Roman Forum of Tibur
About
Tibur's Republican-era forum, laid out on the site of today's cathedral square, held a public weigh-house with marble tables carved with cavities for standard weights, and an Augusteum, an imperial-cult building paid for by a local freedman. Merchants settled disputes over measures at the weigh-house while priests tended the emperor's cult a few steps away. In 117 CE both buildings anchor the civic heart of the city.
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
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Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →