Forum Julii
FORUM JULII(Fréjus), a town of Gallia Narbonensis on the coast between Telo Martius ( Toulon) and the Varus ( Var). Strabo (p. 184) calls it Φόρον Ἰούλιον, and a naval station of Caesar Augustus, situated between Olbia and Antipolis, and distant from Massilia about 600 stadia. But the name Forum Julii existed before the time of Caesar Augustus, for it is mentioned in a letter of Plancus to Cicero, B.C. 43 ( ad Fam. 10.15); and he makes it 24 M. P. from Forum Voconii to Forum Julii (10.17). We may infer that it took its name from C. Julius Caesar, though there is no evidence about what he did to the place, and that Augustus improved it. Pliny (Plin. Nat. 3.5) names it Forum Julii Octavanorum Colonia quae Pacensis appellatur et Classica.The river Argenteus was within its limits. (Ptol. 2.10.) The name Octavanorum, mentioned also by Mela (2.5), is supposed to show that a detachment from the eighth legion was settled here. The name Classica is probably derived from the fleet being stationed here by Augustus. The place has the various names of Oppidum Forojuliense (Tac. Ann. 4.5); Forum Julium Narbonensis Galliae Colonia ( Ann. 2.63); Colonia Forojuliensis (Tac. Hist. 2.14).
Forum Julii was a naval station in the time of Tiberius, and ships of war were kept there, which Augustus took at the battle of Actium, and used for the defence of this part of the Gallic coast (Tac. Ann. 4.63); and it is again mentioned as an important naval station in the time of Vitellius (Tac. Hist. 2.43). It was the birthplace of Cn. Agricola, the conqueror of Britain (Tacit. Agric. 4); and an old and distinguished Colonia, as Tacitus calls it. The sauce called garumwas made here. (Plin. Nat. 31.7, 8.)
The port of Forum Julii was at the bottom of a small bay, but the entrance has been filled up by the earth brought down by the Argenteus, which river flows a little to the west of Forum Julii. The traces of the two moles which formed the entrance of the port, still remain; but the entrance is now about 3000 feet from the sea. The width of the Roman port is estimated at about 1500 feet, and its depth from the entrance between the moles at 1680 feet. These dimensions show that the port of Forum Julium may be compared with those made by Trajan at the mouth of the Tiber and at Centum Cellae, and with the port of Antium. There is no water now in the port of Fréjus, except a small lagune, near a quay of Roman construction, which forms an angle with the mole on the right to one who enters the port. The traces of the walls show that the old town was much larger than the modern.
There is a triumphal arch, which is supposed to have formed one of the four gates of the town. The circuit of the amphitheatre is about 650 feet. The arena, which is buried under rubbish, is probably entire. A road has been formed through the two chief entrances right through it, as in the amphitheatre at Trèves. Near the amphitheatre is one of the old gates, which is at the bottom of a concave semicircle, formed of thick walls and defended by a tower, at each extremity. The aqueduct brought into the town the waters of the Siagnefrom a distance of more than 20 miles. The channel for the water in some parts was under ground, in others it was supported on arches. At the gate of Fréjusit divided into two branches, one of which entered the town and the other went to the port. Parts of this aqueduct are well preserved.
The Roman Via Aurelia passed by Forum Julii; and there were roads from Forum Julii to Aquae Sextiae, Massilia, and Arelate. (D'Anville, Notice, &c.;Walckenaer, Géog. &c. vol. 2. p. 9; Ukert, Gallien, p. 429; Richard et Hocquet, Guide du Voyageur, p. 797.)
[G.L]FORUM JULIIor JULIUM.
1.（Φόρος Ἰούλιος,Ptol.: Eth. Forojuliensis: Cividale di Friuli), a city of Venetia, situated about 25 miles N. of Aquileia, and nearly at the foot of the Julian Alps. Ptolemy reckons it in the country of the Carni, and there is little doubt that this is correct, though it is not possible to separate the territory of that people from the rest of Venetia. [CARNI] Paulus Diaconus ascribes its foundation to Julius Caesar (P. Diac. Hist. Lang. 2.14); and it is probable that this is corrrect, though we. have no earlier authority for the fact. It appears that it was at first merely a sort of central place of meeting for the neighbouring Carni, and where probably the Roman magistrates held intercourse with the mountaineers. In Pliny's time it seems to have been still but an inconsiderable place, as he enumerates the Forojulienses cognomine Transpadaniamong the unimportant towns of Venetia, which were unworthy of fuller notice. But Ptolemy calls it a Roman colony, and it appears to have risen in importance during the latter ages of the Roman empire. It was not, however, till after the fall of the neighbouring Aquileia, A.D. 452, that it attained the dignity, which it continued to hold under the Gothic and Lombard rulers of Italy, of the capital of Venetia. (Plin. Nat. 3.19. s. 23; Ptol. 3.1. s. 29; Cassiod. Varr. 12.26; P. Diac. 2.14, 4.28, 38.)
