By the end of the late republic, the Roman Forum had become very crowded due to the many purposes for which this relatively small space was being used, so Julius Caesar constructed a new forum just north of the Roman Forum, which became known as the Forum of Caesar. Roughly the size of the original forum, it consisted of a rectangular open space surrounded all the way around by colonnades, and contained a temple to Venus Genetrix. This area was obviously prime real estate, so Caesar had to spend an enormous amount of money to purchase the land upon which it was built. It is said that just acquiring the land cost 100 million sesterces. This was the start of one of the largest ongoing developments in Rome and would result in some of its most spectacular buildings. A number of emperors constructed additional fora, which, when completed, connected the old Roman Forum with the Campus Martius and dwarfed the original forum in size. Collectively, these areas are known as the Imperial Fora.
The next one to be constructed was the Forum of Augustus. It was built branching off from the side of Caesar's forum and was roughly the same size. The centerpiece of the Forum of Augustus was an enormous temple dedicated to Mars Ultor (Mars the Avenger). After the assassination of his adoptive father, Caesar, in 44 bc, Octavian (later known as Augustus) vowed to construct a temple to Mars Ultor if he were able to successfully avenge Caesar's death. The erection of this temple was delayed for various reasons so that it was not finally dedicated until 2 bc. Acquiring the necessary land again posed a problem. According to one source, Augustus was reluctant to evict people; therefore, the back wall of his forum is irregular in shape because he was unable to obtain all the land he desired.
This forum was a rectangle about 125 meters long by 90 meters wide with an open space in the center containing the temple at one end and a row of columns down each side of the enclosure. One highly innovative feature was two large hemicycles (half-circles) opening off the colonnade at the level of the temple. The scale of the entire forum was impressive, with the columns of the colonnades nearly 10 meters high and made out of high-quality decorative marbles. The temple itself had 15-meter-high
Figure 11.2 Plan of the Imperial Fora. (Reprinted from Frank Sear: Roman Architecture. Copyright 1982 by Frank Sear. Used by permission of the publisher, Cornell University Press.)
Corinthian columns and sat atop a high podium. The forum backed up against the densely inhabited Subura district but was separated from it by a massive wall of grey tufa some 30 meters in height. This wall not only insulated the magnificence of the forum from the somewhat disreputable Subura district but also served as a firebreak.
Figure 21.3 The remains of the Temple of Mars Ultor. The high, grey tufa wall that separated the back of the Forum of Augustus from the Subura district is clearly visible.
Figure 11.4 Model of the Temple of Mars Ultor. Octavian vowed to build this temple if he were able to successfully avenge Julius Caesar's death.
Figure 11.5 Diagram of the Forum of Augustus and the Temple of Mars Ultor showing the arrangement of statues that collectively serve as propaganda for the emperor Augustus. (This diagram is adapted by Gregory S. Aldrete, Phaeton Group, Scientific Graphic Services Division, from Fig. 50 in Tlir Urban image of Augustan Rome, Diane Favro, 1996, Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press.)
Augustus was a master of using propaganda to justify and popularize his rule, and the decoration of the entire Forum of Augustus complex can be read as the assertion of a consistent symbolic message glorifying Augustus, his family, and his achievements. This symbolism began in the temple itself, where the cult statue of Mars was flanked by statues of Venus on one side and the deified Caesar on the other. On the pediment. Mars was again in the center, with Venus to his right and, on her right, Romulus. On Mars's left were personifications of Fortune and Rome, while at the corners were personifications of the Tiber and the Palatine. The pediment was aligned with the deepest recess of the two half-circular exedra. In a large niche at the center of the northwestern exedra was a statue of Aeneas, and filling the remainder of the niches in this exedra were members of the Julian family and the kings of Alba Longa, In the large niche at the center of the southeastern exedra was a statue of Romulus, and in the other niches were sutnnti viri, or "great men" from Rome's history. The long corridors on either side of the forum also contained niches with statues of additional siimmi viri. Beneath each of these statues was a plaque listing the man's notable achievements, so the forum became a kind of gallery of all the greatest men in Roman history.
This entire decorative scheme served to link Augustus with the legendary founders of the city, to the great men of its history, and even to the gods themselves. As the adopted son of Julius Caesar, Augustus could lay claim to the lineage of the Julian family, which traced its ancestry to the Trojan hero Aeneas. Aeneas was the son of the goddess Venus, and thus Augustus could claim divine ancestry. The prominence given to Venus inside and on the pediment of the temple would remind viewers of this cormection with Augustus, as would the statues of Aeneas and the members of the Julian family featured in the one exedra. Romulus in legend was the son of the god Mars, and while Aeneas may be said to have founded the Roman people, Romulus founded the actual city of Rome. Romulus's mofher was a woman named Rhea Silvia, who was the daughter of the king of Alba Longa, and this family was descended from Aeneas. Thus Augustus could be linked to both Venus and Mars, Aeneas and Romulus.
Even the minor figures on fhe pedimenf confributed to the connection of Augustus with these pivotal figures of Roman myth. The Tiber naturally played a key role in the history of the city, but the choice of the personification of the Palatine is interesting. The ostensible reason for its inclusion was that this was where Romulus lived, but contemporary viewers would have inevitably made the association that this was also the current site of Augusfus's house.
The exedra and the temple formed a kind of intersection of both literal and symbolic axes that tied together Augustus and the founders of the Roman people, the city of Rome, and fhe important gods Mars and Venus. Given Augustus's desire to be seen as a kind of second founder of Rome, fhis symbolic emphasis is not accidental. His forum became the scene of a number of rituals, particularly those involving foreign affairs. Governors of provinces were supposed to begin the journey to their provinces from fhis forum. When the senate was debating whether or not to declare war or whether to award triumphs, they met in Augustus's forum. Military banners and standards that had been seized in battle from Rome's enemies were displayed in the Temple of Mars Ulfor. Finally, the ceremony in which Roman boys assumed the toga of manhood took place in this forum.
The lasf and the largest of the imperial fora was the Forum of Trajan, dedicafed in fhe early second century ad. It was attached to the already existing imperial fora and sfretched away from them toward the Campus Martius to the northwest. The Forum of Trajan was a truly colossal complex, over 300 meters long and 180 meters wide at points. There was a gigantic open courtyard surrounded by columns with two hemicyclical exedra opening off of it, obviously imitating the Forum of Augustus. After this came the Basilica of Trajan, a vasf structure in its own right with hemi-cycles at either end mirroring those of the forum. Beyond this was Trajan's Column, which was itself flanked by two buildings, one containing a Greek library and the other a Latin library.
Figure Tl.6 Ruins of the Basilica of Trajan. The grey columns arc all that remain of the once-imposing structure.
Figure 11.7 Reconstruction of the opulent interior of the Basilica of Trajan. (From G. Gatteschi, Restaiiri della Roma Imperi ale, 1924, p, 71.)
The quality of materials used throughout this series of structures was extremely high. The floors were paved with yellow Numidian marble and purple Phrygian marble, forming geometric shapes. The various columns used these same stones as well as elements made of grey Egyptian granite and fine white marble. The basilica had columns of grey Egyptian granite and green Carystian marble as well as ornate, inlaid marble floors. Trajan's forum was built using the proceeds from his military campaigns in Dacia, and the space was used for judicial purposes, providing needed expansion space for law courts.
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