cities: Rome 227 Roman silver coins, 275–260 b.c.e., depicting the founding twins of the city of Rome, Romulus and Remus (© The Trustees of the British Museum) goddess of wisdom All capitols were built on high ground; Rome’s was on the Capitoline Hill If there was no natural high ground, a platform was built to raise the capitol above the surrounding area Residents believed that the gods represented in the temples were their city’s protectors, and that they could only protect what they could see from the capitol In conquered territories a city’s capitol might hold temples to local gods, with their names changed to those of Roman deities For instance, in the cities of former Phoenician colonies the Romans conquered in North Africa, they built capitols with temples dedicated to the god Baal but changed Baal’s name to Saturn Beginning with Augustus Caesar (r 27 b.c.e.–14 c.e.) Roman emperors themselves began to be declared gods, and capitols throughout the empire began to include temples to the emperors and members of their families who had been declared gods, such as Augustus’s wife, Livia In some parts of North Africa all the old temple gods were replaced by emperor-gods, perhaps because the armies of the emperors offered more obvious protection than did the old gods These practices led to conflict in some colonial cities such as those in Palestine, where Jews worshipped only one god and were forbidden by their faith to worship any others To the Romans no city was protected from evil without a capitol on high ground, and they seem to have had trouble understanding why anyone would object to such a thing, especially when they were willing to let the local people worship whatever gods they preferred, if perhaps under the names of Roman gods The process of Romanizing people included ac- climating them to Roman ways of worship, and it worked almost everywhere, but not in Palestine Besides the capitol, every Roman city had another public area that was in some ways even more important: the forum This was the center of civic life, the place where vital news first circulated and where citizens debated the key issues of the day It was the heart of any Roman city The typical forum was a rectangular, flat open space, usually paved, of varying size from city to city, and bordered by the buildings for the city’s basic institutions The forum did not originate with the city of Rome; earlier examples have been found in southern Italy, perhaps influenced by the ancient Greek agora (literally “marketplace” but extended to mean an open meeting place in a city) But the famed Roman Forum was the model for all that followed The Roman Forum was established in a marshy valley near the Tiber In its early days it was plagued by mosquitoes and the diseases those insects carried, and the river sometimes flooded it Between 616 and 579 b.c.e King Tarquin had a canal dug to drain the area; in the 100s b.c.e this canal was covered and became a sewer At first people seem to have built homes haphazardly around the Forum, and apartment houses called insulae (“islands”) were crowded together The Forum itself was always kept clear and was reserved for pedestrians only Forums generally had colonnades on one or more sides, often with shops selling food or other goods Nearby buildings commonly included a basilica and a curia The basilica was a rectangular open building with a flat roof Rome had one of the largest, the Basilica Julia, its floor