taken into the vocabulary of many modern languages as a borrowed word, usually meaning a place devoted to law-courts and the transaction of public business. This is however not at all the original meaning of the word in Latin, where Forum indicates merely ' market-place '; and the old Roman grammarians derived the word from ferre ' carry ' as being the place to which the people were accustomed to bring the wares which they wished to sell. Modern philologists are united in discarding this derivation, but they have not been able to substitute anything satisfactory for it. The word is usually ex- plained as ' a place hedged about or fenced in ' . Thus the oldest Forum which Rome possessed, the Forum Boarium (' cattle-market '), lay between the Palatine and the river outside the fortification attributed to Romulus, just as in the mediaeval hill-towns of Italy (Perugia, Urbino) the great cattle markets were outside the circuit of the walls. And just as the cattle-trade in ancient Rome was carried on in the Forum Boarium, so the Forum Holitorium ('cabbage-market') served as a vegetable- market, the Forum Cuppedinis ('Titbit-market') as a place for the purchase of various food-supplies, while fish were sold in the Forum Piscarium, wine in the Forum Vinarium, etc.
The Forum Romanum, called in antiquity simply Forum, does not belong to the oldest phase of the de- velopment of the city. Even after the original settle- ment on the Palatine (Palatium, Cermalus, Velia) had spread over the hills to the east and the south (Fagutal, Oppius, Cispius, Caelius) and the ' Septimontium ' city
Fig. I. The oldest city (Palatium und Septimontium).
had grown out of ' Roma Quadrata ' , the depression between the Palatine and the Capitoline continued for a long time a marshy valley, shut out from the city proper. Springs on the north side of the Palatine and on the east slope of the Capitoline watered the valley, and a brook which came from the hills to the east flowed through it and, continuing on through the depression of the ' Velabrum ' and so into the Tiber, formed a very considerable protection for the north side of the Palatine settlement. Starting from the ' old gate of the Palatine '
(porta Mugonia) a road ran north-west (toward the Ca- pitoline) later called the ' Sacred Way ' (sacra via), on which, outside the circuit of the wall which bounded the old ' Septimontium ' city, there lay a burial-ground (sepulcretum^). The valley of the Forum was not included within the boundary of the city until after the Palatine settlement had united with a Sabine settlement on the Ouirinal and then spread out toward the north, and the two communities thus united had chosen the ' head- mountain ' (jnons Capitolinus} as their common citadel (arx} and the seat of their greatest sanctuary (templum lovis Optimi Maximi). Then the burial-place disap- peared, and the little brook was confined within a walled channel and thus became the ' Cloaca maxima '. The Forum, the market-place, a large oblong piece of ground, extended from the boundary of the Septimontium city and the north corner of the Palatine up to the slope of the Capitoline, and was there joined by the Comitium, the place set apart for the law-courts and the public assemblies of the united communities.
Roman tradition preserved for a long time the re- membrance of the early condition of the Forum:
' Where now the Forum lies, were pools of water and marshland, Streams from the Tiber's flood swelled high the banks of the
[brook, . . . Where now through the Velabrum processions move toward the
[Circus,
Willows grew for the herds, and reeds that shook in the wind '. Hoc, ubi mine fora sunl, udae tenuere paludes,
Amne redundatis fossa madebat aquis... Qua Velabra solent in Circum dncere pampas Nil praeler salices cassaque canna fuit.
(Ovid's Fasti VI, 401 ff.).
Legend in various forms filled this region with fi- gures from the story of Rome's foundation. Here, so
the tale goes, in the war after the rape of the Sabine women the doughty henchmen of Romulus came into conflict with those of Titus Tatius, and a Sabine leader, Mettus Curtius, was caught in the midst of the valley, in a swamp or crevice of the earth, which was named after him the Lacus Curtius. After the battle had been stopped by the intervention of the Sabine women, the kings made a treaty of peace in the ' Place of Meeting ', the Comitium, at the foot of the Capitoline. In this same Comitium the third king, Tullus Hostilius, is said to have built the Senate-house, the Curia Hostilia, and the fourth king, Ancus Martius, or his successor Tarquinius Priscus, the Career or prison. All these statements, built on the basis of very uncertain etymologies, are not to be relied upon. When, on the contrary, tradition ascribes the building of the Cloaca Maxima to a powerful foreign race of kings, the Tarquins, who ruled over Rome in the sixth century before Christ, the chronological statement is supported in a remarkable way by the discovery of tombs, the latest of which are dated down into the sixth century, proving that the valley of the Forum was used as a burial-place until that time.
2. The Forum as a Market-place. The Comitium. Our knowledge of the history of the Forum becomes somewhat more definite, and our vision a little clearer, in the period of the later kings, and of the early republic; that is to say at the close of the sixth and the beginning of the fifth century before Christ. In this period the Forum really fulfills Varro's definition of it and appears as the market-place to which the Romans and the farmers of the Campagna ' bring what they wish to sell ' . Both the long sides were fenced in by rows of wooden booths (tabernae), in which butchers and vegetable -dealers offered their wares for
sale. On the festivals of the gods and at the funeral ceremonies of prominent citizens it was in the Forum that the games were held, which the more favoured classes in the community viewed, seated on wooden tri- bunes, or standing on the roofs of the booths, or from the Comitium, which was at a higher level .than the Forum, while the common people had to content them- selves with standing in the market-place. There was as yet no pavement, the Cloaca Maxima ran through the midst, still visible and only partly covered over, and where the ditch of the Cloaca entered the Forum, Cloa- cina, the purifying goddess of fertility, had a small sanc- tuary. Away from the Forum, uphill, alongside the ditch, ran an important street, the Argiletum, leading to a thickly populated district of the city. At the lower end of this street (infimum Argiletuni) stood the chapel of the two-headed Janus, the doors of which were shut only when Rome was at peace with all the world. At the lower end of the market-place stood the round temple of Vesta, in which the six Vestal virgins guarded the sacred fire on the state-hearth. Near it on one side was the Regia, the official residence of the Pontifex Maximus ; on the other side at the foot of the Palatine the Spring of Juturna, the nymph of the healing water; and oppo- site on the slope of the Capitoline, the shrine of the fire-god Vulcan.
The Volcanal looked down upon the Forum and also upon the smaller and more aristocratic Comitium. This Comitium was consecrated according to the rules of the science of augury, a rectangular, almost square piece of ground, the sides of which faced the four car- dinal points of the heaven. On the north side of the Comitium, in the direction of the Quirinal hill, which in early times was separated from the Capitol only by a narrow valley, was situated the Council-house, the
Curia, in which the Senate held its sessions. On the opposite side, where the Comitium joined the Forum, stood the speakers' platform and the waiting-place for the senators (senaculuni). Along side of this sena- torial waiting-place was built later a similar waiting- place for the ambassadors of foreign peoples (Graeco- stasis}. The Comitium covered about two and a half acres (the sides were about 300 feet long), and it was in this space that the community, arranged according to curiac, came together in solemn assembly (comitia cu- riatd) or for legal purposes. On three days in the year (February 24, March 24 and May 24) the king, or after the fall of the Tarquins the rex sacrificnliis, by legal fiction the successor of the king, appeared in the Comitium and performed certain sacred acts, the true meaning of which was unknown even to the contempo- raries of Cicero. There was one especially noticeable detail, namely that the king, after completing the sacri- fice, left the Comitium in great haste as if driven out. It is possible that the inscription on the cippus under the Lapis Niger (see below p. 112) is connected with one of these mysterious old ceremonies. This cippus is the only witness in the Forum to the venerable pri- mitive period of the Roman state: the other monuments of the Comitium we learn of only through the ancient writers. For example we are told that there was in the Comitium a round space fenced in (putcal) and near it a sacred fig-tree (ficus ruminalis). Both of these were thought to be reminders of the augur Attus Navius who by magic art had brought the tree here from its origi- nal position in the Lupercal: and a statue of the magi- cian himself was to be seen on the steps in front of the Council-house. Near the speakers' platform were statues of men who had fallen for the fatherland, and besides this, important documents of state, e. g. treaties of alliance
with foreign peoples, were exhibited here engraved on bronze. And when about the year B. C. 450 Rome created for the first time a written code of law, the ' twelve tables' which contained it were posted on the speakers' platform. In the Forum itself many important sanctuaries arose after the beginning of the republic (B. C. 510). The dates of their foundation are preserved to us in the chronicle which was kept by the Pontifices in the Regia; so, for example, in B. C. 497 (a. u. c. 257) the temple of Saturn at the upper end of the Forum, thirteen years later, at the other end, the temple of Castor. When the Gauls captured the city (B. C. 390) the Capitol was besieged, and both Forum and Comitium were laid waste. Probably very few of the monuments of the earliest Rome managed to survive this catastrophe. But the power of the Roman people itself not only recovered from this terrible blow, but withstood as well the internal quarrel- ling between Patricians and Plebeians, which lasted for centuries. When the struggle for the right of admission to the highest offices of the state was brought to an end by the Licinian-Sextian laws (B. C. 366), M. Furius Camillus, who had captured Veii, and con- quered the Gauls, dedicated a temple to Concord (tern- plum Concordiae) on the Clivus Capitolinus above the Comitium. The architecture of these temples must have been very simple and archaic. The statues of the gods, and the bright-coloured painted bricks which decorated the roof and the pediments, were mostly clay; the walls were made of native stone, tufa or peperino, which was covered with plaster and painted in brilliant hues. Accord- ing to tradition Etruria supplied the models and also the workmen (to whom Tarquin is said to have given as their dwelling-place the vicus Tuscus or ' Tuscan-alley '). We may obtain an idea of what these temples were like from those at Falerii (Civita Castellana) or that
at Alatri, a model of which may be seen in the court of the Museo di Villa Giulia (see also the reconstruc- tion Fig. 2).
3. The Forum as the centre of the life of the city. The Basilicas. Now follows the time in which, after the downfall of the might of Etruria, Rome progressed rapidly and obtained the leadership over the regions of Central Italy. The conqueror of the Latins, Gaius Maenius, consul B. C. 338, decorated the speakers' platform in that year with the beaks (rostra) of the ships which he had captured at Antium, and henceforth the platform was called the Rostra. To this same Maenius is attributed another innovation, namely that on the occasion of games in the Forum places for spectators were erected in galleries (inacniand) on the roofs of the booths. In all probability therefore Mae- nius was also responsible for the arrangement so im- portant for the development of the Forum, namely that butchers and vegetable-dealers were removed from the crowds of trades-people in the Forum and in their place came the more noble trade of the money-changers. In compensation for the loss of the Forum, the macel/um (' provision-market ') was built for the butchers and ve- getable-dealers to the north of the Forum (behind the Tabernae novae}. The booths in the Forum, from now on known as Tabernae argentariae, seem to have been built more solidly, in connection with this change, and some attempt at uniform decoration seems to have been made; for example in B. C. 310 the gilded shields, which formed a part of the booty taken from the Samnites by the dictator Papirius Cursor, were given to the money- changers in the Forum as a decoration for the outside of their booths. An additional proof of the important part which Maenius played in the new development of
IO
the Forum may be found in the fact that an honorary column was erected to him in the Comitium. This column stood on the west side near the Career, and served for several generations as one of the fixed points in the primitive Roman measurement of the hours.
" In the twelve tables", so Pliny tells us (H. N. VII, 212), "mention is made only of the rising and the setting of the sun; some years later noon was added to this, and a servant of the consuls announced the noon-tide as soon as from his stand in the Curia he spied the sun between the Rostra and the Graecostasis. As soon as the sun began to sink between the Columna Maenia and the Career, the same servant announced the last hour of public bus- iness: this was done until the first Punic war, only however when the weather was clear". In B. C. 263 (a. u. c. 491) a sun-dial, which M. Va- lerius Messalla had brought as booty of war from Catana in Sicily, was set up near the Rostra. Although this dial had been calculated for the meridian of the place from which it came and hence showed the hour constantly wrong for the latitude of Rome, — it continued in use for ninetynine years, until in B. C. 164 the Censor Q. Mar- cius Philippus put up a better-reg- ulated dial near the old one.
Fig. 3. Columna rostr.ita.
In the times of the Samnite wars the steps in front of the Curia received a remarkable decoration: an oracle had commanded the Romans to exhibit there " the statues of the wisest and bravest of the Greeks" ;
— II —
and Pythagoras and Alcibiades were chosen for tne purpose.
In B. C. 263 the consul Messalla placed near the Curia Hostilia a great picture of a battle {Tabula Va- leria), representing the engagement in which he had won a victory over king Hiero and the Carthaginians in Sicily. His example later found many imitators. In B. C. 260 (a. u. c. 494) the first Roman admiral, C. Dui- Hus, obtained, in return for his naval victory over the Carthaginians, a statue near the Rostra on a column which was decorated with the beaks of ships (Columna rostratd)\ the honorary inscription of Duilius is pre- served for us in a marble copy from the early empire (on the ground floor of the Palazzo dei Conservator}, see fig. 3 ; the Cohtmna rostrata above the inscription is a work of the xvi century, imitated from ancient Roman coins).
In B. C. 210 (a. u. c. 544) a great conflagration raged on both sides of the Forum. The Tabernae No- vae, the Lautumiae or ' stone-quarry alley ' (on the east slope of the Capitoline), the Forum Piscarium (north- wards, behind the Tabernae Novae}* and many private houses, were reduced to ashes; and it was only with great difficulty that the temple of Vesta was saved (Livy XXVI, 27). This catastrophe led to the erection of many magnificent new bui'dings, which were however in the main undertaken only after the war with Hannibal had come to a happy end (B. C. 201).
At this same time there began for Rome a lively contact with Hellenistic culture and art, induced by her constant relations with Greece and Asia Minor, partly in peace, partly in war. For the Forum there came from Greece, possibly through the medium of the Greek towns in southern Italy, the model for a new kind of building, the Basilicas. These were large covered halls
12
which provided a place protected from sun and rain, for trials at law and the banking business, for the general operations of trade, and for pleasure-strolling, — in short for all those things which had hitherto been done under the open sky in the mai ket- place. The first of these halls was built by the great enemy of Greek
T. SATVRNI
Fig. .\. The Forum about the vc.ir 170 B. C.
culture, M. Porcius Cato Censorius, B. C. 185 (a. u. c- 569): ' He bought two houses on the ' stone-quarry alley ' and four booths and built there the Basilica which was named Porcia after him ' (Livy XXXIX, 44). Since the ' stone-quarry alley ' was at the foot of the citadel, in the region of the modern Via di Marforio, and further since the Basilica was quite near the Curia Hostilia, its position can be approximately estimated. No remains however have been preserved: whatever was spared by
— 13 —
the conflagration of B. C. 52 (see below p. 15) must have been removed during the changes in the Forum made by Caesar and Augustus. The censors of the year B. C. 179, M. Aemilius Lepidus and M. Fulvius Nobilior, built a second Basilica on the north side behind the Tabernae Novae, and also a new fish-market. This Basilica, frequently restored and beautified, has been preserved in the form which was given it by the buil- ders of the Augustan age (see below p. 123 f.). Next came the Basilica Sempronia in B. C. 170 (a. u. c. 584), situated behind the old booths. It was built by Ti. Sempronius Gracchus on the site of the house of the older Scipio Africanus,' near Vortumnus. ' Possibly under the eastern half of the Basilica Julia traces of this building may still be found.
A picture of life in the Forum about the year B. C. 180 is given us in the so-called ' parabasis ' of Plautus's comedy Cur- culio (a passage to be sure which seems to have been inserted in the play after the death of the poet). The speaker offers to ex- plain to the public where people of all sorts, both good and bad, can be found.
'If for perjurers you are seeking, look in the Comitium, If you wish for liars and boasters, go to Cloacina's shrine, Husbands wasting their wives' fortunes meet in the Basilica, Courtesans with checkered history, and fierce cut-throats meet
[there too,
While the gourmets throng the fish-mart, buying tid-bits for their
[feasts.
Walking in the lower Forum you will meet good men and rich, While the middle part is filled with those who are not what they
[boast,
And the borders of the Lacus crowded full of envious prattlers Ready on account of nothing to speak ill of all good men, Though themselves more fit to merit all the ill they say of others. In the old booths are the usurers who loan money out at interest, While behind the shrine of Castor gather men who' ve lost their credit.
— 14 —
In the Vicus Tuscus are those who will sell themselves for gold, Ready to deceive in person, or to lend the means to do so. The Velabrum holds the bakers, butchers, and haruspices.'
Qui periurum convenire volt homincm, ito in comitinni : Qui mendacem el ffloriosum, apiid Cloacinae sacrum. Dilis damnosos marilos sub basilica quaerito : Ibidem erunt scoria exoleta quique stipulari solent : Symbolarum conlalores aput forum piscarium. In foro infimo boni homines alqne diles ambulant: In media propter canalem ibi ostentatores meri. Confidenles garrulique el malevoli supra lacuin, Qui alleri de nihilo audacter dicunt contumeliatn. El qui ipsi sat habent quod in se posset vere dicier. Sub veteribus ibi sunt qui dant quique accipiunt faenore. Pone aedem Castoris ibi sunt subito quibus credos male. In Tusco vico ibi stint homines qui ipsi sese venditant, Vel qui if si variant vel aliis ut vorsentur praebeant. In Velabro vel pislorem vel lanium vel haruspicem.
A glance at the plan on p. 12 shows that the description follows strictly the topographical order: the Basilica in v. 3 is the Aemilia, the word-play in the next to the last verse is a reference to the statue of Vortumnus behind the temple of Castor (see above), but it can scarcely be rendered in English.
4. The Forum as the scene of political events. The year B. C. 145 (a. u. c. 609) marks an epoch in the history of the Forum. C. Licinius Crassus, tribune of the people, transferred the legislative assembly (the Comiiia Tributa) from the Comitium, which had grown too small for it, to the Forum, and introduced the custom that the speaker on the Rostra should face the Forum, that is the people, and turn his back on the Curia, that is the senate. It was in the Forum accord- ingly that in the following decades the quarrels between the aristocrats and the democrats were fought out, under
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the leadership especially of the Gracchi. The orators of the democratic party during this period frequently used the steps in front of the temple of Castor as a speakers' platform, in preference to the old Rostra.
In B. C. 121 (a. u. c. 633) C. Gracchus was killed by the blows of the Optimates. His implacable adversary, the consul L. Opimius, was commanded by the senate to restore the temple of Concord, built by Marcus Furius Camillus. Near this temple Opimius built a Basilica, which existed down into the time of Caesar and is said to have been a stately monument. Its stateliness must have consisted in splendid decoration rather than in size, for the site on which it was built was extremely small. In the same year, B. C. 121, the Sacra Via at the point where it entered into the Forum was spanned by an arch (fornix) which its builder, the consul Q. Fabius Maxi- mus Allobrogicus, decorated with statues of his ancestors, the Fabii and the Cornelii (see below No. XXX VII.).
Then came the civil wars between Marius and Sulla, in which the Forum was more than once the scene of bloody fights. When, during these troublous times, in B. C. 83 the Capitoline with the temple of Juppiter had fallen a prey to the flames, the dictator Sulla de- termined to rebuild both it and the Forum in splendid style. Sulla himself began the new temple of Juppiter, and Q. Lutatius Catulus, the victor over the Cimbri, finished it. This same Catulus built, in the declivity between the Arx and the Capitoline, a repository for the archives of the State ( Tabularium}, the big two-storied hall of which formed a worthy boundary for the west side of the Forum. In the Comitium Sulla himself restored the Curia and probably enlarged it, and in this connection the statues of Pythagoras and Alcibiades, referred to above, disappeared. Probably the Rostra was restored at the same time, but the thorough changes
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in the whole region which Sulla had planned were pre- vented by his death.
