The fact that the Forum was not accessible for vehicles suggests a significant point of difference between the festal processions of the colony and those of the capital. In the latter, vehicles had a prominent place. Thus at Rome the official who gave the games in the Circus entered the edifice with his retinue in chariots in the imposing circus parade, pompa circensis, and a similar usage prevailed in the case of other processions; priests, too, and priestesses were on many occasions allowed to ride. But even in Rome carriages were always considered a matter of luxury; and the municipal regulations promulgated by Caesar prohibited the use of vehicles, except those required for religious and civic processions, on the streets of the city from sunrise till the tenth hour, that is, till four o'clock in the afternoon.
In Pompeii, and without doubt also in other cities of Italy and the provinces, the closing of the Forum to vehicles made it necessary that religious and other processions should proceed on foot. We have no evidence of any exception to this rule. We ought perhaps to recognize in it one of those devices by means of which Rome maintained a position of dignified superiority over the provincial towns; to her processions was allowed an element of display which to theirs was denied. It was not permitted to name the two chief executive officers of a municipality consuls, though their functions, within limits, corresponded with those of the consuls at Rome; nor could the city council be called a senate, though the Roman writers did not hesitate to apply this term to corresponding bodies in states and cities outside of Rome's jurisdiction. For like reasons, it would seem that on public occasions officials and priests of a provincial town were not permitted, as were those in Rome, to ride. Was this humiliating restriction laid upon the Pompeians when the Roman colony came, or previously when the city was in name the ally of Rome, but in reality already subject? The evidence is almost conclusive for the latter alternative; for the colonnade of Popidius, which as we have seen was erected in the period of autonomy, left no entrance for vehicles, though in other ways it added greatly to the attractiveness and convenience of the Forum as a place for civic and religious celebrations.
No record of events has survived to help us form a picture of the Forum as the seat of deliberative and judicial functions, the centre of the city's political life; yet stirring scenes present themselves to the imagination as we recall the critical periods in the history of the city.
In the Forum, about 400 B.C., the valiant Samnite mountaineers, having taken the city by storm, assembled and established their civic organization; here, in later times, without doubt amid conflicts similar to those at Rome, the polity was put to the test and underwent transformation. Fierce enough the strifes may have been during the Samnite wars, and again in the time of Hannibal,—after the battle of Cannae,—when the aristocrats who favored Rome contended with the national party for the mastery. Here, on the platform in front of the temple of Jupiter, the leaders of the national party stood in 90 B.C., and with flaming words roused the people to revolt, to join the movement which, starting in Asculum, had spread like wildfire over Southern Italy.
Then ten years of bloody war,—siege, campaigns, surrender,—and again the scene changes. Roman soldiers stand thick in serried ranks upon the area. They are the veterans of Sulla. An officer bearing a civil commission, the nephew of the Dictator, appears before them. Standing in front of the temple of Jupiter, he makes a proclamation regarding the founding and administration of the colony. The citizens crowd back timidly into the colonnade. Many of the best of the Pompeians have fallen in battle; of the rest, a part at least will be dispossessed of house and home to make room for the intruders, whose arrogance they will be compelled submissively to endure.
This is the last tragic act in the Pompeian Forum. After this time, there will be disputes regarding the rights of the old residents and the colonists, public questions of many kinds will call for settlement; the elections will come each year, and the ardent southern temperament may assert itself in violent scenes. Yet all these disturbances will be only as the ripples on the surface; the depths will remain undisturbed. The life of Pompeii has become an integral part of the life of the Roman world.
CHAPTER VIII
GENERAL VIEW OF THE BUILDINGS ABOUT THE FORUM—THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER
The Forum was to the ancient city what the atrium was to the early Italic house; it was used for every purpose for which a special place was not provided elsewhere. And as sleeping rooms, dining rooms, and storerooms were grouped about the atrium and opened into it, so around the Forum lay the edifices which served the requirements of the public life,—the most important temples, the municipal buildings, and market houses or exchanges for different branches of business.
Three temples adjoined the Forum at Pompeii. In addition, there was a sanctuary of the City Lares; and the temples of Venus Pompeiana and Fortuna Augusta were but a short distance away. These religious edifices are representative of the different periods in the history of the city.
In very early times the Oscans of Pompeii received from the Greeks who had settled on the coast the cult of Apollo, and built for the Hellenic god a large, fine temple (C, in [Plan II]) adjoining the Forum on the west side.