"Mars comes, and at his coming he gave the sign of war. The Avenger descends himself from heaven to behold his own honours and his splendid temple in the forum of Augustus. The god is hugh, and so is the structure: no otherwise ought Mars to dwell in his son's city....On this side he sees Aeneas laden with his dear burden, and many an ancestor of the noble Julian line. On the other side he see Romulus carrying on his shoulders the arms of the conquered leader, and their famous deeds inscribed beneath the statues arranged in order."
Ovid, Fasti (V.550-554, 563-566)
Very little of the forum remains, and any attempt to reconstruct it must derive from literary descriptions and reference to other architectural and sculptural works. Ovid attests that the mythical ancestors of Augustus were placed in the exedrae, hemicycles or semi-circular aspes that open behind the colonnade of the porticoes. It is a sculptural program that presages his own greatness. On the left in the plan above (the northwest exedra), Aeneas represents pietas, piety. Holding the hand of his son and carrying his father, he leads them to safety, his statue in the central niche of the exedra. On either side are thought to be his descendants: the kings of Alba Longa (which was founded by Aeneas' son and where Romulus and Remus were said to have been born), the Julian nobility, and Augustus' adoptive father, Julius Caesar.
On the opposite side (the southeast exedra), Romulus bears spolia opima, the first commander to win the arms of a defeated enemy in single combat. He represents virtus or courage, which Augustus now claims for himself. Filling the niches on either side are the principes and triumphatores of the Republic, whose statues may have continued down the colonnaded porticoes, their deeds and achievements recorded in inscriptions. By this pedigree, Augustus associated himself with Aeneas and Venus, his divine mother, and with Romulus, the son of Mars and founder of Rome. The pietas of Aeneas is suggested in having avenged Caesar's death; the virtus of Romulus, in recovering the standards lost to the Parthians and now dedicated in the new temple.
A feature used again in the Forum of Trajan a century later, the exedrae open the area in front of the temple and provide a more expansive sense of space and light. The assumption is that they were roofed, with windows cut in the clerestory above the portico to allow in light, although it is possible that the interior still would not have been sufficiently illuminated to display the program of statues and inscriptions within. Nor would the richness of the polychrome marble pavings have been seen to full effect. Too, when Ovid speaks of Mars looking down from the pediment of the temple to see both Aeneas and ancestors of the Julian clan, it is presumed that they would be visible from that perspective. It may be, then, that the exedrae were not roofed and is yet another reminder that much that is speculated about the construction of the forum, only half of which even has been excavated, is conjecture, often based on a line of text or fragment of stone. Even what does survive may not permit an accurate reconstruction so much as a hopeful visualization.
In this ground plan, the Temple of Mars Ultor, situated at the back of a rectangular courtyard, is flanked by colonnaded porticoes, as is the Temple of Venus Genetrix in the Forum Julium, after which the forum is modelled. Suetonius (LVI) records that it was narrower than had been planned because Augustus was reluctant to dispossess the owners of neighboring houses, but it is more likely that he simply was not able to purchase all the land he needed. Or it may be that the Vicus Longus, which passed behind the forum, did not admit to any expansion. This may explain the lack of symmetry of the rear wall, an irregularity that was concealed by the long porticoes.
The axis that passes through the center of the exedrae and the façade of the temple focuses attention on the piazza in front, where there was a statue of Augustus in a four-hour chariot (quadriga) erected by the Senate in his honor, calling him pater patriae, father of the country, as Augustus records in his Res Gestae (XXXV).
Reference: Ovid: Fasti (1936) translated by James G. Frazer (Loeb Classical Library); A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (1992) by L. Richardson, Jr.; Roman Art: Romulus to Constantine (1995) by Nancy H. Ramage and Andrew Ramage.
