Purcell: Roman Forum (Imperial Period)
Topographically, the revolution in the f. R., foreshadowed by the innovations of Sulla, began in 52 B.C. with the burning of the curia Cornelia and the basilica Porcia at the funeral of Clodius. In itself, this event did not entail a major alteration in the orientation of the forum: the Curia was rebuilt on its old axis. What happened next is a highly complex sequence of events in which there still much uncertainty; but that the decisive role is to be attributed to the designs of Julius Caesar seems now to be certain (Coarelli, Foro Romano II, 233-257). The realisation of the idea of the forum Iulium in 46 (for doubts about the extent of Caesar's plans before 49, Ulrich 1993, Purcell 1994) created a new opportunity which Caesar had the power to exploit, and in the last two years of his ascendancy the Curia was replaced by an aedes Felicitatis, presumably designed to house senate-meetings, and the ancient Comitium vanished with the transposal of the Rostra to the west end of the forum piazza, which was ready for dedicatory inscription and statuary by early 44 B.C. (Cass. Dio 43.49.1). There is no reason to refuse to attribute the allusions to the Rostra in the months that followed Caesar's death to the new construction (the single attestation of the name Rostra Augusti in a 2nd c. jurist (Pomp. Dig. 1.2.43) is not enough to base the supposition of even an Augustan restoration on, given the importance of this structure to later imperial ceremonial, and the silence of the sources, especially the Res Gestae). Some forms of decorum and restraint were still apparent: the equestrian statues of Pompey and Sulla were restored, the ritual functions of the Rostra (and its rostra) were retained (Diod. Sic. 12.26 for the retention of the original text of the Twelve Tables), the sanctity of the old Comitium was not forgotten (see further below), and Caesar forebore to attribute the new construction to himself, ensuring that Lepidus took the credit for the aedes Felicitatis, and Antony for the Rostra. On the other hand, Caesar had not hesitated to obliterate the monument of the gens Sempronia on the south side of the f. R. by building the basilica Iulia (some doubt must still attach to whether 46 (Hier. chron. a. Abr. 1971, p. 156 Helm has "basilica Iulia dedicata") but Augustus claimed to have completed it, R. Gest. d. Aug. 20.3) was the date of dedication or inception of this project). By 44 this moderation was countered by the adulatory senatorial decree which bade Caesar undertake the construction of a new Curia after all, which could be known by his name rather than by Sulla's (Cass. Dio 44.5.1-2). Nothing had been done by the beginning of 43, when reconstruction of the curia Hostilia was still an option (Cass. Dio 45.17.8), but the work was put in hand by the triumvirs of 42 (Cass. Dio 47.19.1) and the building dedicated by Caesar's heir in 29. Plin. nat. 35.27 describes Augustus' project as Curia...quam Comitio consecrabat; Augustus (R. Gest. d. Aug. 20.3) recorded his work on the forum Iulium as completion of Caesar's plans, but significantly claimed (ibid. 19) the curia Iulia as wholly his. Equally between 42 and 29, the construction of the aedes divi Iulii (q.v.) and another set of Rostra in front of it, resulted in the reinforcement of the axis of the Sacra via, with monuments of the Caesarian order at either end of the piazza. The choice of the aedes Saturni (q.v.) by Munatius Plancus (PIR M 728) for his monumentum in 42 is also to be linked with the then new inclusion of the terrace at the feet of the Capitoline in the space of the f. R. (also the background to the establishment "in capite Romani fori", Plin. nat. 3.66, "sub aede Saturni") Suet. Otho 6.2 of the new focal milestone of the city and the empire). Paullus Aemilius Lepidus (PIR A 373), who dedicated the completed basilica Paulii (q.v.) in the later part of 34 B.C. (Cass. Dio 49.42.2) was equally acting in his own family's interests against the background of the Caesarian changes (in which his uncle had played a prominent part) rather than as an agent of the party of Caesar's heir. Careful scrutiny of the literary sources (the complexity of the history of the Rostra still awaits full elucidation) thus makes it certain that both the curia Iulia and the aedes divi Iulii