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Its builders, above all its imperial builders, cared much for spectacular effects and architectural pomp. Even in late Republican times the gloomy mass of the Tabularium and the temples of the Capitol must have towered above the Forum in no mere accidental stateliness, and imperial Rome contained many buildings in many quarters to show that it was the capital of an Empire.
Adjoining the Tabularium is the Schola Xantha, "With the Colonnade of the Twelve Gods, whose images Vettius Agorius Prætextatus, the præfectus urbi, and one of the principal champions of expiring paganism, erected here in A.D. 367."
Above the Treasury, on the second floor, we see the remains of the Doric portico of the Tabularium or Public Record Office, where the records of Rome, engraved upon bronze tablets, were kept. The place is now converted into an architectural museum, where all the most interesting sculptured fragments found in the Forum are preserved, and are exhibited by gaslight owing to the darkness.
From these so tragic ruins there seemed to exhale a great desolation, beneath the deep, green sky. Susanna and Caesar drew near the Forum. In the opaque light of dusk the Forum had the air of a cemetery. Two lighted windows were shining in the high dark wall of the Tabularium, and sharp-toned bells were beginning to ring.
Between the Tabularium and the Forum, about 150 feet southeast from the former, and near the Arch of Severus, are the "remains of The Rostra, or orator's tribune, a name derived from the iron prows of the war-ships of Antium with which the tribune was adorned after the capture of that town in B.C. 338.
On the right rose the square tower of the Capitol, with the perperine substructions of its Tabularium, coeval with the age of the kings; and skirting its base were the cupolas of modern churches, and the nodding columns of fallen temples, beautiful even in their ruin, and more eloquent than Cicero, whose living voice had often been heard on the spot where they now moulder in silent decay.
The Tabularium. The only relics still extant of the ancient Capitol of Rome are the ruins of the Tabularium, erected B.C. 78, by the consul Q. Lutatius Catulus for the reception of the state archives. The modern Capitol covers a part of it.
Iudiciaria, the legal reports, often called gesta, kept in a special tabularium, under the charge of military men discharged from active service. Militaria, which contained reports of all the men employed in war, their height, age, conduct, accomplishments, &c.
We land with the moon lighting up the water, with the stars above us, the northern wain shining on the Hadriatic, as if, while Diocletian was seeking rest by Salona, the star of Constantine was rising over York and Trier. Dimly rising above us we see, disfigured indeed, but not destroyed, the pillared front of the palace, reminding us of the Tabularium of Rome's own capitol.
In the Middle Age, the prison was below the vaults of the Roman Tabularium on the side of the Forum, but it is said that the windows looked inward upon a deep court of the Senator's palace.
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