of Luna had been recently discovered and this rich stone was employed in many of the public edifices; while the aristocrats, stimulated by the example of the Emperor, used bright travertine to adorn the facades of their private houses. The most striking change that took place in the appearance of the city during the reign of Augustus was the transformation of the Forum, and the opening up of the adjacent quarters. In this, as in so much else, Julius Caesar had suggested innovations, which he did not live to carry out himself.
The Roman Forum extends from the foot of the Capitol to the north-west corner of the Palatine. Adjoining it on the north side, but separated from it by the rostrum, was the Comitium, a small enclosed space in which the Curia stood. The first step to the transformation of the Forum, was the removal of the rostrum (42 B.C.), so that the Forum and Comitium formed one place. The Curia had been burnt down ten years before, and Caesar began the building of a new one, which was finished by Augustus and dedicated under the name of Curia Julia. But this was only the beginning of the new splendor that was to come upon the great centre of Roman life. A short description of the chief buildings which adorned it at the death of Augustus will show how much it was changed under the auspices of the first Princeps.
At the north-west corner, close under the Capitolino, where the ascent to the Arx begins, stood the Temple of Concord, rebuilt by Tiberius in 10 A.D. and dedicated in the name of himself and his dead brother Drusus, as aedes Concordiae Augustae. Owing to the nature of the ground this temple had a peculiar cramped shape, the pronaos being only half as broad as the cella. Adjacent on the south side was the Temple of Saturn, between the Clivus Capitolinus and the Vicus Jugarius. It was built anew in 42 B.C. by the munificence of Munatius Plancus. The eight Ionic pillars which still mark the spot where it stood date from a later period. This temple served as the state treasury, which was therefore called the aerarium Saturni.
Between the Vicus Jugarius and the Vicus Tuscus, occupying the greater part of the south side of the Forum, stood the Basilica Julia, which, like the Curia, the elder Caesar had left tohi son to finish. Begun in 54 B.C., it was dedicated in 46; but after its completion, some years later, it was burnt down. Then it arose again on a larger and more splendid scale, and was finally dedicated by Augustus a few months before his death, in the name of his unfortunate grandsons Gaius and Lucius Caesar. East of the Basilica, on the other side of the Vicus Tuscus, was situated the Temple of Castor, of which three Corinthian columns and a splendid Greek entablature still stand. Founded originally in memory of the help which the great twin brethren were said to have given to the Romans at Lake Regillus it was renewed for the second time by Tiberius, under the auspices of Augustus, and, like the Temple of Concord, dedicated in the name of the two sons of Livia.
The Temple of the divine Julius, built on the spot where his body had been burned by the piety of his son, stood at the eastern end of the Forum, facing the new rostra which had been erected at the western side in front of the Temple of Concord. Behind the Aedes Divi Julii and on the north side of the venerable round Temple of Vesta, was the Regia, a foundation of high antiquity, ascribed to Numa, and used under the Republic as the office of the Pontifex Maximus. It had been often destroyed by fire, and in 36 B.C. it was rebuilt in splendid style by Cm. Domitius Calvinus, and there Lepidus transacted the duties of his pontifical office. But when Augustus himself became chief pontiff (12 B.C.), he resigned the Regia to the use of the vestal virgins. On the north side, east of the Curia, stood a building originally designed in 179 B.C. by the censors Fulvius and Aemilius, but built anew by L. Minibus Paullus in 54 B.C. and since then known as the Basilica Aemilia. Burnt down forty years later, it was rebuilt by Augustus, with pillars of Phrygian marble. The Temple of Janus, which Augustus thrice closed, stood somewhere—the exact position is uncertain— near the point where the Argiletum entered the Forum, between the Curia and the Basilica Aemilia.