were subsequent to the work of the Dictatorship, and of that work--the basilica Iulia, forum Iulium, and Rostra--only the last was truly revolutionary in compelling the adoption of new orientations. The remainng doubt concerns only the architectural nature of the aedes Felicitatis, the possible missing link between the area of the new Rostra and the nascent forum Iulium (but it is noteworthy that the latter, planned before the demolition of Faustus Sulla's Curia, would have admitted the retention of the Comitium in its traditional form). The question of the significance of the revolution must therefore be addressed independently of any considerationof the subsequent modification and remodeling of the Caesarian initiatives by Augustus. Caesar's changes were more practical, in that they reshaped the space of both governmental business and popular politics. In planning the forum Iulium Caesar is explicitly said (App. bell. civ. 2.102) to have intended to create a space on the model of ancient Persian probity in which economic activities would be excluded and people would come together for public business. In this the concern for "forensis dignitas") that we have already observed may be seen at work: Caesar's activities are said also to have increased the standing of the old Forum, for all that it was less beautiful than his new work, so that this was the point at which it was first called "Magnum") (Cass. Dio 43.22.2). Whatever Caesar intended the future role of popular politics to be, their development was moulded by the Dictator's death and the forms that his cult and political following took, bringing into being the aedes divi Iulii and the short-lived asylum in front of it (Cass. Dio 47.19.2-3). The building of the new Rostra in front of the temple is unfortunately hard to date (Cass. Dio 51.19.1 describes the affixing of the Actium beaks to the foundation of the heroon of Julius, but in the context of Augustus' funeral uses the term "Julian Rostra", Cass. Dio 56.34.4). That occasion shows also that this platform, where he was eulogised by Tiberius, linked with the divinity of the Julian line as it was, took preference over the Rostra at the north-west end of the piazza where Tiberius' son Drusus delivered a second speech (cf. also Suet. Aug. 100.3). Here the funeral of Augustus' sister Octavia took place in 11 B.C. (Cass. Dio 54.35.4-5);and it may be significant that the last attestation in detail of the circumstances of the passing of a plebiscitum in the summer of 9 B.C. (Frontin. aq. 2.129) is described as pro rostris aedis Divi Iulii (Coarelli, Foro Romano II, 311-324). The new rostra and what was left of the Comitium were adapted for more sinister displays already at the time of the proscriptions, and at intervals in the first century of the new system saw the burning of prohibited books (Tac. Agr. 2). In the early Augustan period, the f. R. retained, alongside its role in popular assemblies, in the old tradition, its spectacle-function (lavish furnishings during Marcellus' aedilate, 23 B.C., even "sine ludis", Plin. nat. 19.24, cf. Cass. Dio 53.31.1-4; Vell. 2.93). After the repaving of the f. R. in the early part of the last decade B.C. no munera are attested, and in 7 B.C. they are specifically said (Cass. Dio 55.8.5) to have been transferred to the Saepta. A poorly attested devastation by fire in the latter part of 9 B.C. is a strong candidate for a catalyst for a major change in function (Coarelli, Foro Romano II, 224-227, based on Cass. Dio 55.8.2 and 5, and CIL VI.457). Constitutionally, the forum Augustum from 2 B.C. took on many of the more important roles of the old f. R., following the precedent of the old forum Iulium (Zanker 1988, 214; explicit in the location there of the quadriga that celebrated his conquest of the gentes, Vell. 2.39, R. Gest. d. Aug. 35, and the ritual attributed to Gaius at Suet. Cal. 44: note however the use of the f. R. for ceremonial ratification of treaties, Suet. Claud. 25.5, and the continuing significance of the rites of peace and war at the aedes Iani, which was also involved in the setting in the f. R.