THE FORA, THEIR LIFE AND BUILDINGS. THE DAILY JOURNAL
=225. The Fora, the Centers of Roman Life.=--Hitherto in our prolonged
“day” in Rome we have carefully avoided visiting those famous quarters
or buildings which are the glory of the imperial city. These can only
take on true significance when we have first seen the ordinary life
of rich and poor. It is now time, however, to visit the “Heart of
Rome”--the splendid system of fora in that great hollow where five of
the “Seven Hills” almost come together just north of the Palatine, and
then to visit the Palatine itself with its abodes of official majesty.
[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF OLD FORUM AND
CAPITOL: a simplified restoration.]
The renowned and original “Forum” is known technically as the
_Forum Romanum_, or the Old Forum, and down to Julius Cæsar’s time
it was the only great plaza inside the official limits of the city.
Under the emperors it is still revered and famous, but the needs of an
enormous metropolis have caused first Cæsar, then Augustus, Vespasian,
Nerva, and finally Trajan to add other wide public squares surrounded
by buildings far more magnificent than most of those around the ancient
rallying spot of the men of the Republic.
[Illustration: OLD FORUM: present state, looking
towards the Capitol.]
All these fora are closely connected together, sometimes by no
very sharp lines of demarkation. You can start in near the Flavian
Amphitheater and follow down the Sacred Way across the Old Forum, with
one soaring edifice, triumphal arch, or memorial column succeeding
another until at the Temple of Trajan you find yourself on “Broadway”
(_Via Lata_), upon the great avenue leading through the select shopping
districts, and then past the Campus Martius, and onward to the northern
suburbs. “Going to the Forum” means visiting any place in this crowded,
swarming district, where every public and private interest seems to
have its stronghold, and where the litters of Senators go past so
frequently that nobody stops to count them.
=226. Incessant Crowds at the Forum. The Centers of Gossip.=--If
driving is impossible in the ordinary Roman streets by day, it is
doubly impossible in this congested region where only those who delight
in crowds should endeavor to force their way from one building to
another. Nevertheless, with that informality so characteristic of
Mediterranean countries, all the fora are allowed to be overrun with
idlers. Ragged boys are scampering between the columns fronting the
most sacred temples, and on the steps of the same adult idlers from
morn till eve are playing “Robbers” on boards scratched upon the
stonework,[138] or rattling dice (nominally forbidden) if the police
are not too near. The foul and the elegant therefore are often in
amazing juxtaposition.
For the average senator or eques a morning visit to the Forum, after
he has received his own callers or clients, is almost a required act
of the day. All his associates are doing the same thing; he can easily
meet almost any friend without making an appointment, he can read that
“Daily Journal” presently to be described (see p. 282), hear the latest
tittle-tattle from the palace and get all the trade reports--all this
even if he has no real business at the Senate House, the government
bureaus on the Palatine, or the Record Office on the slopes of the
Capitol.
If the great men do this, all the lesser fry and above all the genteel
idlers must do the same. The women frequent the fora almost as much
as do the men. If there is nothing else to busy one, one can always
wedge into the crowds listening to the distinguished advocates in the
Basilicas (Court Houses). It is quite a proper thing to imitate Horace
who put in many days simply wandering around the business quarters. “I
go on foot (said he) and go alone. I ask the price of kitchen-stuff
and grain. I often stroll down toward the cheating [gambling] Circus
and around the Forum; then perhaps I stop toward evening at the
fortune tellers. Presently I go home to my supper of leeks, pulse, and
macaroni.”
Across the fora will parade all personages who wish to put men’s
tongues to wagging. People laugh at a certain pretentious senator who
likes to pass for a great hunter and who is incessantly sending his
slaves around the plazas at the crowded morning hour, bearing nets and
spears and driving a mule apparently bearing home a wild boar “which
we all know,” whisper the cunning, “he has just bought in the game
market.”
Here in the fora also the magistrates with their lictoral fasces pass
so often that it is really inconvenient the number of times you have
to bow your head to them, or, if in a litter, to dismount and stand at
polite attention: and in such frequented places the kissing nuisance
takes on its greatest bane. The merest chance acquaintance, if only
he is a citizen, will thrust his damp salute upon you, little heeding
whether you have a vile cold or his own lips be ulcered and his breath
foul.
=227. Grandiose Architecture: Vast Quantities of Ornaments and
Statues.=--In viewing these great public squares and buildings
instantly one is impressed by a single fact--the grandiose character of
the ornaments and the architecture. All the enormous public buildings
are literally overladen with adornments. The architects seemed to have
abhorred the idea of blank spaces. There are no reposeful vistas.
