Two Public Spaces

Nobody planned it exactly. The Roman Forum started out as a low boggy spot between the Seven Hills that would serve as a market once they dug a ditch to drain it. That ditch became a vaulted sewer, and a few temples started to be put up on the slopes of the hills, but the ground in between still served for buying and selling, holding assemblies and holding votes. But the population of Rome grew, and the wealth of Romans grew, and buildings started to encroach into the flat space. Rome acquired moneychangers and moneylenders, a civic bureaucracy and the cults of strange gods. By the time of the last wars of the Republic, Julius Caesar put up a columned hall along one long side, and Lucius Aemilius Paulus put up one on the other. All that was left open was a space the size of a soccer pitch, accessed by narrow roads that twisted and wound around the bases of the monuments. It is difficult to find unless you know what to look for (the curia Julia is an excellent point to orient yourself around).

Those rectangular columned halls were basilicas, and judging by the column bases in the left center of the photo, the basilica Julia was as primitive as an Egyptian temple. Almost the whole floor was dotted with columns, with just a narrow open space in the center, so stone lintels probably ran from column to column and supported the upper stories. Long stone roof-beams will crack, so the space between columns could not be very wide. The architects made up by using precious marbles which were stripped away to feed the lime-kilns and build the churches of the renaissance popes. It must have been an awkward building, full of little gatherings which could almost but not entirely see and hear what everyone else was saying and doing. You could talk to a banker about borrowing a million sestertii, but not give a speech or listen to a speech with thousands of other Romans.

Three hundred years later, Maxentius took over Italy from the Tetrarchy. He lived in Rome and launched great building projects to keep the Romans employed. And along the slopes where the Sacred Way descends into the Forum he had a new type of basilica built. What a structure! Three barrel-vaulted chambers were set on either side of a central aisle. There were no pillars so that aisle must have been spanned with wood. There was a domed apse in one short end opposite the tripple doors, and a smaller apse in one long wall. The great windows were probably closed with glass which was becoming common now that Syrian glassblowers could export their wares or send their excess sons anywhere from Spain to Crimea. Here was a space where the emperor could hold court and lesser judges could oversee lesser trials. It glowered down on Vespatian’s old temple of Peace and the other temples of the pagan gods. When Maxentius was killed, his rival Constantine had a colossal statue of himself installed in the unfinished basilica. One end and one side wall fell down during earthquakes but the other two sides survive like the great brick vault of Ctesiphon.

The Basilica of Maxentius is as big as the final stage of the Forum, but entirely enclosed and roofed. A single monumental structure could fill as much space as was left for the Roman people to go through the forms of elections. That is the wonder and the terror of the later Roman empire, because the Romans were learning some things about how to provide the good life, from building a proper civil service instead of a gang of slaves, to watermills and roof trusses. But more and more, these things were perverted to serve a shockingly arrogant hierarchy, from the villa owners of Britannia to bishops who set cudgel-wielding monks on each other’s supporters. Armies of soldiers playing barbarians roamed across the empire taking whatever they wanted or liquidating political rivals. It was those armies which finally cut the aqueducts and made Rome between the hills uninhabitable. Health and life expectancy remained poor until Roman urban civilization collapsed, but with that civilization went most of what makes life worth living. There would be no more great works of engineering for more than 500 years, and few comforts other than simple food and quiet friendship.

I hope I have another chance to visit Rome, and perhaps that time I will invest in a guide and a guidebook. But a few days of walking with a printed map and a notebook are never a bad way to start exploring an Italian city. I wish I had time and energy to describe more of the things I saw and felt in Rome, from gold of valour on the Quirinal to the shepherds’ huts on the Palatine. But for now, this will do.

I am still looking for work while a great imperial power is trying to subjugate my country and while every industry I am trained for is in a very difficult state. If you can, please support this site.

(scheduled 2 May 2026)