Colosseum & Forums

Another scorching hot day in Rome for this Tuesday, July 7.  We started off across the street from the Colosseum, at the Ludus Magnus.  The Ludus was the gladiator training facility where gladiators who fought in the Colosseum were housed and trained.  It featured barracks and a practice arena, with limited seating for VIPs.  In the photo below you can make out the curve of the practice arena in the upper right.  Most of it is still buried beneath the street.

After the Ludus Magnus we went to the Colosseum itself.  After a lengthy delay from the site management bureaucracy, we finally got into the place.

 The areas under the floor are immense and the perspective is lost by looking from above.  By the way, our word arena comes from the Latin "harena" which means "sand."  Sand was spread on the wooden floor of the Colosseum to provide traction and good footing for the fighters, and also to soak up any blood.

 After the Colosseum we marched over to view Trajan's Forum.  Before this summer, I knew that various emperors had made additions to the Roman Forum, but didn't really understand.  Having now visited three of the biggest additions to Rome's public meeting space in the ancient world, I know am better prepared to explain.  The biggest additions we have examined so far were added by Julius Caesar, his adopted son Augustus and then Trajan over 100 years later.  All of these added to the space available in the center of Rome for public meetings, trials and markets.  Each one of these additions added as much useable space as was contained in the original Forum--the one we all know about.

Today the main focus was the Forum of Trajan.  Trajan was possibly the greatest of the Roman Emperors--certainly top three in any estimation.  He defeated the Dacians in modern Romania, a very wealthy and warlike nation on the boundary of the Roman Empire.  He used the loot from that victory to fund numerous public works.  He bought land adjacent to the Forum of Augustus and the Forum of Caesar and added a new Forum, plus a marketplace.

Key additions in these later Forums were the inclusion of porticoes and basilicas.  A portico is a shaded walkway, a basilica a covered meeting space.  Being in Rome in mid-summer makes me appreciate the value of having a shaded spot in which to hold a discussion.  It can be blazing hot.

Here we see the granite inner columns of the Basilica Ulpia (Ulpius was Trajan's family name).

 At one side of the Basilica Ulpia, Trajan erected a column that commemorates his victory over the Dacians.  Reliefs carved in a spiral up the column tell the story.  There are also spiral stairs inside the column so that one can climb to the top to the narrow ledge above.  To read the story on the column, one must walk around it a number of times, looking ever upward.  To climb to the top, one would also go around and around, climbing up.  It is from the top of his column that one can see clearly the extent of the work that Trajan had built for the city.  Since Trajan was also declared a god upon his death, the climbing of the stairs and the spiral upward of the story also mimics the apotheosis of Trajan (the making of him into a god).  Imagine climbing a dark spiral staircase and emerging into the light at the top with a fantastic view.  Pretty good symbolism, if you ask me.

We after walking around Trajan's Forum at street level, we entered the Museum dedicated to it.  We saw remnants of statues that decorated his forum.

 A caryatid, or ornamental statue used in place of a column, usually found on the higher levels of buildings.

 A view from the upper floors of Trajan's Market, a building next to his forum that included dozens of stalls for shops and merchants.

 A relief of cupids that was likely on the Temple of Venus Genetrix (more on that in a moment), in Julius Caesar's Forum.

 A view of one end of Trajan's Market.  The openings were the commercial stalls available to merchants.

 A panoramic view of Trajan's Forum.

 Trajan's Column and the columns of the Basilica Ulpia.

 While we were visiting the Trajan's Market & Forum Museum, they also had an exhibit of modern sculpture.  I have no idea what this is, but I like it.

 Some of the stalls on the second floor of the market building.

 Trajan's Column

 The inner columns of the Basilica Ulpia.  You can see (bottom left) the footers for the outer columns.

 The inscription above the door to Trajan's Column.  There are several abbreviations in the inscriptions (Romans were very hip with abbreviations--they would have loved texting).  The text reads:

SENATUS POPULUSQUE ROMANUS

IMP(eratori) CAESARI DIVI NERVAE F(ilio) NERVAE

TRAIANO AUG(usto) GERM(anico) DACICO PONTIF(ici)

MAXIMO TRIB(unicia) POT(estate) XVII IMP(eratori) VI CON(suli) VI P(ater) P(atriae)

AD DECLARANDUM QUANTAE ALTITUDINIS

MONS ET LOCUS TANTIS OPERIBUS SIT EGESTUS

In English:

The Senate and the Roman People

to Imperator, son of the divine Nervae, Caesar Nerva

Trajan Augustus, conqueror of Germany and Dacia, Pontifex

Maximus, with tribunician power 17 times, hailed as Imperator 6 times, Consul 6 times, Father of his country

to show of what height 

the hill and place that was removed for such great works.

Apparently, where Trajan's Forum and Market were placed was a hill that he leveled.  The height of Trajan's column is equal to the height of the hill that stood there before and which he removed.  The Romans believed in altering nature to suit their will, as was shown on the rock cut away in Terracina a few days ago for the Via Appia.

Another view of the inner columns of the Basilica Ulpia and the footers for the outer columns.

After we were finished with Trajan's Forum, we were allowed to walk through Julius Caesar's Forum.

This was the focal point of Caesar's Forum, the Temple of Venus Genetrix (Venus goddess of motherhood).  Julius Caesar claimed he was descended from Venus, through her son Aeneas.  Therefore, building a temple to Venus Genetrix also reminds people of his claim to divine ancestors.

 These columns are remnants of a shaded portico that surrounded Caesar's Forum.

 A bit of the marble paving that was used in Caesar's Forum.  It wasn't just enough to create a new public space for the citizens, it also had to be beautiful.

 One of the columns of the portico, of pink granite.

A portion of the Cloaca Maxima: the great sewer of Rome.  The Cloaca Maxima was one of the first major public works projects undertaken in Rome, and one of the most important.

 We then crossed into the Forum of Augustus.  Here a Temple of Minerva.

 Here is the centerpiece of Augustus' Forum, the Temple of Mars Ultor: Mars the Avenger.  Originally Augustus vowed to build this temple when he defeated Brutus and Cassius at the Battle of Philippi.  Brutus and Cassius were leaders of the group that assassinated Augustus' adoptive father, Julius Caesar, so it was perfectly appropriate for him to desire revenge against them.  By the time he built the temple though, all of the assassins of his father had been long dead, and that sort of revenge would have been unseemly.  Instead he claimed the temple was in honor of his being able to threaten the Parthian Empire (in the Middle East) into returning legionary standards that they had captured when the Parthians defeated Crassus at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BC.  Losing legionary standards as a huge big deal, so recovering them was quite a diplomatic coup for Augustus.

 Here is the marble paving next to the Temple of Mars Ultor.  Again, it had to be useful and beautiful

That was the end of today's very warm visit in Rome.  Tomorrow we head to Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli, a gigantic palace complex built by the Emperor Hadrian.