Everything seems striving to be magnificent and ornate. Statues, singly
or in groups, occupy all the gables, roofs, niches, intervals of
columns, and even the stairways. The Triumphal Arches are surmounted
by equestrian figures or by prancing four-horse chariots. Reliefs and
medallions cover all the friezes. If there is any space that cannot be
seized for the mounting of sculptures or at least for bas-reliefs, it
can be used for painting designs in stucco or colored mosaics. Every
detail down to the gutters is highly decorated.
Very different, therefore, are these fora from the chaste elegance of
the public places in Athens. On the other hand much of the effect is
splendid as well as startling. The utilization of concrete permits the
erection of vast soaring domes, often covered with gilded tiles. The
elaborate Corinthian pillars before many of the buildings are often
simply superb polished monoliths of colored marbles. The use of the
arch (practically unknown in Greece) permits new effects often graceful
and pleasing.
The sculptures permitted in such public places are, of course, always
of the highest order. Sometimes they are original Greek masterpieces
carried as spoils to Italy. Often they are excellent copies of those
masterpieces but with small variations, not inelegant, which give the
reproductions a real character of their own. At every turn one sees
these triumphs of bronze and marble, Apollos, Minervas, Victories,
Winged Mercuries, Centaurs, Homeric Heroes, and all the legendary host
of Græco-Roman mythology--now singly, now in groups. Interspersed with
these gods mounted on pedestals or on the entablatures of the buildings
are the honorary statues of the worthies of Rome. Hardly a great leader
is absent from Romulus to the reigning Hadrian.
A mere walk about the fora with an explanation of their portrait
statues becomes therefore a detailed lesson in Roman history. Besides
the images of the truly great and good, there are so many others of
sheer mediocrities or worse that one is left wondering whether the
honor of a “statue in the Forum” is so important after all. Even in
old Cato’s day the abuse was such that he remarked sarcastically that
“he would rather that men asked why he had _not_ a statue in the
Public Square, than whisper questioning why he had one.”
=228. Use of Color on Sculptures and Architecture.=--Needless to
say, in Rome as in Athens very many of these buildings are brilliantly
painted.[139] The great columns of colored or of snow-white Carrara or
Græcian marbles are usually left in their natural aspect, but nearly
all the backgrounds, architectural members, and details are colored
in brilliant greens, reds, and blues. The nude statues are nearly all
tinted in flesh color, and the hair darkened, and there is perhaps an
overplus of gilding.
Under a bright Italian sky these color combinations make the vast
succession of enormous buildings stand out with indescribable
grandeur; and to this spectacle must be added the huge crowds
incessantly moving about the fora, great masses of soft white togas
giving to the wide areas all the exuberance of teeming life. There can
be many other great plazas in the future capitals of the world; there
will never be any more clearly marked out as the veritable center of an
enormous Empire than the succession of fora in Rome.
We are not concerned with archæological descriptions. The arrangement
of the fora in this reign of Hadrian must be sketched over lightly
or explained completely, otherwise the result is not knowledge but
confusion; here a very brief survey will suffice. If we are following
Publius Calvus’s litter as it traces the Esquiline on routine business
of a senator, a series of convenient side streets probably will bring
it past the great baths of Trajan and then down the slope to the
spot where the vast bulk of the Flavian Amphitheater rears itself
arrogantly. The baths and the Amphitheater both will be visited later
(see p. 361 and p. 394), and we can, therefore, ignore them. Then the
litter bearers swing west and slightly north--and before us lies the
veritable Heart of Rome.
=229. Entering the Series of Fora: the Temple of Venus and
Rome.=--To avoid being overwhelmed by details only the most
conspicuous objects and buildings will be mentioned. Some structures
are obvious at the very first. To the left, lifting vauntingly above
the visitors’ heads, rise tier upon tier the domes, balconies, and
pinnacles of the Imperial Palace upon the Palatine, sustained at their
base by an enormous mass of arches and buttresses of masonry and
concrete. The lords of the palace at any moment can look down from
a gilded balcony upon the Old Forum and its bustling life, and they
need only descend an inclined plane in order to mingle with the mob,
or cross the Plaza to visit the Senate House. Directly ahead--at the
end of the vista, rises the Capitol, crowned by the rebuilt Temple of
Jupiter Best and Greatest (_Jupiter Optimus Maximus_), its roof
flashing with the gold tiles; its enormous pillars proclaiming it the
most splendid fane in Rome.
[Illustration: MAP OF
THE HEART OF ROME
The Fora, the Palatine, the Capitoline etc. as in Period of
Hadrian: about 135 A.D.]
At the head of the Via Sacra (for this famous route of the great
Triumphators now opens before us), upon our right, is the new and
indescribably splendid Temple of Venus and Rome, a building just
completed by Hadrian. This edifice has been reared by demolishing the
last of the ruins of the impossibly extravagant “Golden House,” the
architectural monstrosity of Nero.
