How to Study Architecture by Charles H. Caffin (reading the story of the .TXT) 📖

Between these two monuments extended a platform, decorated with the bronze beaks of conquered vessels and hence called the Rostra, from which any citizen could speak who had aught to say concerning the commonweal. For it faced the Comitium or open space, which from earliest times had been the meeting place of the General Assembly of the people. It is true that the voice of the people was too often dominated by the Patrician class whose Curia or Senate House overlooked the Comitium; but the Comitium continued to represent, at least, the theory of Roman Government and to be the veritable nucleus of the Roman Forum.

Since the Forum embodied the ideals and the progress of Rome, its architectural aspects were continually changing throughout the more than one thousand years of Rome’s vicissitudes. But without attempting to follow these changes—many of which are shrouded in obscurity—let us try to picture the Forum in its general aspects and particularly as the embodiment of the Roman ideal.

The ancient citadel was the Capitoline Hill on which in early times had been erected the temple already mentioned to the three divinities of Male and Female Power and of Wisdom—Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. It corresponded to the Acropolis of Athens and her Parthenon. But whereas the Parthenon was the nucleus of the Hellenic ideal, as embodied in architectural glory—the embodiment of an ideal, detached and lifted up above the common life—the formal grandeur of Rome descended from the Capitoline Hill and occupied the low ground that separated it from the Palatine, so that it might identify itself with the practical, everyday ideals of the city.

And, first, for the purely practical. The southern side of the Forum was in early times bordered with the tabernæ or wooden booths of the butchers and other produce merchants, while on the north were the shops of the gold-and silversmiths, and money changers. The Forum, in fact, was the central market of Rome and came to be its financial centre, and, as a necessary result, the centre also of legal and judicial procedure. In later times, as the volume and intricacies of business increased, the tabernæ were replaced by basilicas, which included halls of justice and of exchange for merchants. Meanwhile, let us try to picture the Forum as the embodiment of Roman ideals.

It was bounded on both sides by the Via Sacra, or Sacred Way; the two forks uniting near the foot of the Palatine Hill, around which the Sacred Way continued to its junction with the Appian Way. Its stones were sacred because they had been trod by the countless hosts of Rome’s victorious armies, returning in triumphal procession to pay their homage to the deities of Male and Female Power and of Wisdom upon the Capitol.

As the soldiers swept out of the Appian Way, they would skirt the spot, where in later times arose the Colosseum, and the roadway was spanned by the Arch of Constantine, and a little farther on by the Arch of Titus. From this the road advanced in an easterly direction and then turned north.

Then from earliest times two objects would greet the victors’ eyes. Upon the right stood the arch of two-headed Janus, god of gates and doors. It was all but a certainty that its two doors would be standing open; for, although this army was returning victorious, there were others almost continuously engaged on the frontiers of the empire. So the soldiers, glutted with fighting and hungry for the sight of their loved ones, would turn more eagerly to the left, where rose the circular temple of Vesta, guardian of the home and hearth. It was the symbol of the ideal of sane and simple home life, on which the greatness of Rome was founded, and as the Vestal Virgins thronged the steps of their convent or atrium, hard by the temple, the eagles would be lowered and every bronzed warrior would salute the maiden priestesses, who, in their absence, had kept perpetually alive the sacred fire.

Just beyond this spot in later times Cæsar Augustus erected a Triumphal Arch. Meanwhile, from Rome’s early days the victorious hosts would next defile past the Temple of Castor and Pollux, memorial of the victory gained at Lake Regillus with the help of these twin gods. Close by it came to be erected the Temple of Cæsar, in front of which the great Julius caused a rostrum to be placed, from the steps of which the oration over his dead body was spoken by Marc Antony.

At this spot the veterans would enter the Forum proper, welcomed by the cheers of the merchants; in old times, from the fronts of their booths and later from the porticoes of the Basilica Æmilia on the right and the Basilica Julia on the left. Then, both early and late in Rome’s history, would be reached the ancient Temple of Saturn, god of seed growing and the bounties of the soil, a god of meaning to the soldiers, for many a veteran had been left behind in distant lands, planted upon farms that were to consolidate the power and prosperity of the Empire. Moreover, in some of the chambers of the Temple, which formed the official Treasury of Rome, a part of their spoils of war would be deposited.

The procession by this time is filing past the Comitium, filled with enthusiastic crowds, while orators welcome it from the rostra and the Senators are ranged in ranks upon the steps of the Curia. The roar of welcome is still in the ears of the host as it begins the ascent of the Capitol, passing under the Arch of Septimus Severus, if the date be after A.D. 203. Midway of the ascent, it passes the Temple of Concord, memorial of the termination of the internecine struggle between the Patricians and the Plebs; skirts the Tabularium, wherein the archives of the Empire were preserved, and finally reaches the summit of the Capitol.

Let us take one glance back before the picture fades. The scene is superb but not without confusion. The Romans paid no attention to orientation; consequently there is little uniformity in the placing of the several structures. They vary not only in size and design, but also in the direction which they face. In the contracted space the various edifices seem crowded. Indeed, the conjectured restoration of the Roman Forum and vicinity suggests rather a medley of magnificence.

But even in this respect the character of this heart of Rome, lying between the Capitoline and Palatine hills, symbolised the magnificent variety of elements that composed the Empire. One may find some parallel to Rome’s confusion of appearances in the variety and, for the most part, lack of an organic lay-out in the modern London, the present mother-city of an Empire, founded, like the Roman, upon commerce, and like it in having grown, cell by cell, transcending it, however, not only in size but in grandeur. For the policy of the British Empire has gradually evolved beyond the Roman, substituting for the process of absorption the principle of free, self-governing dominions.