From dictatorship to apotheosis: Caesar and memory in the "fora" of Rome during the end of the Republic

Abstract

The Roman forum underwent many transformations throughout the Republican period, but it was during the crisis of the 1st century BC that this space was violently disputed between great political leaders. In the last days of the Republic the most profound and structural changes were set in motion, led by Julius Caesar still alive or sustaining his figure as a fundamental element to the new visuality of the forum in the years after the Ides of March. In his dictatorship, not only the old Forum Romanum had been altered, but a new forum, adjacent to the old one, was erected too – the Forum Iulium. Octavian, heir to the late dictator, continued the reforms initiated by his father. Thus, the landscape of the complex formed by the two fora mobilized elements of the Roman past and modified and obliterated so many others, which promoted the construction of a collective memory that had in Caesar one of its main bases: in life or posthumously, his memory became ubiquitous in the heart of Rome. In this article, we will analyze the process of construction of collective memory by the urban landscape of the forums, paying particular attention to the role attributed to the image of Julius Caesar in such memory.