In order to get sufficient room for his new structure Hadrian also was
compelled to move the colossal statue of Nero (99 feet high) located
near the site and to set it nearer the Flavian Amphitheater. This had
been a great task, executed by the clever architect Decrianus, with
the aid of twenty-four elephants--performed to the delight of all the
idling crowds in Rome. The statue now towers upon its new pedestal,
with Nero’s unworthy head sagaciously lifted from its shoulders and one
of the Sun God substituted. The new Temple of Venus and Rome is a truly
magnificent object; rising as it does upon a terrace 26 feet high,
500 feet long, and 300 broad, and surrounded by an enormous portico
of 400 columns each 40 feet high. The versatile Emperor boasts that
he has been the architect himself, and whatever are the real facts no
vestibule to the fora could well be more impressive.
=230. The Arch of Titus: Continuation of the Sacred Way.=--With
the Temple of Venus and Rome to our right and the substructures of
the Palatine to the left we go straight ahead to the Arch of Titus.
Everybody recognizes the shape of that impressive but relatively simple
structure. Its bas-reliefs showing the spoils of Jerusalem--the “Golden
Table” and more particularly the “Seven Branched Candlestick”--are
destined to be reproduced countless times.
Old men in Hadrian’s day can still recall the Triumphal Procession
when the son of Vespasian returned in glory; how the great throng of
cheering soldiers and citizens swept up toward the Temple of Jupiter
Capitolinus, then halted at the portal of the Temple while Simon
Bar-Giora, the captive Jewish leader who had been dragged in the
procession, could be taken to a high place overlooking the Forum and
deliberately scourged to death. At the news that he had perished all
the vast company made the crags and columns quake with their brutal
“acclamation,” and Titus entered the shrine to sacrifice and to bear
witness how much mightier was Latin Jove than Palestinian Jehovah.
[Illustration: SPOILS FROM JERUSALEM: Arch of Titus.]
And now the Via Sacra turns at right angles, or, to be more accurate,
its thronging ways divide. Go to the left and you will come upon a high
street passing under the brow of the Palatine. It runs a considerable
distance toward the Capitol, receiving several sloping avenues or
broad staircases leading down from the Palatine. This is “New Street”
(_Nova Via_), the most convenient route to certain buildings on
the southern side of the Forum.
It is better, however, to follow the denser crowds which are swerving
somewhat to the right, and then by a second turn go straight onward
again between magnificent structures, with the gilded roofs of the
Capitol ever looming ahead more clearly. We are now on the Via Sacra
proper; and caught in the eddying throngs of litters, litter bearers,
running footmen, following clients, elbowing plebeians with now and
then a masterful squad of Prætorians in gilded armor, we find it
perhaps impossible to get more than the names of the structures in
passing.
[Illustration: VIEW THROUGH THE ARCH OF TITUS, SHOWING
THE FLAVIAN AMPHITHEATER IN DISTANCE.]
=231. House and Temple of Vesta: the Regia: the Temple of the Divine
Julius.=--The venerable temple near which the ways divide is that
of Jupiter Stator where Cicero convened the anxious Senate when he
delivered his great assault on Catiline. Next comes to view a long
high wall broken only by narrow doorways until you see a stately
portal at the western end, nearest the Old Forum. From above the wall
can be glimpsed the tiles and marble of an elegant mansion inside,
also the foliage trees of a really fine garden. This is the House of
the Vestals, the abode of the six sacrosanct virgins who are the most
revered personages in all Rome, hardly barring the Emperor.
As we advance there come next to view two buildings--one a small round
temple of antique and simple structure; the other a handsome arched
building of no great size. The first is the Fane of Vesta itself, where
burns the eternal hearthfire of Rome, guarded by the Vestals, and the
most sacred structure in the entire city. The second is the Regia, the
official home of the Pontifex Maximus, the head of the Roman religion,
and actually occupied (since that official is now the reigning Emperor)
by various clerks and administrative bureaus relating to the upkeep
of the State cultus. To the right of these buildings are government
warehouses and offices;[140] and then, closing off the Old Forum proper
from these structures just named, stands another extraordinarily
magnificent Temple, that of the deified Julius Cæsar.
=232. The Old Forum (_Forum Romanum_).=--We are now close upon the
actual Forum. It can be entered by two methods: you can go between the
Temple of Vesta and that of Cæsar, very likely walking through the
triumphal arch of Augustus, in which case you will see the pillared
façade of the stately Temple of Castor and Pollux (the divine helpers
of Rome at the half legendary battle of Lake Regillus), and then across
that busy shopping street, the Vicus Tuscus, before reaching the
quieter portico of the great Basilica Julia; or you can take a better
way by keeping on past the northern side of the Temple of Cæsar and
coming out pretty directly upon the Forum. In so doing you will have
the second great court house, the old but capacious Basilica Æmilia
to the north on your right. Let tribunals and litigants, however,
wait--before the visitor at last is opening one of the most famous
areas in the entire world--the _Forum Romanum_.
