Nicomedia Forum
About
Nicomedia's residents were expanding their forum with a grand new wing when a small, unconsecrated shrine to the Mother of the Gods stood in the way. Pliny asked Trajan whether it could simply be moved, since the temple predated Roman rites of consecration. Trajan approved without hesitation, and the expansion moved forward around 112 CE, giving Nicomedia a larger civic square within a few years of Trajan's death. Coordinates mark an approximate city-center placement.
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.
In ancient writing
- Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 10.49
Reports that Nicomedia's new forum, under construction beside the old one, was obstructed by an unconsecrated shrine of the Mother of the Gods.
- Trajan, Epistulae (replies) 10.50
Grants permission to relocate the temple to make way for the new forum.
Sources
Nearby
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