Yesterday I decided it’s time I saw some more ancient Roman sights. After all, YOLO. I invited John to come along on the excursion into town.
“Where are you going?” he asked suspiciously.
“The forum.”
“Ah yes, where they held their pep rallies,” he said snootily, promptly getting himself uninvited.
The walk down the hill took longer than expected and I got lost, so was already sweaty by the time I got to Piazza Campidoglio at the top of the Capitoline hill. Apparently it was in the immediate vicinity, but I still couldn’t see it, even with the help of Google maps. ‘You couldn’t find the forum in Rome’—an insult roughly equivalent to ‘You couldn’t find a piece of hay in a haystack.’ In my defence, there weren’t any signs or flashing lights pointing out the way. After ten minutes of investigation, I peered round a corner and saw it. As it happens, I found out that this was all Michaelangelo’s fault. He designed the Piazza Campidoglio to deliberately turn its back on the forum.
The ‘Archeological Park of the Collosseum’ spans an area of more than 40 hectares in the center of Rome. It contains not only the forum and the Flavian Amphitheater (the Collosseum is its nickname because a giant statue of Nero once stood nearby), but also various temples and monuments, the grand palaces, gardens and structures of the Palatine hill, and several small museums.
The area basically looked like a bombed-out city, which was not what I’d expected. I’d always imagined a kind of outdoor conference room: neat, tidy, blandly immaculate with shiny white marble, something like the Athenian Acropolis. This was more like the remains of a giant bazaar: big, tall, bricky and messy.
I descended several stairs, navigating clumps of dispirited tourists. Most of them were inert, slumped on benches as they listened to their docents. A few people were frankly asleep. I guessed that this must be the end point of their three-hour-long guided tour and they were ready for an apertivo.
Passing by these poor, depleted souls, I kept wondering where the entrance was. Finally, I saw a makeshift hut with a metal-detecting gate inside. A man and woman wearing lanyards were sitting on chairs chatting. There was no sign and no queue.
I approached cautiously. The woman beckoned me encouragingly and scanned the barcode of my ticket. And so I entered the alternate universe of Ancient Rome.
(Note: You will probably notice 95% photos aren’t mine. That’s because I couldn’t really tell what I was looking at most of the time and had to check the internet later.)
- The Arch of Septimius Severus
The star of the western entrance is undoubtedly the arch of Septimius Severus. This imposing marble arch was dedicated in 203 CE to celebrate victories of S.S. and his sons Caracalla and Geta against the Parthians (Rome’s sparring partner from 54 BCE to 217 CE). The arch is beautified with detailed reliefs portraying battles, captives, loot and impressive ornamental detail.
When Septimius Severus died, Caracalla and Geta became co-emperors and, as you can imagine, that didn’t go over too well. Caracalla had his little brother killed and, not only that, cancelled. References to and representations of him were destroyed and speaking his name was punishable by death. German scholars have termed this Damnatia memoriae—condemnation of memory and it was practiced in a lot of ancient cultures, though rarely. It wasn’t always that easy, though. In Geta’s case, there were a lot of coins with his face on them and it was hard to remove all of them from circulation. However, his face has been effectively removed from the arch.
- The Temple of Concordia
One of the first things I saw in the park was a plaque quoting St. Augustine:
A pretty decree of the senate it was, truly, by which the temple of Concord was built on the spot where that disastrous rising had taken place, and where so many citizens of every rank had fallen. I suppose it was that the monument of the Gracchi’s punishment might strike the eye and affect the memory of the pleaders. City of God book 3, 25
The ‘disastrous uprising’ was a disagreement between the aristocracy and the popular party represented by the Gracchi brothers who were advocates for social reform. Naturally, the patrician Senate objected to this and the Gracchi were killed by angry mobs. Marcus Velleius Paterculus (19 BCE-31 CE) said the deaths of the Gracchi kicked off what is now known as the Crisis of the Roman Republic (134 BCE-44 BCE).
