Curia

As you enter the Curia, you are amazed by its vast size, high ceilings, and lovely inlay paving of colored marble. To your left and right are long three-tiered platforms running along the east and west walls (see the interior of the Curia as it appears today and in a (modern reconstruction). Here the senators sit when the Senate is meeting, with the highest ranking senators on the first tier. You chuckle when you realize that the Romans had "back benchers" long before the British Parliament!

At the north end of the Senate Chamber is a golden statue of Victoria, the winged goddess of victory in war, placed here by Augustus to celebrate the military pre-eminence of Rome, but especially to commemorate his own victory over Cleopatra and Antony at Actium. Near it is an inscribed golden shield, the clipeus virtutis ("shield of valor") voted by the Senate for Augustus in 27 BCE. Augustus referred to both the statue and the shield on an aureus and a denarius issued in Spain in 19-18 BCE, and described the reason for this honor in Res Gestae 34:

In consulatu sexto et septimo, postquam bella civilia exstinxeram, per consensum universorum potitus rerum omnium, rem publicam ex mea potestate in senatus populique Romani arbitrium transtuli. Quo pro merito meo senatus consulto Augustus appellatus sum . . . et clupeus aureus in curia Iulia positus, quem mihi senatum populumque Romanum dare virtutis clementiaeque et iustitiae et pietatis caussa testatum est per eius clupei inscriptionem.

In my sixth and seventh consulates, after I had wiped out the civil wars, when I held power over everythng by consent of the entire state, I transferred the Republic from my power to the control of the Senate and the Roman people. For this service I was named Augustus by decree of the Senate . . . and there was placed in the Curia Julia a golden shield; an inscription on the shield itself testified that the Senate and the Roman people gave me this because of my valor, clemency, justice, and piety.

On the low platform that marks the center of the chamber you see a special stool where the presiding magistrate sits (a consul during the Republic, but now the emperor). To find out more about this stool and decide whether you can sit on it, click on sella curulis below.