Historic Sites Don't Look More Average Than This

[image ALT: A wide street, opening out into a large square, or more properly a sort of urban clearing. Three parked cars and a woman on a bicycle approaching us, but otherwise the piazza is empty. On the left, a newspaper kiosque with an octagonal metal roof and behind it the wrought-iron balcony of a building. On the right, not far away, a diminutive tempietto with a copper dome and lantern, no more than 7 meters tall. In the background, the square belfry of a church pokes up from a block of four-story buildings with arcades on the ground floor. It is a view of the Piazza Quaranta Martiri in Rimini, Italy.]

Even today, the Roman Forum remains the main square of Rimini.
It was in the Middle Ages, as well. Click on the tempietto for a slice of medieval life.
(Facing SE: the Flaminia is the street in the distance with the white market van across it.)

The Ghost of Julius Caesar

Transcribed:

1 5	C · CAESAR DICT · RVBICONE SVPERATO CIVILI BEL · COMMILIT · SVOS HIC IN FORO AR · ADLOCVT

Expanded:

1 5	Gaius Caesar dictator, Rubicone superato, civili bello commilitones suos hic in foro Ariminense adlocutus est.

Translated:

The dictator Gaius Caesar,
having crossed the Rubicon,
addressed his comrades-in‑arms in the civil war
here in the forum of Rimini.

So this weathered and fragmentary inscription commemorates Julius Caesar. In January of 49 B.C., having crossed the Rubicon not very far north of here (strangely, no one knows exactly where: not even which river is meant) and reached the first city within the borders of Italy, he stood somewhere around here and harangued his troops and, one must presume, much of the local population — then started his long march down the Flaminia to Rome and supreme power.

Now, an epigraphy test:

Can you tell, from the style of the lettering for example, exactly which century this is from? (Hint: it postdates Caesar.)

Try it: give it some thought first, resist the temptation to do the instant click‑here-for-the‑answer.

Images with borders lead to more information. The thicker the border, the more information. (Details here.)

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SEE
ALSO:

Via Flaminia

Diary

Next stop on the Flaminia:
towards Rome

Roman
Gazetteer

LacusCurtius

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