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, recor ...

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

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

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

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC), Suetonius, Life of Horace commonly known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). Th ...

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 and 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 ...

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 ( , ; , formerly also ; [] by Titus Livius, [] and [] by Pliny the Elder''Natural History'' 3.59.) is an approximately quadrangular area of former marshland ...

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

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

). The ''Appii Forum'' and the " Three Taverns" are mentioned also as a halting place in the account of Paul's journey to Rome ( Acts xxviii. 15). Under

Nerva Nerva (; born Marcus Cocceius Nerva; 8 November 30 – 27 January 98) was a 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 dynast ...

and

Trajan Trajan ( ; born Marcus Ulpius Traianus, 18 September 53) was a Roman emperor from AD 98 to 117, remembered as the second of the Five Good Emperors of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty. He was a philanthropic ruler and a successful soldier ...

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

silex Separation of isotopes by laser excitation (SILEX) is a process for enriching uranium to fuel nuclear reactors that may also present a growing nuclear weapons proliferation risk. It is strongly suspected that SILEX utilizes laser condensation repre ...

(replacing the former

gravel Gravel () is a loose aggregation of rock fragments. Gravel occurs naturally on Earth as a result of sedimentation, sedimentary and erosion, erosive geological processes; it is also produced in large quantities commercially as crushed stone. Gr ...

ling) of the section from Tripontium, 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 (; born Count Angelo Onofrio Melchiorre Natale Giovanni Antonio called Giovanni Angelo or Giannangelo Braschi, 25 December 171729 August 1799) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 15 February 1775 to hi ...

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

Suetonius Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (), commonly referred to as Suetonius ( ; – after AD 122), was a Roman historian who wrote during the early Imperial era of the Roman Empire. His most important surviving work is ''De vita Caesarum'', common ...

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