The Forum Appii (or Appii Forum) is an ancient post station on the

Via Appia The Appian Way (Latin and Italian: ''Via Appia'') is one of the earliest and strategically most important Roman roads of the ancient republic. It connected Rome to Brindisi, in southeast Italy. Its importance is indicated by its common name, ...

, 63.5 km (39.5 imperial miles; 43 Roman miles) southeast of

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus ( legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

, founded, no doubt, by the original constructor of the road.

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ...

mentioned it as the usual halt at the end of the first

day's journey A day's journey in pre-modern literature, including the Bible, ancient geographers and ethnographers such as Herodotus, is a measurement of distance. In the Bible, it is not as precisely defined as other Biblical measurements of distance; the dis ...

from Rome, and described it as full of boatmen and cheating innkeepers. Boatmen were found there because it was the starting-point of a canal which ran parallel to the road through the

Pontine Marshes 250px, Lake Fogliano, a coastal lagoon in the Pontine Plain The Pontine Marshes (, also ; it, Agro Pontino , formerly also ''Paludi Pontine''; la, Pomptinus Ager by Titus Livius, ''Pomptina Palus'' (singular) and ''Pomptinae Paludes'' (plur ...

, and was used instead of it at the time of Strabo and Horace (see

Appian way The Appian Way ( Latin and Italian: ''Via Appia'') is one of the earliest and strategically most important Roman roads of the ancient republic. It connected Rome to Brindisi, in southeast Italy. Its importance is indicated by its common name, ...

). The ''Appii Forum'' and the " Three Taverns" are mentioned also as a halting place in the account of

Paul's Paul's walk in Elizabethan and early Stuart London was the name given to the central nave of Old St Paul's Cathedral, where people walked up and down in search of the latest news. At the time, St. Paul's was the centre of the London grapevin ...

journey to Rome (

Acts The Acts of the Apostles ( grc-koi, Πράξεις Ἀποστόλων, ''Práxeis Apostólōn''; la, Actūs Apostolōrum) is the fifth book of the New Testament; it tells of the founding of the Christian Church and the spread of its message ...

xxviii. 15). Under

Nerva Nerva (; originally Marcus Cocceius Nerva; 8 November 30 – 27 January 98) was Roman emperor from 96 to 98. Nerva became emperor when aged almost 66, after a lifetime of imperial service under Nero and the succeeding rulers of the Flavian ...

and

Trajan Trajan ( ; la, Caesar Nerva Traianus; 18 September 539/11 August 117) was Roman emperor from 98 to 117. Officially declared ''optimus princeps'' ("best ruler") by the senate, Trajan is remembered as a successful soldier-emperor who presid ...

the road was repaired; one inscription records expressly the paving with

silex Silex is any of various forms of ground stone. In modern contexts the word refers to a finely ground, nearly pure form of silica or silicate. In the late 16th century, it meant powdered or ground up "flints" (i.e. stones, generally meaning the c ...

(replacing the former

gravel Gravel is a loose aggregation of rock fragments. Gravel occurs naturally throughout the world as a result of sedimentary and erosive geologic processes; it is also produced in large quantities commercially as crushed stone. Gravel is classif ...

ling) of the section from

Tripontium Tripontium (Latin for "Place of three bridges") was a town in Roman Britain. It lay on the Roman road later called Watling Street (and known today as the A5) at a site now chiefly within the civil parish of Churchover in the English county ...

, 6 km (4 miles) northwest, to Forum Appii; the bridge near Tripontium was similarly repaired, and that at Forum Appii, though it bears no inscription, is of the same style. Only scanty relics of antiquity have been found here; a post station was placed here by

Pope Pius VI Pope Pius VI ( it, Pio VI; born Count Giovanni Angelo Braschi, 25 December 171729 August 1799) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 15 February 1775 to his death in August 1799. Pius VI condemned the French Revoluti ...

when the Via Appia Nuova was reconstructed in the late 18th century.

Suetonius Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (), commonly referred to as Suetonius ( ; c. AD 69 – after AD 122), was a Roman historian who wrote during the early Imperial era of the Roman Empire. His most important surviving work is a set of biographies ...

claimed that a certain Claudius Russus, a forefather of the Claudian dynasty "having set up his statue at Forum Appi with a crown upon his head, tried to take possession of Italy through his dependents".Suetonius, Life of Tiberius, 2, 2.

Notes

References

* Roman waystations in Italy Archaeological sites in Lazio {{Italy-road-stub