--with the populus Romanus formally present "according to rank") as well as informally thronging the roofs of all the monuments--of the great spectacle of the reception of Tiridates in A.D. 66 (Plin. nat. 33.54; Suet. Nero 13; Cass. Dio 63.3.4-5.4). Caesar's heir had been honoured in the f. R. as precociously as he had attained the beginnings of power with an equestrian statue alongside those of Pompey and Sulla, and his decisive victory over the former's son at Naulochus received recognition in the form of a columna rostrata (App. bell. civ. 5.130; Zanker 1988, 37-43). That was the turning-point: while the monument piously recalled the grandeur of mid-Republican Rome, in its boast of the pacification of land and sea, the new column announced the universal claims that would be so characteristic of the new world order. 36 B.C. saw also the inception (Cass. Dio 49.15.5-6) of the Palatine ideology, and the reconstruction of the Regia in that year is probably not a coincidence. The arch (Cass. Dio 49.15.1) and column of the Naulochus victory were the nucleus of the celebration of the Augustan victory, completed with the trophies of Actium and Alexandria (see arcus Augusti 29 a. C.; columnae rostratae Augusti) and Parthia (see arcus Augusti 19 a.C.). By the emphatic moment of the ludi saeculares of 17, therefore, the f. R. was the piously completed centre of the Caesarian res publica tricked-out as the victory monumentum of Augustus with statues, columns, and an arch--whichever it was (Nedergaard 1988; Simpson 1992, Simpson 1993) alongside the aedes divi Iulii. In his piecemeal development of the f. R. during the long ascendancy of Augustus, we see a definite move away from both Julian and, more naturally, triumviral messages (Coarelli, Foro Romano II, 175, 258). The f. R. was now announced to be the centre of the world (Plin. nat. 3.66 on the millearium aureum as centre of the city and the network of roads in the restoration of which Augustus had participated alongside the cooperative primores of the years after Actium), and what went on there was suitably awe-inspiring (Dion. Hal. 6.13.4, on the transvectio equitum of his day, a "spectacle worthy of the greatness of the Empire"). 17 B.C. announced the dynastic aspect of the new regime, and that strategy was to complete the conversion of the f. R. to the imperial order. Fire destroyed the basilica Paulli in 14 B.C. and the cryptic notice of its restoration (Cass. Dio 54.24.3 ) suggests the new dependence of even the gens Aemilia on the new system, into which they were soon to be tied through marriage connexions (Syme 1986, 136; clearly celebrated in the fragmentary inscription CIL VI 36907). Their monumenta were to be subordinated to the commemoration of the direct heirs of Augustus, Gaius and Lucius Caesars, but the construction of the porticus Iulia (Suet. Aug. 29 distinguishes it clearly from the basilica Iulia) along the front of the basilica Paulli (Coarelli, Foro Romano II, 173f.). The dynastic precedent set by the works of the Aemilii was well understood by the princeps. The third restoration of the basilica Paulli in A.D. 22 was still more dependent on imperial favor (Tac. Ann. 3.72). The Julian name of the other surviving basilica was also briefly eclipsed by the commemoration of Gaius and Lucius (R. Gest. d. Aug. 20.3; Cass. Dio 56.27.5 gives the date A.D. 12 if STOA IOULLIA here refers to this building) when it was restored after the fire of 9 B.C. That fire probably also provided the occasion for the reconstruction of the aedes Castorum to glorify that other pair of brothers Tiberius and Drusus (dedicated A.D. 6). Tiberius' adoption had been carried out formally in the f. R. (Suet. Aug. 65.1), and we may deduce from this that so had the adoption of Gaius and Lucius. The f. R. in general had thus become already by the funeral rites of Augustus in A.D. 14, a symbol of imperial power. The Republican past was still on display: he had been traditional enough to retain a toponym Comitium (if only as a place of display for wonders such as a giant serpent, Suet. Aug. 43.4), and an aura of antique religiosity (lapis Niger, Fest. 177 L, and s.v. ficus Ruminalis ; Tac. ann. 13.58 for careful maintenance of other statues by the Rostra in the Augustan period; Plin. nat. 34.22.1, three statues of the sybils; 34.93, a statue of Lucullus). At the same time the f. R. became one of the principal places of display of the new architectural grandeur of the revived imperial city (Gros 1976, Zanker 1988). Yet it was less impressive than