On the east side of the Forum, Tullius Hos filins enclosed a space called the Curia, in which the senators, representing patrician Rome, held their meetings; in front of it, in another enclosure, the Comities, the plebeian vote was polled. From the senate house a flight of steps led to that part of the Comitium where the Rostra stood, from a near-by plat form of which foreign ambassadors (Greek) listened to orators in the Rostra and speakers in the Comitimn. The Rostra was a simple platform, under an arcade, to which the broom beaks (rostra) taken from captured vessels were attached.
The Forum was connected with the Snmma Sacra Via (the ridge between the Colosseum and the Forum) by a short lane which was the original Sacra Via, whose name was then ex tended to the entire length of the road from the Capitol to the Esquiline Hill. Baddedey con jectures that it originated in a path leading to the sacred Capanne, or primitive temples and the cemetery above the marsh wherein the (prisci Latim,* (Sabini,* and their forbears in terred their kindred. Varro says the Sacra Via, at its eastern end, originated in the Sacd him Streniae whose site is now unknown; event ually it was extended to the Clivus Capitolinus. this long track duly developed the rich Republican street lined with temples and houses, descending from the Velia [the north point of the Palatine] so as to skirt the northern flank Of the Regia and then lose itself beside the open Forum. . . . Its conditions, like those of the historic buildings on it, kept on improving until the time of Nero; and from having been a simple path to the place of the ancestral dead, it survived to celebrate for centuries the proud est triumphs of the living.* Then Nero appro priated the Velian Ridge and built across it, from the Palatine to the Esquiline, his House of Gold. By this time (ask 121) the trade centre of Rome had moved from the imperial fora to the Forum Pads and the Forum Transitorium, relieving the Sacra Via of the noisy throng going to and from the Colosseum; and the Triumphs — out-door displays of great magnificence— thereafter passed more con veniently through the Forum Paris and thence into the lower Forum Rosnanum.
Two other streets Vicus Jugarius and Vicus Tuscus— were important features of the environs of the great forum. Both originated in the unknown street which lay along the south side of the Forum; the Jugarius at the western end of the Basilica Julia, and running close under the Capitoline to the Porta Car mentalis, near the Theatre of Marcellus. At its entrance into the Forum was the fountain Lams Servilus where were exposed the heads of senators assassinated during the proscrip tions of Sella. The Vicus Times Tan Wing
the eastern end of the Bast:Hien Julia, through the Velabrum to the Circus Maximus. It was a busy shopping street where straost every thing was sold from the finest silks, frank incense and perfumes to fruits, vegetables and fish. Festal pageants moved along it from the Forum to the circus. On one side of the Forum stood the nberna Argentarkei silversmiths' shoos, and in fraitt of S. Adrian, beyond the Tabernai Novas; Virginia was stabbed by her father. The front of S. Adrian is a fragment of the Basilica. of .€tnilius Paulus. This Basilica occupied the site of the famous Curia of Tullus Hostilius. The three gigantic arches are all that remain of the Basilica of Constantine. Little remains of the once superb temple of Venus and Rome, except a cella, countless fragments of columns, and a mass of Corinthian cornice facing the Colosseum. This was the last pagan temple which remained in use in Rome. Near the church of Saint Fran cesca the Sacra Via passes under the Arch of Titus, the most beautiful monument of its kind remaining in Rome, erected by the senate to commemorate the taking of Jerusalem. Of the orginal erection of 81 4.1). only the central part. of the arch remains; the sides were restored as late • as 1823, The triumphal procession of Titus occupies two reliefs on the inner sides of the janatis of the arch. The chariot bearing the conqueror is drawn by horses led by the goddess Roma. Victory holds a crown above his head, and Lictors surround him, while the procession passes under the triumphal arch. On the opposite jamb a relief displays the spoils of the Temple of Solomon— the table for the the seven-branched candlestick and the golden trumpets. The apotheosis of Titus the emperor ascending, borne by an eagle is represented on the soffit of the arch, while the friezes carry sacrificial scenes. The doings that made the fame of Titus won for him the abhorrence of the Jews, and to this day hatred of him is a part of the creed of that race, which will never forget that captives from Jerusalem marched in chains in the procession of the conquerors, slaved (12,000 of them) in the building of the Colosseum and were forced to lay the stones in the foundation of this very arch, beneath which, it is said, no Jew who respects his religion and racial tra ditions has everpassed willingly. Vespasian exacted from the Jews the same tribute which they had given to the Temple, and Domitian, who erected the arch, drove them out of Rome, from which they remained exiled until Alex ander Severus extended amnesty and permitted them to return to the Ghetto.