Context Matters: Pliny’s Phryges and the Basilica Paulli in Rome

In the nineteenth century, remains on the north-eastern side of the Forum Romanum were identified as belonging to the Basilica Paulli (Chioffi 1996 4–5; Fig. 17.18 below), which had been situated opposite the Basilica Iulia. This identification had been based on ancient texts which are, however, ambiguous in their reading. They attest in the Forum Romanum either a single Basilica Fulvia-Aemilia-Paulli (communis opinio) or two separate basilicas, namely an archaeologically unverifi ed Basilica Aemilia and the verified Basilica Fulvia-Paulli. The latter is here called the Basilica Paulli and not the Basilica Aemilia, which is what, confusingly, most scholars have called it.2 In 1993 Eva Margareta Steinby scrutinised the opposing statements again and concluded that only the assumption of two separate basilicas, set up in the Forum Romanum in two different areas, would resolve the contradictions in the texts.