ABSTRACT
Polybius remarked that public building was the chief expense regularly incurred by the state.1 The range of public buildings in Rome was immense.2 Plautus described the City’s characters in terms of the public places they frequented.3 Strabo listed the Campus Martius with its grassy areas and porticoes, the three theatres, the amphitheatre (not yet a stone-built structure), Augustus’ Mausoleum, the Forums, basilicas and temples, the Capitol and its works of art and those of the Palatium and Livia’s Portico.4 Pliny the Elder mentioned, apart from his praise of the sewers and aqueducts, as among the more important monuments of Rome: the Circus Maximus, basilica Aemilia, Forum of Augustus, Temple of Peace, Agrippa’s roofed Diribitorium, Gaius’ palace and Nero’s domus Aurea, and the theatres of Scaurus, and Curio.5 In 357 the Emperor Constantius paid a visit to Rome and particularly admired the Forum Romanum, the Capitol, the thermae, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, Vespasian’s Forum with the Temple of Peace, Pompey’s Theatre, the Odeum, the Stadium and Trajan’s Forum.6