[Illustration: OLD FORUM: looking west towards the
Capitol. Restoration by Nispi-Landi.]
Of the Old Forum well may one say what Cicero declared of Athens, “On
whatever spot we tread we awake a memory.” There is hardly an event
connected with the long reaches of Roman history which is not also
connected in one manner or another with this public square. The first
impression, to be sure, may be one of disappointment: the whole open
plaza barely measures 300 by 150 feet. It seems the more confined
because a large part of the southern side is hemmed in by the huge
Basilica Julia, while directly above the square rise the two hills of
the Capitoline and the Palatine, their summits crowned with lofty and
noble buildings looking down upon the Forum as a kind of common center.
[Illustration: OLD FORUM, LOOKING TOWARDS CAPITOL FROM
BEFORE THE TEMPLE OF CASTOR: the building on the left,
with statues beneath its upper arches, is the Basilica Julia.
Restoration after Von Falke.]
As one advances, however, the impression deepens as to how earnestly
the Romans have tried to concentrate their whole life around this
beloved square. If statues abound elsewhere in the city, they seem here
more numerous than even the surging throngs around their pedestals.
Every kind of human activity is apparently going on simultaneously.
Along the north side, as we have seen, are the offices of those great
bankers who hold the nations in fee from the Euphrates to Hibernia, yet
pedlers are now wandering about, almost under the feet of the consul’s
lictors, hawking hot sausages, strings of garlic, and pots of eye
salve, while a snake charmer has obtained the license to exhibit two
stupid serpents on the actual steps to the Temple of Janus just beyond
the Basilica Æmilia.
=233. The Forum Area: the Posting of Public Notices.=--Walking
out into the area itself, we find it solidly paved with rectangular
blocks of travertine. The days are gone when closely packed throngs of
quirites stood for hours upon this pavement listening to the orators
bidding them vote upon peace or war, or for or against some proposed
law, as lay in their right as free citizens. Gone, too, is the day of
that great funeral pyre of garments, ornaments, trinkets, tables and
benches, which the frenzied mob heaped around the corpse of Cæsar after
Marcus Antonius had thundered his invective against Cassius and Marcus
Brutus. But not gone is the Senate House (the _Curia_), looking
out across the plaza from the northern side of the square, just beyond
the Temple of Janus. And around the orator’s stands, the Rostra, at the
western end of the area there is still another elaborate funeral in
progress; the wearers of the imagines sitting in their curule chairs,
and the orator pompously lauding “the noble departed.”
Truth to tell the Forum is frequented every morning largely to get
the news. Not merely can you meet the bearers of all sorts of public
or confidential information; you can spend an hour merely reading the
great “white boards” (_albums_) bearing official and private notices
which stand around everywhere. The “Daily Gazette” is here posted, and
we shall consider its contents presently; but apart from that, whether
you wish to know the price of grain or the day set for a lawsuit;
whether Syphax the Moor will race his four in the next circus, or
Epaphroditus the Athenian will lecture to-morrow on the nature of the
soul, the Forum placards will tell you everything. Gossip incalculable,
often of a kind which no man dare put in writing, you may also pick
up, as well as accost half of your acquaintance. A visit to the Forum,
therefore, is almost as important to a Roman of parts and activity as
in another age will be the perusal of the paper.
=234. Western End of Forum: the Rostra: the Golden Milestone: the
Tullianum Prison.=--At the extreme western end of the area, more
temples are seen rising on the slopes of the lofty Capitol. Here is the
Temple of Saturn; and higher still the Temple of the deified Vespasian,
the Temple of Concord, and the great “Public Record Office,” the
Tabularium, and the Rostra are reached just before you quit the level
area and take the winding ascents towards the Capitol.
These famous stands for the orators constitute an elaborate platform,
with a fine marble balustrade which is adorned with exceptionally good
bronze statues of notables such as Sulla and Pompeius; although all
these ornaments were added by Julius Cæsar and know not the days of
the Old Republic. Some of the original “beaks” (_rostra_) from
captured warships which gave the famous pulpit its name are still in
position, however, with others from such battles as Actium added.[141]
Even if the Republic is dead, the place remains of decided utility not
merely for funerals, but also for formal speeches on state occasions;
and sometimes an emperor will still condescend to harangue the loyal
quirites from its platform.