About the year B. C. 55 the Forum and the Comi- tium were the scenes of bloody tumults, especially between the followers of the tribune of the people, Clodius, and his antagonist Milo, and more than once the Rostra served as a fortress, from which deadly missiles were thrown down upon the adversaries. When on January 2oth, B. C. 52, Clodius fell near Bovillae at the hands of the followers of Milo, his partisans carried his body to the Comitium and burned it on an improvised funeral pyre, for which the seats of the senators and the benches of the judges provided the material. The flames spread to the Curia, which was entirely destroyed, and in addition the Basilica Porcia suffered severely. Faustus Sulla, the dictator's son, built a new Curia, which however lasted only seven years, for a great statesman was beginning to develop a plan destined not only to mark out a new course for the whole Roman state but to put a new stamp upon the Forum and the old Comitium. This statesman was Julius Ccesar.
Even while Ciesar was engaged in carrying on the war in Gaul, he had already contemplated a reorgani- zation of the Forum, among his many plans for the beautifying of the capital-city. At first he could of course carry out his plans only by means of interme- diaries. In a letter written in the summer of B. C. 54 Cicero mentions the buildings erected by the consul Paullus, who had restored the Basilica Aemilia at Cae- sar's expense, and had made preparations for the build- ing of a second large Basilica (the later Basilica Julia), and adds: " Qesar's friends, I refer to myself and Oppius, have felt no hesitation in spending sixty million sesterces [about fifteen million francs] for widening the Forum and extending it to the Atrium Libertatis. The owners
MviAava.1
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of the property would not consider any smaller propos- ition. We are hoping besides to accomplish another large undertaking; namely we are building in the Cam- pus Martius a covered voting hall \saeptd\ for the as- sembly of the tribes, made of marble, with a portico. It will be about a mile in circumference".
This letter shows very clearly the two chief purposes of Caesar' s reforms : the transfer of the assembly of the tribes from the old Forum, which had grown too small for the purpose, %to the Campus Martius, and the establish- ment of a better means of communication between the old Forum and the new place of assembly in the Campus Martius. As far as the price paid for the land is concerned, this can be compared with that which was paid almost at the same time for the site of Caesar's own Forum: there the ground cost about one hundred million sesterces, that is to say about ten thousand sesterces (twenty— five hundred francs) a square yard. Under the same conditions in B. C. 54 Caesar's friends could have bought about six thousand square yards, a site considerably larger than that of the Basilica Aemilia, even in the shape in which it has come down to us from the empire.
At the close of the Gallic wars, Caesar pushed his building plans still more energetically with the aid of the wealth obtained as booty. It is amazing how in the course of a few years, even in the midst of the confusion of the civil wars, the enormous alterations were accom- plished which gave to the region its general outline for all time to come. On the south side of the Forum arose the Basilica Julia; it was intended at least in large part to concentrate here the courts, which had been held hitherto in the Comitium, at the Tribunal of the praetor near the centre of the Forum (see below p. 146), or near the Puteal Libonis in the lower part of the Forum (see n. XXV). On the opposite side the old site of the Comitium
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was largely given over to buildings, since it was no longer needed either for the law-courts or for the assemblies of the people. It was on this site that the new Curia arose, larger and more splendid than the Curia Hostilia and with a different orientation. The lines of this new Curia coincide with those of the churches S. Adriano and S. Martina. On account of this change all the old mon- uments, on the border between the Comitium and the Forum, especially the Rostra, had to be given a new lo- cation. Many of them disappeared entirely under the new layer of earth which Caesar's builders heaped upon the old level, to prevent the Forum from being flooded. The Forum, thus splendidly restored, was connected with the Campus Martius by the porches surrounding the temple of Venus Genetrix, which Caesar had built NW. of his new Curia, below the slope of the citadel, in honour of Venus, the ancestress of the Julian house. Under the name of the Forum Julium this arrangement was the prototype of all the imperial Fora.
Caesar hastened the carrying out of these plans, and, as though he had a premonition that he would not live to see the buildings completed, he dedicated the Forum Julium and the Basilica Julia, before they were finished, on September 26th, B. C. 46, the last day of the cele- bration of the victory of Thapsus. Before eighteen months had passed, on March I5th, B. C. 44, Coesar fell by the daggers of the conspirators in the Curia of Pompey (in the Campus Martius, not far from S. An- drea della Valle). The Forum was the scene of his magnificent funeral, and on the spot where his body was burned the templum Divi Juli was built a few years later.
The plans which had been begun by Caesar were carried out by his successor, Octavianus Augustus. He completed the Basilica, dedicated the new Curia and
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probably also the Rostra, and erected a temple on the east side of the Forum (see below n. XXIV), in honour of his adoptive father Julius, who had now been admitted to the ranks of the gods. Near this temple of Caesar an arch was built in honour of Augustus, after he had regained the standards of battle which had been lost in the war with the Parthians (see n. XXV). Members of the nobility too interested themselves in the decora- tion of the Forum : Munatius Plancus restored the temple of Saturn (B. C. 42), Domitius Calvinus the Regia (B. C. 36), and members of the Gens Aemilia the Basi- lica which was named after their ancestor (see p. 1 24). Later Tiberius, the step-son and subsequently the suc- cessor of Augustus, rebuilt the temple of Concord and the temple of Castor (A. D. 10 and A. D. 6), and thus erected memorials in the Forum to himself and his brother Drusus. However, although the splendour of the Forum was increased by the buildings of the Augustan age, the beginning of its decline dates from the same epoch. The emperor himself built on the north side of the old Forum another one, the Forum Augustum with the temple of Mars Ultor; and this new Forum was destined to rival the old one in practical usefulness, and to destroy its hitherto unique position far more than the Forum Julium had done.
5. The Forum as a place of memorial monu- ments. The imperial Fora. The emperors of the first dynasty made no important changes in the general lines laid down by Caesar and Augustus, but contented themselves with completing and beautifying individual details. The Forum was covered with monuments in honour of the emperors, their households, and deserving citizens. The assemblies of the people, which had sunk into absolute insignificance as early as the time of Ti-
2O
berius, would in any case have found the Forum too small for them, for the actual open space was very much decreased by the building of the temple of Caesar, and of the new Rostra, as well as by the enlargement of the old sanctuaries (Castor, Concordia, Saturn). The law- courts retired, in the main, into the Basilica Julia: and from the time of Augustus on we hear no more of gaVies taking place in the Forum. The funeral ceremonies, however, for members of the imperial family continued to be held here, and the emperors conducted certain important state functions preferably in the Forum, be- cause of its countless monuments which recalled the greatness of Rome (see p. 76 f.). In the reign of Tiberius the arch of Augustus in the lower part of the Forum was matched by one in the upper part near the Rostra, where an arch was erected in remembrance of the vic- tories of Germanicus in Germany (see p. 68). Also in the time of Tiberius the temple of Augustus was built at the foot of the Palatine; this temple served later for the worship of the other deified emperors (see No. XXX). The madly fantastic constructions of Caligula -- the extension of the Palatium up to the temple of Castor, and the bridge which crossed the Forum from Palatine to Capitoline - were of short duration, though possibly some remains of the foundations laid in the enlargement of the Palatine have been preserved. The great fire in Nero's reign (July iQth, A. D. 64), which caused such damage to the Palatine and the Sacra Via, scarcely reached the Forum, although the buildings on the east side, the temple of Vesta, the house of the Vestals, and the Regia, were more or less injured.
The Flavian emperors, Vespasian, Titus and Domi- tian, found abundant room for their building activity in the regions which had been laid waste by the fire. On the north side of the Sacra Via, in the direction of*
21
the Esquiline, Vespasian built the splendid temple of Peace (templum Pacts), which contained among other things the booty from the temple at Jerusalem. The porticos around this temple formed an imposing square which in point of size and magnificence was worthy of comparison with the three old Fora and later was some- times called Forum Pads. On the wall of one of the buildings connected with the temple of Peace Vespasian placed a marble plan of the city as restored by him (see p. 22). Titus commenced the temple for his deified father, Vespasian, on the Clivus Capitolinus, but was not able to finish it in his own short reign (see p. 91); even the honourary arch, which the Senate and the people had decreed to him on account of his conquest of Jerusalem, was not finished until after his death (see No. XLIII). Domitian, who had an especial passion for building, completed the temple of Vespasian, restored the Curia, the temple of Castor, and the templum Dim Augusti together with the library; and was himself honored by the erection, in the midst of the Forum, of a colossal equestrian statue, celebrating his victories over the Germans. Finally the construction of a new Forum, the fourth, the so-called Forum Transitorium, on the narrow strip of land which lay between the Forum of Augustus and the temple of Peace, was begun by Do- mitian, but completed by his successor, Nerva.
Qesar's plan of connecting the old Forum with the Campus Martius was carried out in magnificent fashion by Trajan, who built a new Forum, adjoining, the Forum of Qesar and the Forum of Augustus, and surpassing all the earlier Fora both in extent and in splendour (A. D. 113). The very site itself had to be obtained by a vast piece of engineering : the most southern point of the Quirinal hill, which had hitherto extended very close to the Capitoline, was excavated by working
in from the plain until so much of the shoulder had been cut off that the height of the side thus laid bare was one hundred Roman feet (approximately 97 English feet). In the old Forum the chief memorials of Trajan are the beautiful marble balustrades decorated with bas- reliefs, which he probably placed upon the Rostra in
Fig. 5. Fragments of the Forma Urhis.
connection with his restoration of it (see p. 104). These reliefs tell the story of two magnificent acts of imperial favour for Italy and the provinces, which the emperor had just announced in the Forum. Hadrian erected according to his own plans the double temple of Venus and Roma (see No. XLII). Near the east end of the Forum, at the beginning of the Sacra Via, Antoninus Pius built a temple for his wife Faustina, which after his own death (A. D. 161) was dedicated to him as well. Marcus Aurelius and Commodus did not leave any note-
— ^— 2 ^ ^^~
worthy monuments in the Forum. Septimius Severus on the contrary is well represented, because, being" the first African on the imperial throne of Rome, he seems to have made an especial effort to counteract this foreign origin by filling the old historic points in Rome with monuments of his own name. Severus restored the temple of Vespasian and the temple of Peace, where he caused to be erected a new copy of the marble plan of the city. Fragments of this marble plan have been pre- served to us, and those that have to do with the Forum are represented in fig. 5. Severus' s wife, Julia Domna, restored the temple of Vesta and the house of the Vestals; and the Regia seems to have been restored about the same time. What was however of the greatest importance for the general appearance of the Forum was that, on the west side, at the beginning of the Clivus Capitolinus, an arch was erected in honour of Severus, which almost entirely hid the facade of the temple of Concord. In the period of the decline of Rome, in the third century, it is characteristic that we hear of scarcely any important monument in the Forum, with the exception of the ' silver statue ' of Claudius Gothicus on the Rostra. The seventy years between the death of Caracalla and the beginning of the reign of Diocletian, with their continual tumults and violent changes of ruler, have left no monumental traces in the Forum; but in the retired cloistered house of the Vestals a number of inscriptions in honour of the presiding Vestals in this period have been found.
6. The Forum of the late Empire. De- struction and ruin. In the reign of the emperor Carinus (283-284) a great fire raged in the Forum, which gave abundant opportunity to Diocletian and his fellow-rulers to indulge in extensive building operations.
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The Curia was rebuilt, on the old foundation to be sure, but in the style of the day; and in front of the Basilica Julia, which had also been damaged, colossal columns were erected on great foundations of brick. On the Sacra Via Maxentius dedicated a temple to his son Ro- mulus, who had died in boyhood; and he also began the construction of a Basilica which should far surpass all earlier buildings of the sort. In the space in front of the Curia, the last remnant of the old Comitium, the emperors and those appointed as their successors received, in the year 303, honorary columns, the base of at least one of which has been preserved (see below p. 97 f.). In the same region Maxentius constructed a group of Mars with Romulus and Remus; and possibly in this connection he restored the old ' Grave of Romulus '. Maxentius was defeated and killed in the battle of Saxa Rubra(3i3): his vanquisher, Constantine, completed the great Basilica, which has ever since borne his name, and received in the midst of the Forum an equestrian statue, of which the base with the inscription was still in existence in the seventh century. The transfer of the imperial residence to Byzantium (330) marks for the whole of Rome the beginning of an irresistible de- cline. In the following decades the conflict between the old Paganism and the new Christian faith became con- stantly more bitter, and at various crises some of the most important scenes were enacted in the Forum and in the Curia. In the year 346 the emperor Constantius issued an edict which commanded the cessation of offer- ings and the shutting of all pagan temples. To be sure the shutting of these temples was not equivalent to the destruction of them; for in many cases the temples were preserved for practical purposes, as public buildings, store-houses etc.; so for -example the temple of Saturn, in whose cellars the state-treasure was kept (see p. 80)
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A memorial of the reaction which set in under Julian the Apostate for a very short time, is to be found in the restoration of the Portico of the Twelve Gods (see below p. 90), which was carried out by the Prefect of the City Vettius Agorius Praetextatus (A. D. 367). The reign ofGratianus (373-383) marks the final victory of Christ- ianity, when in spite of the eloquent pleadings of the aristocratic pagan party the altar of Victoria with her golden statue was removed from the Curia.
The powerful Theodosius (379-395) was able to de- fend Italy and Rome against the barbarians of the north ; but at his death the empire was divided between his sons Arcadius (the East) and Honorius (the West), and hostile forces poured into the peninsular from all sides. To be sure the emperor managed to put down the re- bellion of Gildo in Africa (386-398), but even that was accomplished only by the aid of his great general Sti- licho, who was himself of northern extraction. It was Stilicho again who in 403 beat back Radagaisus and his hordes at Faesulae. Remains of the monuments which celebrated both these victories are found in the Forum (see below p. 98 f.). But the great protector of the state fell a victim to the suspicions of the emperor, and two years after Stilicho' s death Rome was captured by Alaric and his Goths (A. D. 410). In connection with the plundering of the city, the flames destroyed many monumental buildings in the Forum: the Curia and the adjoining Secretarium, the Basilica Aemilia, and probably also the Basilica Julia. The hasty and wretched resto- rations which were carried out in the following decade bear witness to the decline both in artistic taste and in technical ability which characterized the age of Honorius. In the year 442 Rome was ' visited by such a terrible earthquake that many temples and porticos collapsed ' (Paulus Diac. Hist. Lang. XIII, 16); in all probability
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the Forum was also affected. In the year 455 Rome suffered terribly at the hands of the Vandals under Gei- seric; and it seems almost like irony when a few years later (about 470) a prefect of the city celebrates a naval victory over the Vandals by erecting a wretched little structure adjoining the Rostra (see p. 78). This is the last monument of the western empire in the Forum ; twenty one years after the incursion of Geiseric, the lad Romulus, who had been crowned by his father, the magister militum Orestes, laid his crown in the hands of Ocloacer the Herulian, and Rome lost her last Au- gustus (476).
II. The Forum in the Middle Ages.
Seven years later, in the place of Odoacer, the Ostro- goth Theodoric (493-526) made himself ruler of Rome
Fig. 6. Brickstamp of Theodoric, found in the temple of Vesta.
and Italy. The inscriptions on his bricks, of which a considerable number have been found in the Forum, usually have in addition to his name the phrase ' born for the good of Rome' (bono Romae). And it is a fact that under his rule a better time dawned for Rome after the dreadful catastrophes of the fifth century. He spared what was left of the old Roman state; the Curia once more beheld the assembly of the senators, though to be sure only a part of them were of Roman blood, and the
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majority of them were followers of the king. It is espe- cially characteristic that Theodoric loved to call the old Curia the ' Court of Freedom ' (Atrium Libertatis). The Comitium had its old name no longer, but was called ad J^ria Fata on account of a group of the ' Three Fates ' which stood there. Near this Tria Fata there still stood the little old temple of Janus, closed, not because there was peace, but because it belonged to the old pagan su- perstition; it was opened for the last time in remem- brance of the ancient custom in A. D. 537, when Belisa- rius was defending Rome. The Forum probably still retained most of its ancient monuments, and when any of them came into danger of falling, there was no lack of good will on the part of Theodoric and his succes- sors, in protecting it from distruction. What probably often happened in such cases, is shown by a document accidentally preserved to us: a reply of King Theodahad (535 -536) to the Prefect of the City, Honorius, who had reported to the king that on the Sacra Via, ' which an- tiquity had adorned with many monuments of its super- stition ', the bronze statues of elephants (probably taken from the group on top of some arch of triumph) had grown so dilapidated that they threatened to collapse. The decision of Theodahad was that these remarkable monuments should be protected with all possible care from further injury, and that accordingly the cracked limbs of the elephants (concerning whose natural history the private secretary of the king, Cassiodorus \Var. X, 30] exhibits in this connection a most quaint and curious learning) should be joined together with iron rivets, and supporting pillars of brick should be built up under the bodies, so that posterity might know how these curious animals had looked.
In the dark centuries which followed, whatever of the ancient monuments was not destroyed owes its sal-
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vation in great part to a metamorphosis into Christian churches. Ever since the edicts of Constantius (346) and of Gratianus (3^3) the temples in the Forum had been shut; but a long time must needs pass before the Christians could bring themselves to use for their Christian worship the temples which had been desecrated by the worship of idols. In the Forum itself the first church was dedicated by Pope Felix IV. (526-530) in honour of Saint Cosmas and Saint Damianus: the nave of this church had been one of the halls on the Forum Pacis, probably one of the libraries of the temple of Peace, and the little round Heroon of Divus Romulus formed the vestibule. Somewhat later, probably about the middle of the sixth century, a little chapel of the Virgin nestled itself into the library of the temple of Augustus, and behind the Rostra was erected an Oratory of Saint Sergius and Saint Bacchus.
The end of the sixth and the beginning of the se- venth century mark for Rome a period of the very deep- est decline, and here the correspondence of Pope Gre- gory the Great is most instructive. Rome was indeed in a sad plight, when a pope greeted the accession to the throne of a usurper like Phocas with such flattery as Pope Gregory employs (see below p. 97). The column of Phocas, constructed out of one or more old monuments, is the last memorial of an eastern em- peror on the soil of the Forum (A. D. 608). About two decades later the Curia was consecrated as the church of Saint Hadrian, and the Secretarium as the church of Saint Martina. In place of the small Oratory in the library of the temple of Augustus, a stately church arose, which under Pope Martin I. (649-654) was old enough to receive its second decoration of frescoes. In the Atrium Vestae and in the deserted palaces of the emperors (downs Tibcriana) the officials of the Byzan-
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tine rulers or of the popes made themselves at home, and the same fate, probably before the eighth century, fell to the lot of the Regia and the Basilica Aemilia. In the western aisle of the Basilica Julia the small church of S. Maria in Cannapara was built. The Oratory of Saint Sergius and Saint Bacchus at the forth of the Capitol gave place, under Gregory III., to a stately Basilica.
The last mention of the assembling of the people in the Forum occurs in the stormy times which followed the death of Pope Paul I. The Primicerius Christo- phorus called together in tribus fatis, that is in front of the church of S. Adriano (see above p. 27), ' the priest- hood, the noble warriors, the influential citizens, and all the inhabitants from the greatest to the least ' , and caused the Presbyter Stephanus to be made Pope (August ist, 768).
About this same time there was wandering in the Fo- rum that unknown pilgrim from the Cloister of Reichenau on Lake Constance, who has left us the oldest guide- book to the Eternal City (it is generally called the Ano- nymus Einsidlensis , after Einsiedeln, where the only ex- tant manuscript is preserved). He saw the facade of the temple of Vespasian, and that of the temple of Con- cord, still standing; he saw also, near the Curia, a great monument, possibly a triumphal arch for the wars of Marcus Aurelius against the Marcomani; in the midst of the Forum was still standing the base of the eques- trian statue of Constantine with the inscription : the statue itself, like all works of art made of metal, had probably long ago disappeared. From the description of his journey, and better yet from the plan which can be constructed according to it (see fig. 7), it is clearly seen that at that time the arch of Severus was still the cen- tral point of traffic; there the roads from Saint Peter's
to the Lateran and S. Maria Maggiore crossed those which led from the Pincian and the Quirinal to the southern districts of the city.
Soon after the time of Charlemagne the destruction of the old buildings seems to have made very rapid progress, partly because of neglect, partly because of intentional injury. An example of the latter is given us in a passage from the biography of Pope Hadrian I.
