The Forum Romanum, the Roman name for what we usually call the Roman Forum, was the place where the victorious legions held their triumphal marches, where the deaths of famous persons were made public, where the corpses of emperors were burned, where the heads of emperors rolled, in short the centre of power of the Roman empire.

At this web site you find a description of the Roman Forum between 100 BC and 100 AD. The Roman Forum was the centre of ancient Rome. At this web site the Forum is the centre of exploration. It will be the starting point for a great variety of wanderings. Many interesting aspects of Rome and its inhabitants can be met. Descriptions and views of many historic buildings can be found.

The Roman Forum: view in western direction

The most important social, political, cultural and religious functions of the Roman Forum are dealt with. Attention is paid to the celebrities of that time and the roles they played in public life. All this is put against the background of the Roman Forum. The site presents emperors, senators, writers, artists and architects. Those works of art that originate in the Roman Forum but that are to be found in various museums are presented as well.

At the Roman Forum, many historical aspects meet. The period of 100 BC till 100 AD is by far the most fascinating part of the history of Rome. It was also a time with many writers as contemporary witnesses giving evidence of their time. That explains why the site focusses on that very period.

This web site presents a clear and accessible reconstruction of the old Roman Forum. We, the makers of this site, found it a great challenge to combine the very modern medium of the Internet with a very interesting historical subject of the distant past. Many educational purposes are served. Students and interested visitors will find interesting learning materials and will not have to do without funny anecdotes.

The site offers students all over the globe concise but profound information about the world's most famous forum. In fact everybody interested in the Roman Forum finds a wealth of information. It is an up to date source of reference and consultation. The fragmented information that is to be found on the web already, is also put together in a consistent unity.

Who are we?

e are three students of De Grundel High School in Hengelo, the Netherlands. Last year we made a school trip to Rome and there we visited the Roman Forum. For this visit we already did some interesting research. When we heard of the ThinkQuest contest the idea for our site was born very soon.

Now try to pronounce our names:

• Jan Bonenkamp - "I live in Hengelo; soccer fan and player!; try to play the clarinet; have 2 sisters and 3 brothers".
  
• Mathijs Horsthuis - "I live in Lonneker of all places, which means a 5 miles' cycling distance to school every day; love cycling!; play hockey; have 1 sister and 1 brother."
  
• Marloes Mentink - "I live in Hengelo; am pretty good at tennis; teach gymnastics to very young kids; love kids; have 1 brother."

We thank our coaches for their assistance:

• Rob Rietberg, teacher of Latin and Greek, for his great help in matters of content. All the beautiful photographs of the Forum you see on this web site are taken by him!
• Geert ten Tusscher, teacher of English, who was our superb spelling checker.
• Lex Vroling, teacher of German and Computer Science, who was a great help in technical matters.

If you want to know what we look like, click here.

Mail & feedback

We'd like to hear what you think of this site. What do you like and what don't you like? If there are any comments, please let us know. Have we made any mistakes? Let us know too. Don't spare us your criticism. You can reach us at forum@grundel.nl

 

Acknowledgments

here are a lot of people who have assisted us in building this web site. Without their help and assistance it would have been impossible to make this site. Therefore we would like to thank:

• Paul ter Laak, our deputy headmaster, for taking care of a lot of the administrative work and for drawing our attention to this ThinkQuest contest
  
• Jan Melenhorst en Jeroen den Hartog, teachers of Latin and Greek at our school, for their advice and for lending us their precious books.
  
• Mrs Mentink, Marloes' mother, for making it possible to borrow books from the Enschede library without paying the fines for returning them far too late.
  
• Hans Korsten and Lory Wagenaar, teachers of English at our school, for their last minute assistance with final bits of the translations.
• Anton Goselink, former student of our school, for doing the Perl scripting and making the search engine run.