the new "suburb more beautiful than the city") of the campus Martius or the forum Augustum, and received only a passing mention from our best-informed description of the Augustan city (Strabo 5.3.8, "or you might go through the old agora and see other agorai arranged one after another with basilicae and temples"). The trophies of old successes and the memorials of dead princes had replaced the vibrant political life of the Republic: practical politics was now diffused to the new fora, and increasingly to the Palatine. In late Antiquity the Rostra were remembered as the "perspectissimum priscae potentiae locum") (Amm. 16.10.13,) and that "potentia") was the divine right of the Caesars. The f. R. was reduced to being a venerable and grand forecourt to the new heart of the city. Forum and (imperial) res publica. The f. R. continued under the imperial system to represent formally the constitutional system of which the emperors and an increasingly dependent élite were part. Thus it occasionally served as a symbol of a refuge from imperial tyranny: Anna Rufilla, accused of fraus, took refuge at the doors of the Curia clutching a statue of the emperor (Tac. ann. 3.36, cf. 4.47.6); Agrippina the Elder was maliciously advised to make a public stand beside, or taking with her, an image of Tiberius "in the most frequented part of the forum", ann 4.67. In this context the mysterious activities of Augustus' rebellious daughter on the Rostra acquire considerable significance, "forum ipsum ac rostra ex quibus pater legem de adulteriis tulerat filiae in stuprum placuit") (Sen. benef. 6.32): symbolic manipulation of the messages of monuments and space, especially where it is devoid of practical significance, can also be subverted. The assembled citizens were summoned under Gaius (the tradition went) by nomenculatores sent "circum forum et basilicas") in the traditional phrase: to ascend to the Palatine to participate in the public brothel (Suet. Cal. 41.1). The story illustrates a new topographical emphasis. Where the Sacra via had been the route along which the plebs accompanied the great home from the f. R., it increasingly led to one superior destination--the area Palatina and the postes of the house that Augustus built (Wiseman, in L'Urbs). As the route of now exclusively imperial triumphs, it had a continuing significance, but one which differed from the Republican past in its connection with the Palatium (note also the Vestals in fire of 192 (Herod. 1.14, if this is the meaning of AYLH BACILEOC), cf. Galen 13, 362 K, loss of his mss. from "the storehouse on the Sacred Way,") linked in his mind with both the Temenos of Peace and the Palatine libraries). Architecturally, it was in the changes to the physical link between the Palatine and and f. R. first realized by Gaius and finally shaped by the buildings of Domitian, that the new axis was expressed (cf. H. Hurst, ArchLaz 9 (1988), 13-17). The administrative sophistication for which imperial Rome is famous was in part a consequence of the expedient trivialisation of the public tasks of the still-visible élite and the subordination of their public role to the imperial system. The former stage of their prestigious activities became a place of mundane adminstration, and the public life of the centre of the city was routinized. The scene of record-keeping and accounting is evoked in Pliny's notice of the sudden death of M. Terentius Corax "writing in tabellae in the forum") (nat. 7.182). The imperial establishment ad Castorem (Iuv. 14.260-262; O. Hirschfeld, Kaiserliche Verwaltungsbeamten, 4-5), was one of the principal offices of the fiscus. The new Curia was equipped with more premises for functions ancillary to the senate, of which the first attested is the Chalcidicum (q.v.). The Aerarium, the Curia (Talbert 1984, 114f and its appurtenances, and the Basilica Iulia which housed an important tabularium at least by the Neronian period (lex de portoriis provinciae Asiae, AE 1989, 681.2) all became centres for "litterae illiteratissimae") (Plin. epist. 