I’m an idiot.
OK.
I admit it.
I visited the Forum and did not take any photographs. Anyway, I have to admit I entered the Forum a bit emotional. I had read about it all my life and now I was walking into the center of the empire.
Wow, double wow.
It was a bright sunny day, and the tourists were out in force. I only had a few days in Rome, where my wife met me there after a business trip I took to Germany. Why a few days? Why didn’t we spend two weeks? Want me to say I’m an idiot again?
In Rome we stayed in the Rose Garden Palace Hotel, just a few blocks from Borghesi Park. We should have taken the Metro to the Forum, but I looked at the map and decided that we could walk to the forum. Big mistake. I am originally from Chicago. All the streets are in a grid system. Chicago is great for directions. Get lost in one part of town, and you could be ten miles North and know what street to take to get you back to your original spot. But venturing out from that city, I discovered that everything is not in a grid – especially Roma, Italy. We walked and got lost on side streets that always seemed to angle off in a different direction than we expected. We stopped at one intersection and (this is the truth…I swear) there were tourists on every corner consulting their maps and pointing up at street signs. It was really kind of funny, especially when we found out that we could have easily taken a metro train to get there and would have dropped us off just across the street.
Yes, Rome is ultra modern. But any modern city is a reflection of what has come before. I am sure that many streets still meander much as they did a thousand years before.
The ‘great explorer’ (me) was determined to do it on foot.
We wandered through street after street and got lost. We finally came to one corner, and my wife decided to ask a cafe owner. I was slightly ahead of her, and as soon as I looked to the right…there was the collossium. I can’t quite explain the feeling I had. Basically I was overwhelmed. At the end of the street I could only see a small portion of it, as much as the two side of the street would allow me to, but I knew instantly what it was. I turned to tell my wife but she had already asked for directions from an owner of a small cafe, and by the way he stretched out his arm to the sky showed he was slightly irritated by the question for he knew that he was drawfed by the collossium that was just down the street. In fact you could say it was in his backyard, and he more than likely got asked that question by hundreds of ‘out-of-towners.’
His answer except it was in Italian was kind of…”What za matter…can’t you see it? It’s hanging right over us.”
We walked down the street in its direction, tall apartments on our left and right on a small street barely bigger than the width of a car. I could hear voices. Looking up voices from the second and third floors echoed down. Kids laughing, mothers asking what Dad wanted for dinner, a voice of a workman, pounding of a hammer met our ears…you know…life. This is what have must have been then as well, in ancient Rome, as you walked through the tenements of that ancient city. Voices echoing down from the second and third floors. Kids laughing, Mater asking Pater want he wants for dinner, a voice of a workman, pounding of a hammer…voices coming out from the windows, the doorways…you know…even then life goes on.
Things change…yet they don’t.
I went to Rome not to see the modern city, nor the medieval one at that. I wanted to see something of Ancient Rome, to get a feeling of the past by walking the same ground. Is this really possible? Can one really experience the sights and sounds of a city that is now only memory and ruins?
I take that back…its not even in memory. There are no living people to speak of it. Everyone is dead – long dead. Everyone associated with it is gone off the face of the Earth.
You might as well say you want to talk to a person who lived in New York in 1880.
It — just — can’t — be — done.
What we know of Rome is recorded in snippets of stone and paper…pieces of jig-saw puzzle that can only be put together through archeology.
What is left of Ancient Rome NOW is covered by a modern metropolis that has changed and grown like a living organism. Everything they attempt to build something new they find something of the past — car parks and underground rails have discovered temple, palaces, and burial sites. There is a warehouse storing opera costumes that sits on top of a temple to Mithas (the bull god), and a bookstore that if you take the back steps down into a basement, you descend into a city street of a tiled road, walls, doors and windows — all underground — a city underneath a city.
Rome is like a layer cake.
On the surface, you have to imagine what the ancient city looked like. You have to look thorugh the medieval, renaissance, and 19th, 19th and 20th century influences. Occasionally if you walk through the city, spots are uncovered, holes in the ground to show the past.
Look into a hole and there is a temple. Cool.
History beneath your feet!
Like the Forum by the way.
I have to be honest with you, the Forum was hard for me. Today it is like a bombed out building, stripped laid bare, and a skeleton of what every glory it had. This was the city hub, the central place where Roman Civilization was built around it. At this spot you have the remants of temples to Castor and Pollux, Saturn, Vesta, Antonius and Faustina and many others. There is the Rostra where politicians made speeches, the Umbilicus Urbi (the designated center of the republic and center of the empire). The processional street called the Via Sacra is there, and a sacred pool venerated by the Romans and its reason for veneration forgotton over time. Frankly, any source of fresh water at that time would have been venerated — don’t you think?
Frankly looking at the Forum today does not tell you what it looked like in its glory. It does not tell you what it looked like during the republic or the empire. Steps are missing, marble facing has long disappeared to be stolen for the buildings of other centuries.
The Forum is like looking at an old man and trying to imagine him in his youth.
Am I telling you not to visit? NO!
Read Ben Hur once in your life and VISIT ROME!
My suggestion is when your there…hire a guide. Don’t worry about the cost. It it worth it and I strongly suggest you invest the money. Did I do it? No. I wish I did, but I did listen over the shoulder of many guides as they talked to their customers.
I know…a big cheapskate.
I listened to one guide who stood in front of the Arch of Septimius Severus in celebration of the emperor’s triumph over the Parthians and the Osroeni in 195 CE and 197CE. “It’s propaganda you know,” he said pointing out the prisoners in chains on the relief. “It’s to make the people of Rome to feel better, to feel safe and secure. Kind of like what your George Bush does in showing pictures of prisoners that your army captures.”
I stopped by another guide. He is an older fellow, if anything a history professor in Rome taking his friends through the Forum. They stand over a hole in the ground where two graduate students sift through the dirt. To my understanding the Forum is revealing new finds all the time.
“You Americans think of history from left to right,” the man said. “You have lots of space to think in terms of left to right. We Europeans have no space, no prairie, no plains. Our history must be up and down — we are older so we must go down to find our history.”
And you do walk down. When you walk into the Forum you enter a depression in the ground. Modern Rome sits above you. At one time it was covered in debris, in the past this was nothing but a cow pasture. Every step you take down the ramp is a step back into time. Those answers…those additional answers to the past archeologists have to dig deeper. Remember I said that Rome is a layer cake?
It is.
I did make one hypothesis while I was there. Just one. I wish I could share with you more than that. It was something I noticed. As I stood close to the location to the Temple of the Vestal Virgins I could see the collossium. In fact it is in walking distance. It was not that far from the Senate building where the laws were made, and the emperors sat, and I could imagine that when the wind was good, and the conditions right, 50, 000 voices shouting in their blood lust could be heard through the windows.
I wonder what laws were passed based on that sound.
(Note* Anybody got any stories they like to share? Either write it in comments or tell me of your travels by email.)
Rob Cain has traveled extensively through Europe, Italy, and Egypt. He was formerly on active duty with the United States Army. He is a fan of history, and enjoys reading books on the history of Rome. He currently has a podcast presentation on itunes and hipcast. The blog is for the free and open discussion of Ancient Rome based on Mr. Cain's observations noted in his podcast. Most episodes start out with an original dramatic narration written by Mr. Cain. In the podcasts he will include his own unique commentary, and interviews with subject matter experts. Comments are welcome and will be highlighted on the show. 
