In telling the story of Tarpeia, Propertius associates the site of the Curia with a natural well of water.

One is reminded of the traditional springs at Janus Geminus,⁵ and of the well in St. Peter's prison.⁶

The Curia adjoined the Comitium and was entered from it,⁷ the facade and principal doors being in the direction of the Forum,⁸ and approached by a flight of steps, which existed, according to tradition, in the earliest times.⁹ The origin of the ancient Curia was attributed to king Tullus Hostilius, whose name the building bore until its destruction at the funeral of Clodius.¹⁰

One of the earliest paintings placed in a public situation in Rome was on the side of the ancient Curia. It was placed there by M. valerius Maximus Messala, consul B.C. 263, and represented the victory obtained by him over Hiero and the Carthaginians in Sicily. This picture gave its name to a known locality, which was situated between the Rostra and the Carcer. When the tribune vatinius arrested Bibulus at the Rostra and was carrying him to the prison, the other tribunes released him at the Tabula Valeria.⁴¹¹

The Curia Hostilia was destroyed at the funeral of Clodius, B.C. 52, when the populace insisted on burning his body within it and thus set fire to the building itself. The building then destroyed had been rebuilt or considerably altered by the dictator Sulla, and the Senate committed the task of restoring it to his son Faustus Cornelius Sulla, intending it to receive the new denomination of Curia Cornelia.² The history of the Curia and its site during the ten years that followed is somewhat obscure. Our chief information on the subject is derived from Dio. The restoration decreed by the Senate appears, according to this historian, to have been commenced, if not completed, when Caesar or his friends, jealous of the honour proposed to be paid to the family of Sulla, caused the new building of Faustus to be pulled down, under pretence of raising on its site a temple to Felicity (which was actually completed by Lepidus), but really in order that a new Curia might be built to bear the name of Julia.⁴¹³ In the year following the death of Julius, an order was given for the rebuilding of the Curia Hostilia on the occasion of an alarm caused by various portents and calamities,⁴ and in the next year the Curia Julia was erected at the side of the Comitium in pursuance of the previous decree.⁵

The above narrative does not make it certain whether the Curia Julia stood on the site of the Curia Hostilia. The first passage, which describes the removal of the proposed Curia Cornelia to make room for a Temple of Felicity, implies an intension at that time to build a new Curia on another site; and the completion of the temple, of the subsequent removal of which not a workd is said, seems to present a difficulty in supposing the Curia Julia to have occupied the same spot. On the other hand, the decree to rebuild the Curia Hostilia, and the description of the position of the new Curia, which corresponds so exactly with that of the old, at the side of the Comitium,⁴¹⁶ leaves the impression that the intention to seek another position was abandoned, and that the Curia Julia ultimately occupied the site of the older Curia. It should be added that no further mention is found of the Temple of Felicity. The identification of the Curia Hostilia and the Curia Julia is confirmed by the expression of Livy, who says that the Curia up to his father's time bore the name of Hostilia.⁷ The same inference may be drawn from other authors subsequent to the rebuilding, who speak of the Curia as an individual monument without any identication of a change of site having interrupted its identity.

The meaning of the word Curia is not without its bearing upon the question here discussed. This word was undoubtedly used not only for the regular Senate-house, but for any place where the Senate met, and also for the Senate itself. Cicero boasts that during his consulate he had always on the Rostra defended the Curia, and in the Senate defended the people.⁴¹⁹ Sallust speaks of catiline bursting out of the Curia when the Senate was sitting in the Temple of Jupiter Stator, though the historian does not mention the locality.²⁰ In one of the anecdotes of Valerius Maximus, the Curia, as the place where the Senate was actually assembled, is contrasted with the Hostilia. The Senate invited the tribune Drusus, who was at the rostra, to come to the Curia. "Why does not the Senate rather," said he, "come to the Hostilia, that is, to me?"^1c Still the word Curia when used of a locality without reference to the presence of the Senate, could only mean the ordinary place of meeting for the time being of that body.

