One thing you can learn from the study of
history, is that people are people
and they don’t
change
their basic nature, no matter what time period is examined. And there is one basic
fact about humans that is true in all times, and in all
places: people love to shop. And they are always looking for new stores to go to, and new products to buy. The Romans were no different. We’ve seen how small the original Forum was. Rome outgrew it by 50 B.C. What to do? There were no developers at the time and only the state had the power, or resources, to construct new retail sites in the city. Julius Caesar
led
the way. He built, and
opened, the Forum of Julius Caesar in 46 B.C., financing it with booty he had looted from his conquest of Gaul. It was a smashing
success and won him the adoration
of the voters—and the shoppers!
Subsequent Emperors took notice and built their own forums.
But there can never be
too much retail space.
By the year
100 A.D. Rome was bursting at the
seams—commercially speaking. The Emperor Trajan
decided to follow the tried
and
true method of winning friends,
and
making himself immortal (in the economic sense). Fresh from conquering Dacia (modern Romania), he plowed all
of his gains into the magnificent Forum and Market of Trajan. First, he cut away a spur
of the Quirinal Hill to make some space. Several million cubic yards of earth had to be moved. Then,
he constructed his Forum, (the square space in the foreground). The semi-circular space is what remains of the Market. Everything was for sale: fish,
wine, meat, oil, slaves, dyes, cloth, clothes, everything one could
possibly imagine—except for electronic equipment, and Chick-Fil-A. Sort of like a Roman version
of the Mall of America. You wouldn’t think that Romania had that much wealth to steal would you?
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