Understanding the Roman Forum

For a thousand years, the Forum was the heart of the Roman Empire. The umbilicus romae, the symbolic center of the city, was here. So was the milliarium orium, the golden milestone from which all distances were measured. In a city of wonders, it was the greatest wonder of all, a living link to the beginnings of Roman history, built and rebuilt in ever greater magnificence as the empire grew. After the fall of Rome, the Forum was buried beneath river silt, mudslide debris, and rubble from collapsing buildings. The door of the church inside the temple of Antoninus and Faustina, about 30 feet above the ancient street, shows how much the ground level had risen by the Renaissance. Although the Forum was cleared by a series of archaeological campaigns in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the exposed remains can be difficult to interpret. So, in this video, I'll use the most conspicuous visible ruins to illustrate how the Forum evolved and how it remained at the center of Roman history. Originally, the Forum was a marshy valley used as a cemetery by the villages on the surrounding hills. Burials dating back to the 10th century BC have come to light near the temple of Antoninus and Faustina. The skeletons of a man, woman, and child, apparent victims of a human sacrifice, were found beneath the Forum square. In the 7th century BC, when the villages on Rome's hills had coalesced into a city governed by kings, the Forum was drained. The stream that meandered across it was diverted into a deep ditch, the original Cloaca Maxima, the Great Sewer. A pavement of beaten earth was laid down, and monumental structures began to rise in the vicinity. One of the few visible legacies from this period is the Regia on the east side of the Forum. Although its marble walls were demolished during the Renaissance to provide stone for St. Peter's Basilica, the foundations survive. Beneath them are the remains of a structure built by the kings of Rome soon after the Forum was drained and paved. Although it resembled a palace, it seems to have always been a sanctuary where the kings acted as high priests. In their capacity as priests, the kings of Rome were responsible for overseeing the Vestal Virgins, the six aristocratic maidens who tended the sacred fire of Vesta, goddess of the hearth and home. Vesta's temple, located next to the Regia, was another of the oldest structures on the Forum. Although it was rebuilt several times over the centuries, it always retained its circular shape, perhaps a distant echo of the round mud-brick huts in which the earliest Romans had lived. A short distance from the Regia and the Temple of Vesta is the Forum Square itself. It's about 300 feet long by 200 feet wide, roughly the size of a modern football field. Initially, this space was both the economic and political center of Rome. Its long sides were bounded by rows of shops. Behind, and especially on the Palatine side, were the houses of the Roman elite, who wanted to live as close as possible to the center of affairs. The political heart of early Rome was the Comitium, an open-air space at the northwest corner of the Forum, where Rome's popular assemblies convened. Beside the Comitium was the original Curia, the Senate House, and the Rostra, the platform from which orators addressed the Roman people. Although the Comitium is invisible today, the Rostra can still be seen on the west side of the Forum Square. It was moved to its current position by Julius Caesar, and it was here, fittingly, that Marc Antony delivered Caesar's famous funeral oration. It was here, too, that Antony displayed the head of his political enemy, Cicero. In addition to its economic and political functions, the Forum was an important religious center. Besides the Temple of Vesta, there were two other important temples on the south side of the Forum Square. One was the Temple of Saturn, which we'll discuss in more detail later. The other was the Temple of Castor and Pollux, built to commemorate the first great victory of the Roman Republic. As the Republic expanded, the Forum grew with it. Victorious generals brought vast riches back to Rome, along with Greek ideas about urban planning. The modest rows of shops on the long sides of the Forum were replaced with porticos and soaring basilicas, multipurpose halls with both legal and economic functions. The remains of the latest and greatest of these structures, the Basilica Julia and Basilica Amelia, can still be seen, though little of either survives above foundation height. Before they were eviscerated during the Renaissance, however, these were spectacular buildings, 100 Roman feet tall, with brilliant facades of colored marble. We'll discuss how the Forum developed under the emperors after a brief word about this video's sponsor. At the Roman city of Maktaris, now in Tunisia, archaeologists found the tombstone of a man who had started life as a humble agricultural laborer but worked his way up to become a town counselor. Hard work and careful planning, the epitaph reads, brought me success. Even now, switching careers isn't easy. That's why I'm excited to promote TripleTen, an online platform that teaches all the skills needed for high-paying jobs in tech. TripleTen offers flexible, beginner-friendly online boot camps in software engineering, data science, analytics, and more, designed to prepare applicants for tech jobs in a wide range of industries. 