(772-795)- This pope wished to restore the church of S. Maria in Cosmedin, but ' a great monument of tra- vertine and tufa' (the Carceres of the Circus Maximus?) was threatening it from above. Thereupon ' the pope
Fig. 8. Lime-kiln at the corner of the temple of Venus and Rome, beside the arch ot Titus.
called the people to his help and ordered them to bring a quantity of wood to the foot of the wall and there set it on fire, and when this had been repeated often for the space of a year, the old wall fell in ' , and its stones were then used for building the new church. Probably similar things occurred to many monuments in the Forum, but the scanty chronicles of the ninth to the eleventh centuries do not permit us to follow the history of this destruction in detail. The lime-kilns, which have been
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found in the Basilica Aemilia, near the temple of Vesta, and in the temple of Venus and Rome (see fig. 8) doubtless destroyed many treasures of great artistic and historical value. In the case however of the Basilica of S. Maria An- tiqua, which has recently been excavated, the building itself tells its own story clearly enough. About the middle of the ninth century those portions of the imperial palaces which lay above the church must have reached such a state of ruin that they were a distinct peril to the church. Thereupon Pope Leo IV. determined to give up the old church entirely and in its place to build another in the vestibule of the temple of Venus and Roma. This new church received the name of S. Maria Nova. The capture of Rome by Robert Guiscard (May 1084) caused damage especially to the southern parts of the city, and probably the Forum suffered too.
In the first half of the twelfth century we have an important document in the rules for processions which the Canon Benedict included in his Liber Polipticus completed not long before 1143. 'A study of the itineraries given there shows clearly that about 1130 the centre of the Forum was entirely impassible. The collapse of the Basilicas must have caused insuperable barriers to traffic; and near the old temple of Faustina, which had probably been changed more than a century before into the church of S. Lorenzo in Miranda, the fortifications of Roman barons, the Frangipani and others, blocked the passage. In order to reach the arch of Titus from the arch of Severus the processions were compelled to make a long detour, through the Forums of Nerva, of Augustus, and of Vespasian. In the Forum itself, however, high above the ruins of the splendid struc- tures of ancient times, a few wretched houses stood, built of bricks, and v.ith shingle roofs, surrounded by gardens and vineyards. Many of these houses belonged to S. Ma-
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ria Nova, in whose archives details have been preserved concerning rent and sale, and the names of tenants and owners; but unfortunately most of these details are de- void of general interest.
About this same time, a Roman cleric — possibly the same Canon Benedict of Saint Peter's — undertook to describe and explain to his contemporaries the wonders of ancient Rome. It was the time in which the citizens of Rome were peculiarly anxious for independence and freedom from the supremacy of the pope, and thus those conflicts were the order of the day, which filled up the pontificate of Gelasius II. (n 18-11 19) and of Innocent II. (1130-1143). It was precisely at such a time that the citizens of Rome were aroused to a new interest in those silent witnesses of Rome's greatness, which were older than the gifts of Pipin and Constantine, upon which the papacy based its claims. But what sources had the Roman archaeologist at his command? His chief authorities were a few early mediaeval chronicles, the description of the regions from the time of Constantine, Ovid's Martyrologium de fastis; but the largest part had to be supplied by his own imagination. Thus there came into existence that curious book, the Mirabilia Urbis Romae, upon which for three centuries and more all ideas about the topography of ancient Rome were based. The Forum is described in the Mirabilia (Ch. 24) as follows:
« In front of the privata Mamerlini [the Career] was the temple of Mars, where his statue now lies [the ' Marforio', at present in the courtyard of the Capitoline Museum]; near by was the temple of Fate (templum fatale), which is now S. Martina, and the temple of refuge (templum refugii), which is now S. Adriano. In the neighbourhood was still another temple of Fate [apparently a confused recollection of the Trio. Fata, see above p. 26]. Near the state prison was the temple of the Fabii, Behind S, Sergius
3
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was the temple of Concord, in front the triumphal arch [o Severus], through which the road leads to the Capitol. Nearby was the State Treasury, namely the temple of Saturn. On the other side was an arch made of very beautiful marble, on which was the story how the soldiers received their pay from the pay-master, who had charge of this and weighed all in the scales (stalera) before it was paid out to the soldiers: for this reason the place is called S. Salvator de statera. In the Cannapara [Basilica Julia] is the temple of Ceres and Tellus, with two atria, that is to say halls, adorned round about with porticos and columns, so that whoever held court there could be seen on all sides. Nearby was the palace of Catiline, where the church of S. Antony was, and near there is the place which is called In/emus, because it gave forth fire in ancient times and caused great damage to Rome. Thereupon, in order to save the city, according to the word of the gods, a knight in full armour hurled himself into the pit; then the earth closed in and the city was saved. There is also the temple of Vesta, beneath which, so the saying is, lies a dragon, as may be read in the life of Saint Silvester. There also is the temple of Pallas, and the Forum of Caesar, and the temple of Janus, who foresees the year, both its beginning and its end, as Ovid in the Fasti says: but now it is called the tower of Cencio Fraja- pane. Adjoining this is the temple of Minerva, with an arch; this is now called S. Laurentius de Miranda. Nearby is the church of S. Cosmas, which was the temple of the Asylum; behind it was the temple of Peace and ofLatona, and beyond that the temple of Romulus. Behind S. Maria Nova were two temples, one of Con- cord, the other of Piety. Near the arch of the seven-branched candlestick was a temple of Aesculapius: this was called Cartu- lariiim, because there was a public library there, of which there were twenty-eight in the city ».
This sample shows what a curious mixture of true and false this wonder-book contains, and how statements which are entirely correct and based upon a real know- ledge of the monuments are combined with false con- jectures and pieces of pure imagination. But the assu- rance with which the author gave his explanations, and
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the completeness with which he knew how to explain all the remains of Roman grandeur, gave him great au- thority in subsequent time. The destruction of the mo- numents themselves and the gradual filling up of the area of the Forum were in the meantime continuing. It is worth noting that in the twelfth century the church of S. Adriano had to be raised a half story higher in order that its level might correspond to that of the land around it. Many other churches of the early middle ages fell into ruins and disappeared, especially at the time of the exile of the popes at Avignon, when Rome sank once again into the depths. In the Forum itself the cattle of the Campagna were pastured and the name Forum Romanum was changed to Campo Vaccino. At the beginning of the xiv. century Cola di Rienzo wandered among the ruins of the Forum. " The whole day long", says his contemporary biographer, "he contemplated the old blocks of marble. There was no one who could read the old epitaphs as he could. He understood how to read all the old inscriptions and to explain rightly all the marble figures". Cola's col- lection of inscriptions, which is known to us chiefly in a book entitled De excellentiis urbis Romae, written about 1425 by Nicolaus Signorili, the secretary of the Roman senate, contains none of the ancient monuments which the pilgrim of Einsiedeln had seen, except the arch of Severus, the temple of Saturn, and the temple of Faustina.
With the return to Rome of Pope Urban V. (1367) a brighter time began for the city, although to be sure .the increased interest in building led to the destruction of ancient monuments in a way which is to be regretted. For the palace of the Lateran Urban V. took his material from the Basilica Aemilia and the temple of Faustina. Sixty years later Giovanni Poggio in his book De varie-
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tate foriunae laments that a great part of ehe walls o the cella of the Saturn temple, which had be in standing when he arrived in Rome in 1402, had now beent destroyed by avarice and burned to make lime. But far more important was the fact that there arose at this time a really scientific interest in the remains of ancient Rome, as a part of that humanism which in a relatively short time had gained a knowledge of the ancient literature and the ancient historians. Scarcely twenty years after the publication of Signorili's little book, which is entirely under the influence of the Mirabilia, Flavius Blondus published his Roma Instaurata, the first topography of Rome which was based upon the system- atic use of ancient writings, and which broke away en- tirely from the fairy-stories of the middle ages, and substituted for them independent views, even though in the nature of things many of these views were mistaken.
III. The Exploration of the Forum since the Renaissance.
We may gain an idea of the appearance of the Forum about the end of the fifteenth century by the aid oi the accompanying leaf taken from a Florentine painter's sketchbook preserved in the library of the Escorial (see fig. 9). The sketch was made from a point on the slope in front of the Palace of the Senator, and though the artist has taken the liberty of leaving out most of the buildings which were not ancient, especially the church of Saint Sergius and Saint Bacchus, which lay in the foreground between the arch of Severus and the temple of Saturn, he has however reproduced the mediaeval fortification in front of ttye temple of Faustina. Through the central arch of the ' arco di Settimio ' can be seen indicated by a few strokes a building with Doric columns; this is the
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western corner of the Basilica Aemilia, which was de- molished at the beginning of the sixteenth century (see below p. 129).
The Forum served as a marble quarry for modern buildings, especially in the days of Julius II. and Leo X., and among those who destroyed the ancient buildings
Fig. 9. The Forum about the year 1490.
artists of the very first rank are mentioned, feven Bra- mante himself (see p. 128). To be sure Baldassarre Castiglione has preserved to us the famous letter written by Raphael to Pope Leo X., in which he urged that the monuments of ancient Rome should be preserved and reconstructed, either in actuality or at least in drawings, but this praiseworthy attitude of one individual was powerless in the face of the general abuses of the time. In addition to the remains of the Basilica Aemilia, large
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parts of the Basilica Julia fell at the hands of the des- troyers, and in the early decades of the sixteenth century the temple of Vesta and the house of the Vestals, the temple of Saturn and that of Vespasian, all were com- pelled to surrender their marble and their travertine for new buildings. At most a few inscriptions and sculptures -
Fig. 10. The Forum in the year 1536, seen from the Palatine.
although as regards sculpture the Forum has neveryielded very much - were copied and preserved; for example the eight bases for honourary statues of the Vestal virgins, which were excavated in 1497 in front of Ss. Cosma e Damiano, and the base which was found about 1509 near S. Adriano, and which celebrated the jubilee of the reign of Diocletian and his fellow- emperors (see p. 96).
The pontificate of Paul III. (1534-1550) marked an epoch in the history of the Forum. In 1536, when the
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emperor Charles V. entered Rome after his victorious attack upon Tunis, the pope decorated in his honour a triumphal way, leading through all the triumphal arches which were in the Forum and on the Sacra Via. From the arch of Titus to the arch of Severus a straight road was made, the towers of the barons of the middle ages in front of S. Lorenzo were destroyed, the whole sur- face of the Forum was levelled and filled in by masses of rubbish. Rabelais says that " two hundred houses and two churches ' ' were destroyed in the making of this road, but that refers not to the Forum alone, but to the whole extent of the road as far as the Ponte S. Angelo. A graphic idea of how the Forum looked at this time can be obtained from the drawings of the Dutch painter Marten van Heemskerck (1498-1574) who seems to have been himself employed in the making of the triumphal way (fig. 10 and n).
At this time the remains of the Forum suffered grievously at the hands of Paul III., who was making great progress in the building of St. Peter's, and at the hands of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, who was building his splendid palace near the Campo di Fiori. Perhaps the decade 1540-1550 did more damage to the ancient monuments of Rome than the preceding two centuries. The search for building material went on everywhere - at the temple of Saturn, at the temple of Vespasian, at the arch of Severus and in front of S. Adriano, in the Basilica Aemilia, and at the temple of Castor, on the site of the temple of Caesar and of the Regia, on the Sacra Via from the arch of the Fabii to that of Titus ; the thing was carried to such an extent that the voices of contemporaries were raised against these cose molto orrcnde. A few notable finds, especially inscriptions and beautiful architectural bits, were employed in the deco- ration of the gardens and the courts of the palaces; the
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or official lists of consuls and of triumphs, which were excavated in 1546 near the Regia, were honoured by being placed on the Capitoline in the palace of the Conservatori, but this was exceptional, while by far the largest part of all the marble, travertine, and other stone, which was found, served as material for modern build- ings, or — worse yet - was thrown into the lime-kiln. Truly scientific interest in excavations was at this time almost an unknown quantity; for example, in 1553, in connection with an excavation near the column of Phocas, the bas-relief representing Curtius (see p. 145) was brought to light, and at the same time it was no- ticed that the base of this solitary column, about which antiquarians had made so many guesses, bore an in scription, and traces of the top line could be seen, but no one took the trouble to dig a few feet deeper and discover the secret of the column. Instead, scholars con- tinued in their uncertainty as to what it was, calling it sometimes the Columna Maenia, sometimes the remains of the bridge built by Caligula.
In the Forum with its covering of rubbish the hypo- theses of antiquarians and topographers grew thick and fast. Curiously enough the scholars of the fifteenth cen- tury, Blondus and his successors, had had in general a tolerably correct idea about the site of the Forum, for they placed it "between the two triumphal arches" (Severus and Titus); for example the representation which the worthy Bartolomeo Marliani (1544) gives of the Forum and its monuments deserves praise as a piece of detailed and critical work, considering its time. But now suddenly in the middle of the sixteenth century there comes a new theory, that of the Neapolitan Pirro Ligorio. This man was an architect by profession - - the Villa d'Este at Tivoli in his work — but his hobby was the investigation of antiquity, where as an ambitious dilet-
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tank- he had the habit of filling in the great blanks in his own knowledge by most impudent forgeries. His theory was as follows: the Comitium, that is the place where Romulus and Titus Tatius became reconciled after the rape of the Sabine women, lay, according to Dio- nysius of Halicarnassus, between the Capitoline and the Palatine; accordingly both Comitium and Forum must be sought for in that valley where now the hospital and the church of the ' Consolazione ' lie; the great ruins, however, the temples and the single columns between the two triumphal arches, belonged to the Sacra Via. Here- with began the bitter war of pens, and a passage from Marliani's polemic against Ligorio (Topographiae Urbis hacc nuper adjecta, Rome 1553) shows with what persi- stence the varying opinions were defended: " What I teach about the Forum ", says Marliani, " is the abso- lute truth, and if Father Romulus should rise again and say to me that he had founded his Forum anywhere else, I would reply to him ' Romulus, thou hast but shortly gone through the stream of Lethe, and thou hast there- fore forgotten the position of thine own city so entirely that thou dost gossip the same nonsense as this Strep- siades ' (Ligorio) " . In spite of this enviable certainty about his contention, Marliani and the really correct views which he was defending got the worst of it in the time which followed, and Ligorio's theory won the day, asserted, at it was, with equally great surety and supported in addition by a large number of monuments and in- scriptions which Ligorio fabricated for his purpose. An engraving by Etienne Dup6rac, which is herewith repro- duced (fig. 12, and compare also fig. 57), gives an idea of the appearance of the Forum in 1575: the temple of Saturn was buried in rubbish up to the bases of the columns, and the temple of Vespasian half-way up the columns themselves. The mound of rubbish sloped up
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to the lower story of the columns in the Tabularium, and the only arcade which was preserved in its entirety served as a door of entrance to the Palace of the Senator.
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries excavations in the Forum ceased almost entirely. The soil was considered exhausted, and in fact it would have been necessary to dig very deep in order to bring out blocks of marble and other useful material. Across the Forum lengthwise from the arch of Titus to the arch of Severus stretched a perfectly straight avenue of elms, which can be seen already grown to a considerable size in the pictures made by Livinus Cruyl about 1650 (fig. 14-15). Near the three columns of the temple of Castor there stood, since 1565, a large basin of granite which served as a watering trough for the cattle (since 1817 it has been used as a fountain in the Piazza di Monte Cavallo: see below fig. 138). On the level of the Campo Vaccino there were a few solitary houses, work-sheds of stone- cutters, etc. The investigation of the Forum was still, however, entirely under the spell of Ligorio's theory, especially since Alessandro Donati (1638) and Famiano Nardini (1660) had given it additional support by var- ious arguments of specious learning. In the " Italian Journey" of Goethe the name of the Forum does not occur at all. As the poet in April 1787 was bidding farewell to Rome, he took a moonlight stroll, as lu tells us, " through the loneliness of the Sacra Via from the triumphal arch of Septimius Severus to the Colos- seum", and when in February 1787 he beheld from the Palace of the Senator, " in the brilliance of the after- noon sunlight, the great picture which extended on the left from the arch of Septimius Severus through the Campo Vaccino to the temple of Peace " , he had no idea what an historical site was concealed under the debris.
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A new epoch in the investigation of the Forum began at the end of the eighteenth century in connection with the revival of the whole science of antiquity through the influence of \Vinckelmann. The first excavation for scien- tific purposes was undertaken in 1788 by the Swedish ambassador to Rome, C. F. v. Fredenheim. He laid bare a part of the Basilica Julia, but being completely under the influence of Nardini's theories he considered it a part of the portico which separated the Forum from the Sacra Via. A systematic continuation of these excavations in the following decade was hindered by the tremendous political disturbances, but several festivals in honour of the " Roman Republic ' ' were celebrated on the Campo Vaccino, one of which has been immortalized in a contemporary engraving (fig. 15). With the be- ginning of the nineteenth century, however, the false theories which had existed so long gave place to more correct views about the topography of the Forum. This change was largely due to the activity of Carlo Fea, who, as Winckelmann's third successor, beginning with the year 1801, acted as Commissario delle antichita; and for more than a generation carried on excavations in the Forum on a large scale. He commenced in 1803 with the excavation of the arch of Severus and began even at that early date to develope a plan for the com- plete excavation of the Campo Vaccino. The political developments of the following years did not permit this plan to be fulfilled immediately, but the French go- vernment too turned its attention to the Forum; the modern houses, which had been built beside the temple of Saturn and that of Vespasian, were destroyed, the facade of the Tabularium was laid bare, and the temple of Vespasian was restored. The houses which surrounded the column of Phocas were removed, and at last the inscription on the base was discovered(i 8 1 1). The prefect
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De Tournon conceived the plan of uniting the Forum with the Colosseum and the Palatine, and thus creating; a sort of* Passeggiata Archeologica', though to be sure the carrying out of this project (cf. the plan in De Tour- non's Jttudes statistiques sur Rome, PI. 23) would have hidden rather than uncovered the ancient monuments, \Ve are indebted to this same period for the first accurate plan of the Forum, an excellent piece of work by the french architect Caristie (drawn 1811, published 1821). On the return of the pope in 1814, Fea, who was again appointed curator of antiquities, continued his excavations most energetically: the front half of the temple of Castor, the NW corner of the Basilica Julia, the beginning of the Sacra Via with the first two brick bases (those next to the column of Phocas), and the temple of Concord, were all uncovered in the course of four years. Then the work ceased for a period of ten years, until in 1827 it was begun again by Pope Leo XII. under the supervision of Antonio Nibby. Be- tween 1829 and 1834 the whole slope of the Capitoline and the foundation of the Tabularium were laid bare, and the excavations at the arch of Severus, at the column of Phocas, and on the Sacra Via were extended and connected with one another. The progress of the excav- ations between 1811 and 1836 is shown on the accurate plane made by G. Angelini and Antonio Fea (1837). The yield of scientific results from these excavations was published partly by the aged Fea in his Indicazione del Foro Romano^ 1827, but more especially in the works of Bunsen (1834 and 1835) an<^ °f Canina {Esposizione storica e topografica del Foro Romano 1834, I835). A problem which had been discussed for centuries, the relation of the Comitium to the Forum, was solved by Theodor Mommsen in one of the earliest of the impor- tant articles which he wrote in Italy (1845). The pictur-
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csque appearance of the Forum however had begun to suffer, and King Ludwig of Bavaria complained (1834):
" Everywhere rents in the earth, till the eye beholds nothing but chaos!
Beautiful as it was once — now not a trace of it left! Artists have nothing to say, archaeologists rule as they please here,
Blind to all but one side, caring for nought but their own ".
And yet those portions of the ancient level which had been excavated were merely pits surrounded by railings, and the greater part of the Campo Vaccino with the avenue of elms was as yet untouched. This is proved, for example, by the beautiful etching by W. Fries (fig. 16). Not until the time of the short-lived Roman Republic (1848-1849) was any considerable area excavated, namely the front half of the Basilica Julia. The excavations at the arch of Tiberius and near the column of Phocas were continued also by the papal government until 1853, and then the work ceased again, this time for seventeen years.
