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Civil Basilica of Cuicul
About
This roughly 532-square-meter hall off the Old Forum served as courtroom and exchange, funded by the city priest Caius Julius Crescens Didius Crescentianus in the year of Lucius Verus's death. Litigants and merchants shared one long colonnaded space where a magistrate could hear a property dispute in the morning and grain brokers could strike deals by afternoon. Its construction rounded out the forum precinct with the last major public building the founding-era square would ever receive intact. It arrived more than half a century after Cuicul's colonists first broke ground under Nerva.
What happened here
This is the town's indoor hall, and in winter it is where everyone goes. Court sits at one end on a raised platform, screened off with wooden partitions when the case is private. Around it, business goes on regardless — contracts witnessed, cargoes argued over, bankers at their tables, men sheltering from rain with nothing to do. The roof is carried on two storeys of columns, and the upper gallery is a good place to watch a trial without being counted as part of the crowd. Advocates are paid by reputation and perform accordingly; a good one draws an audience the way an actor does. Noise carries badly, which everyone complains about. Building one is the standard way for a rich citizen to be remembered.
Sources
Nearby
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