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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 March 2025
The Forum Augustum represents one of the most important examples of the public and material dissemination of Augustan ideology. This paper offers a new model for understanding how the Forum's spatial and architectural design communicated that ideology. Departing from scholarly emphasis on the Forum's statuary programme, it examines how the Forum's spaces set up a series of contrasts that structured visitors’ experiences. In the porticoes, the extensive statue programme granted viewers a wide range of choices about what they could see. In the central square and hemicycles (exedrae), however, visitors were compelled by the paucity of material to encounter certain images and ideas. This argument shows a new way of understanding the Forum, where movement into and between certain spaces structured how Augustan ideology was communicated, received, and understood.
I am grateful to Scott Smith, Clifford Ando, Catherine Kearns, James Johnson, and Katherine Clarke for their comments on earlier versions of this project. The feedback I received at CAMWS 2022 and the Ancient Societies Workshop in 2017 also helped me take the argument in fruitful directions. Any mistakes or omissions are my own. All translations are also my own.
1 Ov. Fast. 5.550–66. Figure 1: C. Ahenobarbus, ‘Plan of the Forum of Augustus with Temple of Mars the Avenger’, <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_of_Augustus#/media/File:Forum_auguste_plan.png>, accessed 30 October 2022. Used under the terms of CC BY-SA 3.0.
2 Zanker, P., The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor, MI, 1988), 214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Favro, D., The Urban Image of Augustan Rome (Cambridge, 1996)Google Scholar; Shaya, J., ‘The Public Life of Monuments: The Summi Viri of the Forum of Augustus’, AJA 117, no. 1 (2013), 84Google Scholar; 1–2, 7; Russell, A., The Politics of Public Space in Republican Rome (Cambridge, 2016), 17–18Google Scholar, 23. See also Laurence, R., Roman Pompeii: Space and Society (New York, 2007)Google Scholar, Laurence, R. and Newsome, D.J. (eds.), Rome, Ostia, Pompeii: Movement and Space (Oxford, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Östenberg, I., Mamberg, S., and Bjørnebye, J., ‘Introduction’, in Östenberg, I., Malmberg, S., and Bjornebye, J. (eds.), The Moving City: Processions, Passages and Promenades in Ancient Rome (London, 2015), 1–3Google Scholar.
4 Shaya (n. 3), 84. O'Sullivan, T., ‘Augustan Literary Tours: Walking and Reading the City’, in Östenberg, I., Malmberg, S., and Bjornebye, J. (eds.), The Moving City: Processions, Passages and Promenades in Ancient Rome (London, 2015), 111–12Google Scholar, discusses how the act of reading about Rome and the act of moving through the city physically suggest ‘a broader cultural metaphor connecting movement and mental activity’.
5 A. Barchiesi, ‘Martial Arts: Mars Ultor in the Forum Augustum: A Verbal Monument with a Vengeance’, in G. Herbert-Brown (ed.), Ovid's Fasti: Historical Readings at its Bimillennium (Oxford, 2007), 3. Shaya (n. 3), 83–4, explains how the seeming permanence of public monuments displaces all other narratives. In reality, ‘meanings evolve as viewers bring new concerns and understandings to them’.
6 Cf. C. B. Rose, ‘The Parthians in Augustan Rome’, AJA 109, No. 1 (Jan., 2005), 46–7, 59–61 63, for related work on the Forum Romanum, as well as G. Sumi, Ceremony and Power: Performing Politics in Rome between Republic and Empire (Ann Arbor, MI, 2005), for a detailed account of rituals in the built environment of Rome. T. Stevenson, ‘The Forum of Augustus: Reshaping Collective Memory About War and the State’, in M. De Marre, and R. K. Bhola (eds.), Making and Unmaking Ancient Memory (London, 2022), 80–1, analyzes the different experiences one could have in the Forum Augustum and what sightlines were visible as one moved through the space.
7 Cf. R. Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford, 1939), 448–50; and K. Galinsky, Augustan Culture: An Interpretive Introduction (Princeton, 1996), 204.
8 A. T. Smith, The Political Landscape: Constellations of Authority in Early Complex Polities
(Berkeley, CA, 2003), 107–9.
