At the back of the open square which forms the Forum proper lay the basilica, its two short sides curved, like the sides of the Forum, into apses. The basilica presents its long side to the Forum as Italian basilicas regularly did, but was much grander than the basilicas of Alba, Cosa, or even the Basilica Julia in the old Forum. The basilica had two double rows of columns, in gray granite and polychrome marble: the yellow _giallo antico_, from Numidia; the striated green _cipollino_, “onion-stone”; the purple-streaked _pavonazzetto_, “peacock-stone”--Italian masons have over 500 different names for marble. The architraves were marble, crystalline white from Mt. Pentelicus in Attica. The walls were veneered with marble, from Carrara. The roof was plated with gilt bronze. It was this magnificence which the Christians sought to imitate in their great early basilica churches in Rome, where the high altar stood in the place of the judges’ tribunal: Old St. Peter’s, Santa Sabina, St. John Lateran, St.-Paul’s-Without-the-Walls, San Lorenzo. Trajan’s goodness as _optimus princeps_ was legendary to early Christians; Trajan’s basilica supplied a noble model for early Christian churches; Pope Sixtus V did Trajan a grave injustice when he replaced his statue at the top of the Column with one of St. Peter. Behind the basilica a pair of small libraries, one Greek and one Latin, faced the tiny square in the midst of which rose Trajan’s 100-foot column. Its shaft, of Parian marble, was wound about with 155 scenes on the twenty-three spirals of the great scroll, whose bands grow wider the higher they go, so that they were “readable” to a great height, especially from the library balconies. Unrolled, the scroll would be 650 feet long. It described in 2500 figures the events of Trajan’s two campaigns, of A.D. 101–102 and 105–106, against the Dacians, ancestors of the modern Rumanians. It is because of Trajan’s conquests, imposing Roman culture, that Rumanians speak a Romance language, derived from Latin, today.