View Page: The Roman Forum

	The Roman Forum
	written by justinvf / 09.14.2005

Section Three

3 of 7

Function

Campo Vacino

After the Forum filled up with dirt it was no longer a revered location, but rather a cow pasture.

St. Peters

Durring the middle ages the "Rome of the Caesars was destroyed for the Rome of the Popes," with one empires center becoming another's quarry.

Downfall

With the downfall of the Roman Empire there was insufficient infrastructure in Rome to maintain the forum. Following a series of natural disasters which broke the sewage system, the roman forum began to fill with sediment and by the middle ages was a husk of its former glory. It was no longer known as the forum, but instead as the Campo Vacino, or cow pasture. The arches were halfway submerged in muck, and some of the structures were incorporated into medieval fortifications. The greatest devastation took place however during the middle ages, when the site became a quarry for large-scale papal building such as St. Peter’s Basilica. This was a terrible time for the forum, but it shouldn’t be forgotten that financing the original forum was in large part due to spoils of was and sackings of foreign treasures, so the forum becoming a quarry for the church does seem a particularly Roman end.

Conclusion

The Roman forum is a monumental work of propaganda whose scope seems unmatched in the modern world. Today as one explores the great site, it seems hard to get a sense of continuity within the jumbled ruins. In a way though, that is the point of the Forum. The Forum exerted its power over the population by being a canvas with which politicians could give the message that would bring the most stability at that time, and thus the piecemeal appearance of the Forum is a reflection of the ever changing demands of the populous.

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