Close by the Rostra and near its southern end rises a tall stone pillar
coated with gilded bronze. This is the “Golden Milestone” whereon
Augustus inscribed the names of the great roads leading out of Rome,
and the distances to the chief towns along their course. “_All roads
lead to Rome_,” and leading to Rome find their convergence in the
“Golden Milestone.” It comes close, therefore, to being the “Hub” of
the entire Roman Empire.
[Illustration: OLD FORUM: present condition, western
end looking east. In foreground pillars of Temple of Saturn.]
Near the other, the northern end of the Rostra, when one goes a little
of the way up to the Capitol, there is quite a different landmark, far
more venerable--the old prison of the city, the Tullianum, prepared,
according to the story, by King Ancus Martius. It was originally
nothing but a kind of well let into the damp rock, with an upper and a
lower compartment; this second chamber is only accessible by means of
a hole in its vaulted roof through which prisoners were lowered by a
rope.
The Tullianum has long since been discarded as the public jail, but
state prisoners are sometimes confined or executed there. Familiar
is the story of how Jugurtha, the luckless Numidian, was starved to
death in the lower dungeon; and how Lentulus and the other Castilinian
conspirators were strangled in the upper. Since then, if one accepts
the story told by those very despised creatures, the Christians, their
great leader, Peter, one of the associates of Christus, was kept there
in chains before he was taken out to be executed by Nero’s orders. It
is assuredly a gloomy and fearsome enough place to strike terror even
into such “Haters of all Mankind,” as official documents assure us
these Christians must be.
=235. The Basilica Æmilia: the Temple of Janus: the Senate House
(_Curia_).=--But to return to the great buildings lining the Forum.
The Basilica Æmilia on the north side was erected as early as 179
B.C., and, though often repaired, it is a substantial monument of the
great days of the Republic. It is so like the greater Basilica Julia,
however, that one description will do later for both. Directly by this
court house stands the venerated Temple of Janus, a structure with many
arches and sacred to the most characteristic if not the greatest of
all the gods of Rome.[142] The gates of the shrine, one notices, are
standing carefully open, as a token that some petty frontier wars are
still raging. When absolute peace prevails these doors, however, will
be carefully shut. The Romans are thrifty and practical people. Why
waste good sacrificial victims and incense on the god when his help
against the foe is not needed? It would be like paying a doctor when
one is feeling entirely well.
Leading away from the Forum and this Temple is a series of vaulted
passages also called _janus_, which form a large part of the banking
district. Here, because the Sacred Way is too limited, many great
financiers have their offices; here countless clerks are busy with
their account books; here great loans are negotiated or investments are
placed hourly. It is almost a regular exchange and the scene of many
speculations. Regularly one hears of fortunes made or lost “between the
janus,” _i.e._ by the workings of high finance.
Beside the Temple of Janus rises the magnificent porch of the _Curia_
(Senate House). The Conscript Fathers are not yet in session, and a
visit to the interior can wait. The structure is very splendid, but it
is not the grand old Curia Hostilia, built according to legend by King
Tullus Hostilius, and the scene of nearly all those famous Senatorial
debates across the long annals of the Republic. That ancient building
was burned in 52 B.C. during the riots following the murder of the idol
of the populace, the demagogue Clodius. Julius Cæsar, therefore, had a
good excuse for building a stately new Senate House. This in turn was
damaged in Nero’s great fire, but Domitian carefully repaired it--and
with its fine pillars, bronze doors, and galaxy of statues, it forms a
worthy meeting place for what is still a venerable and powerful body.
=236. The Basilica Julia, the Greatest Court House in Rome; the _Lacus
Curtius_.=--The Basilica Julia on the southern side of the Forum is a
building into which it is best to enter. The structure was begun by
Julius Cæsar to meet the imperative need for a larger court house. More
important business is transacted under its roof and ample porticoes,
perhaps, than in any other building in Rome; and in bad weather nearly
all the Forum loungers take refuge beneath its ample shelter. Its
size is worthy of its important functions; it is 270 feet long and in
addition to the regular exterior colonnade has a fine inner colonnade.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF A BASILICA: restored.]
These double porticoes are the special lounging spots of fashionable
idlers of both sexes. Young men of fashion seeking to meet congenial
ladies of easy habits have only to loiter around and stroll about a
little--their hopes are gratified. Assuredly Venus can hardly reckon up
the love affairs that here have ripened. The pavements are even more
marked up for gaming boards than elsewhere and some of the players, we
note, actually wear the equestrian stripes, while there are senatorial
laticlaves in the interested throngs standing around them. Along the
sides of the building are roomy offices, where a large corps of city
officials and clerks conduct the various municipal boards and bureaus.
The glory of the Basilica Julia, however, is its great hall, used
for the chief courts of justice, barring always those of the Emperor
and the Senate. The hall is paved with colored marbles of price; the
pillars running down either side are splendid monoliths of still rarer
marbles, and the ceiling is heavy with gilt fretting and painting.
