themselves upon Demosthenes and Socrates; her philosophers drank in the wisdom of Plato or the severe sagacity of Zeno; her poets imitated Homer and Pindar; her dramatists copied and plagiarized from Menander or Euripides; her priests adopted the gods of ancient Greece, transforming Ares into Mars, Zeus into Jupiter, Hera into Juno, the divine Pallas into the wary Minerva; and, finally, her architects borrowed from the glorious edifices of Athens their palaces, forums, theatres, and temples. It is true that with the Greek thought and imagination the Roman mixed some of his own alloy, and that in the noble flights of genius he never rose so high as his master. The Eneid will not bear comparison with the Iliad; the graceful lyrics of Horace never achieve so high an inspiration as the burning and impassioned odes of Pindar. There was more worldliness, more hardness, more roughness in the Roman character; as you may see by contrasting Zeno with Cato, or Demosthenes with Cicero. It is the same in their sculpture and their architecture; which are the sculpture and the architecture, not of a bright, radiant, imaginative, sensuous people, but of a stern, haughty, and somewhat ascetic race, who preferred the grave to the graceful, and grandeur to beauty. Still no one can enter Rome without emotion. Her history has a majesty and a power of which the annals of Greece are ignorant, and the Eternal City herself presents a spectacle of glorious splendour, even in her decay, which Athens could never approach. Taking a broad and comprehensive view of her porticoes, her temples, her fountains, her theatres, her public places, her statues, her gardens, her Capitol, one is forced to confess that Athens herself, with all her purity of taste and superiority of genius, could not equal, at least in profusion and extent, the magnificence of Rome. And we must remember that structures such as these extended beyond the city, even to the pleasant banks of the tawny Tiber, even to the shores of the Mediterranean, to Anxur, to Capua, to Baiæ, and to Naples. Italy was furrowed with aqueducts, says Lefevre, her highways were adorned with tombs, every rood of ground was covered with villas and temples. In due time there were no cities in the Old World which had not their arenas, their triumphal arches, their palaces, and their baths. Rome, overflowing the earth, carried everywhere art and science; while, remaining unique and unapproachable, she multiplied herself, and left her impress, still clear, bold, and deep, in Syria, even in Egypt, in Palestine, and Africa. Wherever we trace the course of civilization, we recognize the footsteps of the Roman-we mark the track of Roman conquest. One of the first places in the Eternal City to which the traveller proceeds is THE FORUM, where, as Byron sings, "A thousand years of silenced factions sleep- And still the eloquent air breathes-burns with Cicero." It was in the Forum that the Roman plebeians gathered in all the throes of political warfare. It was here that the tribunes harangued their supporters, and that the great orators of the day aroused the passions of conflicting interests. It was here that Cicero and Cato, Hortensius and Cæsar, poured out their eloquence. The Forum was, emphatically, the safety-valve of Rome, which provided an escape for the feelings and prejudices and ideas of a haughty and vigorous race. To the time of Augustus it remained the central point of Roman political life, where citizen met citizen and discussed the condition of public affairs. Here were held the courts of justice, plaintiff and defendant arguing their causes in public. Here were suspended the laws of the Twelve Tables, that he who ran might read; and, after 304 B.C., the Fasti, written on white tablets, to inform the citizens when the law-courts were open. The field of freedom, faction, fame, and blood; To that when further worlds to conquer failed." As the Acropolis was the chief and central point of Athens, so was the Capitoline Hill of Rome, and it was at the foot of the Capitoline Hill that the Roman Forum (Forum Magnum) was situated. Its modern name is the Campo Vaccino, or Cattle Market, the greater part of the area having become, as early as the fifteenth century, the resort of cattle-" a kind of Roman Smithfield." It extended, according to the latest researches, from the Arch of Septimius Severus to the Temple of the Dioscuri in its longest diameter, and from the front of the Church of San Adriano to the steps of the Basilica Julia in the other an area, in all, of about seven jugera (or nearly four and a half English acres), surrounded by streets and houses. Roughly speaking, it was 180 yards long by 70 broad. included the Temple and hostia of Julius Cæsar, the Basilica of Paulus, the Lacus Curtius, the Column of Phocas, and the Rostra. On the east * It * The Roman jugerum comprised 28,800 square feet, or 240 feet long by 120 broad. |