Free Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Rome (Yesterday's Classics) by James Baikie

tragedies of Roman history befell. Here, in early days, stood a line of butcher's stalls, and it was from one of these stalls that Virginius snatched the knife wherewith he struck his fair young daughter Virginia to the heart, when nothing else could save her from slavery and shame. On your left hand, enclosed by a marble balustrade, is another spot sacred in the ancient traditions of Rome. For it is written that in the days of old a great chasm opened in the midst of the Forum, and could by no means be filled up; and when the counsel of the gods was sought, answer was given that the chasm would never close until what was most precious in Rome was cast into it. Then some were for throwing one rich treasure, and some another, into the gulf, but all to no avail; when at last Marcus Curtius, a noble Roman youth, dressed himself in full armour, mounted his charger, and crying that the most precious thing in Rome was the life of its youth, spurred his steed across the Forum and leaped, horse and man, into the dark abyss. And forthwith the gulf closed, and great awe fell upon all who beheld, and the place is held sacred even unto this day.
    Turn now to your left and look towards the western end of the Forum, past the Lacus Curtius, as it is called, and the great pillars that adorn the square. Behind all, and closing the view to the west, towers the Capitoline hill, bearing on its southern spur a group of splendid buildings, the Temple of Concord, the Temple of our new Emperor Vespasian, the Portico of the Twelve Gods, the solid masonry of the Public Record Office, and, dominating and crowning everything, the superb Temple of Jupiter of the Capitol, the Father-God of Rome. There, on the northern spur of the hill, is the ancient citadel of Rome, and beside it the Temple of Juno Moneta, where the coinage is struck, and whence the word Mint shall be used henceforth as the name of all such places. On the gloomy rock face of this spur is the Tullianum, the horrible prison where offenders against the State languish out their lives, or die swift and violent deaths.

 
    TEMPLE OF MATER MATUTA
     
     
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    Beneath the Capitoline, and just behind the Forum, stands the beautiful Temple of Saturn. And here, right across the western end of the square, runs a marble balustrade and terrace, decorated along its face with the brazen beaks of captured galleys. This platform is the famous Rostra, from which the leaders of Rome address the gatherings of the people in time of stress and excitement. Many a time the Forum has rung with the winged words spoken by men like Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, or later by Cicero and his rival orator Hortensius, from this famous terrace. Nor has it been without its tragedies, as well as its triumphs of oratory. Here were exposed the severed heads of the victims in those mad welters of bloodshed that marked the successive supremacies of Marius and Sulla, and here the head and hands of Marcus Tullius Cicero, supreme of all speakers who have used the Latin tongue, were nailed, by order of his slayer, Mark Antony, to the balustrade that had echoed to his great orations. It suggests what Roman manhood and womanhood had fallen to in those days when one remembers that a soldier like Antony thus derided his fallen foe, and that Antony's wife Fulvia came forward to the Rostra, looked scornfully upon the dead face, and then, drawing a golden hairpin from her headdress, thrust it through the tongue that had once been so eloquent in the cause of Rome.

 
    THE PANTHEON
     
     
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    At the south end of the Rostra stands an inconspicuous stone, which yet has its own interest; for this is the Golden Milestone, and from it all the roads of the world are measured. The curious column at the other end of the terrace is an old and famous memorial. It is the Duilian Column, erected to commemorate the great victory won by our old friend Gaius Duilius (him who was always to be accompanied by flute-players) over the Carthaginian fleet at