9 Galinsky (n. 7), 9.
10 J. Geiger, The First Hall of Fame: A Study of the Statues in the Forum Augustum
(Leiden, 2008), 8, 84–5.
11 A. Smith, ‘Rendering the Political Aesthetic: Political Legitimacy in Urartian Representations of the Built Environment’, Anthropological Archeology 19 (2000), 136.
12 H. Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford, 1991), 82–3.
13 Lefebvre (n. 12), 82–5; Smith (n. 11), 138. Cf. Russell (n. 3), 17; E. Macaulay-Lewis, ‘The City in Motion: Walking for Transport and Leisure in the City of Rome’, in R. Laurence, and D. Newsome (eds.), Rome, Ostia, Pompeii: Movement and Space (Oxford, 2017), 264.
14 M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York, 1977), 152.
15 D. J. Newsome, ‘Introduction: Making Movement Meaningful’, in R. Laurence, and D. Newsome (eds.), Rome, Ostia, Pompeii: Movement and Space (Oxford, 2017), 5–6.
16 Lefebvre (n. 12), 73.
17 A. J. Droge, ‘Finding His Niche: On the “Autoapotheosis” of Augustus’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, 56/57 (2011/2012), 85.
18 M. Spannagel, Exemplaria Principis: Untersuchungen zu Entstehung und Ausstattung des Augustusforums (Heidelberg, 1999), 16–20, 35–6.
19 A. E. Gordon, Illustrated Introduction to Latin Epigraphy (Berkeley, CA, 1983), 92; L. Richardson, jr., A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (London, 1992), 39; E. A. Dumser, ‘Forum Augusti’, Digital Augstan Rome, D.G. Romano (ed.), Archeological Mapping Lab, University of Arizona.<digitalaugustanrome.org/records/forum-augusti>, accessed 2013.
20 Macaulay-Lewis (n. 13), 275–6.
21 Zanker (n. 2), 6–7. Archaeological investigations show that this area of Rome had been a dense residential zone, fitted along the Quirinal Hill on a series of terraces. These homes were demolished, while the hill itself was levelled, and the area was transformed into a ‘strongly geometric’ and highly planned public plaza, creating a new urban landscape for Romans to negotiate: A. Delfino, ‘Le preesistenze del Foro di Augusto’, in R. Meneghini and R. S. Valenzani (eds.), Scavi di Fori Imperiali: Il Foro di Augusto, L'area centrale (Rome, 2010), 11, 29–31.
22 Favro (n. 3), 170–1, 174; Zanker (n. 2), 7; L. Ungaro, ‘The Forum of Augustus’, in L. Ungaro (ed.), The Museum of the Imperial Forums in Trajan's Market (Rome, 2007), 125–6; F. Coarelli, Rome and Environs: An Archaeological Guide (Berkeley, 2014), 108–9.
23 Newsome (n. 15), 22–3.
24 Russell (n. 3), 45–6, 48, 58–61.
25 E. Macaulay-Lewis, ‘Political Museums: Porticos, Gardens and the Public Display of Art in Ancient Rome’, in Susan Bracken, et al. (eds.), Collecting and Dynastic Ambition (Cambridge, 2009), 1–8. Macaulay-Lewis (n. 25), 9–11, also notes that, starting with Pompey's theatre, more internally coherent programmes of sculpture and art become common, an obvious precursor to the centralized messaging of the Forum. J. R. Senseney, ‘Adrift toward Empire: the Lost Porticus of Octavia in Rome and the Origins of the Imperial Fora’, Journal for the Society of Architectural Historians (2011), 421–2, 425, 435, gives more details on the predecessors to monuments such as the Forum Augustum.
26 J. Ganzert, Der Mars-Ultor-Temple auf Dem Augustus Forum in Rom (Mainz, 1996), 283–4; Russell (n. 3), 191–3. I agree with Geiger (n. 10), 10–11, to a degree, that the Forum was a highly public, and therefore relatively accessible, space. However, the insular nature of the complex and the lack of major access points into or through it poses questions about how open and ‘democratic’ a space it was.
27 See E. Carnabuci, ‘Forma e Funzione del Foro di Augusto’, in R. Meneghini and R. S. Valenzani (eds.), Scavi dei Fori Imperiali: Il Foro di Augusto, L'area Centrale’ (Rome, 2010), 129–37; and A. Claridge, Rome: An Oxford Archeological Guide (Oxford, 2010), 160–1, 164, 166, 167, and Figure 61, for some ideas about how the two spaces connected.
