BASILIC, or BASILICA, in the ancient architecture, a kind of public hall or court of judicature, where the princes or magistrates sat to administer justice. This word is taken from the Greek βασιλεύς, a royal house, or palace.
The basilicæ consisted of a great hall, with aisles, porticoes, tribunals, and tribunals. The bankers, too, had one part of the basilica allotted for their residence; and scholars likewise went thither to pronounce their declamations. In after times the denomination of basilica was also given to other buildings of public use, as town-houses, exchanges, and the like. The Roman basilicæ were covered, by which they were distinguished from the fora, which were public places in the open air. The first basilica at Rome was built by Cato the elder, whence it was called Porcia; the second was called Opimia; the third was that of Paulus, built at great expense, and with much magnificence, whence it was called by some regia Pauli; and Julius Cæsar erected a fourth called basilica Julia, of which Vitruvius tells us he had the direction. Besides these there were others, to the
number of eighteen or twenty. The basilica Julia not only served for the hearing of causes, but likewise for the reception and audience of foreign ambassadors. It was supported by a hundred marble pillars in four rows, and enriched with decorations of gold and precious stones; and in it were thirteen tribunals or judgment-seats, where the pretors sat for the despatch of judicial business.
Basilica is also used by ecclesiastical writers for a church; in which sense the name frequently occurs in St. Ambrose, St. Austin, St. Jerome, Sidonius Apollinaris, and other writers of the fourth and fifth centuries. The name was probably thus applied from many of the ancient churches having been formed out of the Roman halls or basilicæ above described. The name is chiefly applied, in modern times, to churches of royal foundation, as those of St. John de Lateran and St. Peter of the Vatican at Rome, founded by the Emperor Constantine.