forum Romanum
forum Romanum,the chief public square of Rome, surrounded by monumental buildings, occupied a swampy trough between the Palatine, Velia, Quirinal, and Capitol. The edges of the marsh were covered with cemeteries of early iron-age settlements on the surrounding hills, until the area was made suitable for building in the late 7th cent. bc by the canalizing of the Cloaca Maxima, and the deposition of considerable quantities of fill. The Regia and temple of Vesta were traditionally associated with this period, while the earliest dated monuments are the temples of Saturnus (497 BC: Livy 2. 21) and Castor (484 BC: Livy 2. 20, 42). The forum became the centre of Roman religious, ceremonial, and commercial life, as well as the political activities which took place in the adjacent Comitium; balconies (maeniana) were in 338 BC built above the shops surrounding the forum, to allow for the viewing of the gladiatorial shows which took...
[The entire page is 626 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Oxford University Press Titles
- The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology
- The Oxford Dictionary of Economics
- The Oxford Companion to American Literature
- The Oxford Companion to American Military History
- The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization
- The Oxford Companion to English Literature
- The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales
- The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare
- The Oxford Dictionary of Plays
- The Oxford Dictionary of Art
- Oxford Dictionary of Sociology
- Oxford Dictionary of World History
- Oxford Dictionary of World Mythology