28 W. Fuchs, ‘New Evidence for the Design and Urban Integration of the Forum of Caesar, Forum of Augustus, Curia Julia, and Chalcidicum’, Journal of Roman Archaeology, 34 (2021), 520–4, 526–7. Figure 2: Fuchs (n. 28), Figure 10.
29 Ibid., 518.
30 Ibid., 527. The interaxial distances and the evidence for the ‘harmonization’ of the two spaces further rules out the possibility of a largely blank wall between the two spaces: Fuchs (n. 28), 526.
31 Ibid., 532–3. Coarelli (n. 22), Figure 27, reconstructs the area in a way that implies that the two Fora would have been sealed off from each other, prohibiting movement between the two spaces.
32 Fuchs (n. 28), 532–4. Zanker agrees with the idea that the ‘main entrance’ to the Forum was located ‘in the southern, unexcavated part’ of the complex: P. Zanker, Forum Augustum: das Bildprogramm (Tübingen, 1968), 6.
33 Fuchs (n. 28), 511. I remain uncertain about Fuchs’ proposal that a large chalcidicum, which Fuchs defines as a ‘monumental vestibule’ that ‘formed a transition’ between a public space and an ‘adjacent structure or building’, provided the new entrance into the Forum of Caesar from this direction, given the lack of direct archaeological evidence and the need to rely on the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century designs of two later churches: Fuchs (n. 28), 534–3.
34 Ibid., 531. Stevenson, (n. 6.), 78–9, similarly emphasizes the connections between the two Fora and the creation of a larger ‘Julian precinct’ near the old Forum Romanum.
35 Coarelli (n. 22), 164.
36 Ganzert (n. 26), 287, suggests the presence of a central area, but is more cautious about a hard division.
37 L. Ungaro (n. 22), 126–7. Cf. Claridge (n. 27), 52, 74, and 375, for descriptions of opus sectile, and 42–3, for the definitions of the giallo antico, Africano, and cipollino marbles.
38 Y. F. Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis, MN, 1977),
52, 55.
39 Tuan (n. 38), 59–60.
40 Geiger (n. 10), 117–20.
41 Favro (n. 3), 218. CIL 6.8.3 and Geiger (n. 10), 117–62, provide the most up-to-date versions of the Forum's inscriptions.
42 I thus agree with T. J. Luce's, ‘Livy, Augustus, and the Forum Augustum,’ in K. Raaflaub and M. Toher (eds.), Between Republic and Empire: Interpretations of Augustus and His Principate (London, 1990), 126–8, interpretation of Vell. Pat. 2.39.2. For an alternative view of this passage and what was in the attic storeys, cf. C. Nicolet, Space, Geography, and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (Ann Arbor, 1991), 42–3.
43 Shaya (n. 3), 87–8.
44 Zanker (n. 2), 12–14; E. La Rocca, ‘Il programma figurativo del Foro di Augusto’, in L. Ungaro and M. Milella (eds.), I luoghi del consenso imperiale. Il Foro di Augusto, Il Foro di Traiano (Rome, 1995), 77–8; Coarelli (n. 22), 111; Meneghini and R. S. Valenzani I Fori imperiali gli scavi del commune di Roma, 1991–2007 (Rome, 2007), 55.
45 J. Stamper, The Architecture of Roman Temples (New York, 2005), 137; Ungaro (n. 22), 126. See Figure 2, photo by the author.
46 Geiger (n. 10), 61.
47 Geiger (n. 10), 70–2, 186–7.
48 Droge (n. 17), 93–4; Stevenson (n. 6), 82–3.
49 Ibid., 84, 87–8.
50 Cf. Zanker (n. 32), 15, 18–19.
51 T. O'Sullivan (n. 4), 116–18. Cf. Verg. Aen. 8.306–12.
52 Geiger (n. 10), 181.
53 Ibid., 78–9.
54 Russell (n. 3), 188–90.
55 Carnabuci (n. 27), 135–6; Ungaro (n. 22), 151. The actual bases were not found, but excavations did uncover foundational material for them: Carnabuci (n. 27), 135–6.
