Forum of Salona

ForumDalmatia · Solin, Croatia, Salona archaeological parkBuilt 5 BCE

About

Salona's forum measured 45 by 70 meters and rose as the city was promoted to Roman colony and capital of Dalmatia around the turn of the millennium. It anchored civic life here for four centuries straight, housing magistrates, temples and market stalls for the fastest-growing city on the eastern Adriatic. By 117 CE it had already served Dalmatia's governors for more than a century.

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 Elder, Natural History 3.141-142
Names Salona as the seat of a conventus (judicial assize) for the Delmatae, whose fighting men were organized into 342 decuriae, underscoring the city's role as an administrative hub centered on its forum.