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In ancient times there was no city or town so small, but it had its public place, where the inhabitants, together with the population of the neighboring country, might assemble. Those of the Romans, distinguished by the appellation of Forum, whether at Rome, or in the other capitals of Italy, were of an oblong square in form, of which the width was equal to two-thirds of the length.

There were at Rome seventeen of these public places or markets, fourteen of which were appropriated to the purposes of trading provisions and other merchandise. These were called fora venalia. The other where assemblies of the people were held, and where justice was administered, were named fora civilia and judiciaria. Among the most noted were marked by the epithets of Romanum, Julium, Augustum. The first of these was the grandest and the most celebrated, now the Campo Vaccino: it occupied the space between the Capitoline Mount and the Mount Palatine, surrounded by proticoes (basilicae), and the shops of money changers (argentariae), and being the most ancient, was sometimes called forum vetus or Latinum, or simply forum.

Julius Caesar built that which bears his name. And the increase of inhabitants still requiring more accommodation of this kind, Augustus built a third. Several succeeding emperors established new fora at Rome; such as Vespasian and Domitian, whose work, though only finished by Nerva, was called forum Nervae. Lastly Trajan and Antoninus Pius equally contributed to the embellishment and the convenience of the great metropolis by similar constructions.-- Pitiscus--Millin.