Forum Julii became under the Lombards the seat of a separate duchy, and has imparted to the whole province in which it is situated the name, by which it is still known, of the Friuli:the modern town being called Cividador Cividale, obviously a corruption of Civitas.
The period of the destruction of Forum Julii is unknown; but recent excavations on the site have brought to light numerous remains of antiquity, including the foundations of temples and other public buildings, scattered over a considerable extent of ground around and in the neighbourhood of the modern Cividale. The monuments discovered belong, however, for the most part to a very late period, and confirm the inference which we should draw from the few historical notices we possess, that Forum Julii did not rise to any great importance till near the close of the Western Empire. Very exaggerated ideas of its greatness, and of the value of the discoveries made on the spot, were spread abroad by the Canonico della Torre, who carried on the excavations. ( Annali dell' Inst. Arch. 1835, pp. 213--220; Bullett. d. Inst. 1834, p. 5, 1835, p. 134.)
2.We learn from an inscription that the town of Iria in Liguria bore also the name of Forum Julii Iriensium(Orell. Inscr. 73), but no other notice of it occurs under this name. [IRIA]
3.Pliny mentions among the municipal towns of Umbria, in the sixth region of Italy, the Forojulienses cognomine Concubienses;but these, as well as the Forobrentani,who immediately follow them, are wholly unknown. [E.H.B]
Placed near the sea, the town is located at the mouth of the Argens valley. It is on the highroad from Italy to Spain and at the start of the N road to Reia Apollinaris (Riez). Although the Argens valley and neighboring hilltops have revealed traces of settlement from the Palaeolithic to the Celto-Ligurian period, the site of Fréjus was not occupied on a regular basis until the time of Caesar. The first mention of Forum Julii occurs in Cicero's correspondence (Fain. 10.15.3 and 10.17.1) in 43 B.C. Therefore, one can attribute to Caesar (perhaps at the time of the siege of Massilia in 49 B.C.) the creation or expansion of this stopping-place, which was both a market and a provisioning center. The port apparently was laid out during the Triumvirate, since Tacitus (Ann. 4, 5) says that Octavius sent Antony's fleet there after capturing it at Actium (31 B.C.). No doubt the port had already been used in the campaigns against Sextus Pompeius.
During the reign of Augustus, it was one of the major naval bases of the Empire, on the same footing as Misenum and Ravenna; later its role declined. Also in the Augustan period, probably shortly after Actium, a detachment of veterans of the 8th legion turned Forum Julii into Colonia Octavanorum. According to Pliny the Elder (HN 2.35) the town was also called Pacensis and Classica. In spite of the loss of its military role, the town remained a fairly important and prosperous administrative and economic center until the end of antiquity; it became the seat of a bishop at the end of the 4th c.
Linked to the sea by a canal which must have been ca. 1 km long and 50-80 m wide, the port is now completely filled up. Wharfs can be recognized to the W and S over a length of more than 500 m, and the area of the basin can be estimated at some 20 ha. The entry was defended by two towers linked to a wall which met the town ramparts. A small hexagonal monument was built on the ruins of one of these towers after ancient times. It was 10 m high, probably served as a signal platform, and is still visible. At the inner end of the port at the level of the S wharf are the remains of what was long thought to be a lighthouse with three stories, of the same type as those at Ostia and Ravenna, but it was probably nothing more than a tower.
Important vestiges of the ramparts of the colony have remained in place. The walls, Augustan in date, formed an irregular polygon more than 3.5 km long, giving the town an area of ca. 40 ha. More than 2.50 m thick on the average, the walls are faced with ashlar masonry with rubble fill. Here and there opus reticulatum was used. Several towers survive in part to the E and, above all, to the N, where one of them has two stories. The first floor is pierced with loopholes; the second is furnished with windows under a semicircular arch and is connected to the chemin de ronde of the fortifications. Two gates are still visible: the E Rome Gate and the W Gate of the Gauls. Both are set back from the ramparts, at the center of a semicircular wall and flanked by two round towers (the same type is known at Aquae Sextiae and Arelate). These two gates are at the ends of the decumanus maximus. The location of the gates of the cardo is known to the N, but has not been found to the S.
