or BASTILCA, in the ancient architecture, denotes a kind of public hall or court of judicature, where the princes or magistrates sat to administer justice. The word is originally Greek, βασιλικην, q. d. royal house, palace.

The basilicas consisted of a great hall, with aisles, porticoes, tribunes, and tribunals. The bankers too had one part of the basilica allotted for their residence. The scholars also went thither to make their declamations, according to the testimony of Quintilian. In after-times the denomination basilica was also given to other buildings of public use, as town-houses, exchanges, burse, and the like. The Roman basilicas were covered, by which they were distinguished from the fora, which were public places open to the air. The first basilica was built at Rome by Cato the elder, whence it was called Porcia; the second was called Opinia; the third was that of Paulus, built with a great expense, and with much magnificence, whence it was called by some regia Pauli; another was built by Julius Caesar, called basilica Julia; of which Vitruvius tells us he had the direction. There were others also, to the number of eighteen or twenty. The basilica Julia not only served for the hearing of causes, but 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. In it were 13 tribunals or judgment-seats, where the pretors sat to dispatch causes.

BASILIC is also used, in 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. It is thought that the name was thus applied, from many of the ancient churches having been formed of the Roman halls mentioned in the preceding article. In reality, on the conversion of Constantine, many of the ancient basilicae were given to the church, and turned to another use, viz. for Christian assemblies to meet in, as may be collected from that passage of Ausonius, where speaking to the emperor Gratian, he tells him, the basilicae, which heretofore were wont to be filled with men of business, were now thronged with votaries praying for his safety. By which he must needs mean, that the Roman halls or courts were turned into Christian churches; and hence, we conceive, the name basilicae came to be a general name for churches in after ages.

BASILIC 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.

BASILICS were also little chapels built by the ancient Franks over the tombs of their great men, so called, as resembling the figure of the sacred basilica, or churches. Persons of inferior condition had only tumbe or porticuli erected over them. By an article in the Salic law, he that robbed a tumba or porticulur, was to be fined fifteen solidi; but he that robbed a basilica, thirty solidi.

BASILICS, in literary history, a name supposed to have been given by the emperor Leo to a collection of laws in honour of his father Basilus Macedo, who began it in the year 867, and in the execution chiefly made use of Sabbatius Protopatricarius, who carried the work as far as 40 books. Leo added 20 books more, and published the work in 880. The whole, 30 years after, was corrected and improved by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, son of Leo; whence many have held him the author of the Basilica. Six books of the Basilica were translated into Latin in 1557, by Gentian Hervetus. An edition of the Greek Basilics, with a Latin version, has been since published at Paris, in 1647, by Annib. Fabrotts, in 7 volumes. There are still wanting 19 books, which are supposed to be lost. Fabrotts has endeavoured to supply in some measure the defect from the synopses of the Basilica, and the glosses; of which several had been made under the succeeding emperors, and contained the whole Justinian law, excepting the superfluities, in a new and more consistent order, together with the later constitutions of the emperors posterior to Justinian.