THE FORUM OF TRAJAN IN ROME: A Study of the Monuments.<i> By James E. Packer</i> .<i> University of California Press</i> .<i> $550 until June 30, $650 thereafter</i> .<i> Volume I: 528 pp., 18 color plates</i> . <i> Volume II: 128 pp., microfiche</i> .<i> Volume III: 35 folded sheets</i>

Of all the Roman emperors, Trajan has had about the best press from his contemporaries, as well as from later historians, better even than Augustus himself--even if he was an excessive patron of circus games and a moderate persecutor of Christians. He came into the empire as the adopted son of Nerva, a goodish and law-abiding emperor (though weak) whose reign came as a relief after a succession of tyrannous and unstable rulers.

Trajan was a brilliant administrator and an honest prince and was loved by his army. In Rome, his fame has long been associated with a tall column dominating the center of the city, garnished with imperial images and amply inscribed in letters that have been regarded as the model of near-perfect letter-forms since Michelanglo provided an enclosure for the base early in the 16th century. Its shaft was decorated by scrolled, spiraling accounts of Trajan’s military campaigns against the Quadi and Marcomanni who had occupied Austria and Silesia and were threatening northern Italy.

Trajan’s column was the hallmark of the imperial forum, the northernmost, most opulent and the last of those open spaces in Rome that provided citizens with a kilometer of partly covered walkways and a parade of public art. The forum was Trajan’s most magnificent gift to his city and was probably the largest paved area (at least until then) ever given over to pedestrians. It was designed to be the climax of a sequence of forums, to which there would be no sequel. No monarch or tyrant of recent times--not even Hitler in his grandiose plan for Berlin--has provided as much relaxed magnificence for his subjects. Nor has any republic, however rich, ever spent such a fortune from the public purse for its prestige and the pleasure of its citizens.

The achievements of Trajan and his architect, Apollodorus of Damascus, have at last been worthily commemorated. James E. Packer’s sumptuous “The Forum of Trajan in Rome” has the scope and bulk appropriate to a definitive study of this vast and stately monumental complex, and no student of Roman architecture will be able to do without it from now on. Such a work could not be a one-man enterprise, of course; for more than 20 years, Packer led a large team, supported by the Getty, Graham and the Kress foundations as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities and his own university, Northwestern, in measuring, surveying and reconstructing Trajan’s forum.

The book is not cheap--not even inexpensive--though condensed as it is into three volumes, it is certainly cheap at the price. Volume I is 528 pages with 157 illustrations, including 18 color plates, and contains the narrative of the excavations and a restoration of the monuments, as well as a catalog of the surviving architectural and sculptural fragments. Volume II is 128 pages with 859 illustrations and provides a photographic survey with microfiches of all the excavated fragments. The third is a set of 35 folding plates, 24 in black and white, 11 in color, which provides a complete plan and section survey of the ruins in their present state, as well as outlines of the proposed restorations. The reader is advised to have a sizable clear table (or a spread on the floor) before tackling the last volume.

The reader can therefore recreate an achievement which does not have any recent parallel: In the Roman Empire, such an enterprise was considered essential to civic life, while sumptuous 20th century public buildings serve only--like the palace of Nicolae Ceausescu in Bucharest--the ostentation of despots. Since recent corporate building has overreached despotic ambitions and public spaces or monuments are obstructed and constrained by politics and expense, “The Forum of Trajan” can almost be read as a provocation.

Yet when Trajan planned his forum, nearly 2,000 years ago, he was emulating the work of several of his predecessors. The original forum, called the Roman Forum, was at the foot of the city that, according to legend, Romulus had founded on the Palatine hill in 753 BC. It was constantly improved and enriched but had grown too small for the thronging crowds by the time of the first Caesar, approximately 700 years later. This forum was venerable because it contained many temples, monuments and statues connected with the earliest history of the city. Its main space was outlined by two basilicas, in which gladiatorial fights were held. Spectators watched from the colonnades on the second story. Julius Caesar, who completed one of those basilicas (which served as law courts and exchanges), also built the first additional forum just to the north of the original. It was located at the foot of the Capitoline Hill and bore his name. It was dominated by a temple of Venus Genetrix, who, being the mother of the Trojan hero Aeneas, the founder of Rome, was acknowledged as the ancestress of the Julian family.

