Forum (Roman)

This article is about the type of ancient civic center. For other uses, see Forum (disambiguation).

A forum (Latin: forum, "public place outdoors",[1] pl.: fora; English pl.: either fora or forums) was a public square in a municipium, or any civitas, of Ancient Rome reserved primarily for the vending of goods; i.e., a marketplace, along with the buildings used for shops and the stoas used for open stalls. But such fora functioned secondarily for multiple purposes, including as social meeting places for discussion. Many fora were constructed at remote locations along a road by the magistrate responsible for the road, in which case the forum was the only settlement at the site and had its own name, such as Forum Popili or Forum Livi.[2]

  1. ^ From Proto-Indo-European *dʰworom "enclosure, courtyard", i.e. "something enclosed by a door"; cognate with English door and Old Church Slavonic дворъ dvorŭ "court, courtyard".
  2. ^ Abbott, Frank Frost; Johnson, Allan Chester (1926). Municipal Administration in the Roman Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 12.