Old Rome: A Handbook to the Ruins of the City and the Campagna

by Robert Burn

The other bas-relief scene shows a rostrum at one end, from which a sitting figure is superintending the burning of large bundles of books, carried and placed in front of him in a heap. The outline of a figure applying a torch can be traced, and also of several attendants. At the opposite end to the sitting figure the fig-tree and Marsyas are placed as in the other relief.

The style of art in which the reliefs are executed cannot, in Professor Henzen’s opinion, belong to an earlier period than Trajan’s reign. The treatment corresponds to that on those reliefs taken from Trajan’s arch, and set up on Constantine’s arch. After Trajan’s time the style of bas-relief was so much altered that we cannot suppose them to have been sculptured later than the first year of Hadrian.

As Trajan gained great popularity in the early years of his reign by an abolition of the arrears of certain debts due to the imperial treasury, amounting to a large sum, and as he also established alimenta, these reliefs have been generally supposed to commemorate his public benefactions, in founding relief institutions and cancelling public debts.

The backgrounds of both the sculptures are occupied by representations of some public buildings, but it does not seem possible to identify these with any certainty. That they roughly represent some of the temples and Basilicas in the Forum in a sketch is all we can say. One of the temples shown in the relief which depicts the foundation of alimenta has only five columns in its portico, showing a want of accuracy in the drawing which throws great doubt upon its topographical value. The archæologists who have endeavoured to name the buildings have agreed in calling the Ionic and the Corinthian portico in the relief where the account books are being burnt those of the Temples of Saturn and Vespasian, with an arch of the tabularium between them, and the long row of arches the Basilica Julia, but they differ as to the buildings shown in the other relief, for while Mr. Nichols thinks that the Basilica Julia is here again represented with the Heroon of Julius Cæsar and the arch of Augustus, Signor Brizio is of opinion that we have here the north-western side of the Forum with the Basilica Æmilia.[50] The rostra are probably meant to represent temporary wooden constructions.

The most reasonable conjecture which has yet been made as to the purpose which these sculptured screens served is that they formed a pons or passage along which voters passed at a time of election from the Forum to the office where the votes were taken. A great part of the structures used at such times was probably temporary, and made of wood for the occasion. Another explanation suggested by Mr. Nichols is that they formed a passage leading to an altar and statue of the Emperor. It may be that the sculptures never reached their destined site, but were left here, as many of the marbles on the Tiber banks were, and gradually buried in rubbish.

Basilica Julia.

We now pass to the rows of restored bases of columns, which occupy the long space on the south-western side of the seven pedestals above mentioned. Here we find the ground plan of the great Basilica Julia marked out by a treble row of columns at each of the larger sides, and a double row at each end. One pier of the outer row towards the Forum has been restored by Rosa so as to show the original height.

The proof that these ruins belong to the Basilica Julia which was planned by Julius Cæsar, and begun by him but completed by Augustus, who dedicated it to his grandsons Caius and Lucius, is the statement in the monumentum Ancyranum, in which it is placed between the temples of Saturn and Castor.

A second proof is derived from two inscriptions found during the process of clearing the site, one of which records the repair of the Basilica Julia, and the erection in it of a statue by Gabinius Vettius Probianus, prefect of the city in A.D. 377, and the other the rebuilding of the Basilica Julia under Maximian after the fire which destroyed it in the time of Carinus and Numerian. This site is also assigned to the Basilica on the Capitoline plan which may be seen on the staircase of the Capitoline Museum. The outline given there, and marked by the name Basilica Julia, agrees in proportion, and in the rows of columns with the extant remains, and this shows that the present ruin is the same in its main points with that which stood in the time of Severus, when the Capitoline plan was made.[51] Seven steps lead up to the level of the floor from the Forum level.

A great deal of legal business was transacted here, as may be seen from the frequent mention of it in Pliny’s Epistles. There were four tribunals, of which Quintilian speaks, at which four trials could be carried on at the same time; but these tribunals were probably wooden and temporary erections, and there is no trace of any semicircular apses, such as those in the Basilica of Constantine. One of Caligula’s amusements, as we are told by Suetonius, was to stand upon the roof of this basilica, and throw money to the mob in the Forum to scramble for. Whether the basilica was covered over in the centre is not certain, but it probably was so, with two aisles open to the Forum. The row of arches standing at the north-west corner is partly a restoration of the basilica by Canina, and partly consists of some piers and a wall standing behind, which has not yet been satisfactorily identified with any ancient building. The most probable supposition is that they belonged to the Porticus Julia mentioned by Dion Cassius, and were parts of an earlier edifice, in front of which and upon which the basilica was placed by Augustus.