The Forum of Nerva was in the district through which the Via della Croce Bianca passes, and was connected with the ruin commonly called the Temple of Minerva, still standing on the right-hand side of that street where it is crossed by the Via Alessandrina. Two columns are there to be seen now called the Colonnacce, half buried in the earth, surmounted by an entablature and an attica. The wall behind the columns is built of blocks of peperino of unequal size, and is in a style of masonry inferior to the walls of the Forum of Augustus. In it may be seen the traces of an arch which has been filled up with the same stone as that of which the wall is built. The columns, which are of fluted marble, stand out in front of the wall; but, as in the Arch of Severus, the entablature does not lie between them, but projects from the wall over the capitals, and unites them with the wall. The edges of the architrave are richly decorated, and the frieze contains an elaborately carved bas-relief, which, though unfortunately much disfigured, can be partially understood by the help of old engravings taken before it was reduced to its present lamentable state. [Illustration: Forum of Nerva as it stood in 1600. From Du Perac, ‘Vestigj di Roma.’] From these it appears that the figures represent various attributes of Minerva as the patroness of household management. Some of them are drawing water, others weaving or spinning, and others dyeing, washing, holding scales and purses as if bargaining. The remaining portion of the design is incomplete, and was probably carried round the rest of the frieze of the enclosure.[78] On the cornices, both upper and lower, the ornamentation is very rich, but not so chaste as work of the Augustan period. In the centre of the attica stands a figure of Minerva in alto-relievo, with spear, helmet, and shield. That this beautiful ruin, which is one of the most picturesque in Rome, belonged to the wall of Nerva’s Forum is rendered certain by the old views of the sixteenth century, which represent it as part of the inner side of the wall enclosing a splendid temple which stood to the north-west of it. Seven of the columns of this temple were still standing in the fifteenth century, belonging to the left-hand side of the portico, and a considerable part also of the walls of the cella with the pilasters of the portico. The cella of the temple adjoined the semicircular part of Augustus’s Forum on one side, and, as will be seen by the plan, the wall of the enclosure met it on the other, so that only the portico of the temple projected into the open space of the Forum. On the front were the words, probably the last line of a longer inscription, IMP. NERVA CÆSAR AUG. PONT. MAXIM. TRIB. POT. II. IMP. II. PROCOS, showing that the temple was dedicated by Nerva.