PORTICUS
the Roman adaptation of the Greek a-ro, varying more or less
in detail, but consisting in general of a covered colonnade formed by a
wall and one or more parallel rows of columns, or less frequently by
columns alone. There were two prevailing types, one enclosing a rectangular area, either open and laid out like a garden, or occupied by a
temple, and the second a long gallery bordering on a street. In either
case the porticus might be an independent structure, or attached to
adjacent buildings. In the gardens of the rich Romans even the driveways
seem to have been under such colonnades.
The earliest porticus known to us were built in 193 B.C. by two
members of the gens Aemilia, but the period of rapid development in
numbers and use began in the last century of the republic and continued
in the Augustan era (Stuart Jones, Companion 108-110). The earlier
porticus were devoted mainly to business purposes, but during the
empire they were intended primarily to provide places for walking and
lounging that should be sheltered from sun and wind. For this reason
the intercolumnar spaces were sometimes filled with glass or hedges of
box. Within the porticus or the apartments connected with them, were
collections of statuary, paintings, and works of art, as well as shops and
bazaars. A porticus took its name from its builder, its purpose, the
structure to which it was attached or of which it formed a part, or
sometimes from some famous statue or painting preserved within it (e.g.
PORTICUS ARGONAUTARUM).
The campus Martius was particularly well adapted to the development
of the porticus, and by the second century there were upwards of twelve
in
Region IX, some of them of great size, and it was possible to walk
from the forum of Trajan to the pons Aelius under a continuous shelter
(
Vitr. i. 3. I ;
v. 9. 1-5; Ann. d.
Inst. 1883, 5-22;
DS iv. 586; LR 447;
Lanciani, Anc. Rome, 94).
