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FORUM
Open area in Roman cities used for commerce, political affairs, and judicial matters. The forum was usually on level ground, rectangular in shape, and surrounded by temples, law courts, colonnades, and other public buildings.
The forum of Appius was a traveler’s stop on the Appian Way, 43 miles (69.2 kilometers) south of Rome, where Paul was met by Christians from Rome on his way to the capital under guard (Acts 28:15).
The most important of the forums were those located in the city of Rome. These were built at different times in its history, and existing forums were changed through continued building. The Rome to which Paul went for his trial had several forums, including those of Julius Caesar (begun by him but actually completed by Augustus Caesar) and of Augustus Caesar. Most important was the Roman Forum, center of the world in Paul’s day. It lay between the two central hills of the seven hills on which the city was built. It contained many columns, statues, works of art, and buildings important in the political and religious life of the empire.
If Paul was brought directly into the city by the centurion who had charge of him, he would have passed the triumphal arch of Augustus, the temple of Castor and Pollux, and the temples dedicated to Julius and Augustus for emperor worship. Arriving at the Roman Forum proper, he would have noticed on the northwest the famous ideal center of the city (and thus of the empire), and on the southwest the gilded milestone, giving distances to places as far away as London to the west and Jerusalem to the east. In the background was the temple to Jupiter, chief god in the Roman pantheon. On the south side was a large public building, the Basilica Julia, completed in AD 12, the probable site of the pronouncement of Paul’s death sentence. On the north side was the Basilica Aemilia, a building from which marble columns were taken and used in the building of a church over the traditional site of Paul’s tomb. That church was completed in AD 398 and stood for 1,400 years.
See also Appius, Forum of.