All the more energetically did the Italian govern- ment after 1870 take up the work of exploring the whole of the Forum. Pietro Rosa, who had already won an enviable reputation as director of the excavations on the Palatine, was put in charge of the task, and accomplished in six years a great part of the undertaking. 1870- 1871 the whole of the Basilica Julia up to the southern end was laid bare (see fig. 17); and in addition excavations were carried on at the temple of Castor, at the temple of Divus Julius, and at the column of Phocas; 1872- 1873 the whole centre of the Forum was uncovered, and among other things the marble balustrades of Trajan were found (see below p. 100), and the excava- vation of the temple of Vesta was begun. The condi- tion of those portions of the Forum which were at this time laid bare, namely a large section between the
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temple of Caesar and the Rostra, and a small section in- cluding the temples near the Clivus Capitolinus, is shown in A. Dutert's book (le Forum Romain et les Forums de C<?sar etc. Paris, 1876, fol.). Rosa's successor, Fio- relli, continued the work: 1878-1880 the Sacra Via was opened up from the temple of Faustina to the Basilica of Constantine and to the church of S. Francesca Romana. Inasmuch however as communication lengthwise across the Forum was entirely interrupted, and communication crosswise was confined to two streets (Via Bonella-Conso- lazioneand S. Lorenzo-S. Maria Liberatrice; see fig. 18), it seemed that out of consideration for the traffic of the modern city any continuance of the excavations would be extremely difficult. But in 1882 the minister Baccelli had the two streets removed, or rather trans- ferred; and now for the first time all the ruins of the Forum and the Sacra Via were united in one magnificent group: the excavations were then continued until 1885, especially under the direction of R. A. Lanciani, and the most notable result was the surprising discovery of the House of the Vestals. Thereupon there followed a pause for thirteen years, interrupted only by certain deeper excavations for special topographical researches (at the Rostra, the Regia, the temple of Caesar, and the arch of Augustus).
The last period of the excavation of the Forum begins at the end of 1898 under the direction of Gia- como Boni; it surpasses all those that preceded it both in the number and the importance of the results obtained. The area laid bare by excavation has been doubled in extent; besides which the excavations themselves have not ceased at the level of the imperial city, as was previously the case, but they have been carried deeper and thus have brought to light very ancient monuments of the greatest historical value. On the other hand the
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structures of later periods, which had been built among and over the monuments of classical times, have been carefully spared, so that our knowledge of the centuries of Rome's decline has been considerably increased. The chief incidents in this last great campaign of excavation are the following:
1898, December: Laying bare of the front of the temple of Caesar, with the altar; excavations at the temple of Vesta, the Clivus Capitolinus, and the arch of Severus.
1899, January loth; Discovery of the Lapis Niger (upper layer). February-April: Excavations at the Regia, at the temple of Faus- tina, and on the Sacra Via.
End of May: The shrine and the archaic stele under the black
pavement. Summer: Laying bare of the older Clivus Sacer in front of the
Basilica of Constantine, the front of the Basilica Aemilia, and
a part of the Tabernae.
October-November: The House of the Vestals (gold treasure). December: Comitium, west part of the Basilica Aemilia.
1900, January-March: Comitium, Regia.
Spring: Demolition of S. Maria Liberatrice, discovery of the Lacus Juturnae and of the Basilica of S. Maria Antiqua.
Autumn: The rear of the temple of Castor, the upper (eastern) part of the Sacra Via.
1901, Continuation of the excavation of S. Maria Antiqua and the temple of Divus Augustus. ' Cuniculi ' under the pave- ment of the Forum. Southwest corner of the House of the Vestals.
November-December: The Sacra Via near the arch of Titus.
1902, Spring; Private houses of the republican period (so-called Career) near SS. Cosma e Damiano.
April: First archaic tomb on the Sacra Via.
Summer and Autumn: Further uncovering of the archaic Necro- polis. Private buildings (horred) south of the temple of Divus Augustus.
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1903, Further excavations in the old Necropolis. June: Base of the statue of Domitian.
Autumn: Excavations in the Basilica of Constantine.
1904, Excavations under the arch of Augustus.
March: Find of vases in the base of the statue of Domitian. June: Lacus Curtius.
Autumn: Excavations on the Clivus Sacer, between the arch of Titus and the Porta Mugonia.
1905, Continuation of the excavations on the Clivus Sacer. In- vestigations in the middle of the Forum (the so-called Basis Tremitli and tribunale imperiale).
In the last three years, progress has been slow; and with the exception of the researches at the Summa Sacra Via (see n. XLIII) there have been merely some unimportant experimental diggings. We may however expect in the future many important undertakings: complete excavation of the Basilica Aemilia (begun in October 1908 after the houses on the south side of the Via della Salara Vecchia had been demolished); demarcation of the Curia (S. Adriano); continuation of the excavations between the temple of Divus Augustus and S. Teodoro (and the laying bare of the whole NW slope of the Palatine as far as the Lupercal). Further it is earnestly to be desired that the Forum of Caesar (Via Marmorelle, Via Marforio) should be investigated, and also the older monuments of the Comitium, which lie under it: this undertaking is important and promises a good return, and it is to be hoped that it will be car- ried out in connection with the systematization of the slope of the Capitoline which lies to the east of the mo- nument to Victor Emmanuel II.
The statues, bas-reliefs, inscriptions, coins, terra- cottas etc., which have been found in the Forum, both those that have been discovered in the recent excav-
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ations, and those that had been previously deposited in different museums (especially the museum in the Baths of Diocletian), are to be brought together in a " Mu- seum of the Forum ' ' , for which a suitable building is being prepared by alterations in the cloister of S. Fran- cesca Romana. It is proposed to establish in connec- tion with this museum a reference library and a collection of all drawings, engravings, and photographs, which have to do with the Forum, its excavation, and its re- construction. Such an institution not only would be of great interest to the visitor to the Forum, but would also provide important material for scholars.
II. THE MONUMENTS OF THE FORUM.
The visitor to Rome usually obtains his first view of the Forum Romanum from the Capitoline side; and there is no spot more suitable for a general orientation of the ruins, than the projection in the Via del Campi- doglio on the right-hand side, near the Tabularium, which stretches out like a balcony and is in reality the last remains of the carriage-road which was removed in 1882 (see above p. 54). The view from this point embraces not only the Forum proper with its temples, Basilicas, and triumphal arches, but also the Sacra Via, which, ascending the ridge of the Velia (arch of Titus), led from the Forum to the entrance of the old Palatine city (Porta ilfugonia, Porta vctus Palatii). (Cf. the view which was taken from a point near here, only higher up, and the reconstruction, both on plate IV).
There are to be sure certain things which render it difficult to obtain a general idea of the arrangement of the Forum and of the monumental buildings which surround it. The open space proper, recognizable by its pavement of slabs of white travertine, is occupied in part by buildings of the very latest time, besides which it serves as a storage-place for columns and other architectural remains, and is in many places cut up by excavations. On the other hand many of the surrounding buildings have been
«fcr ~» ! 1
mff .
1
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razed to the foundations, and their ground-plans do not indicate, at the first glance, whether they belonged to covered or uncovered spaces. The temples are the most easily recognized: on the left hand the temple of Saturn with its eight smooth columns of granite; near, but separated from it by the modern city street, the temple of Vespasian, a corner of which is still stand- ing, three beautiful Corinthian columns with entab- lature; further on, the temple of Concordia, destroyed except the foundation of the cella. The portico which supports the carriage-road and is partly concealed under it is the Porticus Deorum Consentium, and this completes the row of buildings at the foot of the Capitoline. At the opposite end of the Forum, under the Palatine, stands the row ot three columns belonging to the temple of Castor, and to the right of this are the huge brick walls of the temple of Augustus; opposite the temple of Castor, at the beginning of the Sacra Via. is the best preserved of all the temples, that of Antoninus and Faustina. In contrast to the temples, the two great basilicas, which formerly bounded the Forum lengthwise on both sides, are almost absolutely destroyed. The ground-plan of the one on the south side, nearest to the spectator, the Basil- ica Julia, is indicated, though in a rather unfortunate fashion, by a number of modern brick pillars. Oppo- site on the north side lies the Basilica Aemilia, which has only recently been excavated, the facade of which occupied all the space between the temple of Faustina and the Senate-house (Curia, now the church of S. Adriano with its bald brick front). In front of the Curia stands the arch of Severus, in good preservation; nearer to the spectator, but partly concealed by the columns of the temple of Saturn, is the solitary column of Phocas, the latest monument in the Forum. On the road in front of the Basilica Julia are seven brick pedestals, all
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of which formerly supported colossal columns: upon two of these pedestals the columns have recently been set up again. The east side of the Forum is bounded by the temple of Julius Caesar, of which only the foundation remains.
Behind the temple of Qesar the Sacred Way (Sacra Via) begins; on this road lies first the temple of Faus- tina, and just about opposite to it the house of the Vestals (atrium Vestae) with its court surrounded by high brick buildings (the temple of Vesta itself, of which only the concrete core of the foundation remains, is partly con- cealed from view by the temple of Castor). Farther along on the Sacra Via is the round temple of Divus Romulus (now the church of SS. Cosma e Damiano); behind it are conspicuous the three arches of the Basilica of Con- stantine. To the left of the temple of Castor is the arch of Titus, to which the Sacra Via runs. The massive structure of the Colosseum forms the background: in antiquity there stood in front of the Colosseum the splendid double temple of Venus and Roma, in the vestibule and the cella of which the church and the cloister of S. Francesca Romana now stand.
The longitudinal axis of the Forum lies almost exactly north-west to south-east: following the customary termi- nology however we shall designate as the north side that which lies between S. Adriano and S. Lorenzo, and as the south side that between the Basilica Julia and the temple of Castor.
In addition to the Sacra Via several other important ancient streets run into the Forum: on the south side at both ends of the Basilica Julia, the Vicus jitfrarius (' yoke- makers-street '), which runs along the foot of the Capi- toline, and the Vicus Tuscus, which runs almost parallel with it along the foot of the Palatine. Both these streets connected with the Velabrum and afforded communication
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between he Forum Romanum and the Circus and the Forum Boarium. On the north side of the Forum was an important street, the Argiletum, which was later used by Nerva for his Forum Transitorium. It ran into the Forum between the Basilica Aemilia and the Curia. On the north slope of the Capitoline (below the church of Aracoeli)an important street afforded communication with the Campus Martius; under the republic it was called Lautumiae (stone-quarry-alley), under the late empire Clivtcs argentarius (money— changers-alley).
I. The Basilica Julia. The entrance to the Forum is on the south side in the Via delle Grazie. A foot- path bordered by bits of columns and various antique and mediaeval fragments leads down: the Basilica Julia is the first building which one enters.
The Basilica was begun in the year B. C. 54 (see above p. 17); and the Tabernae veteres and the Basilica Sempronia (see above p. 1 3) had to make way for it. On the day of celebration for the victory of Thapsus, September 26th, B. C. 46, it was de- dicated by the Dictator Caesar, although it was not yet finished. The building was completed by Augustus but was destroyed by fire. After the fire the emperor began a new building on a larger piece of ground, and dedicated it A. D. 12 in his own name and that of his adopted sons Gaius and Lucius, who had died. The building however kept the name Basilica Julia, and is only very rarely referred to as Basilica Gai et Luci. We know very little about the Basilica in the first centuries after Christ: in the great fire in Carinus's time (see above p. 23) and again in that in the time of Diocletian it was injured; and it also suffered when Rome was plundered by Alaric and his Goths: the Prefect of the City Gabinius Vettius Probianus restored it again and decorated it with
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works of art (416). In the ninth century a little church, S. Maria in Cannapara, nestled itself into the west portico. In the follow- ing centuries it lay ruined and covered with debris, and served as a stone-quarry for the builders of the Renaissance. The hospital of the ' Consolazione ', which owned the land, made a very considerable revenue in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by renting it out to those who wished • to dig for marble and tra- vertine'. The site of the Basilica was partially excavated in 1788, more completely in 1849, and at last entirely after 1870, but only such scanty remains of the architecture were found as the marauding diggers of the previous centuries had left.
The Basilica consists of three parts: the vestibule alongside of the Sacra Via, the main hall with the galleries surrounding it, and the separate rooms (tabernae) situated behind it (toward the 'Consolazione'). In order'to see these three parts in their proper order one should first walk through the Basilica, as far as the ves- tibule (opposite the two colossal columns on the Sacra Via; PI. I, a).
From the Sacra Via the vestibule was reached by a broad flight of steps (seven steps at the east end, only one at the west). The portico, which consisted of two stories, was supported by large pillars of marble, against the front of which were laid half-columns with simple Doric capitals. On the side toward the Forum the facade has been entirely destroyed; one pillar made of travertine was built up in modern times and does not represent therefore the original material. On the broken ends of the other pillars - and even these ends are mostly of modern construction - all sorts of architectural fragments and pieces of ins- criptions, found in and around the basilica, have been placed: in the middle near the modern pillar two large bases with inscriptions of the city-prefect, Probianus, A. D. 416 (see above); on these are two small flat bases
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with the inscriptions: opus Polycliti and opus Timarchi. Such bases with the names of artists, always very famous ones, are frequently found in the period after Constan- tine, when an attempt was made to protect the old statues of the gods against the iconoclasm oi the Christ-
Fig. 19. Facade of the Basilica Julia.
ians by ascribing to them high artistic worth (the best known instances of this are the inscriptions of the "Horse-tamers" on the Quirinal). The pavement of the portico consists of slabs of white marble, on which in many places the diagrams of games (tabulae lusoriae) have been scratched : most of these diagrams are in the form of a circle and were employed in a game where two players, each provided with three pebbles, placed them at various points on the diagram and then made
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alternate moves until one of them won by getting his three pebbles in a row (see fig. 20); others were rect- angular, with various letters and symbols, mostly in groups of six. They seem to have been used in a game similar to our 'tick-tack '. The vestibule and the side- aisles of the basilica had flat roofs with terraces: Caligula was very fond of throwing coins from the roof of the
Black upon ABC White -> A' B' C'
Black begins, and wins with the seventh move.
Fig. 20. Tabula lusoria.
building down into the crowd in the Forum, who fought for them.
Two steps lead from the vestibule up into the main hall, which including the aisles was about 328 feet long and 118 feet wide (central nave 271 ft. by 59 ft.). Thirty-six pillars of brick, covered with marble, sur- rounded the central nave, and on this nave the galleries iu the upper story opened; the roof above the central nave was one story higher than over the side aisles and the vestibule, and the central nave was lighted princi- pally by windows in this story under the roof. The great quantity of timber which was used in making the roof offered food for the flames by which the building was so often injured. The side-aisles had ceilings of massive cross -vaulting with rich ornamentation in stucco (re- mains of the decoration were found in 1789 and 1849,
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but they have disappeared since). The floor of the central nave was paved with large slabs of costly colored marble (giallo, africano, pavonazzetto) ; the pavement consisting of small bits of marble, which now covers the greatest part of the space, is modern. The side aisles were paved with white marble; on the slabs are scratched, in addition to numerous diagrams of games, various re- presentations of figures, in part clumsy attempts to re- produce statues which were exhibited there (near b on plan I, a statua loricata, near c, an equestrian statue).
In the main room of the basilica the sessions of the Roman jury-court (centumviri) were held; this court sat in four sections, at four separate tribunalia, but in especially important cases all four could be united (qua- druplex indicium}. Ouintilian tells us that when Ga- lerius Trachalus (Consul A. D. 68), who was not only a very eloquent man but also the possessor of an unusually powerful voice, was speaking before the first tribunal, he received applause from the public of the other three tribunals as well. According to this the four tribunals can scarcely have been separated by solid walls, but curtains or wooden partition-walls, which could easily be removed, were used instead. Concerning a general session of the four tribunals in connection with a cause c^ftbre, Pliny, who made one of the speeches himself, tells us that not only was the lower room crowded but also the upper galleries ' where one could see well, but hear only with difficulty ' . The Basilica accordingly, like many modern halls of similar construction, seems to have been deficient in acoustic properties.
Back of the second side aisle is a row of rectangular rooms with walls of tufa and travertine blocks which have an archaic appearance but belong in reality to the construction of Augustus. They are called tabernae and were probably used as offices, and as places of assembly
5
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for corporations etc. ; possibly also money-changers and bankers had their places of business here: nnmnlarii de basilica Inlia are often mentioned in sepulchral inscrip-
Fig. 21. Remains c t' the H.isilic.i Julia.
tions. Up to the present only a small part of these tabernae has been excavated.
In the vestibule on the west side (that toward the Vicus Jugarius) are to be seen the remains of the small church of S. Maria in Cannapara (" in the rope-walk ";
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the central nave must have served as such in the cen- turies of the decline): a column and slabs which formed a part of the chancel-rail, ornamented in the style of the vu. and vin. centuries (see fig. 23). Owing to the
Fig. 22. Reconstruction of the Basilica Julia.
building of the church within the Basilica one or two of the outer pillars, which supported the vestibule, have been preserved ; in the case of one pillar three layers of marble blocks are still in position ; in the case of a second (at the north-west corner, plan I, d) only the impressions are to be seen, which have been left in the mortar of a brick pillar afterwards built against it. This pillars formed part of an arch over the street (the Vicus
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Jugarius); but both the name of the arch and the time of its construction are uncertain. Also at the north-west corner of the basilica recent excavations have brought to light remains of walls of tufa and opus reticulation,
j .
*> »—»•• • i
Fig. 25. Chance! rail of S. Maria in Cannapara.
which possibly belong to the older buildings of Caesar and Augustus.
II. The Arch of Tiberius. Across the Sacra Via about five feet below the level of the pavement remains of a large foundation of concrete are to be seen : this belongs to the arch of Tiberius. When during his expeditions in Germany A. D. 15 and 16 (battle at Idisiaviso) Germanicus had won back the standards lost at the defeat of Varus, this victory, which had occurred " under the leadership of Germanicus, under the auspices of Tiberius " (ductu Germanici, auspiciis Tiberii), was celebrated toward the end of A. D. 16 by the erection of an arch " below the temple of Sa- turn". This arch, which as a matter of fact is men- tioned only once - in Tacitus -, is usually called
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" the arch of Tiberius ". Remains of its architecture were discovered, partly in 1835, partly in 1848 when the viaduct (ponte della Consolazione) was built, but the foundations were not discovered until 1900. The single arch (represented in a relief on the arch of Constantine; see belov; fig. 28) did not cross the Sacra Via, but stood near it ; fragments of it (with the beginning of the in- scription SENATVS POPVLVS^z^ romanus) lie on and around the last (westernmost) brick pedestal.
III. The Schola Xantha. To the right (northwards) near the foundations of the arch of Tiberius lies a marble pavement which belonged to a small room; traces on the marble slabs seem to show that a bench once extended along the sides and across the rear wall. At the present time nothing of the superstructure is left ; but about 1540 excavations were made on this spot, and remains of a small but elegant structure from the time of the empire were brought to light. On the architrave over the entrance stood a double inscription, according to which an imperial freedman Bebryx (of the time of Tiberius) together with a certain Aulus Fabius Xanthus had built " the schola (office) of the clerks and heralds of the curule aediles ' ' , and had adorned it with deco- rations in marble, seats of bronze, and the silver statues of the seven planets (the gods of the days of the week). A second inscription, added later, gave the information that in the reign of Caracalla (about 224 A. D.) a certain C. Avilius Licinius Trosius had restored the schola. The bits of architecture and the fragments of inscriptions which were found at that time (1540) were immediately destroyed; even the exact spot where these discoveries were made was so completely forgotten, that for a long time the name ' Schola Xantha ' was wrongly given to the seven chambers under the Porticus Deorum Consent-
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him (see below p. 91). It was most proper that the subordinate officials under the aediles should have their
Fig. 24. Substructures of the Clivus Canitolinus. (in the background the temples of Saturn and Vespasian).
office beside the Rostra and near the treasury (below p. 80).
