The only building on the E. side of the Forum is the very dilapidated Basilica (Pl. E, 3), once the exchange and court of justice. Unlike most other ancient edifices of the kind, it is a single hall (31 by 16 yds.), with three niches at the N. end and five small chambers on the E. side. The large square niche at the S. end, at the foot of the theatre hill, served as a law-court.
Of the buildings on the W. side of the Forum the two in the middle are the Curia (Pl. E, 3), where the town-council (ordo decurionum) met, a rectangle of 17 by 12 yds., with a colonnade in front and platform behind, and a small Temple (Pl. 8; E, 3), preceded by a speaker’s platform (rostra), 6¾ ft. high. The purpose of the other buildings is unknown.
Near the Fountain at the N.W. angle of the Forum we turn to the S., out of the Decumanus into the Voie de la Curie, and thence to the left into the Voie du Théâtre (38 ft. wide), on the S. side of the Forum.
The Theatre (Pl. E, 3), dating from 167, lies on the W. slope of an isolated hill. It held about 4000 spectators, but little of it is left, as the materials were used in building the Byzantine fortress (p. [296]). The semicircular orchestra, with its three tiers for the places of honour (bisellia), allotted to the decuriones and other persons of distinction, is well preserved. The Cavea, or auditorium, 69½ yds. wide, rising on the hill-side, once had twenty-six tiers of seats, but of these the seven lowest only remain. The stage (pulpitum) has been destroyed with the exception of the front-wall, with its niches and steps, and the hyposcenium, consisting of brick pillars (29½ in. high), which supported the floor of the stage. The large colonnaded hall behind the former back-wall of the stage served as a promenade (‘foyer’).
The hill behind the cavea of the theatre, where the remains of a Temple Court have been unearthed, affords a splendid *Survey of the ruins. The view extends to the W. to the distant hills near Batna; to the S.E., beyond the great débris-strewn slopes of the lower hills, rise the Aurès Mts.
From the centre of the theatre colonnade we may walk to the W. to the Petits Thermes du Centre (Pl. E, 3), with admirably preserved heating apparatus in the caldarium and laconicum (p. [291]) on the W. side.
On the W. side of these baths runs the Cardo Maximus Sud, the finely paved main street of the S. quarter of the town, leading past the entirely ruined S. Gate (Pl. E, 4) and the house of the Sertii (on the right; p. [294]), and ending at a Fountain in the Voie des Thermes.
The *Thermes du Sud (Pl. E, 4), of the 2nd cent., extended in 198 and restored about the end of the 3rd cent., are the finest in the town next to the N. Thermæ.
A peculiarity of this building consists in the three great Exedræ, semicircular projections on the N.E. and S. sides. The semicircle near the S. entrance contained the Latrinæ, now almost entirely destroyed. The great colonnaded hall near the N. entrance served as a promenade. From the Palæstra, 26 by 10 yds., the largest hall in the baths, bathers could enter the Apodyterium as well as the Frigidarium, flanked by its two piscinæ. The small ante-rooms behind the Frigidarium opened into the heated rooms: on the right the Tepidarium, on the left the large Caldarium with its three hot-water basins, and, straight in front, a smaller Caldarium with two basins. The quadrangular space between the caldaria was the Laconicum.
The cellars on the S. side were partly occupied by the Praefurnium (furnace room). Huge stoves (furnaces) heated the water in cylindrical boilers (testudines, no longer existing) and also the air, both for the Hypocaustum, or hollow floor resting on low brick pillars, and for the hollow tiles (tubuli) or nipple tiles (tegulae mammatae) with which the hollow walls of the hot rooms were lined.