[a. L. forum.]
1. Rom. Ant. The public place or marketplace of a city. In ancient Rome the place of assembly for judicial and other public business.
1460. Capgrave, Chron., 29. Thoo places in whech juges herd causes he [Foroneus] cleped hem, aftir his name, ‘forum’; that is to sey, ‘a hopen place,’ or ‘a market.’
1601. Holland, Pliny, II. 117. This is to be seen and read in a Table, which Augustus Caesar late Emperor of famous memory, caused to be hanged vp at the base or foot of the said Scipioes statue erected in the Forum or publick hall which himselfe built.
1647. R. Stapylton, Juvenal, 61. The City of Rome had four great Forums or Piazzas.
1781. Gibbon, Decl. & F., II. 15. To perpetuate the memory of his success, he chose the same advantageous position for the principal Forum; which appears to have been of a circular, or rather elliptical form.
1838. Arnold, Hist. Rome, I. 39. In the space between the Palatine and the Capitoline he [Tarquinius] made a forum or market-place, and divided out the ground around it for shops and stalls, and made a covered walk round it.
b. as the place of public discussion; hence fig.
1735. Thomson, Liberty, I. 160.
| Foes in the forum in the field were friends, | |
| By social danger bound; each fond for each, | |
| And for their dearest country all, to die. |
1818. Byron, Ch. Har., IV. cxiv. 1025.
| Rienzi! last of Romans! While the tree | |
| Of Freedom’s withered trunk puts forth a leaf, | |
| Even for thy tomb a garland let it be— | |
| The forum’s champion, and the people’s chief— | |
| Her new-born Numa thou—with reign, alas! too brief. |
1831. Carlyle, Sart. Res. (1858), 8. To descend, as he has here done, into the angry noisy Forum, with an Argument that cannot but exasperate and divide.
2. A court, tribunal. Law of the forum: the legal rules of a particular court or jurisdiction.
1848. Wharton, Law Lex., Forum, the court to the jurisdiction of which a party is liable.
1857. Parsons, Contracts, II. II. ii. § 6 (ed. 2), 103. Limitation and prescription are applied only according to the law of the forum.
1858. Ld. St. Leonards, Handy-bk. Prop. Law, II. 4. As the law of property is now administered in the different forums, allowing for the imperfection of all human laws, it exhibits a splendid and comprehensive code of jurisprudence.
b. transf. and fig. (Cf. med.L. in foro interno, in foro conscientiæ).
1690. Case Univ. Oxford, 48. A right to be impleaded in their own Forum only.
1756. Burke, Subl. & B., V. v. Of this, at first view, every man, in his own forum, ought to judge without appeal.
1852. Gladstone, Glean. (1879), IV. xiv. 151. In every country of Europe, except one, when excusable collision arises between the civil and the religious power, it must be in the external forum.
1874. Morley, Compromise (1886), 147–8. It is truth that in the forum of conscience claims an undivided allegiance.
3. attrib., as forum-area, -orator.
1811. Southey, in Quarterly Review, VIII. 347. A forum orator some years ago published a tour, in which he described the gratification which he felt in the act of being overturned in a stage coach, because never having experienced such an accident before, it gave him a new sensation.
1893. Archæologia, LIII. 544. The forum area was trenched but not excavated by Mr. Joyce, who regretted that he could not entirely clear it.
