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XXI. FIRST WALK IN THE FORUM AND BEYOND
About mid-afternoon as you return toward the Forum. In another generation, Constantine will build his great arch here, rivaled only by the triumphal arch built by another great megalomaniac, Napoleon, in Paris 1500 years later. Actually, as an aside, Napoleon’s original plans did not necessarily call for an arch in the Roman style. One of the early plans called for a gigantic stone camel or elephant to be placed in the Etoile (‘star’) in Paris, until someone thought a more standard bit of historical egomania based on the Roman model would be more appropriate, and hence you have the Arc de Triomphe.
As another aside from a modern point of view: the Arch of Constantine near the Forum wasn’t really built by him. (We're here in 285 at the moment, and Constantine at this moment is still only a 12 or 13 year old boy at Diocletian's court in Naissus—modern Izmit, Turkey.) Constantine had little interest in Rome and spent his time building a great capital as his own megalomaniac monument—Constantinople. His builders in Rome take an existing great arch, built for Trajan just after 100, and update it to look like Constantine’s. What's around the corner as we walk the streets of Rome in 285 is that Rome is a few decades from becoming a backwater—still cosmopolitan, but increasingly pathetic as Vandals and other barbarian generals become her staunchest defenders. Constantine in 324 moves the main imperial court to his new city, the former Byzantium, and the final Imperial fugues play out in places like Milan, Ravenna, Trier, and Split. In Rome, meanwhile, the imperial residence that had formerly covered virtually the entire Palatine begins to shrink as wealthy and aristocratic men buy up the land to build their own lavish residences. In this sense, ironically, the use of the Palatine starts reverting to what it was in the late Republican era when up and comers like Cicero and other Homines Novi ("new men") lived in its wealthy neighborhoods. At that time, the best address in town was still the Roman Forum itself. Top dogs like Julius Caesar and Octavian had houses where soon the great basilicas would go up, and Octavian, as he became Augustus, moved to the Palatine to found a new imperial Rome with himself as its Romulus. It was on the Palatine, after all, that the original Balatine or Palatine clan of Latins had their humble huts in a tiny settlement laid out by Romulus using two oxen and a plow.
The Forum Romanum is the true heart of ancient Rome. Today, in 300, Romans can look back at least 1,000 years, to a time before the Etruscans helped them drain the marshes amid these small hills and valleys (in fact, it will be Mussolini in the Twentieth Century who finishes the job, famously draining the Pontine Marshes—although that, and making the trains run on time, will not save him from the mob’s wrath when he lost the war). The Forum Romanum is lined on either side with monuments and temples, including the Tabularium, or administrative headquarters of the empire. At the far end, away from the Colosseum, is the Senate house (Curia) where the fate of the world is debated. Right outside, in modern times as it was in the ancient days, down the steps from the Senate house, a little to the left, is a rectangular marble monument marking the spot where the dictator Julius Caesar was murdered by his fellow senators in 44 B. C. Above, not far away, looms the Arx, a steep hill from which condemned criminals were thrown to their deaths in ancient times (and you can imagine what a grim scene that must have been, at a time when all this was still unclaimed swamp land).
During the imperial age, common criminals are most often crucified. In the Roman Forum is without question world history's smallest and most notorious prisons of all time—it is best remembered by its dreaded Medieval name, the Mamertine Prison. Located near the Arx, it's a nasty hole in the ground called the Tullianum, and important state prisoners were kept here until their execution. Among the many famous souls to pass through this one-way dungeon were Jugurtha, a North African king who defied Roman power; and Vercingetorix, a Gaulish king who did the same. Boudicca, the famous warrior queen of the Iceni, who briefly captured Britain from the Romans, took poison on the battlefield rather than die in the Tullianum. Political prisoners were tortured and stabbed, garroted, or strangled in the Tullianum. Others, like St. Peter and possibly St. Paul, were tortured here and then taken to their deaths elsewhere. There is currently (300 A.D.) no stairway here, only a hole above through which prisoners are thrown (although in those instances where they send professional wrestlers down to strangle a prisoner, a ladder might be lowered temporarily). There is lower hole through which the bodies can be thrown right into a sewer running below ground that was in neolithic times probably a sweet water spring tying into the nearby Cloaca Maxima.
Darwin leads you to a safe lodging. There is no word from Amalthea. "I left word for her to get in touch through a small temple in Subura," Darwin tells you. "We’ll sleep in luxury tonight," he says. "I was able to latch on to a minor philosopher named Polybius, who is a librarian and slave in the house of Ulpian. That’s the co-owner of the great Corporation that owns the grain works in Ostia, and the Villa of Priscus where we spent last night. It’s the same Corporation that employs your host, Meteor. The trick is—we mustn’t let on that the body you’re in is that of their employee Meteor, or he’ll get in trouble and we’ll be suspected of witchcraft. We’ll tell them I’m Drusus and we’ll tell them you’re Drusus Jr., or Drusillus. That will keep them guessing long enough while we get in and get out."
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