Tourists Walk Here Every Day — It Once Ran with Blood
Today tourists stroll between the ruins. Two thousand years ago, Rome’s political heart often ran with blood.
Today, the Roman Forum is busy with tourists snapping pictures.
They push baby strollers between cracked gray columns.
Eating gelato.
Sipping espresso.
Laughing.
Two thousand years ago, blood sometimes sprayed and soaked into the Forum sand.
During the bloody purges of Lucius Cornelius Sulla, in the final years of the Roman Republic, the severed heads of enemies were displayed in the Forum for all of Rome to see.
The heads were propped near the Rostra, where Roman politicians addressed the crowds.
Ancient writers record another chilling moment.
While Sulla was addressing the Senate nearby, the screams of prisoners being executed echoed through the Forum. Hundreds were being slaughtered.
Sulla paused only briefly.
Then he told the senators not to worry — the executions were simply a matter of state business.
But Sulla’s executions were only one of many brutal episodes in ancient Rome.
Throughout the Republic’s centuries, the Forum often erupted into violence.
Political rivals clashed in the streets.
Mobs fought with clubs and stones.
In 52 BC, gangs loyal to the populist leader Publius Clodius Pulcher battled supporters of Titus Annius Milo. Clodius was killed, and his enraged followers carried his body into the Senate house.
They built a funeral pyre inside the building and set it ablaze.
The flames destroyed the Curia Hostilia.
Years later, after the assassination of Julius Caesar, Caesar’s supporters burned another massive funeral pyre in the Forum itself.
The crowds rioted again.
Today, tour groups move quietly past the ruins of the Senate house.
Few realize that this peaceful square was once one of the bloodiest political stages in the ancient world.
The Forum bore witness to worse.
After the civil wars that followed Caesar’s murder, Rome’s new rulers issued death lists of political enemies.
One of the most famous victims was the great orator Marcus Tullius Cicero.
Cicero had spent his life speaking in the Forum — defending the Republic with speeches that thundered across the crowd.
When he was captured and killed in 43 BC, his enemies brought his severed head to the Rostra.
They nailed it there for all of Rome to see.
His hands were displayed beside it — the same hands that had written and delivered his famous speeches.
Today, Cicero is remembered as one of history’s great political and philosophical thinkers.
Yet he died brutally, his blood spilled in the Roman Forum.
Screams and blood filled the long history of the Forum.
Today, the loudest sound here is the click of camera shutters.
I don’t celebrate it.
I simply observe.
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Other bloody incidents happened in the Forum, too. Gaius Gracchus and his supporters were killed in 121 BC.
Lucius Appuleius Saturninus died in 100 BC, captured and killed by a mob throwing stones and roof tie.s