Between the Regia and the open space of the forum stands the podium of the Temple of Divus Julius which Augustus erected to the deified Caesar (dedicated 29 B.C.). This site was chosen be cause Caesar's body was burned upon a speaker's platform at this place (probably the tribunal Aurelianum). The spot had first been marked by an altar, the foundations of which may still be seen.
Augustus in building the temple respected the altar, indenting the portico so that the steps of the temple rose at the sides of the altar. Hence the strange ground-plan. This temple was the first striking proof at Rome of the acceptance of the theory of "Divine rights" of Rome's princes. Foundation walls of heavy masonry built outside of the concrete mass now visible supported the walls of the temple. The temple itself was an Ionic hexastyle building of marble, the columns being about ten and a half metres high. The interior was very richly decorated with imported works of art. but the architectural decoration of the entablature, fragments of which are still to be seen on the south side, was rather crude, as was all such work at Rome during the period. A few feet south of this temple there still exist the foundations of the Arch of Augustus erected only ten years later. Fragments of the marble decoration of this arch may be seen lying at the nearby corner of the Regia. Though somewhat too graceful and delicate for the pur pose of a triumphal arch those carvings are done with a care which shows a remarkable advance in such work during the ten years after the construction of the temple of Divus Iulius.
The famous temple of Castor and Pollux,' which still has three Pentelic columns erect with a part of the entablature, is the most prominent ruin of the Forum. The first temple on the site was built in the Tuscan style early in the republic (484 B.c.) to the divinities of the Greek cavalry who aided the Romans at the battle of Lake Regillus. Since these gods were adopted as the patron deities of the Roman knights, the temple became the official meet ing place of the knights and wealthy business men of Rome, and these took some interest in maintaining it. They used its coffers for safety deposits, and its basement offices for the protection of standard weights and measures and for an assay-laboratory for the testing of coins and metals. It thus came to be Rome's "Bureau of Standards." The cappellaccio blocks which may be seen in the podium remain from the first structure, while those found in a small room under the front stairway belonged to an early speaker's platform not directly connected with the first temple. Much of the inner core of concrete belongs to a reconstruction made by Caecilius Metellus in 117 B.C., while the rest of the concrete, as well as the heavy masonry, are a part of the reconstructed temple built by Tiberius in A.D. 6. The splendid Pentelic columns seem,
however, to belong to a reconstruction of Hadrian's day, though of this we are not yet certain. This last temple was Corinthian, octo style and peripteral, with II columns on each side, the whole measuring about 30x50 metres. No temple at Rome reveals finer decorative workmanship.
Along the west side of this temple runs the vicus Tuscus which leads to a very large brick structure behind Castor. This has long been called the temple of Augustus, though the brick-work belongs chiefly to the Flavian period and no traces of an earlier temple have been found. The suggestion has also been made that it was Intended as an audience chamber by There are serious objections to both hypotheses. East of this massive structure one enters the remains of the mediaeval church, S. Maria Antica, di rectly from the area of the Lacus Iuturnae. It contains frescoes— interesting to students of early Christian art, from the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries.' What the building was before Christian times is still a matter of dispute : older authorities assumed that it was a library, though it has not the usual form of a Roman library. A more recent suggestion is that it was the Atrium Minervae where the records of honourable dismissal of legionaries were kept. The impluvium, part of which is visible, belonged to the palace which Caligula had built here as an extension of his Palatine resi dence.
West of the vicus Tuscus, in the forum, are the confused re mains of the Basilica Julia. Caesar first built this on the site of the small basilica Sempronia, dedicating it in 46 B.C. To gain the necessary space he removed the shops which lined the Via Sacra of the Forum, and built in their place a row of shops all along the rear colonnade of his basilica. The whole was a vast structure designed to serve as a set for the four lower civil courts as well as for a market place. After a fire Augustus rebuilt it with lavish adornments of Oriental marbles, but later rebuildings after fires in the 3rd and 4th centuries left little of these structures to be seen. The modern excavators attempted to outline the ground plan by erecting bases of brick and marble fragments, out succeeded only in confusing the evidence of the structure found. An accurate reconstruction is no longer possible. The old praetor's tribunal, which stood in the forum in front of the Basilica Julia, has now quite disappeared, but the remains of an inscription in honour of Naevius Surdinus, praetor, cut into the pavement blocks of the torum reveals the location. It was merely a low platform large enough to seat judges and jury, and was unprotected except for a canopy over the praetor's seat. The place was seldom used after the larger basilicas were built to house the courts, but it was here that the principles of Roman law were first formulated.