TRIBUNAL PRAETORIS
the judgment seat of the praetor, always apparently
a movable wooden platform, which stood originally on the comitium
(
Liv. xxvii. 50. 9; Jord. i. I. 499-500; Mommsen, Jahrb. des. Gem. d.
Rechts vi. 389 ff., Jurist. Schriften, iii. 319-326).
1 It was transferred
to the forum at some later date, perhaps about the middle of the second
century B.C., and set up sometimes at least near the
PUTEAL LIBONIS
(q.v.) and the arcus Fabianus (Porphyr. ad Hor.
Epist. i. 19. 8;
Jord.
i. 2. 402-403).
In the travertine pavement of the Augustan age in front of the column
of Phocas are the matrices of the bronze letters, 30 centimetres high, of
an inscription-L. Naevius L. [f. Sur]dinus pr. This is the same inscription that is found on the back of the archaistic relief of Mettius Curtius
(S. Sculp. 324-326; SScR 316; Cons. 36)-
L. Naevius L. f. Surdinus
pr[aetor] inter civis et peregrinos (
CIL vi. 1468). Naevius was triumvir
monetalis in 23 B.C. (BM. Aug. 139-146; cf. p. xcv), and the inscriptions
seem to indicate that he constructed a praetor's tribunal at this point in
the forum, as well as repairing it (see
FORUM ROMANUM, p. 234, n. I;
ZA 86; DR 73, 74; RE
Suppl. iv. 504; HFP 27, 28), in connection
with Augustus' rebuilding of the rostra. It is possible that this was the
usual place for the praetor's seat after it had been moved from the
comitium (cf. another praetor's inscription,
CIL vi. 1278, found here in
1817). The structure of Naevius was not monumental, but the traditional
wooden platform may have been provided with a stone foundation, or an
enclosure wall on which the archaistic relief was placed (Hulsen, Forum,
Nachtrag,
Rome 1910, 15-21;
CR 1906, 133; Richter,
BRT iv. 28-29).
But the significance of the inscription (completely misunderstood by
Richter) has not been fully appreciated, and we must refer to it a general
repairing of the whole Forum (
JRS 1926, 134).
