Since very little of Vespasian’s Forum of Peace remains above ground, recourse for information about it must be had in the first instance to literature. Pliny the Elder, who was on Vespasian’s staff, described it as one of the most beautiful squares in the world, embellished as it was with trophies of war, including the famous seven-branched gold candlestick from the temple in Jerusalem, carved in relief on the Arch of Titus.
A fragment of the previously-mentioned Marble Plan of Rome, the Forma Urbis, inscribed with the letters CIS ([Fig. 9.1]), is easily restored to something like [Forum Pa] CIS, Forum of Peace. It shows a portico, on one side walled, on the other colonnaded, the colonnade approached by steps. An open space is incised with a series of three long indented strips, apparently representing formal garden-plots. The fragment also shows one right angle of a structure which should be an altar.
Faced with the thousand pieces of the Marble Plan, archaeologists play the fascinating game of making joins, as in a jigsaw puzzle. In 1899 Lanciani announced the discovery of a new fragment which joined with the piece of the Marble Plan already mentioned. It filled out the rectangular shape of the altar, added two more rows of garden-plots, and supplied another side to the portico, at right angles to the other. This side had two rows of columns, four of which were represented as of larger dimensions than the others, and as standing on plinths or square bases. These two fragments made possible restoration, on paper, of a considerable part of the Forum’s plan. Given the Roman architectural principle of axial symmetry, Lanciani could be sure that the altar belonged in the middle of one side of the portico-surrounded space, towards the back. He could restore two more column-bases; and, knowing that there must have been three rows of garden-plots on either side of the altar, and that the scale of the Marble Plan was 1:200, he could arrive at the original length of one inner side of the portico—about 325 feet. But there paper hypothesis had to rest, awaiting excavation.
Fig. 9.2 Rome. Forum Transitorium, Colonnacce before excavation.
Fig. 9.3 Rome. Forum Transitorium, Colonnacce after excavation.
(M. Scherer, Marvels of Ancient Rome, Pls. 162 and 165)
Fig. 9.4 Rome, Imperial Fora, model. (F. Castagnoli, Roma antica, Pl. 4)