The low ground to the north of the Palatine Hill and to the east of the Capitoline Hill served from early times as the civic center of the city of Rome (Figure 20.8). Because of centuries of use and modifications, the building history of the area is extremely complicated. Until early modern times, the area was covered with houses and served as an integral part of the city. Antiquarian interest intensified in the early nineteenth century, with systematic excavation beginning in 1870. Further stimulus for exploration came during the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, 1922—43, in his drive to link Fascist Italy with the glories of ancient Rome. Work continues today, with attention to problems of preservation in the heart of a large congested city.
This land was originally marshy, crossed by streams. To render the area useful, the streams needed to be chaneled. And indeed, the Etruscan kings did just that, according to Livy. A sewer, the cloaca maxima, was built across the area for the evacuation into the Tiber River of stream and rainwater and liquid wastes; eventually it was lined with stone and vaulted with concrete, an impressive construction that measured ca. 2.0m—4.5m wide, 2.7m—4.2m high.
During Republican times, the forum consisted of an irregular rectangle, with its corners at the Curia, the site of the later Temple of Antoninus, the Temple of Castor, and the Temple of Saturn (see Figure 20.8). Leading into the forum was the Sacred Way, an old street whose existence indicates the intertwining of religious and civic here at Rome as already seen in Athens and the Ancient Near East. Like the Athenian Agora, the Roman Forum developed over many centuries, with buildings placed here and there, as the need arose, not in an ordered arrangement. This haphazard development contrasts with that of the forum at Cosa and with the later Imperial Fora of Rome itself.
Religious buildings
Religious buildings in the forum included three major temples to the deities Vesta, Saturn, and Castor, and an important shrine, the Lacus luturnae. Vesta was the goddess of the hearth. Her temple contained not a cult statue, but instead the sacred hearth fire of the state; the hearth and its fire were symbols central to Roman religion. The temple itself was round. Originally it resembled an Iron Age Italic hut with a thatched roof. But the building was repeatedly destroyed, damaged by fires, and rebuilt many times; its final version, erected by Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius Severus, in the late second century AD, was an elegant marble tholos surrounded by twenty columns with Corinthian capitals.
The original Temple of Saturn dated from the early Republic, but the extant remains are from a rebuilding in 42 BC and later refurbishing (after a fourth-century AD fire). The temple stands on a high podium, in typical Italic style. The temple contained the state treasury. Saturn himself was a god of agricultural fertility and indeed of civilized life. His cult statue, made largely of ivory, was filled with vegetal oil, a fruit of his magnanimity.
The last of these deities, the divine twins Castor and Pollux, were honored twice in the forum. According to legend, Castor and Pollux helped the Romans defeat the Latins at the Battle of Lake Regillus in 496 BC. After the battle they were seen watering their horses at the Juturna Spring (Lacus luturnae). These divine protectors received early tributes in the Roman Forum. At the spring, a stone fountain building was erected in their honor. Nearby, a Temple to Castor (and perhaps Pollux) was built. The visible ruins come especially from the rebuilding in the Augustan period: the temple stood on a high podium, but otherwise was largely Greek in feel, with a peristyle of Corinthian columns around all four sides.
Civic buildings
The forum contained many structures that served governmental and other civic functions. The Regia, a small building, was the headquarters of thepontifexmaximus, the head of the state religion. The Senate met in the Curia; this meeting hall underwent various reconstructions, the present building having been erected by Diocletian after a fire of AD 283, but based on the version
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