In every possible niche rise statues of famous jurisconsults and
advocates. The light streams down abundantly through the windows in
the upper clerestory, and in this second story at the present moment
there are standing or sitting groups of very respectable men and women
listening to the orator pleading before one of the tribunals below. Any
guide will tell how the mad Emperor Caligula used to delight to stand
in these upper balconies, fling down money, and roar with delight when
the crowds trampled one another struggling to get the coins.
So large is this hall that not one but _four_ tribunals have been set
up in different quarters of the building, and litigation often proceeds
before all four of them simultaneously, although in the absence of
partitions strong-lunged advocates sometimes interfere with their
neighbors; they tell of a certain stentorian Trachalus who once while
speaking before one tribunal not merely was heard by but drew applause
from the audiences in the other three. Here Quintilian, Pliny the
Younger, Tacitus, and other orators of the generation just departed,
won their fame, and at present every windy amateur in the rhetoric
schools dreams of the day when he can wave out his toga in the Basilica
Julia before a crowded and cheering balcony.
These are some of the more famous monuments in and around the Forum
Romanum. Were one to descend to particulars the task were endless.
Perhaps there should be mentioned a certain modest altar in the
very center of the open plaza. This marks the so-called _Lacus
Curtius_. Antiquarians give one several stories concerning it, but
the accepted version is this.--Once in the good old days a yawning
gulf opened at this very spot, the portent, perhaps, of the devouring
of the entire city--when lo! the brave youth, Marcus Curtius “devoted”
himself for his country and plunged unflinchingly into the abyss. The
earth closed over him, he was seen no more, but Rome held his name in
eternal remembrance. Doubtless he had thus taken upon himself the anger
of the infernal gods and had saved the state![143]
[Illustration: THE TARPEIAN ROCK: on slopes of the
Capitol. (From this traitors were hurled in the time of the
Republic.)]
=237. The New Fora of the Emperors: the Temple of Peace.=--After
surveying the Forum Romanum we are told that five other fora--the
creations of high-minded Emperors--still await inspection. Truth to
tell, however, these great plazas--not marking the growth and events
of centuries, but the mandates of wealthy despots--give one a sense
of anticlimax. Of them it will be properly written: “The fora of the
Empire were as much superior in magnificence to the Forum Romanum as
they were inferior in historical interest and association.”
They are the work of master architects mobilizing armies of laboring
slaves, stone cutters, and artists. The eye becomes weary with the
incessant sheen of costly marble; the equestrian statues, the forests
of ornate Corinthian pillars, the great reaches of tessellated
pavements, the quantities of colored paint, enamel, and heavy gilding.
At first these imperial fora appear to the visitor as a hopeless
complex of pretentious splendor; but after a little, a clever method
appears in their arrangement by which one great plaza or system of
public buildings joins itself to another.
Four of these public squares join closely together, but the fifth
stands a little apart. This last is located near the northeast end of
the Old Forum, verging toward the Subura and the Esquiline, and is the
“Forum of Peace,” constructed by Vespasian about 75 A.D. The
open area, however, is relatively small, for its center is occupied by
the imposing “Temple of Peace.” This temple is adorned with a perfect
gallery of sculptures and paintings, nearly all of them masterpieces
by the Greeks. These works of art had formerly occupied Nero’s Golden
House until that grandiose structure was destroyed by the thrifty
Vespasian. In this Temple of Peace likewise are kept those precious
Jewish spoils shown on the Arch of Titus, and there is not merely a
fine library but a hall for the savants and scientists when they meet
for their learned conventicles.
=238. The Fora of Julius, Augustus, and Nerva.=--In dealing with
the four connected fora it profits little to multiply detailed
descriptions; one glittering marble edifice succeeds another around
each square. Nearest to the Old Forum lies the Forum Julium. Julius
Cæsar paid out 100,000,000 sesterces ($4,000,000) merely for the land
which it occupies, and its buildings are worthy of the costly soil
whereon they stand. In its center rises the great Temple of Venus
Genetrix, “mother” of the Julian line. Here at times the Senate can
convene, while the shops under the porticoes around are among the
finest in Rome.
[Illustration: FORUM OF AUGUSTUS AND TEMPLE OF MARS THE
AVENGER: restored.]
Directly north of this Forum Julium is the Forum Augustum. When young
Octavius went forth to avenge his adopted father against Brutus and
Cassius he vowed a temple to Mars Ultor (“Mars the Avenger”). Later
as the Emperor Augustus, most splendidly he fulfilled this vow. The
porticoes around the plaza are of Numidian marble, and variegated
marbles compose the pavements; the open area is covered with bronze
_quadrigæ_ (four-horse chariots), triumphal arches, and, of course,
numerous statues, some of precious metals, while the Temple of Mars
Ultor itself matches all its rivals in magnificence.
