Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/807

 EOMA. vcliat confirms what has been ah-eady said respect- ing the forum and its environs ; except that tlie usurers sub Veteribus show that the bankers' shops were not confined to the N. side of the forum. What the canalis was in the middle of the forum is not cleiir, but it was perhaps a drain. The passage is, in some places, probably corrupt, as appears from the two obscure lines respecting the mariti Ditis, the second of which is inexplicable, thougii they pro- bably contain some allusion to the Sacellum Ditis which we have mentioned as adjoining the temple of Saturn. Mommsen, however {I. c. p. 297), would read " dites damnosos marito," &c., taking these " dites " to be the rich ixsurers who resorted to the basilica and lent young men money for the purpose of cornipting city wives. But what has tended to throw doubts upon the whole passage is the mention of the basilica, since, according to the testimony of Cicero (Brut. 15), Plautus died in the very year of Cato's censorship. Yet the basilica is also alluded to in another passage of Plautus be- fore quoted; so that we can hardly imagine but that it must have existed in his lifetime. If we could place the basilica in Cato's aedileship instead of his censorship, every difficulty would vanish ; but for such a view we can produce no authority. Mommsen (/&. p. 301) has made an ingenious, and not improbable attempt to show, tiiat Plautus, as becomes a good poet, has mentioned all these objects on the fonim in the order in which they ac- tually existed ; whence he draws a confirmation of fhe view respecting the situation of the comitium. That part of the forum is mentioned first as being the most excellent. Then follows on the left the Sacrum Cluacinae, the Basilica Porcia, and Forum Piscatcrium, and the Forum Infimum. Re- turning by the middle he names the canalis, and proceeds down the forum again on the rl[//it, or southern Bide. In the " malevoli supra lacum " the Lacus Servilius is alluded to at the top of the Vicus Jugarius. Then we have the Veteres Tabernae, the temple of Castor, the Vicus Tuscus, and Velabrum. Tiie Basilica Porcia was soon followed by others. The next in the order of time was the B^vsilica FuLViA, founded in the censorship of M. Aemilius Lepidus, and M. Fulvius Nobilior, B.C. 179. This was also " post Argentarias Novas" (Liv. xl. 51), and must therefore have been very close to the Basilica Porcia. From the two censors it was sometimes called Basilica Aemilia et Fulvia. (Varr. L.L. vi. § 4, Miill.) All the subsequent embellishments and restorations appear, however, to have proceeded from the Gens Aemilia. M. Aemilius Lepidus, consul with Q. Lutatius in b. c. 78, adorned it with bronze shields bearing the effigies of his ancestors. (Plin. XXXV. 4.) It appears to have been entirely re- built by L. Aemilius Paullus, when aedile, b. c. 53. This seems to have been the restoration alluded to by Cicero (ad Att. iv. 16), from which passage — if the punctuation and text are correct, for it is almost a locus desperatus — it also appears that Paullus was at the same time constructing another new and magnificent basilica. Hence a difficulty arises respecting the situation of the latter, which we are unable to solve, since only one Basilica Paulli is mentioned by .ancient authors; and Plutarch (Caes. 29) says expressly that Paullus expended the large sum of money which he had received from Caesar as a bribe in building on the forum, in place of the Biusilica Fulvia, a new one which bore his own mime. (Cf. Appian, B. C. ii. 26.) It it curtain at EOMA. 787 least that we must not assume with Becker (TTandh. p . 303) that the latter was but a poor affair in compa- rison with the new one because it was built with the ancient columns. It is plain that in the words " nihil gratius illo monumento, nihil gloriosius " Cicero is alluding to the restoration of the ancient basilica, since he goes on to mention it as one which used to be extolled by Atticus, which would not have been possible of a new building; and the em- ployment of the ancient columns only added to its beauty. The building thus restored, however, was not destined to stand long. It seems to have been rebuilt less then twenty years afterwards by Paullus Aemilius Lepidus (Dion Cass. xlix. 42); and in about another twenty years this second restoration was destroyed by a fire. It was again rebuilt in the name of the same Paullus, but at the expense of Augustus and other friends (Id. liv. 24), and re- ceived further embellishments in. the reign of Ti- berius, a. d. 22. (Tac. Ann. iii. 72.) It was in this last phase that Pliny saw it when he ad- mired its magnificence and its coluiims of Phrygian marble (sxxvi. 24). BASILICA AEMILIA. (From a Coin.) The third building of this kind was the Basilica Sempronia, erected by T. Sempronius Gracchus in his censorship, B.C. 169. For this purpose he pur- cha.sed the house of Scipio Africanus, together with some adjoining butchers' shops, behind the Tabernae Veteres, and near the statue of Vertumnus, which, as we have said, stood near the forum at the end of the Vicus Tuscus. (Liv. xliv. 16.) This, therefore, was the first basilica erected on the S. side of the fonuu. AVe hear no further mention of it, and therefore it seems probable that it altogether disappeared, and that its site between the Vicus Tuscus and Vicus Jugarius was subsequently occupied in the imperial times by the Basilica Julia. The Lautumiae, of which we have had occasion to speak when treating of the B.asilica Porcia, was not merely the name of a district near the forum, but also of a prison which apjiears to liave i)een constructed during the Republican 'period. The Lautumiae are first mentioned after the Second Punic War, and it seems very probuble, as Varro says (L.L.y. § 151, Miill.), that the name was derived from the prison at Syracuse ; thoiigh wo can hardly accept his second suggestion, that the etymology is to be traced at Home, as well as in the Sicilian city, to the circumstance that stone quarries formerly existed at tiie spot. The older topographers, down to the time of Bunsen, assumed that Lautumiae was only another ap])ellation for the Career Mamertinus, a misconception jx-rhaps occasioned by the .abruptness with which Viuro (/. c.) passes from his account of the Tullianum to that of the Lautumiae. We read of the latter as a place for the custody of hostages and prisoners of war in Livy (xxxii. 26, xxxvii. 3) ; a purpose to which neither the size nor the dungeon-like con- 3e 2