During the interval between the burning of the Curia Hostilia and the death of Caesar, the great hall in the Porticus of Pompey was the usual meeting-place of the Senate, and was inaugurated for this purpose.⁴²² This building was therefore for the time the Curia; and an anecdote told by Suetonius, in which the word is used without qualification, probably relates to this building. Caesar having given great offence to the Romans by admitting strangers, especially half-barbarous Gauls, into the Senate, some wit suggested, as a happy thought, that they should all agree to refuse to show a new senator the way to the Curia.^3d So Ovid writes with reference to the death of Caesar:

The Curia, with a structure called the Clacidicum attached to it, is among the buildings claimed by Augustus in the Ancyran inscription.^5e It was dedicated by him in the year B.C. 29, the same year in which he celebrated his triple triumph and closed the Temple of Janus. He placed in the Curia a statue of Victory, which remained there in the time of Dio. This statue came originally from Tarentum;⁴²⁸ it was carried in the funeral procession of Augustus.^7e Two pictures, placed upon the walls of the Curia by the same emperor, preserved the names of their authors, Nicias and Philochares, to the age of Pliny, who mentions, as a singular circumstance with reference to the material, that the work of Nicias was said, in his own inscription on the picture, to be burnt in.^8e

The Curia Julia is mentioned by Suetonius as existing at the death of Caligula, when the Roman aristocracy was so averse to the rule of the Caesars, that the consuls convoked the Senate in the Capitol, rather than in the Curia, because the latter bore the name of Julia.^9f

Herodian mentions a statue and altar of Victory, which stood in the Senate-house in the reigns of Heliogabalus and Maximin.^2g The altar of Victory became afterwards a central point around which was waged the war between Christianity and expiring Heathendom. It appears to have been removed by Christian influence under the emperor Gratianus in the year A.D. 382, and its restoration was demanded by symmachus, and opposed by Ambrose as offensive to the conscience of the Christian senators.^3g The Christian party is said to have prevailed; but an allusion of Claudian, in his description of Stilicho's reception by the senate some twenty years later, seems to imply that the statue, if not the altar, of Victory was then in the Senate-house.

The Senatus, as the building itself was commonly called in later times,^5h probably continued to exist on its ancient site for many centuries. Both the original Curia and the Curia Julia appear to have been guarded by some sort of fence.^6h

^ 404. Propertius, iv. 4.3.13.

^ 5. Varro, L.L. v. 32 (43). (Note 740.)

^ 6. See pp. 6, 7.

^ 7. C. Aufustius (obiit) egressus, quum in Senatum iret, offenso pede in Comitio. Plin. N. H. vii. 54; Dionys. iv. 38. (Note 409.) I assume that the Curia always stood on the same place, or in other words that the site of the Curia Hostilia and Curia Julia was identical. See this matter discussed further on p. 153.

^ 8. Dio Cass. lxxiii. 13 (Note 620); Procop. B. Goth. i. 25. (Note 639.)

^ 9. Tum Tarquinius, ..medium arripit Servium, elatumque e Curia in inferiorem partem per gradus deiicit. Liv. i. 48. Liv. i. 36 (Note 474.). Dionys. iv. 38.

^ 10. Principes Albanorum in Patres...legit... templumque ordini ab se aucto curiam fecit, quae Hostilia usque ad patrum nostrorum aetatem appellata est. Liv. i. 30. Cic. Rep. ii. 17. (Note 381.)

^ 411. M Valerius Max. Messala... princeps tabulam picturae praelii, quo Carthageniensis et Hieronem in sicilia devicerat, proposuit in latere Curiae Hostiliae. Plin. N. H. xxxv. 7.
Cum eum (Bibulum) tu consulem in vincla duceres, et a tabula Valeria collegae tui mitti iuberent, fecerisne ante Rostra pontem continuatis tribunalibus, per quem consul populi Romani... non in carcerem sed ad supplicium et necem duceretur? Cic. in Vatin. ix. 21.
Nam ad me P. Valerius... scripsit... quemadmodum a vestae ad tabulam Valeriam ducta esses. Cic. ad. Terent. (Ep. ad. div. xiv. 2, 2.)