The S sector of the ramparts includes two natural hillocks which dominated the port: the Saint-Antoine hill to the SW and the Platform to the SE. The former was defended by three towers. On the W side the rampart was reinforced on the inside by semicircular buttresses, intended to contain the pressure of the earth. A group of buildings arranged around a central court has been brought to light on the terreplein. They are set up on artificial fill designed to level the hillock. Ceramic material permits the fill to be dated to the last third of the 1st c. B.C. Under this fill have appeared the remains of a private dwelling of an earlier period. These are all that is left of Caesar's Forum Julii. The second level, the Platform, was also leveled off by a fill and by the construction farther down the slope of seven large, vaulted chambers, which acted as a base and support. A vast courtyard, into which there opens a cistern with three intercommunicating, vaulted chambers, is at the center of a series of living rooms with a peristyle and baths. The S side remained bare of all construction, to leave unobstructed the view of the port and the sea. The function of these buildings found on the two hills has been variously interpreted: a citadel and a praetorium? It is hard to settle this discussion with any certainty, but their construction in the Augustan period (that is to say, at the time when the naval port expanded) leads one to believe that they played an important role in the organization of the naval base.
Apart from some sections of streets and water mains and of some mosaics and various pieces collected in the museum, the only important structure excavated inside the fortifications is a theater. It had its back against a gently sloping hill in the NE part of the town and faced S. Its design was simple and it was little decorated. Apparently it too was Augustan.
The amphitheater was situated outside the NW corner of the walls and almost in contact with them (during the Middle Ages it served on more than one occasion as a fortress for attackers besieging Fréjus). It dates to a later period, to Flavian or even Antonine times. Its axes measure 113.85 m and 82.60 m respectively. It had only one story and its 16 tiers of seats accommodated ca. 10,000 spectators, or ca. half the capacity of the Arles and Nîmes amphitheaters. The following are also to be noted outside the ramparts: to the SW the remains of public baths; a necropolis, of which there remains a mausoleum called La Tourrache; the bridge of the Esclapes, with its three arches; and, to the S, near the old port and close by the ramparts, the Golden Gate, the remains of a large vaulted chamber with three openings, whose nature has not been determined (a basilica? a large room in public baths?), but whose date is certainly later than the 2d c. A.D. The aqueduct which fed Forum Julii is in an exceptionally good state of preservation. It can be followed over almost 40 km beginning at the foot of Mons hill, where it is a surface ditch. It then continues by underground canal, 3 m wide and vaulted. Arcades and tunnels take it to the Roman Gate. From there it follows the ramparts to the N, cuts across their NE corner, and meets the water tower to the W.
On the town hall square, the group of episcopal buildings comprises the cathedral, which originated in the renewal and transformation of an Early Christian church; the baptistery, whose first state goes back to the 5th c.; and the episcopal palace, which shelters the municipal museum (Gallo-Roman collections).
BIBLIOGRAPHYA. Donnadieu, La Pompéi de la Provence, Fréjus (1927); P. A. Février, “Fouilles à la Citadelle méridionale de ‘Forum Julii,’” Gallia 14 (1956) P; A. Grenier, Manuel d'arch. gallo-romaine, III: l'Architecture (1958) PI; id., “Fouilles a la Plateforme,” Gallia 20 (1962) P; id., “Forum Iulii: Fréjus,” Itineraires ligures 13 (1963) MPI.
C. GOUDINEAUA city in the Natisone river valley ca. 17 km from Udine. There are remains from the Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages and traces of contact with the nearby early Veneti though here these peoples were overcome by a Carni invasion so threatening as to induce the Romans to establish the Latin colony of Aquileia in 181 B.C. A hypogeum, with remains of sculpture (three large stone masks of the type of the celebrated “Têtes coupées” in S France), shows traces of long use. This and persistent echoes in the local toponymy are the only remains of this population that was conquered in 115 B.C. by the consul M. Emilius Scaurus.
A sign of increasingly intense exchange with the Romans are coins found in tombs or in treasure hoards, all from the first half of the 1st c. B.C. The open position saved the area from the threatening raids of the Giapidi. The true pacifier of the area, as of all N Italy, was Julius Caesar, who united the region with Rome, making it a base for the conquest of transalpine Gaul. Forum Julii probably began as a forum or fortified place (the precise date is still under discussion) on an existing road already important for military and commercial traffic. It was not far from Tricesimo at the opening of the Tagliamento valley, where the senate of Aquileia at about this time constructed the gates and walls of a castello recorded by an inscription (CIL I, 2648).