IV. The so-called Rostra vetera (or Rostri ce- sarei). Behind the Schola Xantha is to be seen a row
of (eight) low arches, excellent specimens of opus reti- culatuw, which form small arched rooms. Near the arch of Severus one end of the structure has been pre served, but at the other end at least two arches were demolished in connection with the erection of the arch of Tiberius. Of the chambers that have been preserved, the four at the northern end (behind the Rostra) are somewhat deeper than those at the southern end (behind the arch of Tiberius): they have all of them an archaic
Fig. 25. Roman viaduct near Salona.
pavement made of bits of brick, which extends out somewhat in front of the arcades toward the Forum. The whole structure is scarcely more than 6 feet higher than the level of the Forum (the topmost layer of blocks of brown tufa is a modern addition): it is nothing but a supporting wall for the Clivus Capitolinus, which had to be moved about six feet to the east in consequence of the rebuilding of the temple of Saturn in B. C. 42 (be- low p. 80). Instead of a stout sloping wall with earth packed behind it, a small viaduct with low arches was made. A very similar construction in the neighbourhood of Salona in Dalmatia is represented in fig. 25. On ac- count of a certain resemblance to the representation of the Rostra, as it was before the time of Augustus, on coins of Lollius Palikanus (B. C. 45: see below fig. 53),
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the suggestion has been made that this structure is the Rostra which was removed by Julius Caesar to the west end of the Forum. But this theory is untenable not only on account of the narrowness and lowness of the structure, but also because it is inconceivable how it could have been ornamented with the beaks of ships.
The right (northern) side wall of the Schola Xantha js built directly against the stout wall of the Rostra.
V. The Rostra. The Rostra is preserved to us in the shape which it received in the time of the early empire. Caesar planned to move the old Rostra (which stood on the boundary of the Forum and the Comitium, seep. 6 and p. 114), but Augustus carried the plan to fulfil- ment. Probably the great walls of blocks of brown tufa which formed the body of the structure belong to his building. Of these only the lowest layers have been preserved, except at the north corner, where as many as four blocks lie above one another: most of the front wall is restoration (1904). On the outer side the blocks of tufa were covered with marble, and the front (80 Ro- man feet = about 78 English feet long) was decorated with the gilded bronze beaks of the captured ships of Rome's enemies. There are still to be seen, arranged in pairs, the holes in which the beaks of the ships were fastened. The fa9ade was crowned by a marble cornice; the upper side of its blocks contains a groove for a balustrade of marble (and bronze). The facade of the Rostra (with the arch of Tiberius on the left) is repre- sented on a relief on the north side of the arch of Constantine over the left-hand arcade (see fig. 23): from this picture it is clear that the balustrade had an opening in the middle, possibly so that a staircase could be placed there, leading down into the Forum, on the
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occasion of some of the great ceremonies of State which took place on the Rostra (see p. 76). The same representation shows honorary statues at the
Fig. 26. Rostra, construction.
corners of the facade; the bases of two ot these, erected in honour of Stilicho (beginning of the fifth century A. D.), were dug up here in the year 1539. The columns with statues, which are visible on the relief,
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stood either on the platform of the Rostra or behind it on the Clivus Capitolinus. In the middle of the side- balustrades there stood, since the time of Trajan, the
Fig. 27. Front elevation of the Rostra.
marble slabs, decorated with relief, which are described below (p. 100 ff.): from the rear the original platform was reached by a broad curved staircase of a few steps. The
Fig. 28. Bas-relief from the arch of Constantino.
Rostra is surprisingly long and broad: the explanation of this is that it was intended not only for the individual speaker, but also oftentimes for the emperor and all his suite (see the illustration on the balustrade of Trajan,
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p. ioof.). It may be permitted to mention here two such ceremonies of state, concerning which we possess detailed descriptions from antiquity: the reception of Tiridates by Nero, and the funeral ceremonies of Pertinax.
In the year A. D. 66 the Parthian king, Tiridates, who had accepted the conditions of peace proposed to him by Nero's general,
Fig. 30. The Rostra, seen from the Clivus Capitolinus.
Domitius Corbulo, came to Rome to receive his crown anew at the hand of the Roman emperor. Nero prepared for him a magnificent reception which is said to have cost 800,000 sesterces (200,000 francs) a day ; the ceremony of the coronation is described as follows : " Before dawn the centre of the Forum was filled with delegations of the Roman people, in white garments and with laurel wreaths on their heads; on the sides and at the entrances the soldiers, with gleaming weapons and standards, were drawn up; countless spectators occu- pied every available inch of ground, even the very roofs of the buildings. At the rising of the sun Nero appeared in the Forum, clad in the garb of triumph, accompanied by senators and praetorians. He took his place on the Rostra, in a curule chair.
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Then between the soldiers, who were drawn up along both sides, Tiridates with his suite wns led to the Rostra, where he paid homage to the emperor. When the public saw this Oriental ruler bowing humbly before their emperor, they raised such 'shouts of enthusiasm that Tiridates was terrified believing this was the signal for his death. Nero however bade him be of good courage, re- ceived his address of homage, ordered a praetor, who understood the language, to translate it for the benefit of the people, and himself made a gracious reply. Then Tiridates mounted a stair- case, which had been built in front of the Rostra, came to the emperor, kneeled before him, and received the crown from his hand: a scene which aroused once more the loud applause of the Romans ". The funeral ceremonies ofPertinax(A.D. 193) are described by an eye-witness, the historian Cassius Dio: "on the Forum Romanum a wooden stage had been built, close in front of the stone one (the Rostra): upon this had f.*: 3»- Augustus and
Agnppa on the Rostra been constructed a small building, the columns (Coin of Sulpicius Plato-
of which were adorned with gold and ivory. rinus' about l8 B> C0- In the building stood a couch of the same material, covered with purple cloth worked with gold: on the couch lay a wax figure of Pertinax, clad in the garb of triumph, and, as though the emperor slept, a beautiful young slave boy was engaged in keeping the flies away with a fan of peacocks' feathers. The emperor and we sena- tors and our wives came to the ceremony in garments of mourn- ing: the women took their places under the porticos (of the Basi- licas), and we under the open sky. Then the funeral procession began; first the statues of all the famous Romans of the old days; then choruses of boys and men, singing a funeral hymn in honour of Pertinax; and then bronze statues representing all the provinces of the Roman empire, each one in the national costume. Then followed the subordinate officials, for example, lictors, clerks, and heralds; then again statues of famous men, those who had won fame by great deeds or discoveries. Then came armed soldiery, on foot and on horse, and then race-horses too: then the funeral gifts which the emperor, we senators with our wives, the knights, the citizens, the guilds and the associations had presented. Finally came an altar covered with gold, and
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decorated with ivory and precious stones from India. After the procession had passed by, Severus mounted the Rostra and made a eulogy on Pertinax. The emperor's speech was frequently inter- rupted by manifestations of applause or of sorrow for Pertinax; and at the end the applause was loud. Then when the bier was about to be carried out great weeping and wailing ensued. The bier was carried from the catafalque by the pontifices and the magistrates, not only those who were at present in office but those who had been appointed for the following year; then it was given over to be borne by men appointed from among the knights. We senators walked in front of the body sorrowing and wailing; behind the bier came the emperor, and so the procession moved to the Campus Martins", where (on Monte Citorio) the ceremony of cremation and consecration took place.
In the reign of Septimius Severus the Rostra was rebuilt with considerable changes, necessitated by the erection of the arch in honour of Severus. In order to make possible a direct approach to the speaker's plat- form from the side toward the arch, a triangular court- yard (see Hof\i\ fig. 32) was cut out of the northern half of the Rostra, and the curved west wall (Jiemicyclium) of this court was ornamented with slabs of red marble (Porta Santa) and pillars of mar mo africano. Some of these slabs - which have been fastened to the wall again in modern times - still show the holes for the nails by which the bronze ornaments were attached. On the side toward the arch of Severus the wall was broken away and the court-yard seems to have been shut off merely by a gate.
In quite late times the facade of the Rostra was ex- tended northwards by an addition built of poor brick work, in which also the holes for the fastening of ships' beaks are to be seen. An explanation of this is probably to be found in a long inscription, consisting of a single line, engraved on rectangular blocks of marble which on their upper side originally supported a balus-
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trade. The inscription states that about A. D. 470, in the reign of the emperors Leo and Anthemius, a prefect of the city [Ulpi]us (?) Junius Valentinus restored the struc- ture - probably after a naval victory over the Vandals ; accordingly the building has been named ' Rostra Van- dalica ' .
The various transformations of the Rostra can best be studied from above. One should go back accordingly
Fig. 32. The Rostra, with the alterations of Septimius Severus.
past the Schola Xantha and the arch of Tiberius and up the Clivus Capitolinus. In this way one comes to the temple of Saturn.
VI. The Temple of Saturn. To it belong the eight unfluted granite columns with the lofty foundation of travertine blocks.
Next to the temple of Juppiter Capitolinus the temple of Saturn is the oldest sanctuary dedicated after the fall of the kingdom. The Consul T. Larcius dedicated it December 17 B- C. 498; but according to tradition an altar dedicated by Hercules stood origin- ally on the same spot. The dedicatory festival, the Saturnalia,
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became one of the greatest and most popular festivals of old Rome, and when it ceased in Christian times it left a great heritage to Christmas. In B. C. 42 the temple was restored by Lucius Munatius Plancus, with the booty captured from the inhabitants of the Alps (it was in their country that he had founded the Colonia Augusta Kax- racorum, the modern Basel). From the early times of the republic the temple served as a state treasury (aerarium Salurn-i), and even after the fall of paganism it was still used for this practical pur- pose. In the fifteenth century, so the humanist Poggio tells us, a part of the walls of the cella was still standing; they were not torn down until 1440, when the Romans wanted the stones for new buildings. The temple, which in the sixteenth century was buried deep in debris (see fig. 12, p. 41), was excavated partially in 1811, and more completely 1834-1837.
In all probability the great substructures of travertine, which contained the vaults for the treasure of the state, belong to the building as restored by Plancus. When at the beginning of the civil war Caesar took possession of the treasury, he found in it 15,000 bars of gold, 30,000 bars of silver, and 30 million sesterces (about seven and half million francs) in coin. In later time the superstructure of the temple was again restored; according to the inscription on the architrave: SENA- TVS POPVLVSQVE ROMANVS INCEND1O CON- SVMPTVM RESTITVIT - it had been destroyed by fire. Judging by the character of the letters in this inscription the restoration can hardly have occurred before the fourth century A. D. The columns of the vestibule are of grey granite, the columns at the side of red granite (about 4 ft. 3 in. in diameter, and about 36 ft. high); the bases are not uniform, and the whole structure makes the impression of a hasty and careless piece of work af a late period. The vestibule \vus approached by a flight of steps, the ground-plan of which has been preserved on a fragment of the Forma
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Urbis (see above p. 22). The entrance to the ' treasury' was probably on the south side, i. e. toward the ' Con- solazione ' ; in the middle ages there was situated on this spot the little church of 6". Salvator de Stalera, with the relief described in the Mirabilia and said to represent the paying off of the army (see above p. 34). In front of the facade under the steps are found re- mains of old constructions of tufa (drains etc.): some of these have been wrongly identified as the remains of the altar of Saturn attributed to Hercules.
VII. The Milliarium Aureum. Near the Rostra and below the temple of Saturn stood the ' Golden Mile- stone ' (milliarium aureuni) erected by Augustus in B. C. 20. It was a marble shaft, covered with gilded bronze, on which were inscribed the distances from Rome to all the important cities of Italy and the provinces. Distances on the Roman military roads were however in the time of the empire reckoned from the gates of the Servian wall: for example the Via Appia from the Porta Capena, the Via Salaria and the Via Nomentana from the Porta Collina; these gates were almost a Roman mile distant from the Forum. In the excavations of 1835 there were found two fragments of a great marble cylinder (diameter about 4 ft.), the surface of which had been left rough and still showed traces of having been covered with metal: these pieces, which are lying at present in front of the temple of Saturn, belonged in all probability to the Milliarium. The exact situation of the mile-stone cannot be ascertained because the foundations were destroyed in connection with the build ing of the modern street (1835).
VIII. The Umbilicus Urbis Romae. The cone- shaped structure of brick at the north end of the Henri-
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cyclium (see plan p. 75 and p. 79) marks the ideal centre of the city of Rome. Similar monuments marking the centre either of a city or of the whole earth existed in Greek and Hellenistic cities, for example at Delphi, Athens, Antioch; their name was Omphalos (navel). The description of the regions of the city from the time of Constantine mentions the ' Umbilicus Urbis Romae ' as standing near the temple of Concord; and the Anony- mus of Einsiedeln in the eighth century speaks of it as near the Church of SS. Sergio e Bacco: the brick remains agree with both these references. The core of brick, consisting of three sections, one above another, was probably covered on the outside with white and colored marble; we do not know how the top was finished off (by a statue or a column?).
IX. The Volcanal. Behind the Umbilicus and protected by a modern wooden roof lie the remains of some very old buildings made of blocks of tufa. They are generally considered the foundations of an altar of Vulcan which stood in a sacred enclosure under the open sky (Volcanal). This Volcanal, traditionally as- cribed to Romulus, was considered one of the oldest sanctuaries in the city; even as late as the time of Pliny the Elder (about 70 A. D.) a lotos tree grew there, which was said to be as old as Rome itself, and the roots of which stretched as far as the Forum of Caesar. The space around the Volcanal (the Area Volcani, as it was called) covered originally considerable ground; in the time before Qesar various objects were exhibited there; a statue of Horatius Codes, another statue stand- ing on a column and representing an actor who was struck by lightning during the games in the Circus, a quadriga of bronze, which Romulus dedicated after his victory over the Caeninenses, and an inscription
put up by Romulus himself ' in Greek letters ' and re- counting his deeds. Naturally no trace of any of these things "has been found; but the fact that the cult of Vulcan continued here later, is shown by a marble
Fig. 33. The Volcanal.
slab which was excavated here in 1548 (now in the Naples museum) and which, according to the inscription on it, stood under a dedicatory gift which Augustus made to Vulcan in B. C. 9. The Volcanal was very much narrowed and partly done away with by the building operations of the empire (the enlargement of the temple of Concord, the construction of the arch of
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Severus etc.). According to Roman tradition the Vol- canal served as the speakers' platform in the time of the kings, before the erection of the Rostra; it is perhaps no accidental coincidence that when Augustus restored the Rostra he moved it very near to this spot. Other old remains (pavement of tufa, with channels for drain- age etc.) between the Volcanal and the Hemicyclium cannot be identified with certainty. Behind the found- ation of the altar of Vulcan are to be seen traces of a flight of steps, cut into the tufa of the Capitoline hill, and leading up to the vestibule of the temple of Concord (see below p. 93 f.).
X. The Arch of Severus. In the immediate neigh- bourhood of the Volcanal is the arch of Severus, which was built in 203 A. D. in memorial ot the victorious wars of Septimius Severus in the east.
Three times Severus was compelled to have recourse to arms in order to render secure the dominion of Rome in the region of the Euphrates: at the beginning of his reign (193 A. D.) when the I'arlhians and the Arabians of Hatra gave assistance to the rival emperor Pescennius Niger, he added to the empire the whole region between the Euphrates and the Tigris under the name of Mesopo- tamia. Then in 197 A. D., when he was called away to Gaul by the revolt of Clodius Albinus, those whom he had just subdued in the east arose in insurrection; after defeating Albinus (198) he returned to the east and conquered the enemy in two campaigns 198-199; the royal cities of the Parthians, Ctesiphon and Seleucia, were captured and 100,000 prisoners were taken and sold as slaves. However the Romans did not succeed in capturing Hatra, the de- sert stronghold of the Arabians. In spite of this the emperor took the cognomina of victory Arahirns Adiabenicus (Adiabene corres- ponds to ancient Assyria) rarthii'iix .I/a \-i»iiis. In 202 he returned to Rome and celebrated the tenth anniversary of his reign (d< i ,-n- nalia)', on this occasion the arch was erected in his honour by the Senate and the people: but he did not celebrate a triumph after his
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t
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wars in the east. The excellent preservation of the arch is owing to the fact that in the middle ages the southern half of it was the property of the neighbouring church of SS. Sergio e Bacco (see fig. 1 1 and 41), and the northern side arcade belonged in the twelfth century to a fortification of the barons (clauslruni Ciniinf), remains
Fig. 55. Relief rom the arch ot Severus (C.ipitolmc
of which (embattled tower, see fig. 34 and 58) were still in existence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
In antiquity the arch was accessible from the Forum only by steps and was accordingly not used for ordinary street traffic. The middle archway is 40 ft. 4 inches high and 22 ft. it inches wide; each of the side archways is 22 ft. ii inches high and 9 ft. 10 inches wide. The facades are decorated each with four columns of compo-
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site style, standing on high bases; on the sides of these bases are bas-reliefs representing legionary soldiers leading Oriental prisoners in chains. On the keystone of the middle arch on the side toward the Capitoline is Mars; in the triangles are Victories with trophiec,
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*tef £^''f^
Fig. 36. Relief from the arch ot Severus (Capitoline side, to the left).
and beneath them the Genius 01 summer (on the left) and that of autumn (on the right). Over the side arch- ways in the triangles are river-gods, above them are narrow reliefs with approximately the same representa- tion on all four sides ; Roma (at the right end) receives the homage of conquered Oriental peoples; booty and trophies are being carried on wagons. Above are large reliefs with scenes from the history of the war, each in
— 88 —
two rows; over the right-hand arch (fig. 35), in the upper row: the expedition setting out, the emperor, sur- rounded by his suite and the standard-bearer, is making an address (eUlocutio) from a raised platform (suggestus) ; in the lower row: the besieging of a city, the walls of which are being destroyed by a battering-ram (art'es). Over the left hand arch (fig. 36) in the upper row: the siege of a city situated on a river (Euphrates or Tigris?), the inhabitants are sending a deputation to the emperor announcing their submission; in the lower row: a city or a stronghold, also near a river, being besieged by the Romans who are also putting to flight the enemy's cavalry. There are similar bas-reliefs on the side toward the Forum: in the triangles the Genius of spring (on the right) and that of winter (on the left) ; over the left arch: beginning of the expedition and address of the emperor; over the right arch: a parley with the barbarians, making of a camp, storming of a city. A more accurate description is not possible, both on ac- count of the fragmentary character of our knowledge of the actual events, and also because of the schematic treat- ment, which when compared with the life-like and indi- vidual scenes on the column of Trajan or even on that of Marcus Aurelius shows clearly the rapid decline of art at the end of the second century.
On the attic, the corner pillars of which were adorned with bronze ornaments (trophies?), is the inscription, ac- cording to which the senate and the people dedicated the arch to Severus and Caracalla « on account of the restora- tion of the state and the extension of the empire ». Exa- mination shows that the last two letters P(atri) ¥(atriae) of the third line and the whole fourth line occupy the place of an older inscription which has been erased — the sur- face on which the letters now visible were cut is not in the surface plane of the rest of the inscription, because
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in erasing the original inscription the marble was cut away. The rivet- holes for the bronze letters of the ori- ginal inscription are still to be seen, so that the letters can be deciphered with certainty: ET . P . SEPTIMIO GETAE NO- R(ilissimo} - CAESARI. After Ca- racalla in the year 211 had by murder rid himself of his brother, who had been appointed his partner on the throne, he caused his name to be erased from all public mon- uments. The lacuna thus created .
Fig. 37. Com of Sevcrus.
was filled up by adding to the titles of Severus and Caracalla the phrase: P(a/rz) P^atriae) OPTIMIS.FORTISSIMISQVE.PRINCIPIBVS— «To the father of the fatherland, to the best and bravest
of rulers ». According to the coins a sixhorse chariot of bronze stood in the middle of the attic, with the statues of Severus and his sons, and at the corners possibly in add- ition equestrian statues.
