elevated above the nave, at the other. Above the aisles thus formed (portions) were galleries, formed by a second row of columns supporting the roof, approached by external Btaircases, for the accommodation of the general public men on one side, women on the other (Plin., Epist., vi. 33). They were guarded by a parapet wall (pluteus) between the columns, high enough to prevent those in the galleries from being seen by those below. Sometimes, as in Vitruvius s own basilica at Fanum, and in that at Pompeii, instead of a double there was only a single row of columns, the whole height of the building, on which the roof rested. In this case the galleries were supported by square piers (parastatce) behind the main columns. The building was lighted with windows in the side walls, and at the back of the galleries. In the centre of the end-wall were the seats of the judge and his assessors, generally occupying a semicircular apse, the prastor s curule chair standing in the centre of the curve. When the assessors were very numerous (according to Pliny, u.s., they sometimes amounted to one hundred and eighty), they sat in two or three concentric curves arranged like the seats of a theatre. The advocates and other officials filled the rest of the raised platform, divided from the rest of the building by a screen of lattice-work (cancelli). In the centre of the chord of the apse stood an altar on which the judices took an oath to administer true justice. The tribunal sometimes ended square instead of apsidally. This is so in the basilica at Pompeii (see the plan annexed), where the tribunal is parted from the body of the hall by a podium bearing a screen of six columns, and is flanked by staircases to the galleries and by the chalcidica. The larger and more magnificent basilicas
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Fiu. 2. Interior view of Trajau s Basilica (Basilica Ulpia), as restored by C auma.
The plans of Trajan s basilica usually give this arrangement. The fragment of the ground-plan in the marble tablets pre- eerved in the Capitol, usually called that of the ^Emilian. but really, as Canina has shown, that of the Ulpian basilica, also shows an apse, designated (Atrium) Lilertatis. This, we know from many ancient authorities, was the locality
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FIG. 3. Ground-Plan of Trajan s Basilica (Basilica Ulpia).
for the manumission of slaves ; and, therefore, the tribunal must have been at the other end, and, doubtless, also apsidal. The basilica of Trajan was one of the largest and most magnificent in Rome. From its existing remains we le.aru that it was 174 feet in breadth, and more than twice as long as it was broad. (The plan and supposed internal arrangements will be seen in the annexed woodcuts from
Canina.) The nave ; 86 feet in breadth, was divided from