Very soon, perhaps by 49 B.C., when the Lex Julia Municipalis gave Roman citizenship to the Cisalpine population, the settlement became a municipium, governed still by quattuorviri (and not according to the later use of duoviri), and was assigned to the tribus Scaptia. However, some connect the development of the site with the systematization of the roads of the region under Augustus in 2 B.C.
In order to distinguish this from other homonymic centers in Gallia Narbonese and in Liguria, Pliny (HN 3.130) called the inhabitants Forojulienses cognomine Transpadani. Ptolemy calls it a colony (3.120), but his testimony is not universally accepted.
Following the work of pacification of the whole Alpine area under Augustus, the region grew in importance. By virtue of its position and climate it became a vacation area for the rich of Aquileia and Trieste, and therefore dotted by spas, villas, and various other buildings though no traces of these remain above ground today. Inscriptions are neither particularly important nor numerous. It may be noted that the gentes mentioned are almost all of Roman or of central or S Italian origin.
The cults are recorded only by inscriptions and by small bronzes. They include Herakles, Jupiter, Fortuna, Augusta, Silvanus, Mercury, and the god Beleno, the best known among the local deities of the region and connected with a Gallic cult. It is possible that several columns of varicolored marble, fragments of doorposts and of architraves from an earlier temple were reused in the celebrated church of S. Maria in Valle. Inscriptions also indicate the existence of a Pontifex, of sexviri, and of Augustales. Unlike Aquileia, no record of artisan or agricultural activity is preserved here.
Excavations carried out at various times and stray finds have confirmed at Forum Julii the customary network of roads found in Roman cities, though of course with variations imposed by the geographical situation. The forum or center of the city must have corresponded to the present Piazza Duomo, where the cardo maximus intersected with the decumanus. Here have been found under the Palladian Palace of the Pretorio (itself constructed on the ruins of a patriarchal palace) the remains of a basilican building with two naves, an unusual type also found in the nearby center of Julium Carnicum (Zuglio).
The beautiful private houses, interesting for their varied plans, must have been richly decorated with mosaics. Many of these, conserved at the museum, date from the 1st to the 3d c. A.D. The museum contains a particularly tasteful head of Oceanus from the baths, judged to be from the Antonine age.
The walls offer some interesting problems. It is probable that the earliest city wall, constructed at the same time as the first forum, defended a center corresponding roughly to two-thirds the area enclosed by the later wall. The slightly later wall started from the Natisone, circled, and returned there, thus incorporating the steep bank of the river into the defensive system. The course of the wall has been securely established, and its average thickness is 2.4 m. Its remains have been found in the cellars of the houses constructed above. The wall was rebuilt or restored in great haste at the time of Marcus Aurelius when the center, menaced by the invasion of the Quadi and the Marcomanni, had to prepare a military defense. The Emperor, in fact, must have included the center in the defensive system he created with the praetentura Italiae et Alpium.
From that point on, all imperial interest in the area ceased and it again became the outpost it had been at the time of Julius Caesar, leaving no evidence of the succeeding phases it passed through. We know only that Forum Julii was hardly touched by the Goths, became a part of the Byzantine Empire, and was overrun by the Lombards when they crossed the Alps in 568.
There is scant evidence of the primitive Christianity that must have been practiced here and probably gave impetus to new construction, at least by the 4th c. A.D. The flowering of religious art came with the establishment of the first Lombard Duchy in Italy, at first Arian and then orthodox, especially after the transfer to Cividale of the Patriarchy of Aquileia, now in ruins.
With the patriarchal government ends the ancient history of the Forum Julii of Caesar. The necropoleis, placed as usual outside the gates (one to the S along the road from Aquileia, a second to the NE, and a third to the N), contain both cremation burials and the later inhumations of the barbaric period.
BIBLIOGRAPHYS. Stucchi, Forum Julii (1951); A. Degrassi, Il confine nord-orientale dell'Italia romana (1954) 26-36; G. B. Brusin, “Tessellati di Cividale,” in Memorie Storiche Forogiuliesi 40 (1960-61) 1-23; B. Forlati Tamaro EAA (1959); P. S. Leicht, Breve storia del Friuli (4th ed. 1970).
B. FORLATI TAMARO