 

Our sources

We have used the following books, CD-roms and internet addresses:

For general reference:
• Britannica CD. Version 97. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1997.
• N.G.L.Hammond & H.H.Scullard (ed.): The Oxford Classical Dictionary, second edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979.
• Microsoft Encarta '96 Encyclopaedia. Microsoft Corporation, 1995.
• Microsoft Ancient Lands. Microsoft Corporation, 1994.
• William Rose Benét: The Reader's Encyclopaedia. London: Book Club Associates, 1974.
• Der Kleine Pauly. Lexikon der Antike in fünf Bänden (auf der Grundlage von Pauly's Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft). Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1979.
• Countless url's on the Internet

  The original sources:

• Suetonius: The twelve Caesars. Translated by Robert Graves. Hardmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd. 1957.
• Tacitus: Kronieken. Haarlem: H.D. Tjeenk Willink en Zoon, 1970.
• Plutarch: Biographies on various famous Romans. Translated by John Dryden. Found on the Internet at the Internet Classics Archive.

  On Art and Architecture:

• D.S.Robertson: Greek and Roman Architecture, second edition. Cambridge: University Press, 1971.
• K. Vangenechten: Het antieke Rome. Amsterdam & Antwerpen: Wereldbibliotheek, 1955.
• Anna Maria Liberati and Fabio Bourbon: Het oude Rome: de geschiedenis van een wereldomvattende beschaving. Lisse: Zuid Boekproducties, 1996. The clickable map in the Forum section is a detail from a drawing in this book.

  On Rome:

• Leonard von Matt and Franco Barelli: Rome. Tijdperken van kunst en kultuur. De Bilt: Cantecleer, 1977.
• Aless Mager and others: Rome. Antwerpen: Standaard,1995.
• Michael Grant: History of Rome. London & Boston: Faber and Faber, 1978.
• Mary Mac Gregor: De geschiedenis van Rome. Haarlem: Fibula-Van Dishoeck, 1977.

  On Daily Life:

• W. van Stuyvenberg: 5000 jaar dagelijks leven. De antieke wereld. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Amsterdam Boek B.V., 1975.
• Jérôme Carcopino: Daily Life In Ancient Rome, The people and the city at the height of the empire, edited with bibliography and notes by Henry T. Rowell, Middlesex & New York: Penguin Books, 1981 (=1941).

  On Biographies:

• Britannica CD. Version 97. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 1997. Most of the biographies are abridged or adapted versions of articles from this really great and famous encyclopaedia.

  A selection of useful sites on the Internet

• A great search engine, Argos, specialised in sites on classical art, history and archeology
• The Rome Project of the Dalton School
• The Rome Reborn Project of UCLA
• On Art and Architecture: Roman Art and Architecture
• On Art and Archeology: Romarch
• On women in ancient Rome: Diotima's Art Links: Materials for the Study of Women and Gender in the Ancient World
• For works of the great classical writers on the internet: The Internet Classics Archive
• On Augustus: Augustus:Images of Power
• On Caligula and Domitian: Crazy Caesars of Rome
• On Piranesi: The Fisher Gallery

Awards & Qualifications

This site has been awarded and selected already several times:

Lynx of the Week Web Site Excellence Anthropology	Martin's Pick of the Week Award Medaille d'Or
Pick of the Day at Yahoo	Site Spotlight at Netscape

For more awards click here.

But our greatest reward was given to us by Professor James O'Donnell of the University of Pennsylvania, who wrote in a mailing list for classisists:

"The remarkable Thinkquest competition pulls together secondary school students from many countries to create serious content web sites meant both to teach the competitors web skills and content and also to be useful educational sites.
I've just gotten the URL to a remarkable Roman Forum site done by three students in Hengelo, the Netherlands, and hasten to recommend it.  I would seriously recommend it as a resource for any secondary school teacher, but it would be equally valuable for a variety of introductory Roman history and culture courses in college or university."

This website © 1997 Jan Bonenkamp, Marloes Mentink & Mathijs Horsthuis