So, as St. Augustine argues scornfully, they might as well have built a Temple to Discord.
- The Temple of Saturn
In Roman mythology, Saturn ruled during the Golden age and taught people the art of farming. He was associated with time, agriculture and wealth. It’s possible he was always directly equivalent to the Greek God Cronos, but he may also have started out as Satre, the Etruscan god of the Underworld.
His temple contained the aerarium, Rome’s public treasury. This contained stores of gold and silver as well as important civic documents (laws, for example, were not valid until they were deposited here). A statue of the god would have been placed inside the temple. Pliny the Younger, who once served as praefectus aerarii, says the statue was ‘filled with oil’ (?!) and its feet bound with wool.
One of Rome’s most distinctive ceremonies was the Saturnalia, in December, the only occasion when the wool was removed from the statue’s feet. During the festival, people feasted and exchanged gifts. The toga was exchanged for the synthesis—a colorful costume ordinarily reserved for dinner parties. The natural order and reserve was temporarily abandoned: gambling was allowed, and slaves were treated to a banquet and allowed to insult their masters. For ten days in December there were gladiatorial contests, the bodies of the dead being offered to the god as a gift (munera).
Romans tended to translate the name of stern, cruel foreign gods to ‘Saturn.’ They equated him with Baal Hammon, and Yahweh. The Roman’s name for Jewish shabbat was Saturni dies, which in turn became our Saturday.
- The Bellybutton of Rome
This odd kiln-like structure is the brick core of Umbilicis Urbis Romae, the city’s symbolic center and the point from which all distances from Rome were measured. Legend has it that his was originally a little pit in the ground where Romulus threw the first fruits of the year as a sacrifice.
The umbilicis may have been the site of what the Romans called the Mundus, literally ‘World’ but in context more like ‘Underworld’. The Mundus was opened up three times a year in a ceremony called Mundus Patet, roughly similar to Halloween. On these three days the dead were said to return to earth; the ceremonies were attempts to encourage them to stay in their realm and not to attract the living ‘down there.’ On these occasions official business ceased and people were even discouraged from having sex, possibly to avert the chance of having demon babies.
- The Sacred Teat Fig
The ficus ruminalis (the teat-sucking fig) was a tree that grew near a small cave at the southwest foot of the Palatine hill. It was believed to be the tree that cast shade over the scene of Romulus and Remus suckling at the she-wolf’s teats.
- Lacus Curtius
As signs around the park kept reminding me, this part of the city used to be very swampy and not really suitable for building giant buildings on.
It got much less swampy when the Cloaca Maxima (Big Sewer) was built in about 600 BCE. But even then there was a little pond remaining that is now known as Lacus Curtius. There are several different stories about its significance, the one the park’s officials went with is the following myth.
In about 362 BCE, there was a big earthquake in the forum and a hole opened up in the ground. The Romans tried to fill it in but it wouldn’t stay filled. They went to the City Magicians/Soothsayer (aka augurs), who said the gods demanded the city’s most precious possession. The Romans couldn’t think what that would be but finally a young nobleman named Marcus Curtius said it was courage and weaponry. So, arrayed in his armor and astride a war horse, he jumped into the swampy hole, killing himself and saving Rome.
- Rostra
It wasn’t clear to me exactly which monument this referred to, because nothing looked like what was being described in the explanatory boards. However, wherever it is, it used to be a platform where high-status speakers (magistrates, orators, politicians, advocates) addressed assemblies. Our word ‘rostrum’ derives from this.
‘Rostra’ means ‘rams, i.e. the things sticking out from the front of ships to ram other ships. The nickname comes from 338 BCE, when the consul Gaius Maenius confiscated the fleet of the coastal town of Antium, so making her a colony. The rams of six of these ships were displayed on the speaking platform and Gaius erected a modest pillar nearby to remind everyone of his achievement.