On the side toward the Forum there seems to have been originally a flight of 6-8 steps in front of the whole width of the arch; later for reasons which we do not know
Steps leading to'fhe^rch of Severus. the level of the FOFUm WES
lowered at this point by about
eight feet. As a result, the flight of steps had to be lengthened, and in the side arches it is still possible to see how steps were cut into the great travertine blocks of the foundation. On account of this change of levei
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the foundation of travertine which had been originally under ground, came into view at the corners and was in its turn covered with thick slabs of white 'marble, in order to harmonize with the rest of the structure, which was entirely of marble.
[The temple of Concord, the temple of Vespasian, and the portico of the Dei Consentes are separated by the modern city-street from the rest of the excavations in the Forum : the entrance is at the south corner under the flight of steps which leads to the Via del Campido- glio. Visitors should apply to the custodians of the Forum. Our description of these ruins follows the order in which they lie, beginning at the entrance].
XI. The Portico of the Dei Consentes. The portico of the twelve gods, which was excavated in 1834, consists of two wings which join each other at an obtuse angle; behind the colonnade are at present seven rooms of varying size, and there were probably originally several more. They contained the statues of the Olympian gods. Varro speaks of the twelve gilded statues of the dei consentes, which were exhibited in the Forum; in the market place at Athens also there stood similar statues of twelve gods. In Rome these gods were Juppiter-Juno, Neptune-Minerva, Apollo- Diana, Mars-Venus, Vulcan-Vesta, Mercury-Ceres. The portico in Rome was restored in the dying days of paganism by one of the most zealous representatives of the old faith, the Prefect of the City, Vettius Agorius Praetextatus. The inscription reads :
dforum eONSENTIVM SACROSANCTA SIMVLACRA CVM OMNI LO«
tolius ai/orna/JnNE CVLTV IX formam anliqnam restitute
rETTIVS PRAETEXTATVS . V . C . PRA<r/<r<r/uj «RBI reposuit
CVRANTE LONGEIO v . c . rONSVLARI
The columns are of Cipollino, their flutings are filled in the lower half with astragals, and the fillets are similarly ornamented. The capitals were ornamented with trophies; the best preserved of these is in the Tabularium. In 1858 this ruin was largely restored: the columns of travertine date from this restoration. The rear wall of the rooms in the left wing is a very old retaining wall of tufa, which
— QI
supported the Clivus Capitolinus. In the open space in front of the portico of the Dei Consentes are a large number of architectural fragments, most of which were found in the excavations of 1834, among them dome from the arch of Tiberius (see above p. 68 f.); the large capitals of travertine belong possibly to the upper story of the Tabularium (which according to this would have been of the Corinthian order, and not of the Ionic, as given in fig. 39). Descending into the narrow passage which is all that is left of the originally much larger space between the substructure of the portico and the temple of Vespasian, we see on the left seven chambers (labernae) made of brick, with wide entrance doors- Formerly they were wrongly called the Schola Xantha (see above p. 69) : the correct name and the purpose of the rooms is not known. On the right are to be seen the foundations of the temple of Vespasian, huge blocks of tufa and travertine very accurately laid. The end of the passage-way is formed by the massive sub- structures of the Tabularium on the Capitoline: one can see how one entrance door of the Tabularium was blocked up by the building of the temple of Vespasian.
XII. The Temple of Vespasian and Titus. The temple of Vespasian was probably vowed and begun soon after the consecrat- ion of that emperor, but it was not completed until after the death of Titus (81), and was accordingly dedicated to him as well. It was a Corinthian prostyle with six columns in the front: since the space between the Tabular ium and the Clivus Capitolinus was rather narrow, the steps which led up to the entrance were in large part cut in between the foundations of the columns. The inscrip- tion on the architrave was still complete in the 7th century:
D1VO VESPASIANO AVGVSTO S . P . Q. . R . 1MPP.CAESS.SEVERVS ET AXTOXIXVS PII FELICES A YGG . RESTITVERan/
but only the end of the last word has been preserved. One can still see that originally only the upper band of the architrave was inscribed, and that in connection with the restoration by Severus it was united with the lower band by a poorly exec- uted cornice so as to afford space for the larger inscription. The frieze of the side facade (fig. 40) is decorated with the in- signia of the priest - the cap (apex), the sprinkler, the pitcher,
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the sacrificial knife, the saucer, the ladle, the axe - carried out in fine detail. On account of the elevated position of the originals and
l:ig. 39. The temple of Vespasian, \\ith the Tubul.irium behind.
their unfavourable light one can judge of the fineness of the work better by studying the cast in the Tabularium, made by Valadier and restored by him with the help of ancient fragments. Against
- 93 —
the rear wall of the Cella is preserved the base for the statues of the two Divi seated on thrones. The ruin, which after the 1 6th century, was buried in debris up to the capitals of the columns (see fig. 12), was excavated in 1811-1812 under the direction of Valadier (see fig. 41). At that time the foundations of the columns, which had suffered greatly, were almost entirely restored. In the hollow between the temple of Vespasian and the temple of Concord there lies a small brick building the rear wall of
Fig. 40. Cornice of the temple of Vespasian.
which rests against the Tabularium. In this was found a marble base with a dedicatory inscription to the Diva Pia Faustina (wife of Marcus Aurelius), which was erected by the subordinate officials in the finance department (via tores quaeslorii ab aerario Saturni), who possibly had their bureau (schola) here.
XIII. The Temple of Concord. The temple of Concord was dedicated by the dictator Marcus Furius Camillus after the settling of the century-long contest between the patricians and the pie-
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beians, in B. C. 366. The dimensions of the original building can be roughly estimated owing to the fact that the Tabularium, erected in the time of Sulla, was built with regard to the extent of the temple of Concord: the northern part of the great sub- structure of the Tabularium was made without windows because the
,• Fig. 41. Excavation near the temple of Vespasian in 1812.
rear wall of the temple rested against it. Accordingly it is possible that the old temple of Concord was a rectangular structure 49 ft. by 82 ft. After the death of C. Gracchus (B. C. 121) the temple was restored by L. Opimius. Tiberius began B. C. 7 a second restoration and dedicated it January i6th, A. D. 10. The Ta- bularium prevented Tiberius from enlarging his temple toward the rear, and the Clivus Capitolinus offered an insurmountable obstacle against the enlargement of it toward the front; accordingly he made the cella broader right and left so that it was now about twice as wide as it was long. The ground plan of this building is pre-
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served to us on the Forma Urbis Romae (see above p. 22, fig. 5). In the late empire the temple was again restored, and the facade with the inscription: 5. P. Q. R. aedem Concordiae velustate con- lapsam in meliorem faciem opere et cultu splendidiore restiiuerunl, was still standing in the vir. century A. D.
In addition to the steps leading up to the vestibule, which are at least in part cut into the tufa of the Capitoline, there has
Fig. 42. Cornice 01 the temple ot Concordia.
been preserved the threshold of the cella, a colossal block of Porta- santa marble, ornamented by a bronze wand of Mercury (cadu- ceus) set lengthwise into the surface of the stone. The cella itself was splendidly decorated; in 1817 at the time of the excavation very considerable remains of the pavement and the covering of the walls were found — costly variegated marbles, which have however since disappeared. In the cella were found several marble bases (at present in the Capitoline museum), which were dedicated to Concordia by high officials pro salute Tiberii: according to the inscriptions, statues of precious metal (5 Ibs. of gold, 25 Ibs. of silver) stood upon them. Ancient writers too speak of the costly furnish- ings of the temple: Tiberius seems to have made it into a veri-
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table museum of Greek art. In the time of Pliny the Elder the cella contained sculptures by Baton, Eupliranor, Nikeratos, ans Piston, and paintings by Nikias, Theoros, and Zeuxis. Augustud dedicated among other things four elephants of obsidian; and among the curiosities the ring of Polykrates of Samos was exhibited. In the vestibule of the temple sessions of the senate were held down into the late empire; and the Arval brothers and other colleges of priests met here for the performance of sacrifices and various ceremonial acts.
Resuming our interrupted circuit of the Forum we go through the S. opening of the arch of Severus, and down the flight of steps and along the front of the Rostra to the Comitium. On the way we pass several monuments from the late empire: the column of Phocas, the base of Diocletian, and two honorary monuments from the time of Honorius.
XIV. The Column of Phocas. A square founda- tion of brick supports a marble base upon which rises a column (44 ft. 7 in. high and 4 ft. 5 in. in diameter) of white marble with a Corinthian capital. Thajnscrip- tion on the north side of the base informs us rnat the Exarch Smaragdus, on August ist, A. D. 608, erected on this column "a dazzling golden statue of His Majesty, our lord Phocas, the eternal emperor, the triumphator crowned of God, in return for countless good deeds, for the establishing of peace in Italy, and for the preserva- tion of freedom ' ' .
Phocas, a man of the lowest birth, was proclaimed emperor in A. D. 602 by the Byzantine army on the Danube, in which he was serving as centurion. By slaying his predecessor Mauricius, and the latters five sons he assured the throne to himself, and thereupon proceeded to disgrace his position by cruelty and excesses of every sort. In spite of this he was acknowledged as emperor at Rome, where any change in the rule seemed to offer the possibility
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of betterment, harrassed as the city was by attacks of barbarians, strife among her own people, and destructive outbreaks of nature. The letter in which Pope Gregory the Great welcomes the usurper to the throne begins with the words: " We rejoice that your gentle- ness and piety have been raised to the imperial throne. May the heavens be filled with joy, and the earth exult, because throughout the whole empire the people, who were just now so full of sorrow, are glad once more " etc. In one solitary respect Phocas did good to Rome: he gave the Pantheon to Pope Boniface IV.. who on May 1 3th A. D. 609 dedicated it as a church of all the martyrs. In October 610 Phocas was dethroned by treachery and put to death with fearful tortures; the statues of the usurper, whose repulsive ugliness (small deformed body, red hair, long bushy eyebrows grown in together, a terrible scar which disfigured and discoloured his cheek) is most graphically described by contemporary writers, were everywhere overthrown.
The monument itself was not erected by Smaragdus; it is however probably not older than the iv.-v. centuries A. D., and was at that time made of the spoils of older buildings. Judged by their style the column and the capital seem to belong to the second century A. D. An addition^ from the very latest period is the pyramid of steps, for the construction of which many of the sur- rounding monuments were compelled to furnish material. Two of the sides of this pyramid were demolished in 1903: on this occasion, the latter part of the in- scription of the praetor Naevius Surdinus (see p. 147) was laid bare.
XV. The Monuments of Diocletian and Honorius. Not far from the Rostra Vandalica in the direction of the Niger Lapis is a square base of white marble covered on all four sides with reliefs: on one side are trophies and representations of Victoria, and between them a shield with the inscription: Cacsarum decennalia felidter; on the second side the animals slain in the solemn state sacri-
— 98 —
fice of the Snovefaurilia (pig, sheep, steer) being led to the altar; on the third side the emperor (the head appa- rently intentionally destroyed) sacrificing to Roma and Mars; on the fourth side a procession of nine men clad in the toga. The base was found in 1547 in front of the church of S. Adriano: on the same spot about 1500 a similar base, now lost, was found bearing the inscription Augustorum vicennalia feliciter. These bases supported colossal columns, and were probably erected in front of the Curia in A. D. 303 in celebration of the twentieth, respectively tenth, anniversary of the reign of Diocletian and his fellow-rulers. It is very interesting to compare the representation of the sacrificial animals on this base of Diocletian with the corresponding representation on the balustrade of Trajan not far distant. The comparison shows the rapid decline of Roman sculpture in the course of not quite two hundred years.
Several blocks of marble near this monument of Dio- cletian belong to a monument from the time of Honorius and Arcadius which was excavated here in 1549. It is a large base for a quadriga, with a vainglorious inscrip- tion celebrating the conquest of the rebel Gildo in Africa (386-398) by the emperor's great general Stilicho. This monument, in an almost perfect state of preserva- tion, fell into the hands of the Farnese, who had it sawed up " for modern works of art ". One piece only was preserved in the Farnese collection of antiquities, and taken afterwards to the Museum in Naples; from there it was returned to the Forum in the Autumn of 1908. Another small piece, left behind in the Forum in 1547, was brought to light again by the recent excavations. The copies made by the epigraphists of the Renaissance- enable us to restore the text as follows (the letters in italics are now missing):
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imp's, R A Toribus invictissimis felicissimisque rfrf-wN- ARCArf/o el honorio'fratribus SEN A.tus populusque Romanus r\ N D \cata • reEE.L,Ltone eT • A Frtcae reSTITulione laelus-
" To our lords, the brothers Arcadius and Honorius, the most invincible and fortunate, the Senate and People of Rome, rejoicing in the vanquishing of the rebels, and in the restitution of Africa ' ' . The rejoicing of the Roman people had a very natural reason, inasmuch as Africa was at this period the main granary for the capital. — To the same monument belong two pieces of a metrical in- scription lately excavated:
d\rmipotens Liby\c\um defendit Honoriri\s orbem (?)
possibly a verse from the poet Claudianus, who refers to the monument in his poem de sexto consulatri Honorii. Farther to the right, at the edge of the excavation of the Lapis Niger, stands a tall marble block. Accord- ing to the inscription (on the side toward the Curia) it formed part of a monument which was erected by the senate and the people in the reign of Honorius and Arcadius " in honour of the fidelity and valour of the most devoted troops ", on account of a victory over the Goths won under the command of a vir illustris. The name of the commanding general is purposely erased, but it must have been Stilicho; and the monument refers to the battle at Pollentia A. D. 403, where Stilicho drove back Radagaisus and his hordes, and once again saved throne and land for the emperor. Soon after this time Stilicho came into disfavour, and was treacherously murdered (A. D. 408) at the command of Honorius, and his name was erased from all public monuments. Two years later Rome was captured and plundered by Alaric and his Goths. — It is characteristic of the wretched means which
100
in this late time were at the disposal of the authorities for the erection of even important monuments, that the inscription is engraved on the side of a block which had already been used. Originally it was employed to support an equestrian statue, and the holes by which this was fastened may still be seen on what is at present the left side.
XVI. The marble balustrades of Trajan. The two marble balustrades with reliefs (anaglyphd) on both
Fig. 43. Marbl" balustrade from the Rostra.
sides were found on the site where they are now stand- ing, very roughly set up on blocks of travertine which had been used once before (the base-tables of white marble are a modern addition). Evidently this cannot have been the original arrangement; but they were brought here in very late antiquity to serve as the sides of a foundation like the brick bases opposite the Basilica Julia. When they were thus set up a second time the reliefs with historical scenes faced the outside, and those with the animals faced inwards. The two balustrades were then connected at the ends by carelessly built walls, and thus a rough square was formed and the inside was filled up with rubbish. Thus it happens that the reliefs with the animals have been preserved with
IOI
a wonderful degree of freshness, while the reliefs with historical scenes have suffered very much more, since they were exposed for centuries to all the influences of the weather and all the destruction at the hand of man.
On what is now the inner side we see the pig, the sheep, and the steer, the animals offered in the solemn state sacrifice of the Suovetaurilia, adorned with sacri- ficial fillets (yittae) on the horns and around the body. Such Suovetaurilia were offered at the cerimony of puri
Fig. 44. Marble balustrade from the Rostra.'
fication (lustrum) for the people at the close of the census, and for the army at the beginning of a cam- paign, probably also in connection with the founding of temples and on other solemn occasions. At these times the three sacrifical animals were led around the assembly of the people or the place which was to be purified, and were then sacrificed.
The two reliefs which at present face outwards re- present two state acts of Trajan. On the first — the one which faces the arch of Severus — is to be seen the emperor on the Rostra (represented by the beaks of three ships); behind him are his suite and the lictors (with the bundles of rods without axes). The emperor, clad in the toga, is addressing the populace standing in
102
front of the Rostra. The costume of his audience is the garment characteristic of the Romans plebeians, the pacnula, a short cloak reaching to the knee. The assembly are raising their hands, apparently to applaud the emperor for what he is announcing. The contents of the speech have been indicated by the artist in a way which would be immediately understood by his contemporaries — namely by a group characterized as statuary by being set on a low base. This group represents the emperor seated in a curule chair, while a women approaches him carrying one child on her arm and leading another by the hand: it is Italia, who is thanking the emperor for a charitable foundation by means of which he had provided for the support of the children of the land. In A. D. 101 Trajan invested large sums of money in mortgages (on the farms, fundi) in all the towns of Italy, the interest of which should be used in every parish for the bringing up of poor children. There are still in existence original docu ments, large bronze tablets, relating to this benefaction (institutio alimentaria), one from Veleia (now in the museum at Parma) and one from the parish of the Ligures Baebiani not far from Benevento (now in the National Museum at Rome). Both of them bear witness not only to the care which was taken in the investment of the capital but also to the generous amount of the sums invested. When to two relatively small parishes like Veleia and the Ligures Baebiani 1,044,000, re- spectively 401,800 sesterces (circa 260,000, respectively 100,500 francs) were assigned, the expense for the whole of Italy must have run up into many hundred millions. This splendid benefaction not only encouraged marriage, by assisting parents and caring for orphans, but also helped the small property owners by lending them money on their farms at a low rate of interest and for
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an indefinite period. It is readily intelligible therefore that the Emperor's action made a deep impression upon contemporaries. The writers of the day speak of it in the highest terms, coins were struck in remembrance of it, and on the Forum Romanum, where the proclamation took place, the event was immortalized not only in this relief on the balustrade, but also by the erection of a group of statuary.
The second relief is incomplete, on account of the loss of the first slab at the right: one sees however that here too the Rostra was represented. The emperor, seated and with his right hand stretched out, is giving a command to a high official. His command relates to the setting fire to a heap of diptycha, that is to say wooden tablets covered with wax, which the Romans used for business papers, statements of endebtedness, etc. These diptycha are being collected together by men in half-military costume (notice especially the military boot caliga with its complicated leather lacing, and also the sword-girdle, cingulum militiae, with its metal tips): the men are public servants (apparitores or possibly statores), and they are bringing official documents, probably obli- gations of indebtedness. It is likely therefore that the relief represents the cancelling of arrears of taxes for the provincials (Italy itself was free from taxes under the empire). Accordingly the historical scenes on the two balustrades present a remarkable parallelism: on the one the emperor is celebrated as the benefactor of Italy, on the other as the benefactor of the provinces.
Just as the historical scenes represented stand in a parallel relation, so the backgrounds of buildings in front of which they take place complement each other. Both of them together give an almost complete panorama of the Forum Romanum, as it was at the beginning of the second century A. D. On the second
— 104 —
balustrade we see: the temple of Vespasian (the temple of Concordia was probably on she first slab, which has been lost) with, six Corinthian columns; the temple of Saturn with six Ionic columns; between these temples, high up, an arch probably intended to indicate the Tab- ularium; farther on, a large hall, the Basilica Julia. The figure of a Satyr with a wine-skin on his shoulder closes tbe scene on the left-hand side: this is Marsyas, whose statue, booty from a Greek city, stood in the midst of the Forum near the Tribunal Praetorium : beside him is a sacred fig-tree fenced in (see below p. 149). The same group, Marsyas and the fig-tree, we find at the right end of the first balustrade: then follows a large portico, corresponding to the one on the other balus- trade: this is the Basilica Aemilia; then a broad street, the Argiletum (between the Basilica and the Curia); then a temple-like structure with a flight of steps in front (the Curia before its reconstruction by Diocletian); fin- ally an arch which has not been identified, and which was probably destroyed in the alterations by Severus, and in front of the arch the Rostra again. The two monuments which are repeated — the Rostra and Mar- syas — show that the two reliefs were intended to be joined together to form a complete circle; and yet of the buildings which surrounded the Forum we miss two, the temple of Caesar and the temple of Castor, that is to say the east side.
