“Imparare l’inglese nell’antica Roma”Docente: Dott.ssa Roberta Petrilli

The Forum was the center of public life of any Roman city and the most important was the Forum of Rome, consisting of many public

buildings of great importance.

The Roman Forum (Latin: Forum Romanum) is a small open rectangle surrounded by the ruins of ancient government buildings at the center of the city of Rome. It was for centuries the center of Roman public life: the site of triumphal processions and

elections, venue for public speeches and nucleus of commercial affairs. Here statues and monuments commemorated the city's great men. It is located in the small valley

between the Palatine and Capitoline Hills.

It is commonly thought that BC stands for "before Christ" and AD stands for the Latin phrase "anno domini" which

means "in the year of our Lord."

10 BC : ten years before the birth of Christ

10 AD : ten years after the birth of Christ

In italian we use:a.C. avanti Cristod.C. dopo Cristo

Each roman forum has four key elements

SQUARE

BASILICA

TEMPLE

CURIA

The Latin word basilica was originally used to describe a Roman public building, usually located in the forum of a Roman town.

The Roman basilica was a large roofed hall erected for transacting business and disposing of legal matters.

Section Plan

Such buildings usually contained

interior colonnades that divided

the space, giving aisles (3 o 5

usually) or arcaded spaces on

one or both sides, with an apse

at one end (or less often at each

end), where the magistrates sat,

often on a slightly raised dais.

One of the most important roman

basilica is Ulpia Basilica, built by

Trajan.

The Edict of Milan (Edictum Mediolanense) ,

issued in AD 313, was a letter signed by

emperors Constantine I and Licinius that

proclaimed religious toleration in the

Roman Empire. The emperor ordered the

construction of many religious buildings,

especially basilicas, as places of worship in

memory of Christian martyrs.

The plan was changed and Christians used these

buildings as sites for reunions and prayer.

During the Roman Republic, Roman senators met together in their senate house, which

was known as the curia, a building whose history predates the Republic. It had low

marble seats for the senators.

In the early days of Roman history, there were no buildings devoted to the worship of the gods: a "temple" consisted merely of a quadrangular space marked out on the ground by priests. Later, however, stone temples were built specially for religious ceremonies. As

time passed, these gradually became more and more rich and magnificent.

1. A Roman temple usually stood on a high platform (podium), approached at one end only by a long and steep flight of steps.

2. The colonnade, or row of columns, was characteristic of Roman temples. They usually had columns only along the front, an others at both ends

3. The deep porchway between the colonnade and the doorway was called the pronaos.

4. At the end of the building there is a room, called the cella (in Greek naos), that was the temple proper, and was quite small. It contained the statue of the god (often of enormous

size), the shrine, and other altars.

There are many differences between the Roman and Greek temple.

A classical order is one of the ancient styles of classical architectureclassical architecture, each distinguished by its proportions and characteristic profiles and details, and most readily recognizable by the

type of column.The orders' origins come from Ancient Greece, later, they were used and modified by Romans.

Each style has its proper entablature, consisting of architrave, frieze and cornice.

THE COLUMNThere are three parts of a column. A column is divided

into a shaft, its base and its capital. In classical buildings the horizontal structure that is supported on the

columns is called an entablature. The entablature is commonly divided into the architrave, the frieze and the

cornice.

A complete column and entablature consist of a number of distinct parts.

The stylobate is the flat pavement on which the columns are placed. The remainder of the base may be given one or many moldings with profiles. Common examples are the convex torus and the concave scotia, separated by

fillets or bands.

There are three distinct orders in Ancient Greek architecture: Doric, Ionic, and, later, Corinthian. These three were adopted by the Romans, who modified their capitals. The Roman adoption of the Greek orders took place in the 1st century

BC.

The capital rests on the shaft. It has a load-bearing function, which

concentrates the weight of the entablature on the supportive column,

but it primarily serves an aesthetic purpose.

The simplest form of the capital is the Doric, consisting of three parts. The

necking is the continuation of the shaft, but is visually separated by one or many

grooves. The echinus lies atop the necking. It is a circular block that bulges outwards towards the top to support the

abacus, which is a square or shaped block that in turn supports the

entablature.

The Ionic order came from eastern Greece, where its origins are entwined with the similar but little known Aeolic order. It is distinguished by slender, fluted pillars with a

large base and two opposed volutes (also called scrolls) in the echinus of the capital.

The echinus itself is decorated with an egg motif.

The Corinthian order is the most ornate of the Greek orders, characterized by a slender fluted column having an ornate capital decorated with two rows of acanthus leaves

and four scrolls.

Next to the forum often were built public baths, which are a important element of Roman civilization.

The Roman Baths drew their origin from the fusion of the greek Gymnasium with the Egyptian bath. The gymnasium in ancient Greece functioned as a training facility for

competitors in public games. It was also a place for socializing and engaging in intellectual pursuits.