1.10.9) that passed for professionalism. All of this required housing: the Tiberian period saw the construction of a purpose-built headquarters (in a site near the Rostra but not precisely identified, see s.v. schola Xanthi) for the apparitores of the curile aediles, and the other apparitores presumably had equally prestigious bases (CIL VI 37153 has a "praeco de foro", not certainly apparitorial), but the provision of many of these facilities was more makeshift. Housing these activities was the ultimate fate of many of the surviving tabernae (and presumably the purpose for which later monumental tabernae, like those of the porticus Deum Consentium, were built). The political offence of Ser. Cornelius Scipio Salvidienus Orfitus (cos. A.D. 51: PIR C 1444), in letting three such tabernae from his house near the f. R. to municipia as stationes (Suet. Nero 37.3; Cass. Dio 62.27.2), was misplaced patronage towards the cities in question. The episode should not be used as a datum in the (vain) pursuit of a specific locality called "stationes Municipiorum", but is precious testimony to the changing use of the f. R. (note also the continuing political significance of property in the hands of ancient families near the f. R.: the ancestral house of the Scipiones had been in the vicinity of the basilica Sempronia). Another anecdote concerning a lotos-tree (Plin. nat. 16.235) shows the existence of more of these in the direction of the forum Iulium, and they are also attested west of the f. R. on the Sacra via (v. stationes Municipiorum; Coarelli, Foro Romano I, 170). We should not expect to have much evidence of this activity in the archaeological record: both the hazards of survival and the predilections of earlier investigators privilege the solid monumental structures. It is therefore on the occasional literary anecdote, and more on the epigraphic record, that we rely for proof that the architectural armature was no sterilised array of sclerotic grandeur, but teeming with relatively humble activity. The pursuit of CEMNOTHC or "forensis dignitas") was now more seriously maintained in the material fora and especially that of Trajan. Cf. negotiatores in the area Saturni, ILS 892; SEG 30 (1980), 1224, continuing the tradition of the Republican argentarii; tabularium in basilica Iulia, AE 1989, 681; ager privatus surviving near the Rostra on at least a small scale, Plin. nat. 34.93. The f. R., however, also offered the emperors an opportunity to legitimate their power through giving them and their activities a setting for their contributions in the monumental record that went back to Romulus, and with it a place in Roman history. The list of monuments is long: arcus propter aedem Saturni for Tiberius A.D. 16 (Tac. ann. 2.41, cf. CIL VI 906); the equus Domitiani (Stat. silv. 1.1) of Domitian, who removed Augustus' naval monuments to the Capitol (Serv. georg. 3.29); the arcus Septimii Severi (something of an innovation in that it was actually in what was left of the Comitium, a fact which was, strikingly, noted at the time, Herodian 3.9.5-6, with A. Birley, Septimius Severus, the African Emperor (1971), 222 f.). In accordance with the role appointed by Augustus as a place for symbols rather than action, honorific statues in the f. R. now became part of the imperial system, as emerges notably from the case of L. Volusius Saturninus (AE 1972, 174: PIR1 V 661), five of whose nine honorific statues were in the f. R.: two marble and triumphal in the templum novum divi Augusti, one as consul in the aedes divi Iulii, an equestrian one beside the Rostra, and one as augur in the Regia (the other sites--forum Augustum, Palatine, opera Pompeiana--suggest interesting functional parallelisms with the old f. R.). But the most important part is the honorific process was the presentation of the fulcrum of the new-style res publica, the emperor himself, in his lifetime and for posterity. The role of the Rostra in imperial funerals established by Augustus on the precedent of Julius Caesar continued (Hist. Aug. Aur. 7.11). The Curia and aedes Concordiae were central to the ceremonies on the accession of Pertinax on New Year's Day 193. The f. R. could thus be important at both the opening and closing of a reign: notable examples of the latter being the death of Galba and the curious "abdication") moment when Vitellius attempted to deposit the insignia of power in the aedes Concordiae, but was forced by the crowd to go from the Rostra not back to his family home and retirement, but to the Palatine and his doom (Tac. Hist. 3.68). The maintenance of the ancient public religion