What at first sight seems a striking omission is to be explained most easily by the original position of the two balustrades. They stood namely as balus- trades on the platform of the Rostra, and in such a position that the historical reliefs were on the inside and the sacrificial animals on the outside. Thus the difference in scale between the two sets of scenes is readly understood: the animal reliefs were visible only
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from the level of the Forum, that is to say from a distance of 12 or 15 feet, while the historical reliefs were seen close to. If the first balustrade (fig. 43) stood to the left of the speaker, the representation of the north side of the Forum which it contained was in exact agree- ment with the actual position of the buildings; similarly, if the second balustrade (fig. 44) stood to the right of the speaker, the monuments which it represented, those of the west and the south side of the Forum, lay actually on the right-hand side and behind the speaker. The east side, that which is not represented, is exactly the side which the speaker on the Rostra had before his eyes. The sacrificial animals, which are represented as passing in solemn procession around the outside of the monument, may be considered as symbolic of a per- petual lustratio, a purification and dedication of the Rostra.
XVII. The Lapis Niger and the Grave of Ro- mulus. On the boundary-line between the Forum and the Comitium there lies, at present protected by an iron roof (see fig. 46, and 47, which shows the mon- ument as it was in 1900, before it was covered by the roof), a square of black marble slabs fenced in by a wall of white marble. The surface of the black pavement has been injured in several places and patched together, for example with a piece of an inscription, but the patching has been done with great care. Its orien- tation agrees with that of the Curia of Caesar and Dio- cletian, and it is situated almost exactly in front of the entrance to this Curia. Immediately upon the discovery of this pavement it was brought into connection with a group of monuments, the existence of which in the Co- mitium is mentioned by writers of the late republic and the early empire.
— io6 —
" The black stone in the Comitium ", says the antiquarian Pom- peius Festus (whose work is an abridgement of a larger one by Verrius Flaccus, the contemporary of Augustus), ''marks an unlucky spot: according to some it was intended to serve as the grave of Romulus, but this intention was not carried out, and in place of Romulus his foster-father Faustulus was buried; according to
Fig. 45. Lapis nigcr.
others it was the grave of Hostus Hostilius, the father of the third king Tullus Hostilius ". Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote in the time of Augustus, states that " many people think that the stone lion, which was situated in the noblest place in the Roman Forum, close by the Rostra, was a monument for Faustulus, who was buried on the spot where he fell in battle ". The same author repeats in another place the other explanation, namely that " Hostus Hostilius was buried in the noblest place in the Forum, and received a me- morial stone (stele) with an inscription which praised his virtues". Finally the old commentators on Horace remark: " most people sny
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Fig. 46. The Lapis nigcr seen from above (from a photograph taken from a balloon).
— io8 —
[in another passage Varro is mentioned by name] that Romulus was buried c'ose to [in front of or behind] the Rostra, and that
Fig. 47. The upper layer of the I.apis nigcr.
Fig. 48. The lower layer of the Lapis niger.
this was the reason that the two lions were placed there, just as they may be seen to-day guarding graves". -^jr
— log —
On the level of the Julian-Augustan pavement we have to be sure instead of a " black stone " a black pavement of marble blocks, and we find no traces of lions as guardians or of a stele with an ancient inscrip- tion. However, by digging deeper, there was discovered above five feet lower a group of monuments of very ancient time, which were covered over in late antiquity and in part purposely destroyed.
In the first place, covered only in part by the black pavement are to be seen two bases of tufa (fig. 48 A B}
Fig. 49. The " Sacellum ." and the archaic Stele.
which seem especially appropriate for two reclining sta- tues of lions. Between the two bases there lies (possibly not in its original position) a single block of stone (C). Behind, the two bases run against a foundation (Z7) which has not as yet been more closely investigated: the suggestion, which has recently been made, that this foundation represents the speaker's platform of the re- publican Rostra is impossible on account of the small- ness of the dimensions (5 l/2 ft. X ll V2 ft-)- This shrine, a ' sacellum ' , is usually considered identical with the ' grave of Romulus ' mentioned by ancient writers; some scholars think that on the single block of stone (C) stood the ' black stone', perhaps as in the case of
— no
Etruscan graves a conical block of black vulcanic sub- stance.
Behind the ' sacellum ', under the black pavement, stands the mutilated trunk of a round column of tufa (G);
Iff
*f v~
1. qttoilio...
2. sakros es-
3. ed sor...
4. ...tasias
5. recfi /..
6. ...evam
7. quos r..
Fig. 50. Inscription on the archaic Stele.
further behind in the darkness (the custodian provides a candle) is a rectangular stele (//) covered with in- scriptions on all four faces. The writing goes from the top down and from the bottom up (vertical bustrophcdori): fig. 50 and 51 show the lines of writing horizontal in order that they may be more easily legible.
Ill
The letters show greater resemblance to the Greek alphabet than those of any other Latin inscription (it is in this inscription only that R still has the form P) :
8. m kalato-
9. rent hap...
10. ...iod iouxmen-
11. to, kapia dota v..
15. m ite ri
14. quoiha-
1 3. (d)nelod nequ..
12. ...od iovestod
1 6. loiquiod...
Fig. 51. Inscription on the archaic Stele.
among all the inscriptions preserved on stone it is certainly the oldest, and is not later than the fifth century B. C. Unfortunately the content is up to the present almost entirely unknown, and inasmuch as the
I 12
lines are preserved in scarcely half their length, and pos- sibly in only a third, the future promises little for their deciphering. This much however is known, that men- tion is made of a rex, — whether this be the real king of Rome or his shadow-like successor of republican times the rex sacrorum, — further of iouxmenta, that is to say wagons and animals to draw them, and of a public servant kalator. Finally the end of one sentence is still pre- served : sakros esed = sacer esto (sit~), according to which it is probable that we have before us a lex sacrata: and for that matter in so ancient a time scarcely anything else would have been engraved on stone. The rex (and later the rex sacroruni) had business in the Comitium especially on three days in the year, February 24th, March 24th, and May 24th (see above p. 6); and it is at least conceivable that the lex had to do with the holy ceremonies to be performed by him, and that the privilege was granted him of appearing with his servant in the Comitium in a wagon, although wagons were otherwise forbidden there, and whoever broke this law was delivered over to the deity for punishment. But a genuine re- storation of the inscription is impossible.
When the ' sacellum ' was excavated the plinths of the bases were found packed in a layer of gravel which had been purposely brought there: in this layer were numerous dedicatory gifts, small idols of clay, bone, and bronze, pieces of terracotta bas-reliefs, fragments of vases, bones from animal sacrifices etc.; these are
Fig. 52. Small bone figures found near the "Sacellum ".
all stored at present in the magazzino of the excavations (plan I m). These objects too come mainly from very ancient times (vm.-vi. centuries B. C.).
It is still a mooted question at what date this old sanctuary was destroyed and at what date it was entirely covered over. Some scholars consider that the first destruction took place as early as the invasion of the Gauls (B. C., 390), and that the final covering over and the laying of the black pavement occurred in the time of Caesar or Augustus; others believe that as late as the time of Varro the lower group was still completely visible, and that the black pavement was laid in the time of the late empire as a memorial for the grave of Romulus which had long since disappeared. The settle- ment of this and of many other disputed points may be expected from the continuance of the excavations.
Under the right-hand corner of the black pavement is a rectangular well-like structure, made of slabs of tufa, the mouth of which is on a level with the Comitium of Julius Caesar and Augustus; a similar but pentagonal well is found on the right-hand side at the entrance to the excavation. The meaning of these constructions, and of similar ones in front of the Rostra, along the Sacra Via in front of the Basilica Julia and elsewhere, is uncertain. The name ' ritual wells ' (pozzi rituali) is unfounded, at least for the majority of them; and it seems much more likely that they served some practical purpose (drainage).
XVIII. The Comitium. The space between the Lapis Niger and S. Adriano is the last remnant of the old Comitium. The greater part of it was paved with slabs of travertine, under which many tufa remains of a very ancient character have come to light. Among these remains the most notable is a large curved foundation (marked in red on plan V) of blocks of brown tufa which
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can be traced from the east side of the Sacellum (near <z) to the edge of the marble pavement in front of S. Adriano (near d). It belonged to a building which was destroyed in connection with the alterations of the Forum carried out by Julius Caesar and Augustus. At that time the circle was broken into in several places by the well-like shafts (mentioned above) made of large slabs of tufa (i, II, pi. V). Parallel to this curved foundation and about thirty feet further toward the west runs a drain (c, d, e, pi. V) with walls of good opus reticnlatum, which seems to have been built about the time of Sulla. Possi- bly the Rostra of the latest Republican period lay between this drain and the circular foundation. This Rostra, as the coin of Palicanus shows (see fig. 53), Fig. S3. Coin represent- jia(j a curved front. The remains of
mg the Rostra before
the time of Augustus, steps built of small tula blocks, which are preserved at a lower level than this curved foundation (marked in black on plan V) may possibly in that case belong to the Rostra of the old republic. Of equally archaic appearance is a wall of small flat block of tufa, which has come to light between these foundations and the entrance to the Lapis Niger (g, h, i, pi. V). It has been incorrectly thought that this wall formed a boundary between the Comitium and the Forum.
In front of the flight of steps leading to the Curia is a pavement of marble; on the boundary between this marble pavement and the pavement of travertine is to be seen a marble basin having the shape of a platter, which was the lower part of a fountain, as is proved by the traces left by the action of water. In the middle of this basin a space is left for an octagonal base upon which a high cup-shaped vessel (cantharus) stood. The
— H5 —
whole construction dates from very late times, possibly from the fifth century.
At the edge of the excavations on the side toward the Basilica Aemilia are several large square marble bases. One of them (/, pi. V) bears a large honorary inscription, which was erected in honour of the emperor Constantius by the city-prefect Memmius Vitrasius Orfitus between 356 and 359 A. D. The surface of the others (m, n) appears to have been intentionally destroyed, but certain traces show that the dedicant was the same city- prefect. One of the inscriptions was probably in honour of the later emperor Julian (the Apostate).
On the other side of the excavation (at/, pi. I and V) is a large marble base with inscriptions on all four sides. Originally it supported a statue of Antoninus Pius which was dedicated on August ist, A. D. 154 by the heads of the Roman guild of carpenters (collegium fabrum tignuarioruni): the date on the back and the long list of names on the left-hand side are connected with this original use of the base. Later the base was used to support a monument, probably a group in bronze, which the emperor Maxentius dedicated to the founders of the city, Romulus and Remus, and their father Mars, on April 2ist A. D. 308, the anniversary of Rome's foun- dation. It is a plausible suggestion that this group stood upon the " black pavement ", which was renewed in remembrance of the " grave of Romulus ".
The three marble steps which extend eastward from the " black stone " in the direction of the arch of Severus belong to a very late (mediaeval?) construction. In front of the right side-entrance of the arch, there stands on the travertine pavement (near e) the base of an equestrian statue, which according to the inscription was erected in honour of the emperor Constantius by the City Prefect Neratius Cerealis (352-353). In this inscription the
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emperor is celebrated as restitntor urbis et orbis, ex- stinctor pestiferac tyrannidis: this last refers to the conquest of the rival emperor Magnentius (352).
XIX. The Curia Julia. The church of S. Adriano, with its bald facade of brick, corresponds to the main room in the senate-house of the Empire, the Curia Julia. The Curia Julia, constructed by the Dictator Caesar in place of the old Curia Hostilia which lay further north (see above p. 18), occupied the largest part of the old republican Comitium. A coin of Augustus, struck be- tween 35 and 28 B. C. (see fig. 54), shows the facade of the building, re- sembling a temple with a portico and an high pediment. The Curia has a similar form on the Anaglypha of Trajan (see fig. 43 and p. 104): there it Coin Fof "Augustus is represented as a temple with a portico (on the frieze and a flight of steps in front. Caesar's structure consisted of the large assem- bly-room, the Curia in the more specific sense of the word, and a smaller room for secret sessions or for the sitting of Committees (secretarium senatus): this latter room is now the church of S. Martina (see above p. 28). In antiquity both buildings formed one whole, and as late as the beginning of the xvi. century there existed between the churches a courtyard with columns, and behind the church of S. Adriano there were various other rooms: either the courtyard or one of these rooms must be identified with the Ckalcidicunt, which Augustus in the Monumentum Ancyranum calls " an annex to the Curia ' ' .
Caesar did not live to see the completion of the building, and it was dedicated by Augustus in 3. C, 29. He chose as patron-
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goddess Victoria, whose altar with a golden statue of the goddess was placed in the main room. Domitian restored the building and dedicated a chapel to his patron-goddess Minerva; possibly this was in the Chalcidicum of Augustus, which for this reason was given the additional name of the Atrium Minervae. The building was severely injured by a fire in the reign of Carinus (283), but it was restored by Diocletian, and at that time took the shape in which we now see it. Possibly it was dedicated in A. D. 303 in connection with the jubilee of the reign of the em- peror and his fellow-rulers, and at that time the two colossal columns, mentioned above (p. 97 f.), may have been erected. A few years later the Prefect of the City Junius Flavianus (311) restored the Secretarium. At the close of the fourth century the altar of Victoria was the subject of a bitter strife between the Christian and the heathen party in the senate (see p. 25). When Alaric captured Rome (410), the whole north side of the Forum was devastated by fire: the Prefect of the City Flavius Annius Eucha- rius Epiphanius restored the Secretarium in 412, as we learn from a monumental inscription preserved in the apse of the old church of S. Martina down into the xvii. century. Even in the time of Theodoric the building served for the sessions of the shadowy "senate"; the name 'Liberty-court' (Atrium Liber- talis), which was given it at this time instead of the classic 'Curia', was derived from an entirely distinct building in the neighbourhood. But when in its turn the kingdom of the Goths had fallen, the senate house was abandoned: in the middle of the vn. century the two churches of S. Adriano and S. Martina .were built in it, and it is to this that we owe all that is left of the Curia. At the beginning of the xvi. century, in connection with a projected alteration of both churches, which however was never carried out, A. da Sangallo, the elder, and Peruzzi made important studies of the remains that were preserved. Many old parts were destroyed when the Via Bonella was built, in the reign of Sixtus V (1585-90); and still others in connection with the restoration of S. Martina by Pietro da Cortona (1640). At that time the floor of the church was raised a whole story above the level of the mediaeval structure, which now serves as a crypt for the modern church.
In front of the Curia is a space paved with marble (see above p. 114), on the outer side of which traces of the fence are yet to be seen by which the Curia was
Fig. 55. Facade of the Curia.
separated from the Forum and the Comitium. A flight of steps, of which however only the concrete core has been preserved, led up to the entrance door. The high brick wall of the facade was covered in its lower part with marble, and in its upper part with stucco in imi-
tation of marble blocks. Old drawings show thai in the xvi. century a very considerable amount of this
Fig. 56. Facade of the Curia, restored.
stucco decoration was still in existence; the beams of travertine which project out under the gable, and are at present devoid of decoration, were originally orna-
• — 120 —
mented with stucco in imitation of a rich Corinthian cornice, with heads in bas-relief between the brackets.
bis Z.XV.Jhh.
H ERQAN Z V NQ.
E^lMITTELALTERLICHE
BAVTE N nach A.d.SANCi AU.O
1 IPROIECT1RTER
' ' dei B.PERVZ-Z.I
Fig. 57. Plan of the Curia and the Sccretarium.
Those parts of the ancient structure which existed down to the xvi. century arc indicated in black; parts supplied arc indicated by shading; mediaeval construction by dots; and the reconstruction as planned by Pcruzzi is given simply in contour.
The entrance -door of the Curia, 1 1 ft. 9 in. wide and 19 ft. high, lay in the time of Diocletian at the height of the platform of the flight of steps, but afterwards it
— 121 —
122 —
was several times raised higher (see fig. 55), along with the gradual rise in the level of the Forum. About ten feet above the original level two blocks of marble have been built into the wall to serve as corners for a new threshold; the lower half of the door of Diocletian has been blocked up with rough masonry, in which broken bits of marble, fragments of inscriptions, and porphyry columns have been used. In addition some pieces of ornaments, which are not older than the viu.-ix. centu- ries, have been found in this rubble- work; accordingly the first raising of the level cannot be brought into con- nection with the founding of the church of S. Adriano, but must have occurred at the time of a mediaeval re- storation of the church (after the attack of the Normans under Robert Guiscard, 1084, or in the reign of Gre- gory IX., 1229?). In the following centuries the level of the Forum was again raised, so that about 1570 one descended into the church by a flight of six or eight steps (see fig. 58). In 1654 a Spaniard, Alfonso Sotomayor, the general of the order of the Mercenarii, restored the church again, and raised the level about lofeet higher: the threshold of the door of 1654 is almost exactly on a level with the lintel of the door of Diocletian. The door-jamb and the bronze doors were still the ancient ones: these doors were removed in the time of Innocent X, by Borromini, who used them for the chief portal of the Lateran in connection with his restoration of that basilica. When the doors were taken apart for transportation, several ancient coins were found between the panels, among them one of Domitian. The numerous graves which have been found partly under the staircase and partly hollowed out in the brick wall of the facade correspond, as far as the scanty indications enable us to judge, to the various epochs in the history of the building : the lower layers go back possibly to the X.-xi. centuries, the upper ones to the time of Cola di Rienzo.
— 123 —
XX. The Career. With the exception of the Curia, the Career is the only building in the Comitium which has been preserved. Accordingly it cannot be omitted
C A R C E R
Fig. 59. Plan of the Career.
here, although it does not belong to the excavations of the Forum proper. It will be found most convenient to visit it in connection with the temples on the Clivus Capitolinus: the entrance is under the steps of the church
— I24 —
of S. Giuseppe del Falegnami (also called S. Pietro in Car- cere) opposite to the arch of Severus (near C fig. 59).
Roman writers distinguish between the career, in which evil- doers were imprisoned after their arrest until sentence was pro-
t
Fig. 60. Cross-section of the career and Tullianum.
nounced upon them (imprisonment itself as a punishment was unknown to Roman law), and the lidltanum, a subterranean dungeon in which such executions occurred as did not take place in public. On account of the sound of the name, Roman tradition considered this dungeon as a foundation of the sixth king, Servius Tullius, whereas the Career was attributed to his predecessor Ancus Marti us. In reality litllianum means perhaps only " well- house", and is derived from the obsolete word iitllus, "spring" (see below). The Tullianum is always described as a frightful
— 125 —
dungeon; the Career, with its annexes and over-flow the "stone- quarries" (lautumiae) on the slope of the Arx, was a more agree- able place of confinement, in which the prisoners were permitted for example to read and write, and to receive the visits of their rela- tives and friends. It is told of the poet Naevius (about B. C. 200) that he wrote two plays in carcere. The use of the Career simply
Fig. 61. Cross-section and plan of the Tullianum.
as a prison of detention and not as a place of penal servitude explains why Rome never had more than this one prison, which even with its annexes must have been of very moderate size.
\Ve descend by a modern stairway to the ancient entrance, the threshold of which was almost 5 ft. below the present one, and was on the level of the old Comitium. On the outside, over the door, on a projecting band of travertine, is the inscription in
- 126
lai-e letters: C. Vibivs C.f. Rufinus M. Cocceht\s M. f. Nen>d\ cos. ex s(enatus) c(onsulto). These two men were consuls under Tiberius or Caligula (between 20 and 40 A. D.). -- We next enter the only well-preserved cell of the upper prison, a vaulted chamber of tufa blocks with very scanty use of travertine. Remains of other rooms adjacent have been discovered, but these rooms are not accessible.
Another modern staircase leads down into the lower prison: in antiquity the room was entered only through a hole in the ceiling. This ceiling is however not the original one, but belongs to some restoration, possibly that under Tiberius mentioned in the inscription. The ground-plan of the room is circular, but a third of the circle is cut off by a chord. This chord consists of the living rock; the circular wall is made of blocks of tufa which are very exactly fitted together without mortar. There are still left three layers of blocks, each one of which projects out over the one below: originally this construction was continued to more than twice the present height and formed a primitive cupola, such as is found in very ancient monuments in Italy and Greece (the so-called treasure-house of Atreus at Mycenae, the well-house on the citadel of Tusculum).
