Forum Beneventanum
About
Beneventum's forum anchored the Latin colony founded on this ground in 268 BCE, sitting where the town's decumanus crossed its cardo. By Trajan's reign brick civic buildings and shrines to the imperial cult ringed the square on every side. The complex sat roughly 300 meters from the new Arch of Trajan, at the heart of the colony. Wartime bombing later exposed massive brick foundations that archaeologists have only partly excavated.
What happened here
Business starts at first light. The magistrates' tribunal opens, cases are called, and the crowd that gathers to listen is half the point of coming. Money-changers work from tables under the porticoes, weighing coin from a dozen mints against the local rate. Notices are painted on the walls and whitewashed over when they go stale: elections, gladiator shows, a lost slave, a house to let. By the sixth hour the heat empties the open square and the arcades fill instead. Statues of the town's benefactors stand between the columns, and the men who paid for them expect to be greeted by name. Public slaves sweep at dusk. The forum is where a Roman town keeps its records, its gossip and its self-regard in the same place.
Sources
Nearby
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