The Forum: A Meditation on the Uses of Location

In the Forum, one can walk in places that have been soaked in history. Looking in one direction one may see the spot where Mark Anthony gave his famous speech. Further on one can stand near the location where Julius Caesar's body was burned before a terrible mob, his soul ascending away in the symbol of a captured eagle released from bonds. Yet what real significance does a location have? Flood after flood have washed away all trace of the soil that may have dirtied the sole of Nero's foot, or stained the garments of an otherwise pure vestal virgin's garments. Centuries pass, atoms dissapear to take another form in some distant region of the atmosphere, or far in the quiet depths of the Earth. The Earth inself has changed its rotation about the sun ever so slightly as to make it impossible to stand and look at the sun the same way as a triumphant gladiator may have seen it. Some will say that we visit monuments to learn about history, and yet would a book in a quiet library not tell us more in a single page than a load of rubble behind an iron rail. I maintain that to experience a historic location is an act of the imagination, it is a catalyst to see in the past. The historic landscape is the most obscure and subjective of any text, but in the same way as a fictional text, a landscape can prod me into allowing my mind to recreate not the facts found in a text book, but the sensations arroused by the muggy, stale air, the swarming flies and crowd that inhabit both the Forum of Caesar and the Forum of the modern postcard salesman. To fully appreciate any historic sight, one must make this leap of the imagination. But of course one must first have the historic information. Otherwise the Forum will indeed only resemble so many white stones.