56 This determination is based on Ungaro (n. 22), Figures 144–5, and (n. 58), page 151, Figure 198. This argument also cautions against Droge's (n. 17), 91, contention that an ‘invisible axis’ between the two central niches in the upper exedrae connected below the temple's pediment. In looking at the Forum's architectural plans, this axis is visible. However, the porticoes, statues, and entrances to the exedrae would have blocked one's view of this axis at ground level.
57 Cf. Ungaro (n. 22), Figure 142.
58 Ibid., 126–7; L. Ungaro, ‘The Memory of Antiquity’, in L. Ungaro (ed.), The Museum of the Imperial Forums in Trajan's Market (Rome: 2007), 163.
59 Macaulay-Lewis (n. 13), 277–8.
60 E. La Rocca, ‘La nuova immagine dei fori Imperiali. Appunti in margine agli scavi’, MDAIR 108 (2001), 112–13; Geiger (n. 10), 118.
61 La Rocca (n. 60), 117, 122. Cf. Claridge (n. 27), for her descriptions of this type of floor.
62 Cf. Carnabuci (n. 27), 123–6.
63 R. Meneghini and R. S. Valenzani (n. 44), 55.
64 Ungaro (n. 58), Figure 152; Coarelli (n. 22), 110.
65 O'Sullivan (n. 4), 121–2.
66 See, for example, Q. Caecilius Metellus’ elogium: CIL 6.8.3 40942, b.
67 Ungaro (n. 58), 163; Geiger (n. 10), 100–2, 123, argues that Aeneas held his father, son, and the Penates. Ovid says that Mars sees Aeneas ‘wearied by a dear burden’ [Aenean oneratum pondere caro], a vague phrase that clarifies little: Ov. Fast. 5.563. Cf. Spannagel (n. 18), 276–80, for the arguments for the number of statues on the upper storey and the inclusion of Aeneas in it, at the far right of the exedra.
68 E. La Rocca (n. 60), 122; Carnabuci (n. 27), 103;
69 Spannagel (n. 18), 282–3.
70 Ibid., 86.
71 Zanker (n. 32), 7. Ideology was also concentrated in the so-called hall of the colossus, a small room at the northern end of the northwestern portico. Given the lack of archaeological finds, it is difficult to draw any major conclusions about this room. This space was concentrated on a large central statue, either of Caesar or the Genius Augusti, suggesting a focus on ideas surrounding pietas. The lack of clarity around the statue's identification and the probable lack of public access to this religious space, however, limit its importance to the general public's experience of the Forum. Cf. Spannagel (n. 18), 306–7, 309, 316; La Rocca (n. 44), Figure 75; Ungaro (n. 22), 126–7; (n. 58), 144, 147.
72 F. Sear, Roman Architecture (Cornell, NY, 1982), 49, 84; D. Favro, ‘Reading Augustan Rome: Materiality as Rhetoric in Situ’, Advances in the Study of Rhetoric, 20 (2017), 181–3. Cf. Suet. Aug. 28.3.
73 Favro (n. 3), 183.
74 Ibid., 184–7.
75 Ibid., 186.
76 Zanker (n. 32), 12.
77 Luce (n. 42), 126–8.
78 P. Herz, ‘Zum Tempel des Mars Ultor’, in J. Ganzert (ed.), Der Mars-Ultor-Tempel auf dem Augustusforum in Rom (Mainz, 1996), 279; Shaya (n. 3), 88–9.
79 Nicolet (n. 42), 41–2; Senseney (n. 25), 430.
80 Spannagel (n. 18), 357; Stevenson (n. 6), 72, 74.
81 Zanker (n. 32), 14; Stamper (n. 45), 133; Droge (n. 17), 97.
82 Ov. Fast. 5.559–60; Barchiesi (n. 5), 6–7.
83 Spannagel (n. 18), 352.
84 Mon. Anc. 29; Zanker (n. 2), 196; D. Fishwick, ‘Iconography and Ideology: the Statue Group in the Temple of Mars Ultor’, American Journal of Ancient History 2, 1 (2003), 75–6, 92.
