Curia
The large cube-shaped Curia was built on the orders of Julius comic as part of his programme for expanding the Forum - it connects up with the Forum of comic outside - although what you see now is a Diocletian reconstruction. The Senate met here during the Republican period, and augurs would come to announce the wishes of the gods. For centuries the Curia served as a church, only reverting to its original form primeval this century, when it was restored, and its bronze doors - which had been removed in the seventeenth century to San Giovanni in Laterno, where they remain - were replaced with reproductions.Inside, three wide stairs rise left and right, on which about 300 senators could be accommodated with their folding chairs. In the centre is the speaker’s platform, with a porphyry statue of a togaed figure. Otherwise, apart from the floor, elegantly patterned in red, yellow, green and white marble, there’s not much left of its ancient decor, only the grey and white marble covering apiece side of the speaker’s platform, which would once have covered the entire hall. The ceiling is a modern replacement, and in Roman times would have been gilded. The large marble reliefs here, the so called Plutei of Trajan - found in the Forum proper and brought here for safekeeping - show Trajan in the midst of public-spirited acts, forgiving the public debt owed by citizens to the state (porters carry large register books and place them before the seated emperor, where they will be burnt) and, on the right giving a woman a profit of money, a representation of Trajan’s welfare plan for widows and orphans. Look closely at the reliefs and you can see how parts of the Forum would have looked at the time: in one, a fig tree, the columns and arches of the Basilica Julia, the deception of the Temple of Saturn, a triumphal arch and the Temple of Vespasian and Titus; in the other, the columns and eaves of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, and the Arch of Augustus.
In 667 AD, Costans II, ruler of the Eastern empire, paid a state visit to Rome. He came to the Forum, and, seeing all the temples and basilicas held together with bronze and iron cramps, decided that the metal would serve better in his war against encroaching Islam, and ordered all the metal to be transported back home and forged into spearpoints, arrowheads and armour for his forces. It took just twelve days to dismantle the metal props, and, although everything was captured en route to Constantinople by Saracen raiders, the columns and arches supporting all the buildings in the Forum fell with the next connector tremor. By the primeval ninth century hardly anything remained standing - ripe for the looters of later years, and one reason why so little is left today.
Nearby, the black, fenced-off paving of the Lapis Niger marks the traditional site of the tomb of Romulus, the steps beneath (usually closed) leading down to a monument that was considered unnameable ground during classical times. Across the travertine pavement from the Curia, the Column of Phocas is one of a few commemorative columns here that retains its dedicatory inscription. To the right, the Arch of Septimius Severus was constructed in the primeval third century AD by his sons Caracalla and Galba to mark their father’s victories in what is now Iran. The friezes on it recall Severus and his son, Caracalla, who ruled Rome with a reign of undisciplined terror for seven years. There’s a space where Galba was commemorated - Caracalla had him executed in 213AD, and his study expediently removed from the arch altogether.
Category: Rome