To the south-east of the Forum of Augustus and joining it to the Forum
of Peace is the smaller Forum of Nerva. This plaza was really begun by
Domitian, but when that tyrant perished ere completing the task, it was
finished and named by the eirenic Nerva. It is really a kind of broad
thoroughfare leading down from the Subura district, although upon it
fronts a fine Temple of Minerva. One of the features of this square is
a stately avenue of statues of the deified Emperors.
=239. The Forum, Column, and Libraries of Trajan.=--By far the
finest of the imperial fora, however, is that of Trajan--and all the
buildings, when we visit them, are still relatively new. It opens to
the northwest of the Forum of Augustus, and is not really a single
square but a genuine series of squares.
To get the level space for their great areas, it was needful to cut
away a whole spur of the Quirinal, excavating to a depth equal to the
height of Trajan’s Column (128 feet). On entering this precinct, if one
has been marveling before, it is right to be astounded now. First there
comes the _Forum Trajani_ proper, a square of most imposing size, with
lofty porticoes, semi-circular at the ends; and in the center stands
a remarkable equestrian statue of the imperial founder himself. Then
there is the vast _Basilica Ulpia_, the third great court house of the
city, which spreads lengthwise across the northwestern boundary of this
forum. It is 300 feet long, 185 feet broad, and five lines of pillars
divide it into four separate halls for different kinds of business; in
fact it is really a finer building than the older Basilica Julia.
Going through this enormous but very open structure, we come to a
second smaller plaza, and here rises one of the noblest sights of
Rome--a monument that will draw the admiration of all ensuing ages--the
_Column of Trajan_ itself. The bas-reliefs telling in picturesque
detail the whole story of the Dacian Wars, the 2500 human figures
executed with infinite fidelity and care, wind spirally from the top
of the 18 foot pedestal clear to the summit. This last is crowned by a
colossal bronze-gilt statue of Trajan looking down upon the sculptured
record of his military glory.
[Illustration: AN IMPERIAL FORUM, NEAR THE COLUMN OF
TRAJAN: restoration after Von Falke.]
This column is, perhaps, the worthiest monument of the whole imperial
age.[144] The marvels of Trajan’s forum-system, however, are not
exhausted. North and south of the Column are two fine buildings of
moderate size; these are the _Bibliothecæ_, the two public “Libraries
of Trajan,” one Latin, one Greek--containing on the whole the finest
collections of books in Rome; and directly facing the Column and the
Libraries across another open area of considerable extent is the
_Temple of Trajan_, where the priests daily offer their sacrifice to
the deified manes of the terror of Dacia and of Parthia.
=240. The Park System of the Campus Martius: the Pantheon.=--These
exhaust for the moment the structures we can survey around the fora:
and it were well to stop lest sheer confusion may follow. With time,
however, we could wander after the throngs again northwestward along
“Broadway” past the great porticoes and fine shops of the Sæpta Julia,
and saunter about the great park system of Campus Martius.
The public baths there located and such structures as the Theater of
Pompey and the Flaminian Circus can, perhaps, be explained later; but
a word must be spoken for the one great temple which is here situated
away from the center of Rome. The _Pantheon_, dedicated to
Mars, Venus, the deified Cæsar, and to all the other deities of the
Julian line was the erection of Marcus Agrippa, the mighty coadjutor
of Augustus. It has just been rebuilt from its very foundations
by Hadrian.[145] Its noble dome shines with the golden tiles. The
soaring rotunda inside is encircled with stately altars to the gods
the building honors. Already one can stand and look upward 143 feet
to that patch of blue 18 feet in diameter through which sun and
stars will shine down across at least eighteen centuries of changing
history--making the Pantheon the one great building, not a ruin, which
shall link the Rome of the Cæsars with the Rome of another day.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE PANTHEON: restoration
according to Von Falke.]
=241. The Daily Gazette (_Acta Diurna_). How Rome Gets Its News.=--One
thing, to avoid complexity, we omitted while crossing the old Forum
Romanum. It behooves us to return and to explain it. Before a series
of tall white boards set up against certain pillars is gathered an
elbowing, gesticulating throng. Many of the company have tablets and
seem copying vigorously. The crowd is always receiving additions,
while others are departing. The white boards (“albums”) when we get
near enough are seen to be covered with somewhat fine writing. There
is a special rush and flutter in the crowd when a petty official sets
up still another white board, and a hundred styli instantly become
busy. It is easy to learn the excitement caused by these notices: they
constitute the publication of the new _Acta Diurna_.
