The Curia Cornelia was a place where the Roman Senate assembled beginning c. 52 BC. [1] It was the largest of all the Curiae (Senate Houses) built in Rome. Its construction took over a great deal of the traditional comitium space and brought the senate building into a commanding location within the Roman Forum as a whole. It was the Senate House of the time of Julius Caesar and is significant because its location was moved by him to diminish the Senate's dominance within the City and Republic.
In 80 BC, Lucius Cornelius Sulla decided to enlarge the existing Curia to accommodate the doubling of senators in the Republic. He had to demolish the old Curia Hostilia and the Comitium, but the name Hostilia was kept.
The Curia Hostilia was again destroyed during riots at the funeral of Publius Clodius Pulcher, in 52 BC. It was rebuilt again by Faustus Cornelius Sulla, the son of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, and took the name Curia Cornelia. [2]
In 44 BC, the Curia was converted into a temple by Caesar during his redesign of the Roman Forum. It is not known when the building was finally torn down, but its location in relation to the Forum of Caesar made it more than likely that happened during or after the construction of the first Imperial Forum.
Finally, Caesar replaced the Curia Cornelia with the Curia Julia, which still stands, in 44 BC.
80s BC is the time period from 89 BC – 80 BC.
Lucius Cornelius Cinna was a four-time consul of the Roman Republic, serving four consecutive terms from 87 to 84 BC, and a member of the ancient Roman Cinna family of the Cornelia gens.
This article concerns the period 109 BC – 100 BC.
The Roman Forum, also known by its Latin name Forum Romanum, is a rectangular forum (plaza) surrounded by the ruins of several important ancient government buildings at the center of the city of Rome. Citizens of the ancient city referred to this space, originally a marketplace, as the Forum Magnum, or simply the Forum.
Curia in ancient Rome referred to one of the original groupings of the citizenry, eventually numbering 30, and later every Roman citizen was presumed to belong to one. While they originally likely had wider powers, they came to meet for only a few purposes by the end of the Republic: to confirm the election of magistrates with imperium, to witness the installation of priests, the making of wills, and to carry out certain adoptions.
The pomerium or pomoerium was a religious boundary around the city of Rome and cities controlled by Rome. In legal terms, Rome existed only within its pomerium; everything beyond it was simply territory (ager) belonging to Rome.
The Curia Hostilia was one of the original senate houses or "curiae" of the Roman Republic. It was believed to have begun as a temple where the warring tribes laid down their arms during the reign of Romulus. During the early monarchy, the temple was used by senators acting as council to the king. Tullus Hostilius was believed to have replaced the original structure after fire destroyed the converted temple. It may have held historic significance as the location of an Etruscan mundus and altar. The Lapis Niger, a series of large black marble slabs, was placed over the altar where a series of monuments was found opposite the Rostra. This curia was enlarged in 80 BC by Lucius Cornelius Sulla during his renovations of the comitium. That building burned down in 52 BC when the supporters of the murdered Publius Clodius Pulcher used it as a pyre to cremate his body.
The rostra was a large platform built in the city of Rome that stood during the republican and imperial periods. Speakers would stand on the rostra and face the north side of the comitium towards the senate house and deliver orations to those assembled in between. It is often referred to as a suggestus or tribunal, the first form of which dates back to the Roman Kingdom, the Vulcanal.
The Populares were a political faction in the late Roman Republic who favoured the cause of the plebeians.
Faustus Cornelius Sulla was a Roman senator. Faustus was the only surviving son of the Roman Dictator Lucius Cornelius Sulla and his fourth wife, Caecilia Metella, and thus was a member of one of the most ancient patrician families, the Cornelii. After his father's death in 78 BC, he and his twin sister, Fausta, were brought up by his guardian and father's friend, Lucullus.
The gens Cornelia was one of the greatest patrician houses at ancient Rome. For more than seven hundred years, from the early decades of the Republic to the third century AD, the Cornelii produced more eminent statesmen and generals than any other gens. At least seventy-five consuls under the Republic were members of this family, beginning with Servius Cornelius Maluginensis in 485 BC. Together with the Aemilii, Claudii, Fabii, Manlii, and Valerii, the Cornelii were almost certainly numbered among the gentes maiores, the most important and powerful families of Rome, who for centuries dominated the Republican magistracies. All of the major branches of the Cornelian gens were patrician, but there were also plebeian Cornelii, at least some of whom were descended from freedmen.
Aurelia was the mother of Roman dictator Julius Caesar.
Cornelia was the first or second wife of Julius Caesar, and the mother of his only legitimate child, Julia. A daughter of Lucius Cornelius Cinna, Cornelia was related by birth or marriage to many of the most influential figures of the late Republic.
The Comitium was the original open-air public meeting space of Ancient Rome, and had major religious and prophetic significance. The name comes from the Latin word for "assembly". The Comitium location at the northwest corner of the Roman Forum was later lost in the city's growth and development, but was rediscovered and excavated by archeologists at the turn of the twentieth century. Some of Rome's earliest monuments; including the speaking platform known as the Rostra, the Columna Maenia, the Graecostasis and the Tabula valeria were part of or associated with the Comitium.
The Lapis Niger is an ancient shrine in the Roman Forum. Together with the associated Vulcanal it constitutes the only surviving remnants of the old Comitium, an early assembly area that preceded the Forum and is thought to derive from an archaic cult site of the 7th or 8th century BC.
Pompeia Magna was the only daughter and second child born to Roman triumvir Pompey the Great from his third marriage, to Mucia Tertia. Her elder brother was Gnaeus Pompeius and her younger brother was Sextus Pompey.
Lucius Cornelius Cinna was a politician in the Roman Republic. He came from a noble family which had gained prominence during the civil wars of the 80s BC, but lost their political rights for opposing the dictator Sulla. Cinna sought better fortune for himself by joining the failed rebellions of Lepidus and Sertorius in the 70s BC, but was recalled to Rome and granted amnesty with the support of his brother-in-law, Julius Caesar. Cinna remained debarred from public office, however, an impediment only rescinded by Caesar when he crossed the Rubicon and took control of Rome in 49 BC.
The Curia Julia is the third named curia, or senate house, in the ancient city of Rome. It was built in 44 BC, when Julius Caesar replaced Faustus Cornelius Sulla's reconstructed Curia Cornelia, which itself had replaced the Curia Hostilia. Caesar did so to redesign both spaces within the Comitium and the Roman Forum. The alterations within the Comitium reduced the prominence of the Senate and cleared the original space. The work, however, was interrupted by Caesar's assassination at the Theatre of Pompey, where the Senate had been meeting temporarily while the work was completed. The project was eventually finished by Caesar's successor, Augustus Caesar, in 29 BC.
The Graecostasis was a platform in the Comitium near the Roman Forum, located to the west of the Rostra. The name refers to the Greek ambassadors for whom the platform was originally built after the Roman Republic conquered Greece. Placed at the southwest end of the Comitium, the platform was the designated spot for all representatives of foreign nations and dignitaries from the republic and empire's domain.
