Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1944, Page 105

SWEDISH EXCAVATIONS
95
Swedish excavations in the Forum have been continued also in
our time by E. Gjerstad’s investigations in 1938—39 of the
Comitium, the assembly-place of the people in Republican Rome,
the history of which Gjerstad completely succeeded in clearing
up through a minute digging of layers. The place was taken into
use for its purpose about 450 B. C., which archaeological date is
in accordance with new historical information according to which
it is possible to date the introduction of the Republic at that
time, instead of 509 B. C. as formerly believed. To the first fixed
relics the well-known Forum stele belongs, which may have been
erected in its present place at the time after the invasion of
the Gauls in 390 B. C. In connexion with C. Maenius’s read-
justment of the Forum and Comitium in 330 B. C. a large plat-
form for speakers was built, of which considerable rests are
preserved. On the steps to this platform the excavators found
holes after wooden poles, which supported prows of ships cap-
tured at Antium in 338 B. C. (from these the name of Rostra
‘prows’). — The next stage in the history of Comitium began
in 200 B. C., when the tomb of Romulus, which was situated
near the Rostra, was given a monumental architectural form.
The so-called tomb is an old cult-place with a preserved base
of a small chapel with an altar in front of it, on both sides
flanked by bases of the statues of lions mentioned in the litera-
ture. — In Sulla’s time a rearrangement of the Comitium took
place: the old platform was demolished and a new one erected,
curved and towards the Forum decorated with prows of ships.
— The last alteration was made under Sulla’s son, who rebuilt
the Rostra and covered the old cult-place with a black stone
(niger lapis). This rebuilding took place after the Curia was burnt
down in 52 B. C. — Caesar had the Curia and the Rostra de-
molished and had a new platform for speakers built in the place
of assembly of Imperial Rome.
Santa Maria in Via Lata in Rome. During the two years 1942—
43 E. Sjöqvist conducted excavations in another place in Rome,
viz. under the church of Santa Maria in Via Lata off the Corso.
Here previous archaeologists thought they had found the Saepta
Julia, the assembly-room of the Roman assembly of the people.
The excavations now have corroborated the view of an Italian
scholar, G. Gatti, that the ruins under the Santa Maria in Via
Lata cannot be the Saepta, but that this building must be searched
for elsewhere. Instead the building proved to be a construction of