Old Rome: A Handbook to the Ruins of the City and the CampagnaBurn, Robert
History
Old Rome: A Handbook to the Ruins of the City and the Campagna
Burn, Robert
Rome (Italy) -- Antiquities; Rome (Italy) -- Description and travel
An inscription, which is now built into the wall on the north of the
pillar, commemorates the remission of all debts to the emperor’s private
purse (fiscus) by Hadrian, a fact which we find also mentioned in Dion
Cassius and Spartianus. The latter writer adds that it was in the Forum of
Trajan that Hadrian publicly burnt the list of his debtors, and the
inscription was no doubt intended to mark the spot of this act of
liberality or bribery.
[Sidenote: Ruins of the Forum Julium.]
The ruins of two portions only of the Forum Julium, which adjoined that of
Trajan, have been discovered in modern times. The first is a considerable
part of the outer wall of the Forum, standing in the court of the house
No. 18 in the Via del Ghetarello, a small street which opens out of the
Via di Marforio, near the Carcer and the Church of SS. Martina e Luca.
This ruined wall consists of three arches composed of large blocks of
peperino and travertine skilfully cut and joined without mortar and
under-built by another arch, as if in order to enable the wall to bear a
great weight. The length of the fragment of wall is about 50 feet and the
highest point about 30 feet.
The other relic of Cæsar’s Forum is now no longer visible. We obtain our
information about it from Palladio, the architect, about the middle of the
sixteenth century, who relates that while he was at Rome the ground-plan
of a temple was uncovered in digging the foundations of a house between
the Salita di Marforio and the temple of Mars Ultor, a description which
points plainly to the block of houses behind SS. Martina e Luca. There was
a peculiarity in the inter-columniations of this temple, which Palladio
particularly remarked. The distance between the columns, he says, was the
eleventh part of the diameter of a column less than a diameter and a
half.
[Sidenote: Forum of Augustus. Temple of Mars Ultor.]
The almost universal opinion of Roman topographers now is that the three
Corinthian columns on the left-hand side of the Via Bonella and the
massive arch which leads from it into the Via di Tor di Conti are the
remains of the Temple of Mars Ultor, which Augustus built in his Forum,
and of the north-eastern portion of the enclosing wall.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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