The Argiletum, a street famous for booksellers, traversed the populous and busy region north of the Forum, which was densely packed with houses and threaded only by narrow streets. Caesar formed the design of opening up tins crowded quarter and establishing a free communication on this side between the Forum and the great suburb of Rome, the Campus Martius. In order to effect this he constructed a new market-place: and it was owing probably to this scheme that the Curia Julia, whose building began about the same time (54 B.C.), was built nearer to the Forum than the old curia. The Forum Julium, as it was called, lay north of the Curia, and, like it, was dedicated (46 B.C.) before completion, and finished after Caesar’s death. The chief building which adorned it was the Temple of Venus Genetrix, mother of the Julian race, which Caesar had vowed at the battle of Pharsalia.
As the elder Caesar had made a vow at Pharsalia, so the younger Caasar made a vow at Philippi. The vow was to Mars Ultor, and was duly fulfilled. The house of Mars the Avenger likewise became the centre of a new Forum. This temple, dedicated by its founder on the first of his own month in 2 B.C., served as the resting-place of the standards which his diplomacy had recovered from the Parthians. The Forum Augustum adjoined that of Caesar on the north-east side. It was rectangular in shape, but on the east and west sides there were semi-circular spaces with porticoes in which statues of Roman generals in triumphal robes were set up. It became the practice that in this Forum, the members of the imperial family should assume the toga virilis; and when victorious generals were honored by statues of bronze, they were set up here. These fora of the first Caesars, father and son, were the beginning of a rehabilitation of this quarter of the city, which was resumed, a century later, by the Emperors Nerva and Trajan; and they established an easy communication between the Forum and the Field of Mars. Hitherto the way from the Campus to the Forum had been round by the west and south sides of the Capitoline, through the Porta Carmentalis.
The Campus Martius itself, whether taken in the wider or the narrower sense, put on a new aspect under the auspices of the Caesars. The Campus in the stricter sense was bounded on the south by the Circus Flaminius and on the east by the Via Lata. It was the great rival of Caesar who set the example of building on this ground. In 55 B.C. Pompey erected his “Marble Theatre”. Caesar began the construction of marble Saepta—an enclosure for the voting of the centuries—which was finished by Agrippa. The name of Agrippa has more claim to be associated with the Field of Mars than either Caesar’s or Pompey’s. The construction of the Pantheon, which is preserved to the present day, was due to his enterprise. This edifice is of circular form and crowned with a dome, which was originally covered with tiles of gilt bronze. The dome is an instance “of the extraordinarily skillful use of concrete by the Romans; it is cast in one solid mass, and is as free from lateral thrust as if it were cut out of one block of stone. Though having the arch form, it is in no way constructed on the principle of the arch”. The building is lighted only from the top. “The interior measures 132 feet in diameter, as well as in height. The walls are broken by seven niches, three semicircular, and, alternating with them, three rectangular, wherein, at a later period, splendid marble columns with entablatures were introduced. Above this rises an attica with pilasters, the original portion of which has undoubtedly been changed, since we know that Diogenes Caryatides once rose above the entablatures of the columns, and divided the apertures of the great niches. Above the attica rises, in the form of a hemisphere, the enormous dome, which has an opening in the top twenty-six feet in diameter, through which a flood of light pours into the space beneath. Its simple regularity, the beauty of its parts, the magnificence of the materials employed, the quiet harmony resulting from the method of illumination, give to the interior a solemnly sublime character, which has hardly been impaired, even by the subsequent somewhat inharmonious alterations. These have especially affected the dome, the beautiful and effectively graded panels of which were formerly richly adorned with bronze ornaments. Only the splendid columns of yellow marble (giallo antico), with white marble capitals and bases, and the marble decorations of the lower walls, bear witness to the earlier magnificence of the building. The porch is adorned with sixteen Corinthian columns”.
Agrippa also built the adjacent baths called after him, Thermae Agrippae (27 and 25 B.C.), and a basilica, which he dedicated to Neptune in memory of his naval victories, and enclosed with a portico which from the pictures adorning it was called the Portico of the Argonauts. Another wealthy noble of the day, Statilius Taurus, constructed the first stone amphitheatre in Rome, and its site, too, was somewhere in the Field of Mars. The first Princeps himself seemed content to leave the adornment of the Campus chiefly to the munificence of his lesser fellow-citizens. But much further north than