Graecostasis

• a building in Rome, near the Curia and Comitium, where at first Grecian and afterwards other foreign ambassadors took up their abode, Varr. L. L. 5, § 155 Müll.; Cic. Q. Fr. 2, 1, 3; Plin. 7, 60, 60, § 212; 33, 1, 6, § 19 al.; cf. Becker's Antiq. I. p. 284.

• , γραικόσταςλτ;γτ;ς, a building in which foreign ambassadors awaited decisions of the senate.

GRAECO´STASISthe station of the Greeks,was a place in the Roman forum where ambassadors stood to hear the debates, and had their προεδρία or post of honour at the public spectacles anciently held in it. It thus, as Niebuhr remarks (R. I. vol. ii., n. 116), resembled. the privileged seats in the hall of a parliamentary assembly. It was so called because the first envoys thus honoured were the Greeks of Massilia (Justin (Justin. 43.5.10); the privilege was afterwards extended to foreign ambassadors in general. The Stationes Municipiorum may, according to Niebuhr, have been places allotted to municipals for the same purpose; but the .allusion in Pliny (Plin. Nat.16.236) is too vague to warrant any inference. The Graecostasis, like the Rostra which it adjoined, seems to have occupied a different site before and after the reconstruction of the Forum under Julius Caesar. The older one is described by Varro (L. L. 5.155) as a stone platform (locus substructus) to the right of the Senate-house (i. e. the Curia Hostilia) on the side of the Comitium. It is to this site that the statements in Pliny refer, that when the sun was seen from the Curia coming out between the Rostra and the Graecostasis, it was mid-day; and an accensus of the consul proclaimed the time with a clear loud voice (H. N. 7.212); and that the brazen shrine (aedicula) of Concord, erected by Cn. Flavius, curule aedile in B.C. 303, was placed on the Graecostasis, quae tune supra comitium erat (33.19), implying that in his own time it had been removed. Cicero speaks of it as a vantage-ground from which the debates could be interrupted by disorderly persons (ad Q. Fr, 2.1). The later site of the Rostra was to the south-west of their original position, i. e. further from the Comitium and more towards the open part of the Forum: the remains of the Rostra of Julius have within the last few years been excavated and identified beyond a doubt, and a curved platform adjoining them is conjectured with great probability (though without direct evidence) to have been the later Graecostasis, transferred together with the Rostra. The Graecostadium of one of the regionary catalogues, the Curiosum, is no doubt identical with this later Graecostasis. (Compare Burn, Rome and the Campagna, pp. 84, 123, with plans pp. 74, 107; Middleton, Anc. Rome in 1885, pp. 148, 163, with plan p. 158.)

(Γραικόστασις). Professor Middleton defines the Graecostasis as a platform in the Forum, on which foreign ambassadors stood to hear the speeches from the Rostra or Comitium, like the Diplomatic Gallery in the American Senate and House. The Graecostasis got its name from the fact that the first envoys thus honoured were Greeks from Massilia (Marseilles), as stated by Iustinus (xliii. 5. 10). Cicero speaks of it as being a place from which disorderly persons often interrupted the debates. It appears to have occupied a different place before and after the reconstruction of the Forum by Iulius Caesar. It is mentioned by Varro (L. L. v. 155) as of stone, and standing to the right of the Curia—this statement referring to the older structure. Archaeologists formerly regarded the term as denoting the foreign embassy at Rome. See Burn, Rome and the Campagna, pp. 84, 107, 123; Mommsen, History of Rome, i. p. 577 (American ed. 1888); Middleton, Remains of Ancient Rome, i. pp. 237, 256 (London, 1892), and cf. the article forum.