FORUM APPII, an ancient post station on the Via Appia, 43 m. S.E. of Rome, founded, no doubt, by the original constructor of the road. Horace mentions it as the usual halt at the end of the first day’s journey from Rome, and describes it as full of boatmen and cheating innkeepers. The presence of the former was due to the fact that it was the starting-point of a canal which ran parallel to the road through the Pomptine Marshes, and was used instead of it at the time of Strabo and Horace (see [Appia, Via]). It is mentioned also as a halting place in the account of Paul’s journey to Rome (Acts xxviii. 15). Under Nerva and Trajan the road was repaired; one inscription records expressly the paving with silex (replacing the former gravelling) of the section from Tripontium, 4 m. N.W., to Forum Appii; the bridge near Tripontium was similarly repaired, and that at Forum Appii, though it bears no inscription, is of the same style. Only scanty relics of antiquity have been found here; a post station was placed here by Pius VI. when the Via Appia was reconstructed.
(T. As.)
FORUM CLODII, a post station on the Via Clodia, about 23 m. N.W. of Rome (not 32 m. as in the Antonine Itinerary), situated above the western bank of the Lacus Sabatinus (mod. Lake of Bracciano), and connected with the Via Cassia at Vacanae by a branch road which ran round the N. side of the lake (Ann. Inst., 1859, 43). The site is marked by the church of SS. Marcus, Marcianus and Liberatus, which was founded in the 8th or 9th century A.D. Inscriptions mentioning the Foro-Clodienses have come to light on the spot; and an inscription of the Augustan period, which probably stood over the door of a villa, calls the place Pausilypon—a name justified by the beauty of the site.
See Notizie degli scavi (1889), 5; D. Vaglieri, ibid. (1895), 342.
FORUM TRAIANI (mod. Fordongianus), an ancient town of Sardinia, on the river Thyrsus (Tirso), and a station on the Roman road through the centre of the island from Carales to Olbia and Turris Libisonis. Many of its ruins have been destroyed since 1860. The best preserved are the baths, erected over hot mineral springs. The tanks for collecting the water and the large central piscina are noteworthy. The bridge over the Tirso has been to some extent modernized. On the opposite bank are the scanty remains of an amphitheatre. Not far off is a group of nuraghi, of which that of St Barbara in the commune of Villanova Truschedda is one of the finest.
See Taramelli in Notizie degli scavi (1903), 469.