What's Under the Forum?

[ricus suavus]

What's under the Roman Forum? That's what we could have found out if they had not filled in what appears to be an oblong entrance hole with a staircase "apse" at one end situated in the middle of the Via Nova in front of the Basilica Julia. The "hole", which is obviously man-made as its brickwork borders and straight edges show, had originally contained debris "in-fill" from the centuries of the city's destructions but at a lower level than now. City workers, apparently considering it a safety-hazard for tourists (as if they couldn't see it!) filled it in completely to the top and smoothed it flat with the street level surface. Instead, archaeologists should have dug it out completely so we could learn exactly what was the purpose of the subterranean chamber that must be down there and how far under the forum pavement it extended. Now we will probably NEVER know! But my own theory is that since it is the only such opening in the Forum and it is near the shrine of Vesta and the palace of the Vestal Virgins, it actually was the chamber in which Vestals were imprisoned to starve to death after losing their virginity. I know Plutarch claims this was done in a chamber by the Colline Gate, but he has been found to be archaeologically inaccurate about other details; and just thinking about it, why go to all that trouble and expense of escorting a disgraced Vestal through the city when it would have been much more convenient and just as noticeable to have her entombed alive in the center of the city?! There would have been space for a crowd to gather and watch the gloomily scandalous kind of spectacle Romans loved. Since the pit is too big to have been covered with a door, the door sealing her in must have been in an underground entrance to the chamber. This seems to be the only explanation for such an unusually and otherwise inconveniently placed opening in the center of an ancient major thoroughfare of the city for which there are no contemporary accounts of its nature or use from what I know.

[Antiochus of Seleucia]

Do you have a link to the story? I would like to read more details. Personally, without reading the story, I would guess that it would be an entrance to the Cloaca Maxima.

 

The great Roman sewer or Cloaca Maxima, which still drains the Forum, was built to handle rainfall runoff

[dianamt54]

Didn't Sulla build on top of the Forum? I read somehere (sorry about that I seem to read a lot and then can't remember where) that Sulla raised it so many feet??

 

 

What's under the Roman Forum? That's what we could have found out if they had not filled in what appears to be an oblong entrance hole with a staircase "apse" at one end situated in the middle of the Via Nova in front of the Basilica Julia. The "hole", which is obviously man-made as its brickwork borders and straight edges show, had originally contained debris "in-fill" from the centuries of the city's destructions but at a lower level than now. City workers, apparently considering it a safety-hazard for tourists (as if they couldn't see it!) filled it in completely to the top and smoothed it flat with the street level surface. Instead, archaeologists should have dug it out completely so we could learn exactly what was the purpose of the subterranean chamber that must be down there and how far under the forum pavement it extended. Now we will probably NEVER know! But my own theory is that since it is the only such opening in the Forum and it is near the shrine of Vesta and the palace of the Vestal Virgins, it actually was the chamber in which Vestals were imprisoned to starve to death after losing their virginity. I know Plutarch claims this was done in a chamber by the Colline Gate, but he has been found to be archaeologically inaccurate about other details; and just thinking about it, why go to all that trouble and expense of escorting a disgraced Vestal through the city when it would have been much more convenient and just as noticeable to have her entombed alive in the center of the city?! There would have been space for a crowd to gather and watch the gloomily scandalous kind of spectacle Romans loved. Since the pit is too big to have been covered with a door, the door sealing her in must have been in an underground entrance to the chamber. This seems to be the only explanation for such an unusually and otherwise inconveniently placed opening in the center of an ancient major thoroughfare of the city for which there are no contemporary accounts of its nature or use from what I know.