THE ROMAN FORUM IN ROME
As the political center of the city, the Forum also became Rome’s most prominent building site. Near the end of the seventh century, the Regia (see Rome Under the Kings) was erected along its edge. At the end of that century, builders laid out another public space, later known as the Comitium, and along its edges they con-structed a large stone building that is probably to be identified with the later Curia Hostilia. The original uses of the Comitium and the Curia Hostilia are obscure. In later periods at least (and possibly from the outset too), they were crucial to the functioning of the Roman state: The Comitium was a sacred space where officials would summon citizens to vote, to hear legal cases, and to make (or be informed about) important public decisions; the Curia Hostilia served as one of the meet¬ing places for the council of elders known as the senate.
During the sixth century, a sanctuary dedicated to the god Vulcan was laid out not far from the Comitium. Around the middle of the same century, at the oppo¬site end of the Forum, the first building on the site of the later Temple of Vesta (which contained the sacred hearth of the city) was constructed near the Regia. By the last third of the century, the Sacra Via, the chief processional route of the city, had been paved and graded as it entered the southeast corner of the Forum. Around the beginning of the fifth century, temples to Saturn and Castor were con¬structed on the south side.
In addition to the Forum Romanum, two other major centers of Rome’s civic and religious life, the Capitol and the Forum Boarium, also began to be adorned with larger, more elaborate structures. At the end of the seventh century, builders cleared the huts from part of the plain along the banks of the Tiber and estab¬lished a sacred space, which in all likelihood contained an altar. The first temple here, probably dedicated to Fortuna, was built in the second quarter of the sixth century; it was rebuilt a generation later, and decorated with terracotta friezes and statues of the Greek hero Heracles and the Greek goddess Athena. On the Capitoline hill, the Romans began to construct the temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest (Jupiter Optimus Maximus) around the beginning of the sixth century; when completed toward the end of the century, this structure was one of the largest temples in Italy. Last but not least (although the matter is controversial), the Romans of the sixth century may have protected parts of their city by exca¬vating a fossa that was fifty-five feet (16.5 m) wide in places, and by constructing an agger to a height of forty feet (12 m).
A wealthy and powerful elite lived in the city. Goods deposited in seventh-century tombs reveal the presence of aristocratic families able to expend resources in large-scale displays of their status. Wealthy Romans also constructed buildings for their personal use. By 625, houses built of stone and roofed with tiles had replaced some of the huts on the Velia. More such houses would soon follow on the Palatine and other hills. Around 530, the walls that had marked the northeast corner of the Palatine were covered by a large earth platform. On it at least four substantial private dwellings were constructed, with large reception rooms or atria (singular, atrium) and other rooms grouped around enclosed gardens—features that would mark Roman aristocratic houses for cen-turies. By the end of the sixth century, dwellings spread over most of the hills, making Rome one of the largest cities in Italy.