had played an important part in Augustus' manipulation of the f. R., and it continued to serve as a guarantee of stability and legitimacy. The diuturnity of the imperial system was reflected equally in a maintenance of the architecture of the past (the forum paving by L. Naevius Surdinus (PIR N 16) seems to have remained in situ over much of the f. R. from the last decade B.C.: 1987, 95-102 for the praetor's Giuliani - Verduchi tribunal) that has been mistaken for monumental sclerosis. If traditional values seem to have decreed that the repertoire of venerable structures should remain undiminished, they were in fact frequently rebuilt, not least because of the losses by fire: in A.D. 64, when the Regia and area Vestae (Tac. ann. 15.41) burned, perhaps in 80 to explain the changes made by Domitian, in A.D. 192, when the Vestal Virgins only just rescued the Palladium (Herodian 1.14.4-6), in A.D. 283, when the Curia, forum Iulium, basilica Iulia, and Graecostasis were consumed (Chron. a. 354, 148 M). We have already seen how the life of the f. R. continued at the more transient level to be a good deal more mouvementeé than appears in the archaeological record. But the fossilizing of the basic rhythms of the forum landscape announced the stability of the system, and it lent its authority to the cults of the Caesars themselves. The true innovation in the imperial history of the f. R. lay not in the adaptation of the Republic honorific tradition of triumphal and other monumets but in the transformation of the heart of the res publica into a key location for the worship of the emperors. Here again the creation of the aedes divi Iulii is one turning-point, to be connected from the dedication in 29 B.C. with the observances of the revived fratres Arvales. As Caesar's emotional funeral was the forerunner of the more decorous one of the first princeps, so the aedes divi Iulii was the prototype for the location and function of the templum novum divi Augusti, south of the basilica Iulia, and also the seat of a major new priesthood, though still little known archaeologically. The proximity of these two sites to the temple rebuilt by his great-uncle in the name of his grandfather perhaps influenced Gaius in at least planning the adaptation of the aedes Castorum for his own cult, in a project which clearly involved enhancing communications between the f. R. and the northwest facade of his new works on the Palatine. The neighborhood of the Aerarium and of the aedes Concordiae was the significant choice of Titus for the temple in whose cult he speedily joined his thrifty father. The last in the sequence is the great Temple of Antoninus and Faustina (CIL VI 1005),on the fringes of the f. R. but very close to the aedes divi Iulii and the aedes Vestae. By the late 2nd c. only the aedes Saturni had no strong connections with one of the dynasties of the Caesars among the more conspicuous monuments of Roman religiosity in the f. R. and the architecture of the piazza was dominated not just by buildings of the emperors, but by the unambiguous statement of their divinity.
General bibliography in Forum Romanum: the Republican period. H. Jordan, "Sylloge Inscriptionum Fori Romani", EphEp 3 (1877), 238-310 is still useful. J. Patterson, "Politics and the City: The Forum", in "The city of Rome from Republic to Empire", JRS 82 (1992), 193f.
The f. R. and the Roman revolution. P. Gros, Aurea Temple (1976). R. Syme, The Augustan Aristocracy (1986). P. Zanker, Forum Romanum. Die Neugestaltung unter Augustus (1972); The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (1988), ch.3. P. Verduchi, "Le tribune rostrate", in Roma I (1985), 29-33. E. Nedergaard, "Zur Problematik des Augustusbogen auf dem Forum Romanum", in Kaiser Augustus (1988), 224-239; see most recently the view of C. J. Simpson that there was no Parthian arch, and that the Fasti Capitolini were originally displayed in the Regia, "On the Unreality of the Parthian Arch", Latomus 51 (1992), 835-842; "The original site of the Fasti Capitolini", Historia 42 (1993), 61-81. R. B. Ulrich "Julius Caesar and the Creation of the Forum Iulium", AJA 97 (1993), 49-80.
f.R. and (imperial) res publica. A. Birley, Septimius Severus, the African Emperor (1971). R. J. A. Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome (1984).
--N. Purcell