ROMAN EXCAVATIONS. 



199 



vaccino), assumed the appearance it wore down 

 to the beginning of the present century. It was 

 no longer anything but a dust-covered square, 

 surrounded by mediocre churches, with here and 

 there a column projecting hall-way out of the 

 soil — a melancholy, desolate spot, where one 

 might come to meditate upon the fragility of hu- 

 man greatness and the vicissitudes of events. 

 Thus is it represented by Poussin in his little 

 painting in the Doria Gallery, and by Claude Lor- 

 rain in the landscape preserved in the Louvre. 



Qne might suppose that these half-buried col- 

 umns would have awakened the curiosity of 

 scholars. How is it that, since the Renaissance, 

 none of them thought of digging at the bases of 

 these columns to discover the soil on which they 

 'rested? That soil was the soil of the Forum, 

 and there was no room for question but that it 

 was full of historic debris, yet no one thought of 

 undertaking a work that might lead to discoveries 

 of the highest interest. It was not until the 

 early years of the present century, during the 

 French occupation, that scientific researches be- 

 gan to be made ; but they were interrupted pre- 

 maturely, and gave rise to more problems than 

 they resolved. The results were so incomplete 

 that hot disputes arose among the archaeologists. 

 Every one gave a different name to the buildings 

 discovered, every one had his own plan of the 

 Forum ; neither its exact limits nor its precise 

 position was known, some thinking that it ex- 

 tended from the Arch of Severus to the Arch of 

 Titus — that is, from west to east — others making 

 it lie in the opposite direction, from St. Adrian's 

 to St. Theodore's ; and each one found in the an- 

 cient authors passages clearly confirming his own 

 particular view. Everything was in a state of 

 confusion, and new excavations alone could 'set- 

 tle the disputes. But now all of these problems 

 have been solved ; thanks to the work done by 

 Rosa, the mass of rubbish accumulated during 

 eight or ten centuries has disappeared. Nor was 

 this done without labor ; over 120,000 cubic me- 

 tres of soil has been removed, but the topography 

 of the Forum is now settled. 



We will consider in detail all these labors, 

 enumerating the discoveries to which they have 

 led. The starting-point was the Julian Basilica, 

 which had been discovered by Canina, and partly 

 unearthed by the preceding Government. This 

 was one of Cajsar's finest monuments. As he had 

 not the time to finish it, his nephew assumed the 

 task ; but hardly had it been completed before it 

 was destroyed by a fire, and it had to be begun 

 Augustus took this opportunity for 



enlarging its plan and making it more beautiful. 

 There still remains of this edifice the marble pave- 

 ment, covering 4,500 metres of surface and raised 

 several steps above the surrounding streets. This 

 pavement bears the marks of the pillars which 

 supported the roof of the basilica, and hence we 

 can reconstruct the plan of the building with cer- 

 titude. It consisted of a double row of porticoes 

 inclosing a grand hall. These porticoes were 

 frequented by both sexes as a promenade ; they 

 were the largest and finest of all the porticoes ia 

 Rome. The hall was used as a court of justice. 

 It was sufficiently roomy to accommodate a tri- 

 bunal of one hundred and eighty judges, with 

 benches for the advocates and the friends of the 

 litigants, and a large free space for sight-seers. 

 Here it was that the most important civil suits 

 were tried during the empire ; here it was that 

 Quintilian, Pliny the Younger, and other famous 

 advocates, achieved their most brilliant legal vic- 

 tories. Above the first tier of porticoes rose a 

 second, reached by means of a stairway, some 

 traces of which still remain. From this upper 

 portico the spectator could overlook the whole 

 plaza. Caligula was wont thence to throw money 

 down among the people for the pleasure of seeing 

 them scramble for the possession of it. From 

 this portico a view could be had of what was go- 

 ing on in the interior of the basilica, and even the 

 pleadings of the advocates might be heard. Pliny 

 tells of how, while once he was making a plea for 

 a young lady disinherited by her father, who at 

 the age of eighty had been captivated by an art- 

 ful woman, the crowd was so great that not only 

 the hall, but even the upper corridors, were filled 

 with men and women who had come to listen to 

 him. 



It was a matter of great importance to ascer- 

 tain precisely the site of the Julian Basilica, for, 

 this once known, then we can fix with certainty 

 the names of the neighboring monuments. In 

 the Ancyra inscription the Emperor Augustus 

 says : " I have finished the basilica commenced 

 by my father, situate between the temple of Cas- 

 tor and the temple of Saturn." This fixes the 

 identity of the two edifices between which stands 

 the basilica erected by Caesar. The temple of 

 Saturn lies nearest to the Capitol ; of it there still 

 remain eight columns. The workmanship of 

 these columns is rude enough. They must have 

 been repaired during the later years of the em- 

 pire, in the interval between two invasions, and 

 the work was done so hastily and so carelessly 

 that the sections of the shafts ai'e in some in- 

 stances set upside down. The other temple, situ- 



