THE COLUMN OF PHOCAS,
which formerly supported the statue of that emperor. It faced the Senate House; and is placed upon a pedestal rising from a pyramidal basement of steps, the whole evidently the plunder of other edifices.
It was erected by Smaragdus, the Exarch of Italy, in A.D. 608, and was excavated by the Countess of Devonshire in 1816.
It is thus mentioned by Byron,—
"Tully was not so eloquent as thou,
Thou nameless column with the buried base!"
Childe Harold, iv. 90.
Between the Temples of Saturn and Castor are the remains of
THE BASILICA JULIA,
on the site of the Basilica Sempronia, erected by Sempronius Gracchus, B.C. 169 (Livy, xliv. 16). This was burned down, and rebuilt by Julius Cæsar, and called Julia, after his daughter. It was destroyed by fire, and rebuilt by Augustus (Dion Cassius, "Augustus"). It was again destroyed by fire, and rebuilt A.D. 283. Suetonius tells us that Caligula, "during three days successively, scattered money to a prodigious amount among the people, from the top of the Julian Basilica" ("Caligula," xxxvii.). It is shown on two pieces of the marble plan.