Julius’ successor, Augustus, built his own much more solemn and ornate forum at right angles to Caesar’s forum. It was built into the foothill of the Quirinal hill, and at its center was the temple of Mars the Avenger, a temple he vowed to build when he defeated Brutus and Cassius together with Caesar’s other enemies in 42 BC at Philippi.

Because the Julians believed themselves descended from Venus and because Mars was the ancestor of Romulus, Rome’s legendary founder, the two deities were therefore appropriately united in Caesar’s and Augustus’ forums, two public places that took over some of the religious and civic functions that had occurred in the ancient Roman Forum. Three extensions to these forums were added before Trajan started work on his own.

Trajan’s forum effectively paved the space between the Capitoline and the Quirinal hills and required vast earthworks. Today, we know exactly how deep the excavations were, since the height of Trajan’s column corresponds to the depth of the earth removed, or so its inscription says. That column stood in its own square court, hemmed in on either side by two libraries, one Greek and one Latin. The narrative relief on the column’s shaft, spiraling like a scroll, was similar to the scrolled volumina kept in the libraries, which, according to Vanantius Fortunatus, the poet-bishop of Poitiers, France, who died in 609, were certainly still being used four centuries after the emperor’s death for poetry readings and literary competitions.

South of these libraries was one of the largest Roman basilicas, the Basilica Ulpia, which measured 650 feet long and was named after Trajan’s family and separated the libraries, the square court of the column and the temple of Trajan, the divinized emperor (which has not yet been excavated, nor is likely to be in the foreseeable future) from the forum itself, a square that opened in two hemicycles, the whole lined with shops and lawyers’ offices.

Complex as it was, the forum was but one element of a much larger design, which featured a huge multistory market (or shopping center) above its northern edge. This market used much of the excavated soil from the forum and formed a six-story retaining wall against the side of the Quirinal Hill. The market had a more utilitarian aspect than the forum. The outer brick walls were covered with painted plaster and the doors and windows outlined with travertine while, in contrast, the floors and the walls of the forum were sheathed with a profusion of different colored marbles and crowded with gilt, bronze and marble statues.

In this enterprise, Trajan’s vision was abetted by his favorite architect, Apollodorus, who had already built a huge thermal complex for the emperor just north of the Colosseum. Arguably, the complex by Trajan set the standard for the Imperial Baths in Rome. Unfortunately, little of it remains today, yet glimpses of its magnificence can be seen in the derivative establishments of Caracalla and Domitian, which, though ruined, are still vast and very visible in modern Rome. Even though he was Syrian, Apollodorus’ various achievements were thoroughly Roman and his great works were meant to honor the empire and the city. After Trajan’s death, the next emperor, Hadrian, exiled Apollodorus to his homeland and, some historians maintain, had him killed for making snide comments on his own imperial projects. Hadrian had already enshrined the golden urns (which, of course, have disappeared) that contained the ashes of Trajan and his wife, Plotina, in a chamber at the base of the column. He was also reputed to have been a skilled architect himself: His vast mausoleum (now called Castel Sant’ Angelo), the Pantheon and the Temple of Venus and Rome overlooking the Roman Forum are often credited to him, though they have, at various times, also been attributed to Apollodorus.

Whatever the truth about Hadrian’s relation to Apollodorus, Trajan’s forum was still much admired in the 4th and 5th centuries. Even after the imperial administration of the empire had been moved by Constantine from Rome to Byzantium in AD 453, emperors left it intact; its statues were not carted away as trophies, as was done with other monuments. By the 9th century, however, shaken by later depredations and two earthquakes, the forum turned into both a ruin and a quarry; it was gradually buried in the rising soil and built over. Systematic excavations, aside from Michelangelo’s early work, were started during the Napoleonic occupation of Rome, a testimony to his imperial ambitions. Some of the churches and houses over the site were razed and the inner colonnades of the Basilica Ulpia made their first appearance out of the earth since antiquity.

