Page 86 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Rome

84  ROME AREA B Y AREA

1 Basilica Aemilia 3 Rostra
See Visitors’ Checklist. See Visitors’ Checklist.
Originally this building was a Speeches were delivered from
rectangular colonnaded hall, this dais, the most famous –
with a multicolored marble floor thanks to Shakespeare – being
and a bronze-tiled roof. It was Mark Antony’s “Friends, Romans,
built by the consuls Marcus Countrymen” oration after the
Aemilius Lepidus and Marcus assassination of Julius Caesar in
Fulvius Nobilor in 179 BC. The 44 BC. Caesar himself had just
two consuls, who were elected reorganized the Forum, and this
annually, exercised supreme speech was made from the
power over the Republic. newly sited Rostra, where the
Basilicas in ancient Rome ruins now stand. In the
served no religious purpose; The Curia, or the Court of Rome, rebuilt by following year the head and
they were meeting halls for Diocletian in the 3rd century hands of Cicero were put on
politicians, moneylenders, display here after he had been
and publicani (businessmen 2 Curia put to death by the second
contracted by the state to See Visitors’ Checklist. Triumvirate (Augustus, Mark
collect taxes). A consortium Antony, and Marcus Lepidus).
agreed to hand over a specified A modern restoration now Fulvia, Mark Antony’s wife,
sum to the state, but its stands over the ruins of the stabbed the great orator’s
members were allowed to hall where Rome’s Senate tongue with a hairpin. It was
collect as much as they could (chief council of state) used to also here that Julia, Augustus’s
and keep the difference. This is meet. The first Curia stood on daughter, was said to have
why tax collectors in the Bible the site now occupied by the played the prostitute – one
were so loathed. church of Santi Luca e Martina, of many scandalous acts that
The basilica was rebuilt many but after the building was led to her banishment.
times; it was finally burned destroyed by fire in 52 BC, The dais took its name
down when the Visi goths sacked Julius Caesar built a new from the ships’ prows
Rome in AD 410. Business seems Curia at the edge of the Forum. (rostra) with which it was
to have continued until the last This was restored by Domitian decorated. Sheathed in iron
moment, for the pavement is in AD 94 and, after another (for ramming enemy vessels),
splashed with tiny lumps of fire, rebuilt by Diocletian in these came from ships
coins that melted in the fire. the 3rd century. The current captured at the Battle of
building is a 1937 restoration Antium in 338 BC.
of Diocletian’s Curia. Inside are
two relief panels commissioned 4 Arch of Septimius
by Trajan to decorate the
Rostra. One shows Trajan Severus
destroying records of unpaid See Visitors’ Checklist.
taxes to free citizens from
debt; in the other he sits on This triumphal arch, one of
Melted coins embedded in the floor a throne receiving a mother the most striking and best
of the Basilica Aemilia and child. preserved monuments of
the Forum, was erected in
AD 203 to celebrate the tenth
anniversary of the accession
Honorary
statue
Relief panel in
balustrade,
showing Trajan’s
acts of charity

Rostra
This reconstruction shows the
platform for public speaking in the Prows of ships
Forum, as it looked in Imperial times. (rostra)

US_084-085_EW_Rome_US.indd 84 15/03/17 3:52 pm
Eyewitness Travel LAYERS PRINTED:
Catalogue template “UK” LAYER
(Source v1.9)
Date 20th August 2012
Size 125mm x 217mm