BASILICA, (from Paatilevc, king, and OlgOc, house, signi fying royal house,) a building originally used as a court of justice. Among the Romans, it was a large hall adjoining the forum, where the magistrates judged the people under cover, which distinguished it from the fora, where they held their sittings in the open air. Basilicas were in plan parallelogrammic, divided lengthwise into three or more aisles, the centre one of which was called the testudo, and those at the sides porticos. The testudo was covered by a roof' supported on two rows of columns, situate on either side between it and the adjoining porticos. These porticos were divided vertically by two galleries, one above the other. which ran round three sides of the building, and were cov ered by a lean-to roof, meeting the abo•e-named columns below their capitals, so as to leave an open space between the roofs of the porticos and the testudo, for the admission of light. At that end of the testudo where the gallery was discontinued, stood a raised platform, on which was placed the tribunal for the magistrate. The above is as clearly as can be discovered, a correct description of the ancient basilica, and agrees in all its principal features with a build ing which has been discovered in the ruins of Pompeii.
.".,ruv.us The proportions of these edifices are given by \ as follows :—" The breadth," he says, "is not to be less than a third, nor more than the half of the length, unless the nature of the place opposes the proportion. and obliges the symmetry to be different ; but if the basilica has too much length, clialehliee (supposed to be apartments on the sides of the tribunal, separated from the body by a partition) are taken oil' the ends, as in the basilica Aquiliana• The columns of the basilica are made as high as the porticus is broad ; which again is equal to the third part of the space in the middle. The upper columns are less than the lower, as above written. The pluteum (a kind of podium or continued pedestal) which is between the upper columns, should also be made a fintrth part less than the same columns, that those mit° walk on the floor above, may not be seen by the negotiators below. The epistylium, zophores, and corwur
below, are proportioned to the columns, as in my third book.
'• .Nor will basilicas such as that at the colony of Julia of Fanum, which I designed and executed, have less dignity and beauty, the proportions and symmetry of which are as follows : The middle testudo, between the columns, is one hundred and twenty feet long. and sixty feet broad. The porticos around the testudo, between the walls and columns, is twenty feet broad. The height of the continued columns, including their capitals, is fifty feet, and the thickness five, haying behind them par:1st:me (attached pilasters) twenty feet high, two feet and a halt' broad, and one foot and a half thick, which sustain the beams that bear the floors of the portieus. Above these are other parastatre, eighteen feet high, two feet broad, and a foot thick, which also receive beams sustaining the canthe•s of the porticus, which are laid below the roof of the testudo : the remaining space that is left between the beams which lie over the parastatw, and those over the columns, is left open in the inter-columns, in order to give light. The columns in the breadth of the testudo, including those of the angles to the right and left. are four ; and in the length, on that side which is nest the Iiirum, including the same angle columns, eight. On the other side, there are but six columns, including those of the angles, but the middle two on this side are omitted, that they may not obstruct the view of the pronaos of the Temple of Augustus, which is situated in the middle of the side-wall of the basilica, looking toward the centre of the forum and Temple of Jupiter. The tribunal, in this building, is formed in the figure of a hemieyele : the extent of this hemicycle, in front, is forty-six feet, and the recess of the curvature inward, fifteen feet, so that those who attend the magistrate obstruct not the negotiants in the basilica.