From that time onward, various excavations followed, slowly disinterring other parts of the forum. In the first half of the 19th century, several scholars (mostly French) made further essays. In 1849, the greatest expert on Roman architecture and topography of his age, Luigi Canina, undertook a major campaign of excavation, published surveys and restorations, from which later classicists and archeologists devised some grotesque, and sometimes very elaborate, restorations of the complex. Systematic work started again late in the 1920s, when the markets that overlooked the forum were excavated and restored. Mussolini’s own imperial ambitions, more strident and less scholarly than Napoleon’s, played upon the grandiloquent ruins; they inspired the building of a triumphal avenue (which he had called “Via dell Impero”--a name now deflated to “Way of the Imperial Forums”) that connected his headquarters at Palazzo Venezia to the Colosseum and cut a diagonal swath through Trajan’s forum and the other imperial forums. Even so, work on Mussolini’s avenue went in tandem with much more extensive excavations of the forums. Recent plans to continue excavating beneath Mussolini’s roadway and even to construct a museum have been financially handicapped.

Inevitably, therefore, Packer cannot present a complete picture of the complex. The new excavations and restorations answer as many (if not more) questions than they raise, and they will be debated for many years to come by Roman historians and anyone at all interested in architecture. Were the trees planted in the forum really so closely pollarded? Were the figure-sculptures and reliefs quite so busily crowded? Were the open colonnades in the upper story of the basilica unusable in winter? Were its apses quite as dark as they appear on the perspectives? A reader might also wonder why the bold and staccato, even brutal way the face of the basilica, modeled on Trajan’s coins, is--according to most of the restorers--tamed, smoothed out by the load and richness of the sculpture. Certainly, some of Packer’s decisions, such as his rearrangement of the basilica or the planting of those trees in the forum, are accurate. His restoration improves on those of his predecessors, both in precision and in credibility. The questions these volumes raise may say more about 20th century taste or they may reveal how little archeologists and restorers know about what 2nd century die-cutters intended architecture to be.

More important, however, than such queries or even doubts is the generosity and the deep commitment this publishing project required from its participants. The publishers also deserve credit: The generosity of the layout, the quality of the printing and production match the enthusiasm of the author. More the pity, then, that most readers who, even if they could afford it may not have the shelf-space for the complete work, will certainly need a digest of it. Perhaps the University of California Press will print a slimmer one-volume format, as it did some years ago when it published an equally splendid three-volume commentary on the early medieval plan of an excavated monastery in Saint Gallen, Switzerland.

Yet in the case of Trajan’s forum, the need for an accessible format is much more urgent, because this account of imperial munificence is a powerful witness to the way the central government of a wealthy country once considered it appropriate to spend its riches. Of course, they were not all spent in this fashion; as much of the national income was spent on maintaining a standing army in Trajan’s time as the United States does today. Additionally, public works included public entertainment--gladiatorial games, animal hunts and fights in the circus--activities that cost almost as as much as the buildings. (We, on the other hand, take our violence in movies; to witness the real slaughter of people or animals would be considered degrading, cruel or even perverse by our society.)

But do not the realities of Roman civic splendor mitigate circus bestiality? Are we not also entitled to the dignity of civic display? The eyes, which quickly tire of the screen, are still those of a body, whose healthy senses, not just sight but hearing, touch and smell, require stimulus and satisfaction in the public, not just private, realms. The poverty of our public life and the lack of interest in civic affairs are all reflected and represented by the skimpy meanness of the few public spaces we do have.

A book on Trajan’s forum should therefore not just be an antiquarian celebration. It should and can become a political challenge: Can we really have the rich and vital grass-roots public life, which the makers of the Constitution desired for the nation, if it is not housed with dignity--and even splendor?