A public bath was built around three principal rooms: the caldarium (hot bath), the tepidarium (warm bath) and the frigidarium (cold bath). Some thermae also featured

steam baths: the sudatorium, a moist steam bath, and the laconicum, a dry steam bath much like a modern sauna.

The water was heated by a system of underground spaces.

Roman engineers devised an ingenious system of heating the baths—the hypocaust. The floor

was raised off the ground by pillars (in latin suspensurae) and spaces were left inside the

walls so that hot air from the furnace (praefurnium) could circulate through these open

areas. Rooms requiring the most heat were placed closest to the furnace, whose heat could

be increased by adding more wood.

Romans liked very much the shows and built for this purpose many theaters and amphitheaters.

Juvenal, Roman poet active in the late 1st and early 2nd century AD, author of

the Satires, writes:

“For the People who once upon a time

handed out military command, high civil

office, legions — everything, now

restrains itself and anxiously hopes for

just two things: bread and games”

The games originally

were organized during

some religious

ceremonies, but during

the imperial time the

games became more

important than the

religious cerimonies.

The theatre was founded in ancient Greece as a simple open space for the public and then became a designated area (circular or trapezoidal), built in stone 5th- 4thcentury BC). The theatre of ancient Greece is an open structure and has three essential parts:

Cavea: area where there are seats for the public

Skenè: the playwrights began using a backdrop or scenic wall, which hung or stood behind the orchestra, which also served as an area where actors could change their costumes

Orchestra: The performance space was a simple semi-circular space, the orchestra, where the chorus danced and sang.

The characteristics of Roman theatres are similar to those of the earlier Greek theatres, but Roman theatres have specific differences:

-The Roman theatre was built upon their own foundations instead of earthen works or a hillside and being completely enclosed on all sides.

- The roman theatre has a monumental facade with arcade and pillars.

- Frons scenae: front of the skenè is erected and decorated

-Presence of curtain

The actors used masksthat could be terrifying or hilarious.

The mask was brown (male) or white (female).

A hair, attached to the mask,completed the mask.

The amphitheatre was one of the most original public buildings of Roman civilization, where the gladiatorial games were held.

Unlike the theatre (semicircular), it has an elliptical shape.

The activities in a roman amphitheatre were:

Munera = gladiators fighting

Venationes = hunting of wild animals

Naumachiae = naval battles

Arena: the arena was the area where took place fights among gladiators and between gladiators and animals

Cavea: area where there are seats for the public

Pulvinar: the imperial box was called the pulvinar and was located on the podium.

Gladiators (from Latin gladiatores) were both professional and amateur fighters in ancient Rome who fought for the entertainment of its "civilized" spectators. These matches took

place in arenas in throughout the empire and for the bulk of its history.

It's most likely that the origin of the "games" was rooted in the Estruscan custom of ritual human sacrifices to honor the dead. The first gladiatorial contest in Rome took place in 264

BC as part of one of these funeral rituals called a munus.

Gladiators were typically recruited from criminals, slaves, and prisoners of war. If selected for such duty, having lost, or never had, the rights of a citizen, there was no choice but to

comply for these "recruits". Provided that one had desirable physical appearance and abilities, the arena could be a likely destination.

Gladiators were trained in special schools called ludi which could be found as

commonly as ampitheatres throughout the empire. There were four schools in

Rome itself, the largest of which was called the Ludus Magnus which was connected

to the Colosseum by an underground tunnel.

In ancient Rome, the domus was the type of house occupied by the upper classes.

The elite classes of Roman society constructed their residences with elaborate marble

decorations, inlaid marble paneling, door jambs and columns as well as expensive

paintings and frescoes.

The domus is a combination of the “Domus italica” with a court (atrium) and a garden

(Hortus), and a greek house (peristylium).

Vestibulum (Fauces) The vestibulum was the main entryway hall of the Roman Domus. It is usually only seen in structures, however many urban homes had shops or rental space directly off the streets with the front door between.

Atrium The atrium was the most important part of the house, where guests and dependents (clientes) were greeted. The atrium was open in the centre, surrounded at least in part by high-ceilinged porticoes that often contained only sparse furnishings to give the effect of a large space. In the centre was a square roof opening called the compluvium in which rainwater could come, draining inwards from the slanted tiled roof. Directly below the compluvium was the impluvium.

An impluvium was basically a drain pool, a shallow rectangular sunken portion of the

Atrium to gather rainwater, which drained into an underground cistern. The impluvium

was often lined with marble, and around which usually was a floor of small mosaic.

Triclinium was The Roman dining room. The area had three couches, klinai, on

three sides of a low square table.

In Roman architecture, an insula (Latin for "island," plural insulae) was a kind of apartment building that housed most of

the urban citizen population of ancient Rome, including ordinary people of lower- or middle-class status (the plebs) and

all but the wealthiest from the upper-middle class (the equites).

Living quarters were typically smallest in the building's uppermost floors, with the largest and most expensive apartments

being located on the bottom floors. The insulae could be up to six or seven stories high.

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