85 Spannagel (n. 18), 88–9, 224.
86 Some of Spannagel's arguments – namely, his assertion about the equivalency of the spolia opima (the arms that signified Romulus’ defeat of a foreign enemy in single combat) and the return of the Parthian standards – stretch the evidence too much: Spannagel (n. 18), 231–52.
87 J. Ganzert (n. 26), 286–7; E. La Rocca, ‘Passeggiando intorno ai Fori Imperiali’, in L. Haselberger and J. Humphrey (eds.), Imaging Ancient Rome. Documentation—Visualization—Imagination (Portsmouth, RI, 2006), 128, 130. See Figure 3, photo by the author.
88 Richardson (n. 19), 161; Zanker (n. 2), 197, 200–1; Galinsky (n. 7), 208–9; Ungaro (n. 58), Figure 166. Droge, by contrast, identifies this figure as a divine or semi-divine Augustus: Droge (n. 17), 98–100. While it is compelling, I find problematic Droge's suggestion that Augustus would assert his divinity on arguably the most important Augustan monument in Rome, given his reluctance to be worshipped in Italy. Zanker sensibly suggests that ‘Mars’ here might have attributes that alluded to Augustus, implying a sublimation of the god and princeps, or a version of Mars with marks of Augustan affinity: Zanker (n. 32), 14, 22.
89 G. Alföldy, ‘L'iscrizione dedicatoria del Tempio di Mars Ultor,’ in G. Alfoldy (ed.), Studi sull'Epigrafia augustea e tiberiana di Roma (Rome: 1992), 18–21.
90 Ibid., 21–2, 30–1.
91 Ibid., 30–1.
92 Ibid.. In Ov. Fast. 5.567, Mars looks upon his ‘temple, adorned with the Augustan name [Augusto praetextum nomine templum]’, further supporting the notion that Augustus’ name was prominently displayed as part of the temple's dedicatory inscription.
93 Geiger (n. 10), 81, Shaya (n. 3), 91–2.
94 Zanker (n. 2), 112–14, makes a similar argument relying on the ‘integrated set of images’ that Augustan monuments used.
95 Shaya (n. 3), 94.
96 Droge (n. 17), 105–9.
97 For the Forum's legal uses, see Suet. Aug. 29.1; R. Meneghini and Velanzani (n. 44), 56–7; and Carnabuci (n. 27), 110–11, Figure 8 and fn. 9. Wax tablets from Herculaneum have revealed some of the details of these legal procedures, including the designation of the northwestern exedra as the court of the praetor urbanus, the legal official in charge of cases involving Roman citizens, and the southeastern exedra for the praetor peregrinus, the legal official in charge of cases involving foreigners. This division of labour channelled the movement of Roman citizens and foreigners to distinct parts of the Forum. Foreigners had to pass by the summi viri and plead their case in front of the statue of Romulus. The siting of the peregrine court before such a symbol of Roman conquest connected the Forum's legal functionality with its ideology of imperial expansion.
98 Gruen, E., ‘Augustus and the Making of the Principate’, in Galinsky, K. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus (New York, 2005), 33Google Scholar, 47.
99 Spannagel (n. 18), 26–7. Even if the events in 2 bce were a dedication of the temple alone, the rest of the Forum was part of this celebration, since it officially opened the most important structure in the complex.
100 Herbert-Brown (n. 5), 98–9; Meneghini and Valenzani (n. 44), 47.
101 Ibid., 51.
102 Sumi (n. 6), 251.
103 Droge (n. 17), 95.
104 Meneghini and Valenzani (n. 44), 45, estimate that the entire area of the Forum complex was around 5,300 square metres (400 x 400 Roman feet, 120 x 120 metres) and the central area was around 1,800 square metres, or about 37% of the total complex.
105 Cf. La Rocca (n. 87), 142–3, who makes a similar point for the imperial Fora as a whole.
106 As Schmitzer, U., ‘Der Kaiser auf dem Forum. Das Forum Augustum als gebauter und geschriebener Raum öffentlicher Kommunikation’, in Mundt, F. (ed.), Kommunikationsräume im kaiserzeitlichen Rom (Berlin, 2012), 87–8Google Scholar, notes, when future triumphatores arrived at the Forum, most of those processions could not fit inside. The Forum's atmosphere thus changed depending on how many were in it.
107 Barchiesi (n. 5), 5–6.