- The Temple of the Deified Julius Caesar
You probably know that Julius Caesar was stabbed to death on the Ides of March 44 BCE, but did you know that he was subsequently deified? Octavian (aka Augustus) organized funeral games in honor of Caesar for July 44 BCE, a couple of months after Caesar’s death. As they were taking place, comet C/−43 K1 appeared in the skies over Rome during the funeral games, clear proof that the dictator had become a god:
During the very time of these games of mine, a hairy star was seen during seven days, in the part of the heavens which is under the Great Bear. It rose about the eleventh hour of the day, was very bright, and was conspicuous in all parts of the earth. The common people supposed the star to indicate, that the soul of Cæsar was admitted among the immortal Gods; under which designation it was that the star was placed on the bust which was lately consecrated in the forum. (Pliny the Elder, Natural History)
- The Temple of Vesta
Vesta, goddess of the hearth, home, and family was one of Rome’s twelve most revered deities. Her priestesses were selected when they were between the ages of six and eleven. They vowed to serve the state for thirty years, their two most important duties being abstaining from sex and supervising the sacred fire. Other duties included keeping the temple tidy and participating in various religious festivals. They guarded sacred objects including a statue of Pallas Athena that had supposedly been brought from Troy and a big phallus used in fertility rites.
Extinction of the sacred flame was believed to be a portent of disaster. If a priestess allowed the sacred fire go out, she was whipped (in the dark and through a curtain to preserve her modesty), after which the fire could safely be relit. The punishment for having sex was being buried alive. The rationale for such a severe penalty was that their bodies were living representations of Rome; as penetration was equivalent to conquest, their weakness had the potential to weaken the city itself.
A Vestal Virgin had extraordinary privileges. Unlike other Roman women she was able to make a will, leave her property to women (not even Roman men were allowed to do this), attend men-only spectacles and ceremonies. She had the right to travel in a two-wheeled horse-drawn chariot. By touching a condemned man on his way to being executed, she had to the power to free or pardon him.
According to popular belief, she even had magical powers. Pliny the Elder was willing to consider it:
[They are said, by] uttering a certain prayer, to arrest the flight of runaway slaves, and to rivet them to the spot, provided they have not gone beyond the precincts of the City. If then these opinions be once received as truth, and if it be admitted that the gods do listen to certain prayers, or are influenced by set forms of words, we are bound to conclude in the affirmative upon the whole question.
Mind you, Pliny the Elder was also willing to consider the existence of the ‘bonasus,’ a kind of bull with a horse’s mane that shot burning excrement at attackers.
- AMOR & ROMA
The Temple to Venus Felix (Bringer of Good Fortune) and Roma Aeterna (Eternal Rome) was the brainchild of the emperor Hadrian. When Apollodorus, a brilliant architect, looked at Hadrian’s drawing of the gods enthroned in the temple’s inner chambers, he made a droll remark to the effect that if the gods tried to stand up they’d bump their heads. Later for Apollodorus! A short time later he was banished and executed.
This was probably the biggest temple in the Roman world, but was levelled by an earthquake in the 9th century. Since the eighth century a church has stood over its former oratory. The one standing there now is Santa Francesca Romana.
You might wonder why there was a temple to Venus. Well, she had a special relationship to Rome thanks to the fact that she was Aeneas’ mother and Aeneas was the legendary founder of Rome, which is why Julius Caesar claimed Venus as his ancestor. This has been well-known fact among schoolchildren for a couple of millennia.
- Basilica of Maxentius
The largest building still standing in the forum, the basilica of Maxentius is an imposing sight. In the Roman world, a basilica was not a church but a big rectangular building with a large central open space. It served as a court house, council chamber and meeting hall, though there might be statues of gods overlooking all the goings on.
Maxentius, who reigned from 306-311 CE, was the last Roman Emperor to permanently live in Rome. He started construction on the basilica in 308 CE but didn’t live to see it finished. In 312 he lost the Battle of the Milvian Bridge to Constantine and drowned.