Even without the Acta Diurna (“Daily Doings”) a city like Rome
would have its supply of news. There are professional gad-abouts
who make themselves desirable guests at dinner-parties merely
because they are “very well informed.” They have picked up all the
stories about the Parthian king, the new chiefs of the Germans,
the number of legionaries mobilized on the Rhine, and the corn
prospects in Africa and Egypt, as well as every kind of commercial
information. Other wiseacres of a less reliable cast are known
as “_subrostrani_,”--“Rostra-haunters,”--for at the Rostra all
gossipers have their tryst. These people specialize in rumors of
calamity, reports of great military disasters, of the sudden death of
magistrates, etc., and take a peculiar glee in circulating vile stories
about the Emperors--the danger of repeating such rumors only adding
spice to their game. Usually, however, they are too insignificant fry
for the government to consider worth prosecuting.
=242. Contents of the Acta Diurna.=--The Acta Diurna, however, is
issued by a government bureau, and a certain degree of official
responsibility is attached to the more formal statements. The editors,
nevertheless, are allowed to add racy anecdotes of a personal nature,
especially concerning the higher aristocracy. The relations between
the senatorial nobility and the freedmen and equites in the imperial
government bureaus are none the best; and Hadrian himself is not on
perfect terms with the Conscript Fathers.[146]
Official circles, therefore, are never careful to suppress spicy bits
about the aristocrats. The public record offices and dispatches from
the provinces supply most of the items, but some of the material can
only have come from direct reportorial activity. In any case the
interest in this Daily Gazette is enormous. Its single copy will be
multiplied many times, copies being made of the copies, and the same
sent to wealthy people in all parts of the Empire. A month from now
groups will probably be gathering in Spanish Corduba and Syrian Antioch
to read the items published to-day in Rome.
Owing to the limitations of space, despite the use of many “white
boards,” the Acta Diurna has to maintain a very dry journalistic style
indeed. The lively Italian imagination, however, can provide most of
the details, even if they are not at once eked out by quantities of
that “smoke,” oral rumor, which is passed about amid the copyists the
moment the new gazette is posted. This is a very commonplace issue, and
the albums read something like this:[147]
“Records for the tenth day of June. Yesterday ---- boys and ---- girls
were born in the city of Rome. ---- bushels of grain were landed at
the Emporium. ---- head of cattle [and other commodities specified]
were also brought into the city. On this same day the palace slave
Mithridates was ordered crucified for blaspheming the guardian genius
of his master the Emperor. At the imperial treasury ---- million
sesterces, which it proved impossible to loan out at interest, were
ordered returned to the public funds. A fire broke out in the insula of
Nasta in the Viminal district but was extinguished.”
=243. Miscellaneous Entries and Gossip in the Gazette.=--The entries
go on to give the doings in the petty police courts, the copies of
important wills with especial mention of any bequests that were left
the Emperor, the statement that a certain eques had caught his wife
in gross misconduct and divorced her; that a procurator for a large
trading house was being prosecuted for embezzlement, and a summary of
the evidence in a great violation of contract case between two marble
importers now on trial in the Basilica Æmilia. Then follow magisterial
edicts, lists of judicial appointments, and careful entries about
all the doings of the Emperor and of his progress back toward Rome.
Next is given a rather elaborate summary (evidently made by shorthand
reporters) of the latest debate in the Senate, with careful entry of
the applause and interruptions which the orators received.
All this is more or less “official”; but the newsmongers are really
more interested in “human interest stories” added by the publishers’
private authority. Thus it makes good reading to tell how a frantic
admirer of a certain “Red” charioteer who was killed in the last races,
cast himself on the funeral pyre of the beloved jockey, in order not to
survive his idol; or to relate how a citizen of Fæsule has just visited
Rome and sacrificed to Jupiter along with “eight children, thirty-six
grandchildren, and nineteen great grandchildren.”[148] Furthermore, the
report of love affairs among the noble and mighty is never omitted--how
a senator’s wife has eloped with a gladiator, and how a certain
oft-mentioned lady is about to wed an eighth husband. Finally (perhaps
the most copied of all) there are, of course, the announcements for the
coming exhibitions in the theater, amphitheater, and circus, with lists
of the actors, gladiators, and charioteers, and other data, which can
enable all Rome to arrange its wagers and its holidays.
The Acta Diurna therefore goes about as far as is possible to create a
real newspaper in the days of mere penmanship. Its vogue is immense.
Many a fine lady sends her slave or freedman to the Forum every day to
bring home a special copy. Its items will focus the conversation at a
thousand dinner tables.
Finally this publication will enjoy a certain degree of historic
importance. After each issue has served its daily purpose, fair copies
are deposited in the Public Record Office, and here they can be
consulted many years later by the learned. It is from the files of the
Acta Diurna that Tacitus and Suetonius have apparently drawn a great
many of their anecdotes about the days of the early Emperors.