^ 2. Dio Cass. xl. 50. Plin. N. H. xxxiv. 12. (Note 485.) ascon. ad Cic. p. Mil. 5. (Note 551.)

^ 413. Dio Cass. xliv. 5.

^ 4. Dio Cass. xlv. 17.

^ 5. Dio Cass. xlivii. 19.

^ 416. Pliny likewise places the Curia Julia in the Comitium. Plin. N. H. xxxv. 10. (Note 428.) The new Curia was, not improbbly, on a larger scale than the old. The adjoining basilica, which was burnt with it, may have afforded room for its extension.

^ 7. Liv. i. 30 (Note 410.)

^ 8. Propertius, iv. 1, 11. Mon. Ancyr. (Note 437.) Dionys. iv. 38. (Note 409.)

^ 419. Ut semper in rostris Curiam, in senatu populum defenderim. Cic. in Pis. 3.

^ 20. Dein se ex Curia domum proripuit. Sallust. Bell. Catilin. Cic. in Catil. i. 1. (Note 44.)

^ 1c. Cum senatus ad eum misisset ut in Curiam veniret, Quare non potius, inquit, ipse in Hostiliam, propinquam Rostris, id est ad me, venit? Val. Max. ix. 5, 2.

^ 422. Confirmavitque (Varro), nisi in loco per augures constituto, quod templum appellaretur, senatus consultum factum esset, iustum id non fuisse; propterea et in Curia hostilia et in Pompeia et post in Iulia, quum profana ea loca fuissent, templa esse per augures constituta, ut in iis senatus consulta more maiorum iusta fieri possent. A. Gell. xiv. 7.

^ 3d. Peregrinis in senatum allectis, libellus propositus est: bonum factum, ne quis senatori novo Curiam monstrare velit. Suetonius, Iul. 80.

^ 4d. Ovid. Metam. xv. 801.

^ 5e.Mon. Ancyr. (Note 437.)

^ 428. Dio Cass. li. 22.

^ 7e. Sueton. Aug. 100.

^ 8e. Item in Curia quoque, quam in Comitio consecrabat (Augustus), duas tabulas impressit parieti. Nemeam sedentem supra leonem... Nicias scripsit se inuississe, tali enim usus est verbo. Alterius tabulae... Philochares hoc suum opus esse testatus est. Plin. xxxv. 10. Ib. xxxv. 40. (Note 36.)

^ 9f. Sueton. calig. 60.

^ 30. Becker, Handbuch. i. 346.

^ 430. Hieron. an. xcii. t. i. p. 443. Ronc.; Prosp. Aquit. p. 571; Cassiod. Chron. t. ii. p. 197; Catal. Imp. Vienn. p. 243. (Becker, Handbuch, i. 347.)

^ 1f. Catal. Imp. Vienn. (Note 448.)

^ 2g. Herodian, v. 5; ib. vii. 11. Dio Cass. li. 22. (Note 426.)

^ 3g. Quis ita familiaris est abarbaris ut aram victoriae non requirat? relatio Symmach. i. 4. Prudentius, ed. Valpy, p. 683.
Cum vir clar. Praefectus urbis Symmachus ad clementiam tuam retulisset, ut ara quae de urbis Romae curia sublata fuerat redderetur loco, etc..... Sic deam esse et Victoriam crediderunt... Hujus aram strui in urbis Romae Curia petunt, hoc est, quo plures conveniunt Christiani. Ambros. Epist. in Symm. ibid. pp. 689, 699.

^ 434. Claudian, xxviii. De vi. Cons. Honor. 595.

^ 5h. Senatum dici et pro loco et pro hominibus. A. Gell. xviii. 7. Compare Plin. N. H. vii. 54 (Note 407); Pseudo- Ascon. in cic. Verr. II. i. 22. (Note 389.)

^ 6h. Cic. Rep. ii. 17. (Note 381.) Propertius, iv. 4. 13. See before, p. 151.

Francis Morgan Nichols, The Roman Forum (London: Longmans and Co, 1877), 152-159.