Comitium Niger Lapis

The data collected from recent investigations prove beyond doubt that the area of the future Comitium, a plateau sloping towards the plain of the Roman Forum on the slopes of the Capitoline Hill, was occupied from the Iron Age onward. Careful reexamination of the investigations and documentation arising from the most recent excavations indicate that from the 7th B.C., the site accommodates structures functional to political, administrative, and religious activity that we later find in the Comitium of the Republican age: the square, the stepped tribunes and the sacred area to which refer the archaic Latin inscription C.I.L., I2.1, or the Cippo del Foro (or Niger Lapis inscription). The latter was accurately surveyed for the first time with the use of modern three-dimensional surveying and restitution techniques (Laser Scanner). The results led to the definition of new considerations on the reading of the text and the normative content of the inscription itself.