After the latter's death, his colleague Marcus Aemilius Lepidus completed it, and it was frequently restored and redecorated by the members of the Aemilian gens, giving the basilica its current name.

In the year 50BCE, Julius Caesar "...gave the consul Paulus fifteen hundred talents with which he added to the beauty of the forum by building the famous Basilica which was erected in the place of the one called "the Fulvia".

The columns in the central nave, in African marble, had Corinthian capitals and friezes with deeds from the history of Republican Rome.

The latter was dedicated to the emperor's two grandsons (Porticus Gai et Luci): it had two orders of arcades with pilasters and Doric semi-columns.

It was a place for business and, in the porticus of Gaius and Lucius (the grandsons of Augustus) fronting the Roman Forum, there were the Tabernae Novae (New Shops).

The wooden roof, the Tabernae as well as the facade of the basilica were completely destroyed by fire when Rome was sacked by Alaric the Visigoth in 410 AD.