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A temple was constructed on the site to celebrate Caesar's ascension to godhood. Although little remains now, you can still see the outline of the small rostra that was built into the podium of the temple. You can also see the small altar embedded in the platform, which marks the exact spot of Caesar's pyre. On the pediment of the temple above, shown an image of a comet that was said to have carried Caesar's soul to the gods. Augustus, Caesar's heir, continued the transformation of the Forum, rebuilding the temple of Castor, the basilicas on both sides of the Forum square, and the Kyria. The Forum became an increasingly monumental and ceremonial space. Although legal cases were still heard in the basilicas, economic activity moved elsewhere, and the Forum became, first and foremost, a place to celebrate the glory of the emperors. In the embellishment of the Forum, as in most things, later emperors followed Augustus's lead, filling in and elaborating the monumental scheme he had established. Much of the new construction was concentrated on the west end of the Forum, where Tiberius completed the temple of Concordia Augusta, and the Flavians added the temple of Vespasian and Titus. Perhaps the most conspicuous addition was the Arch of Septimius Severus. Like the long-vanished Arch of Augustus on the edge of the Forum square, and the Arch of Titus above the Forum valley, this structure spanned the Via Sacra, the ancient triumphal way that crossed the Forum before climbing the slopes of the Capitoline to the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus. The Arch celebrates the victories of Septimius Severus over the Parthians in what is now northern Iraq. The Arch's panels, heavily damaged because of their high relief, depicted the capture of various Mesopotamian cities. Although the Arch was originally surrounded by a dense cluster of other monuments, its location, ringed by the building programs of earlier emperors, must have struck Septimius Severus as an ideal place to commemorate the achievements of his new dynasty. Most of the buildings and monuments in the Forum were rebuilt at least once during Late Antiquity. The ancient temple of Saturn, for example, was reconstructed in the late 4th century AD. The gray and red granite columns of its porch were recycled from older buildings, rather carelessly. One column is upside down, and several are spliced together. The blocks of the Architrave were also recycled, as can be seen from the inward-facing frieze. Like the adjacent portico of the Harmonious Gods, this final reconstruction of the temple of Saturn was part of the late Roman aristocracy's rearguard action against Christianity. Another product of Late Antiquity is the Curia Julia, the Imperial Senate House. Begun by Caesar and completed by Augustus, the building was destroyed by a fire that swept the Forum in 283. It was rebuilt as we see it today, in brick-faced concrete. The exterior was originally covered in marble and gleaming stucco. The interior was plated with marble. The Late Antique floor is still preserved, as are the three broad tiers of marble benches on which senators sat, which had room for about 300 chairs. Opposite the entrance is the base of the Altar of Victory, removed in the late 4th century during a famous controversy between the Christian emperors and the largely pagan Roman aristocracy. After the rebuilding that followed the fire of 283, the Forum changed relatively little. The emperors, with their treasure and patronage, were elsewhere, and the Forum seemed increasingly like a relic of the past. Although Alaric's sack of Rome in 410 destroyed most of the Basilica Amelia, the other structures around the Forum were maintained until after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The last ancient monument in the Forum is the Column of Phocas. Set up at the beginning of the 7th century, when Rome was a frontier possession of the Byzantine Empire, it was a pastiche of recycled monuments. The Roman people were still called to assemble in the Forum in the 8th century, and most buildings remained intact until the great earthquakes of the 9th century. The Forum Square itself remained visible, though surrounded by ruins, until it too was buried after the Norman sack of 1084. Then the Forum became the pasture known as the Campo Vecchino, where cows grazed the same marsh grass that grew here before the rise of Rome. My new book, Insane Emperors, Sunken Cities, and Earthquake Machines, is now available as a paperback, ebook, and audiobook. You can buy your copy through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your local bookstore. For more Tollenstone content, check out my channels, Tollenstone Footnotes, and Scenic Routes to the Past, which are linked in the description. Please consider joining other viewers in supporting Tollenstone on Patreon. Thanks for watching.