FORO APPIO (MARKET OF A.). – Village south of Rome, mentioned in Act. 28:15 as the place where St. Paul, a prisoner, met the delegation of the Roman Church.
Together with the road of the same name, it owed its name and existence to the censor Appio Claudio (312 B.C.). It stood along the Via Appia, approximately 65 km from Rome. Near a marshy and unhealthy area, F. A. was one of the many stopping stations on Rome’s “queen of roads.” At first it was established as a municipium, but later it was regarded as a simple vicus. According to Grazio (Sermones, I, 5, 7), F. A. was “full of sailors, innkeepers, and scoundrels.” The presence of the sailors is explicable because a navigable canal through the Pontine Marshes connected it with the port of Terracina.