The Forum of Trajan in Rome ― A Study of the Monuments in Brief

This abridged edition of the magisterial three-volume The Forum of Trajan in Rome makes this definitive study of the acknowledged showplace of imperial Rome available to a wide audience. Published without the scholarly apparatus of the original edition, the paperback version nonetheless presents a complete history of the Forum, its construction, use in antiquity, destruction, and later fortunes. James E. Packer's comprehensive examination also summarizes the archaeological investigations on the site and reviews the nine major restoration studies of the Basilica Ulpia undertaken by scholars of the last 176 years, focusing on the architecture of the Forum. Beautifully and extensively illustrated with both color drawings and black-and-white photographs, this book will be the authoritative guide to the site.

The Forum of Trajan has suffered a harsh fate. During the earthquakes of a.d. 810 and 847, its buildings collapsed. From the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the site was quarried for its marble, travertine, and peperino. Packer's book is the first to present information from the systematic excavations of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For the buildings still interred, unpublished documents and drawings, representations on coins, and those chance finds reported in the past provide much new information. For the fully excavated East Colonnade and Hemicycle, the West Library, and the Basilica Ulpia, accurate restorations are now feasible. By determining the precise ancient appearance of the excavated buildings, these reconstructions establish, as much as possible, the essential architectural texts for all further study of the site.

An afterword discusses changes made to the reconstructions of the Forum's buildings offered in the original text and figures. The result of work on two computer models of the restored architecture of the site (1997, 1999, 2000), these revised reconstructions appear in thirteen new color figures. The other 158 in-text illustrations document the visible ruins, the excavations, and the earlier reconstructions.

James E. Packer is Professor of Classics at Northwestern University.