Forum Boarium
The Forum Boarium, the old cattle market of ancient Rome, holds the earliest surviving marble building in the city. It is a small round temple, ringed with columns. For centuries, people called it the Temple of Vesta.
That is a strange honor for a building in a place where animals were bought and sold. But the Forum Boarium was never only a market. Merchants, priests, gladiators and soldiers all had business on this ground.
Why did so many different parts of Roman life gather in one patch of land beside the river? Which legends gave the place its sacred weight? And what happened here that the Romans themselves found deeply disturbing?
Rome's original docks, known as Portus Tiberinus, once lay on a level stretch of ground beside the Tiber. That ground sat in a hollow between three hills: the Capitoline, the Palatine and the Aventine.
The Romans used the site as a cattle market, a kind of forum venalium, meaning a place where goods were sold. Boats arrived at the docks, and animals and merchandise changed hands nearby.
Next to the docks stood the Pons Aemilius, the earliest stone bridge across the Tiber. A harbor and a river crossing in the same spot made for intense commercial activity.
Some ancient sources also place a statue by the sculptor Myron in the forum. It had been looted from Aegina. One account mentions a cow, though the work may actually have been a group showing Theseus defeating the Minotaur. That subject would have suited a cattle market well.
A giant named Cacus lived in a cave at the foot of the Aventine hill, according to Roman legend. One day the hero Hercules came to the area driving the oxen of Geryon. Cacus robbed him of them.
Hercules killed the giant. The people living on the Palatine hill then honored him as a god. They are said to have dedicated an altar to him on the spot.
That altar became the Ara Maxima, a massive monument dating to the 6th or 5th century BC. It made the forum a religious centre as well as a commercial one, and it stood alongside the later Temple of Hercules Victor.
The altar's tufa stone core has survived. Today it is kept inside the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin.
In 264 BC, the Forum Boarium hosted the first gladiatorial contest ever held at Rome. It was not entertainment in the later sense. It was a munus, a funeral gift for the dead, part of an aristocratic burial ritual.
Two brothers, Marcus and Decimus Junius Brutus Scaeva, staged the fight to honor their dead father. Three pairs of gladiators took part.
A darker ritual followed in 215 BC. A series of events had been read as warnings of great disaster, and the Romans chose to appease the gods with human sacrifice. Four victims were buried alive under the forum: a Gaulish man and woman, and a Greek man and woman.
The Roman historian Livy described this in the fifth book of his History of Rome, written about 200 years afterward. The victims were lowered into a stone vault that had already been polluted by human victims once before. Livy called it a practice most repulsive to Roman feelings.
Only when the gods were judged to be satisfied did the commander Marcus Claudius Marcellus act. He sent 1500 men from Ostia, who had been enrolled for service with the fleet, to garrison Rome.
The round temple takes its name from Hercules Victor, meaning Hercules the Winner. It also carries the title Hercules Olivarius, the Olive-Bearer. Its date is the 2nd century BC.
A ring of Corinthian columns surrounds a cylindrical inner chamber, called the cella, and the whole structure rests on a tuff foundation. The architrave and roof that the columns once carried have disappeared.
A few steps away stands the Temple of Portunus, a rectangular building raised between 100 and 80 BC. It sits on a podium reached by a flight of steps, with a portico of four columns at the front.
The four Ionic columns of the portico stand free. Six columns along each long side and four at the rear are attached to the walls of the cella. The builders used tuff and travertine and finished the surface with stucco.
For centuries this second temple was known by a different name, the Temple of Fortuna Virilis.
Late in the life of the Western Roman Empire, shops spread across the old forum until they overtook the area. Both temples were deconsecrated and converted into Christian churches.
Across the street stands the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin. It houses the Bocca della Verità.
Modern care for the site began in the late 1990s. The Soprintendenza speciale per i beni archeologici di Roma worked in partnership with World Monuments Fund to conserve both temples. The project also brought new landscaping to the site.
One monument was left out of that work. The Arch of Janus is still unrestored.
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Common questions
What was the Forum Boarium?
It was the cattle market of ancient Rome, a forum venalium on level ground beside the Tiber, between the Capitoline, Palatine and Aventine hills.
Why was the area so busy with trade?
It was the site of Rome's original docks, Portus Tiberinus, and sat next to the Pons Aemilius, the earliest stone bridge across the Tiber.
What happened at the Forum Boarium in 264 BC?
The first gladiatorial contest at Rome took place there. Marcus and Decimus Junius Brutus Scaeva staged it as a funeral gift for their dead father, with three pairs of gladiators.
What happened to the four people buried under the forum in 215 BC?
A Gaulish man and woman and a Greek man and woman were buried alive in a stone vault as a human sacrifice to appease the gods after events seen as portents of disaster.
Which temples survive in the Forum Boarium?
The round Temple of Hercules Victor, from the 2nd century BC, and the rectangular Temple of Portunus, built between 100 and 80 BC. Both were later converted to Christian churches.
What is still unrestored at the site?
The Arch of Janus. The late-1990s conservation project covered the two temples and the landscaping, but not the arch.
All sources
6 references cited across the entry
- 1Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, (William Smith, ed.) Boston, Little Brown & Co.
- 4BookA New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient RomeL. Richardson Jr. — JHU Press — 1 October 1992
- 6Forum Boarium GuideWorld Monuments Fund