Una corte di giustizia presso il Foro di Traiano? : Analisi sulla funzionalità degli Auditoria adrianei

Abstract

The discovery of two auditoria of Hadrian times nearby the Forum of Trajan has allowed to compare the architecture of the building with administrative or judicial spaces and draw a hypothesis about the function of the complex. Precedent studies about tribunalia in Rome attempted to locate the judicial activities in different areas on the city in the Republican, High-Imperial, and Late Antique periods. Reforms in the legal system from Hadrian to Severian eras suggest major changes in the activity of Roman tribunals, a reorganization of the trials and, perhaps, the necessity of new spaces suitable for the judicial procedures. In this paper, we examine the sources about the tribunals in the capital, the magistracies that administered justice in the Imperial Fora and the internal morphology of the courtrooms. We hypothesize the existence of a tribunal founded by emperor Hadrian that would operate simultaneously with other tribunals of the city from the 2nd century AD until the Late Antique period.