ROMAN URBAN TOPOGRAPHY in Britain and the western Empire

Todd: Forum and Capitolium in the early Empire
Fig 50 Virunum: the forum and temple
that the double precinct forum originated in Italy and that
it was transmitted thence into neighbouring provincial
areas. The available dating evidence for the transfer is not
impressive, but so far as it goes it is reasonably consistent.
None of the known examples outside the Italian peninsula
(including Cisalpina) is Augustan. One (Iader) may be
Julio-Claudian. Conimbriga and perhaps Virunum are
Flavian. St Bertrand-de-Comminges in its visible form
(Fig 51) and Paris (Duval 1961, 131-8) are probably
Trajanic. Amiens and Bavai are later, probably Hadrianic
or early Antonine. The most familiar, and most widely
illustrated, of the Gallic fora, that of Augusta Raurica, is
64
most probably early Antonine or Hadrianic at the earliest,
though it must surely have replaced a monumental layout
of the 1st century AD or even earlier. There is little
evidence as yet that the double precinct forum was
widespread in northern and central Gaul in the 1st century
AD and it is therefore not surprising that it had so little
influence on the planning of Romano-British fora in the
Flavian period and the early 2nd century (Frere 1978,
276). What is more interesting, perhaps, is the fact that no
British forum is known to have been later embellished by
the addition of a temple precinct or even by the erection of
a temple within the forum piazza. The Verulamium forum
resembles the Gallic double precinct type in some respects,
but it was not a fully developed instance (Frere
1983, 59-69). It is, of course, in the three lst-century
coloniae of Camulodunum, Lindum, and Glevum that
more elaborate plans might be expected, but as yet the
evidence is too fragmentary for certainty to be attainable.
Recent work at Lincoln suggests that the forum here could
Fig 51 St Bertrand-de-Comminges: the forum and temple