Urban Life And Culture 241
The Forum
According to Variae 8.31, “Who does not enjoy... visiting the forum, looking
on at honest crafts, advancing his own cases by the laws, or sometimes playing
at checkers (Palamediacis calculis)?” There is evidence for the persistence of
the forum as a central or market space in many cities, but in others the forum
may have gone out of use even before the Ostrogothic period.41 For example,
at Aquileia the old Roman wall had surrounded a large area that included a
palace, circus, forum, amphitheatre, and cathedral. Sometime in the 5th cen-
tury a new wall was built that reduced the size of the defended city by about
half; the new perimeter included the cathedral and the amphitheatre but
excluded the palace, the circus, and the forum.42 The Huns destroyed Aquileia
in 452, but some occupation continued in the reduced city where another wall
was built sometime in the 6th century. We know that Aquileia was no longer
an imperial residence and thus perhaps had no need for a palace or circus, but
why jettison the forum?
Aside from its practical uses, the forum in a Roman city served as a monu-
mental display area, filled with statues and inscriptions that testified to the
glory and/or benefaction of its major citizens. However, such inscriptions had
not been produced in large numbers since the late 4th century.43 Most of the
6th-century inscriptions that survive were found in churches, either as dedi-
cations or as epitaphs of elite members of society.44 At Rome some inscrip-
tions were erected in the Forum that record repairs undertaken by Theoderic
or his elites, including the one mentioned above that commemorates repairs
to the Colosseum.45 Tiles stamped with Theoderic’s name were used to repair
the Basilica Aemilia, the Temple of Vesta, and other buildings in the Roman
Forum.46 An inscription now in Ravenna states that one Gundila restored a
41 See Fauvinet-Ranson, “Le devenire du patrimoine monumental romain”, p. 209, who use-
fully notes that fora are not mentioned as notable places in many of our written sources,
but that does not mean that they were not still in use. id., Decor civitatis, pp. 208–13, notes
that in cities where excavations have taken place, such as Oderzo, Brescello, Luni, and
Roselle, the basilicas had gone out of use in the 4th century, but in some of those cities
the forum remained in use as a marketplace.
42 Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 216 and 291–4.
43 See, e.g., Everett, Literacy in Lombard Italy, pp. 236–40, Trout, “Inscribing identity”, and
Randsborg, The First Millennium AD, pp. 110–14.
44 See, for northern Italy, Witschel, “Der epigraphic habit”.
45 CIL 6.32094; see Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 225–6 and Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne,
pp. 198–9.
46 Pani Ermini, “Forma urbis e renovatio murorum” and Arnold, Theoderic, pp. 221–3.