In the floor of the Tullianum rises a spring, at present with a rather small supply of water, which according to common opin - ion originally filled the whole vault and thus formed the spring of the Capitoline citadel. It is usually thought that the over- flow was carried off by a drain cut in the tufa (at present the drain is shut off by an iron door). Recently doubts have been expressed as to the correctness of this hypothesis, especially on account of the absence of all incrustation, which would certainly have formed during the long-continued use of the room as a re- servoir. Instead of the old theory it has been suggested that the structure is a very old cupola-grave, like those at Mycenae.
In the Tullianum Jugurtha, Vercingetorix and other conquered enemies of Rome met their end after they had been exhibited in triumph. On December 5th, B. C. 63, at Cicero's command, the associates of Catiline were executed here on the charge of high treason: in this connection Sallust gives his famous description of the Tullianum: " In the prison there is a room called Tullianum about twelve feet under the ground; it is inclosed by walls and
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a vaulted roof of blocks of stone; its appearance is repulsive and loathesome on account of neglect, darkness and stench". Down into the IY. century A. D., we hear of prisoners of state who met iheir end in the Tullianum. Christian legend considers it as the prison of the apostle Peter, who miraculously called forth the spring from the ground in order that he might baptize his jailers Pro- cessus and Martinianus. It is only in these very late legends that the name Career Mamertinus (or Custodia Mamerlini) occurs, a name entirely foreign to classical antiquity.
Near the Career the "steps of wailing" (scalae Gemoniae or simply Gemoniae} led up to the citadel; on this staircase the bodies of those who had been executed were exposed before being thrown into the Tiber. The direction of these steps must have corres- ponded with one of the modern stairways near the church, but no traces of them have as yet been found.
XXI. The Basilica Aemilia. Taking up our circuit of the Forum which was interrupted in the Comitium, we consider next the remains of the Basilica Aemilia.
In the year B. C. 179 (a. u. c. 575) the Censor Marcus Fulvius Nobilior gave the contract for the building of a basilica - the second in Rome - "behind the new booths", together with the fish-market (Forum piscariuni). He completed its construction, as it seems, in common with his colleague Marcus Aemilius Le- pidus: at any rate in after-time the building bore the name Ba- silica Fuh'ia et Aemilia. The conqueror of Perseus of Macedo- nia, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, seems to have won esteem by the decoration of the basilica: an inscription in his honour has re- cently been found in the ruins. The consul M. Aemilius Le- pidus restored the building in B. C. 78 (a. u. c. 676), and decorated the facade with shields of metal. Probably it was he too who substituted columns of Phrygian marble (pavonazzetto) for the old ones of native stone. A coin of the Triumvir Lepidus struck in B. C. 6 1 shows the building as a two-storied portico (see fig. 62). The basilica became, as it were, a family monument of the Aemilij,
— 128 —
and the members of this fens continued to be interested in its adorn- ment. On this account ever since the time of Sulla the simple name Basilica Aemilia was used in place of the old double name, and this continued in vogue during all the empire. It has al- ready been stated (see above p. 16 f.) that in B. C. 54 one of the Aemilii, the curule aedile Marcus Lepidus, restored the basilica with the approval of Caesar and with Caesar's money, and at the same time began to construct on the southern side of the Forum a similar building, the later Basilica Julia. Twenty years later his son, the consul Paullus Lepidus, dedicated the basilica which had been begun by his father; and in B. C. 14 after a destructive fire the same man restored the building at Augustus's expense. Finally in the reign of Tiberius, in the year A. D. 22, the consul Marcus Aemilius Lepidus restored the basilica, which in this connection Tacitus
Fig. 62. Coin of Lepidus.
calls <( a glorious monument of his ancestors".
In regard to the subsequent fortunes of the building lite- rary tradition is silent, but it is clear from the ruins themselves that it was partially destroyed under the late empire, probably at the time of the capture of Rome by Alaric in 410, and was patched up again in the following years. In 416 the city-prefect Probianus, who restored the Basilica Julia, too, decorated the Ba- silica Aemilia with statues. In the eighth century the greatest part of the building must have been in ruins, and in the eastern half a kind of fortress was constructed. Concerning the final destruction of the building we have no exact knowledge; in the xiv. and xv. centuries the region between S. Adriano and S.Lorenzo was called " la Zecca Vecchia" (the old mint) and was used as a stone-quarry. On the west side, opposite S. Adriano, a corner of the building with its Doric entablature was still standing (see fig. 63 and p. 37, fig. 9); on account of the bucrania in the metopes the artists of the Renaissance are accustomed to call it " Foro Boario ". In 1500, when the Cardinal of Corneto, Adriano Castellesi, built his palace in the Borgo, in the Piazza Scossacavalli (the modern palace Giraud-Torlonia), his architect, the great Bramante, destroyed this last bit of the ruin, in order to use the huge blocks of marble for the decoration of this palace. After the last traces of the building
— 129 —
had disappeared from the surface of the ground the remembrance of it was lost also, and it was only in recent times that the site of the basilica was again discovered.
The basilica of the Empire (of the republican build- ing only a few bits of the foundations remain, which
Fig. 63. Remains of the Basilica Aemilia about 1480 (drawing by Giuliano da Sangallo).
were built into the loundation-walls of the later building) falls into three parts: the vestibule, the separate rooms (tabernae) and the main hall.
From the area of the Forum four steps lead up to a platform paved with white marble, and from here two steps more into the vestibule. The vestibule cor- responded in its architecture to the Basilica Julia oppo-
— 130 —
site (see also the reliefs on Trajan's balustrades, above p. 100): two stories supported by great square pillars, faced with engaged columns, the whole of white marble. At the east corner (near the temple of Faustina) a pa- vilion-like structure projected forward about 13 feet.
The lower story had fourteen large arched entrances; over the arches, a Doric entablature, with bucrania and sacrificial saucers in the metopes (see fig. 63 p. 129). In the vestibule lie several bits of the entablature which belonged to the building, ornamented with acanthus. It is interesting to compare a piece of the original build- ing from the time of Augustus with one which lies near it, dating probably from the restoration of the n. or in. century and showing much ruder and flatter work. From the vestibule one does not enter, as in the Ba- silica Julia, directly into the main room: instead the entrance lies in the middle of the side (the marble threshold is still in situ}. On each side of the entrance, to the right and to the left, are six separate rooms, nearly square and not connected with one another. These rooms, like the similar ones at the rear of the Basilica Julia, probably served as offices, for the bank- ing business etc. At each end of the vestibule a stair- case led to the upper story, which was similarly ar- ranged. In the western half of the building very little is left of the rear wall of the tabernae: one enters the main room ordinarily by means of a bridge over a deep drain with walls of huge blocks of travertine (this drain, in spite of its archaic appearance, belongs to the time of the Empire).
The main room was 95 ft. wide, and about 228 ft. long; the central nave is about 39 ft. wide, and the right-hand side-aisle - the one which is bounded by the rear wall of the tabernae - is about 16 ft. wide. On the opposite (left-hand) side the main hall had, as the
.0/7
•s-
— 132 —
fragment of the Forma Urbis shows (see above p. 22), two side-aisles instead of one. The galleries above the side-aisles vere not supported by pillars, as in the Ba- silica Julia, but by columns: a number of fragments
- —
*•> ,50 *» ?0
Fig. (>). Facade of the Basilica Aemilia, i.-iv. centuries.
___ nnnrrj
Fig. 66. Facade of the Basilica Aemilia, v.-vi. centuries.
of the shafts of these columns (ol black, red and white Marmo Africano, diameter 2 ft. 9 in.) have been pre- served. Above the columns was an entablature of marble of very fine workmanship. On some pieces of the archi- trave which were injured by fire the remains of an in- scription are preserved: PAVL RESTI . . . ,
- 133 —
\\hich probably refers to the restoration by the consul Paullus 34 or 14 B. C. The side-aisles were not vaulted as in the Basilica Julia, but they had ceilings of wood; the columns of the upper story were also of Marmo Africano, but they were only i ft. 9 in. in diameter. The
nstructions in the Basilica Acmilia.
entablature of the upper story was also of white marble with fine workmanship, and numerous fragments of it have been found. The main entrance must have been on the west end, facing the Curia; on the opposite end lay the apse, the excavation of which is soon to be undertaken.
The pavement of the central nave, which consists of great slabs of coloured marble (Giallo, Cipollino, Porta-
- 134 -
santa), shows in many places marks of a conflagration: countless little bits of iron and bronze are melted fast into it, as well as many coins (most of the coins are at present in the magazzino of the Museum). These coins, in so far as they can still be deciphered, belong mostly to the period after Constantine. Accordingly the building must have been at one time injured by fire, when the wooden roofs of the side-aisles and especially the enor- mous roof of the central nave furnished abundant fuel for the flames. According to the coins which have been found, this disaster must have occurred at the beginning of the v. century, probably in connection with the in- vasion of Alaric, when the Curia and the Secretarium were also a prey to the flames (see above p. 117). When the basilica was restored in the reign of Hono- rius the restorers did not take the trouble to replace the injured pavement by an entirely new one, but, just as was done in the house of the Vestals (see below p. 214), a new and much ruder pavement was laid on top of the older one: in this way the traces of the fire, the coins etc. have been so well preserved.
Going out of the main room through the ancient door in the middle, we see on the left the walls of a mediaeval building (a house? or a church?) constructed of blocks of grey-green tufa roughly joined together, and not older than the vii. or vin. century (see fig. 67). The richly sculptured ornamental slabs which are fastened to the outside of the walls have no more connection with the house than they have with the basilica. They were found serving as a cover for a mediaeval drain under the street in front of the basilica (an exactly similar piece previously excavated is in the Lateran Museum). The threshold of this mediaeval house was made of a block of marble which was brought here from the Regia, and which contained a long fragment of the Fasti Con-
— 135 —
sulares (see below p. 194; this block is now with the rest of the Fasti in the Palazzo dei Conservator!) . In some of the tabernae in the east half of the basilica marble pavements are found, the pattern of which, con- sisting of rectangles, circles and narrow bands of Giallo, porphyry and serpentine, resembles the patterns in churches of the vii.-ix. centuries (S. Maria in Cosmedin, S. Prassede); these too date from a structure of the early middle ages. These tabernae are used now as store- rooms for small objects found in the excavations: note- worthy are the beautiful ornaments which come from the basilica itself, among others the door-posts with acanthus ornaments in bas-relief.
In front of the tabernae, near the east corner, are three columns of granite which in modern times have been set up on heavy cube-shaped bases of white marble: the columns themselves formed a part of the reconstruc- tion at the beginning of the v. century. One sees that the spaces between the columns of this colonnade were much smaller than those between the original pillars (reduced from 17 ft. 5 in. to 13 ft. 2 in.): accordingly the facade had 24 much narrower intercolumniations in place of the original 14 large arches (fig. 65, 66).
A great heap of marble fragments in front of the granite columns is composed of fragments of the basilica, and also of parts of other monuments. Especially no- ticeable is a monumental inscription with very beautiful and extraordinarly well-preserved letters:
L • CAESARI • AVG«STI F • DIVI • N
PRINCIPI IVVENTVtfS COS • DESIG
CVM ,?SSET ANN • NaT . XIIII • AVG
SENATVS
This inscription was dedicated by the senate in B. C. 2 in honour of the adopted son of Augustus, Lucius Caesar, when he was designated consul at the
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age of 14 (at that time, in addition to this, he already enjoyed the honour of being princcps iuvcntutis and augur). The inscription belongs probably with the other relating to Augustus (at present set up not far from the first one, in front of the basilica) to a great monument erected to the family of Augustus in front of the temple of Caesar (see below p. 154).
Behind this heap of fragments, almost at the extreme end of the front of the basilica, are several large blocks of marble in situ, the only remains of the lower story of the portico. They formed a part of the pavilion- shaped projection referred to on p. 130; the inner cor- ner is rounded into the third of a fluted column (enga- ged), while the outer sides had merely fluted pillars.
Retracing our steps almost to the west end of the facade, along a road with a mediaeval pavement of ba- salt (we may notice, under the great heap of fragments, remains of very late private house with variegated marble pavements, and further on bits of the large Doric entablature of the basilica), we arrive at the Sacellum Cloacinae.
XXII. The Sacellum Cloacinae. A round sub- structure with a marble rim at the top, and traces of a flight of steps on the west side, have been preserved (see fig. 69). Under the ground a foundation of blocks of tufa to the depth of about 10 ft. has been uncovered.
The little structure stands over the drain which flows through the basilica Fig. 68. Coin (see above p. 130) not far from the
of Mtissitiius I.ongus. • . i .1 /-»i »«•
point where the Cloaca Maxima enters the Forum. Upon the denarii of Mussidius Longus (B. C. 43) a very similar small round building is repre-
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sented, which according to the inscription is dedicated to Cloacina. The so-called ' parabasis ' in the Curculio of Plautus (see above p. 13) mentions the Cloacinae sacrum between the Comitium and the Basilica Aemilia; besides this, its situation is indicated in the story of the death of Virginia (B. C. 449).
Fig. 69. The shrine of Cloacina.
In order to gain possession of the beautiful Virginia, the daughter of the centurion Virginius, the decemvir Appius Claudius caused one of his clients to swear that the girl was his slave. In vain the daughter, with her father, who had hastened to Rome from the camp, appeared before the tribunal of Claudius in the Forum : deaf to all arguments and pleadings Claudius commanded the lictor to lead the girl away to her own master. Then Virgi- nius, robbed of all hope, besought Appius that he might be allowed once more to bid farewell to his daughter; and when he had re- ceived permission he led her and her nurse aside to the shrine of Cloacina near the tabernae which were later called tabernae
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novae, snatched a knife from a butcher, and plunged it into his daughter's breast, crying aloud: " Thus, my child - and thus only - can I give thee thy freedom! But upon thee, Appius, and upon thy head be this blood! " Then the people filled with wrath seized their weapons and drove forth Claudius and all his fol- lowers.
According to the illustrations on the coins we must imagine two female statues on the little round structure,
Fig. 70. The shrine of Cloacina, rcston tio.i.
one of which held a flower in her left hand; beside each of them was a low pillar upon which was a little bird: flowers and doves were well-known symbols of Venus, with whom Cloacina was sometimes identified.
XXIII. The Middle of the Forum. The open space in the Forum is paved with slabs of white lime- stone (travertine): the present pavement dates probably from comparatively late times. Upon this pavement or sunk into it one sees foundations for all sorts of mono- ments, the nature of which is for the most part un- known. For example an almost square foundation of brick, which was discovered, not far from the shrine of Cloacina, in front of the middle of the Basilica Aemilia (near g, PI. I and fig. 71), has without good reason been explained as a Janus.
Janus, the old Roman god of beginnings and entrances, had to be sure no temple in the Forum (offering was made to him in the Regia), but he possessed a peculiar sanctuary consisting of two
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door-ways (jani) connected by walls or gratings. It lay " in the lower part of the Argiletum ", and was still in existence in the sixth century A. D., when an eye-witness describes it as follows: "Janus has his sanctuary in the Forum in front of the Curia, a little beyond the tria fata (see above p. 27). This temple is entirely of bronze [that is to say covered with bronze], rectangular in shape, and just big enough so that a statue of Janus can stand inside of it. This statue is of bronze, five ells (about 7 ft.) high, and
has the shape of a man, but with two faces, one of which looks toward the rising of the sun, and the other toward its setting. On both sides there are bronze doors". The sanctuary is represented on coins of Nero, who in A. D. 66 shut the Janus because " peace was reigning on land and sea ". The foundation above referred to, which is not in front of the Curia, and is not oriented each and west, can have nothing to do with the Janus. Traces of the old Janus have not as yet been found: the existence of other Jani in the Forum is problematical (the archways, for example that over the Vicus Jugarius, see above p. 67 f., are another matter).
The (so-called) EQUUS CONSTANTINI. Farther on in the direction of the Sacra Via one sees on the pavement, just about in the middle, the remains of a base, which judged by its length seems to have supported an equestrian statue. The lower half consists of bricks, rest- ing directly on the pavement, above them are blocks of travertine, and above these in turn the shafts of columns of giallo antico, which now lie near the base, were used as material. It is so badly built that one hesitates to set it in the time of Constantine (whose monument the Anonymus Einsidlensis saw still standing in the midst of the Forum, see above p. 29 f.).
Fig. 72. Coin of Nero with representation of Janus.
The EQUUS DOMITIANI. Between this base and the brick bases on the Sacra Via a very much larger con- crete foundation was discovered in 1903, under the
Fig. 73. The Equus Domitiani.
pavement. That this foundation belongs to the empire, more precisely to the first century A. D., is rendered probable not only by reason of its construction, but also because in the erection of it one of the subterra-
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nean passages (cuniculi) of which we are to speak below (p. 152) was broken through and partly obstructed. Of the superstructure, which doubtless consisted of great blocks of travertine and marble, not the smallest remains have been found - which seems to show that already in antiquity it was purposely destroyed. Now it is a well-known fact that in the first century a great monu- ment was erected in the middle of the Forum close by the Lacus Curtius in honour of a ruler against whom after his death the senate pronounced a judgement of memoriae damnalio. Both the site and the date of these newly discovered remains agree well with their attribution to the equestrian statue of Domitian.
In A. D. 91 Domitian had received in the Forum a monu- ment for his campaigns in Germany: a colossal equestrian statue with the conquered river-god Rhine under the raised fore-foot of the horse. The court poet Statius celebrated this work of art in a special poem (Silv. I, i), to which \ve are indebted for some interesting information concerning the Forum as a whole. He addresses the emperor as follows:
21. Noble the monument's site, beholding the temple of Julius, Who by the grace of his son has gone on the road to Olympus, Leading the way for all those who follow him as our rulers...
29. There on one side may be seen the stately Basilica Julia, Yonder the noble hall of Paullus famous in battle, While behind thee are standing thy father and gentle Concordia. There in the midst art thou,thy noble head raised toward heaven : There tliou beholdest the temples and lookestupon the I'alatium, Rising afresh in despite of the flames, and fairer than ever;
35. Now at the hearth of Vesta with care thy watchful eye searches, To see if the work of the maidens duly pleases the goddess.
Par operi sedes : hinc obvia limina paiuiil Qui /essiis bellis adscrlae munere prolis Primus iter nostris ostendit in aethera dii'is... At lalerum passus hinc Inlia tecta tticnliir, Illinc belligeri sublimis regia Paitli ; Terga paler blandoqiie videl Concordia vollu. ipse autem puro celsum caput acre saepltts
Templa superfulges et prospectare videris An nova contemptis surgant Palatia flammis Pidchrius, an tacila vigilet face Troicns ignis Atque exploratas iam laudet Vesta minislras.
Lines 22 ff. refer to the apotheosis of Julius Caesar which was effected by Augustus; 1. 31 refers to the temples of Vespasian and Concord; 1. 36 contains a reference to a sensational process against the Vestal Virgins at the beginning of JDomitian's reign.
Fig. 74. Clay vessels found in the Basis Domitiani.
In several places large blocks of travertine are im- bedded in the upper surface of the concrete : in
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March 1904 it was discovered that one of these blocks was hollowed out and contained five archaic clay vessels similar to those found in the old necropolis (see below n. XXXV); possibly they were the contents of a very old tomb which was found in digging for the foundation, and which for religious reasons was covered up and left on exactly the same spot. In the vases neither remains of bones nor funeral gifts were found, only in the lar- gest of them were found a piece of quartz, containing a bit of pure gold, and a few fragments of tortoise-shell.
Fig. 75. Lacus Curtiiis.
Beside the basis, at a great depth, in October 1905 three skeletons without indications of formal burial were found. In November, 1905, between the ' Equus Domitiani ' and the third (from east) column-base (near c d fig. 71) was found a concrete foundation, with a pavement of variegated marbles and remains of brick walls and of a stuccoed vault. This structure has been explained as an imperial tribunal, but without adequate evidence.
The LACUS CURTIUS. According to Statins' s de- scription (v. 6^ ff.) there stood-near the monument to Domitian another structure, and that a very ancient one, the Lacus Curtius.
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Popular tradition considered the Lacus Curtius as marking the