Imperial Purple | Page 7

the
Forum and the glare of the Capitol to the new and wonderful precinct
which extended to the Field of Mars, there was a stretch of splendor
which sanctioned the boast. The city then was very vast. The tourist
might walk in it, as in the London of to-day, mile after mile, and at
whatever point he placed himself, Rome still lay beyond; a Rome quite
like London--one that was choked with mystery, with gold and curious
crime.
But it was not all marble. There were green terraces and porphyry
porticoes that leaned to a river on which red galleys passed; there were
theatres in which a multitude could jeer at an emperor, and arenas in
which an emperor could watch a multitude die; there were bronze doors
and garden roofs, glancing villas and temples that defied the sun; there
were spacious streets, a Forum curtained with silk, the glint and
evocations of triumphal war, the splendor of a host of gods, but it was
not all marble; there were rents in the magnificence and tatters in the
laticlave of state.
In the Subura, where at night women sat in high chairs, ogling the

passer with painted eyes, there was still plenty of brick; tall tenements,
soiled linen, the odor of Whitechapel and St. Giles. The streets were
noisy with match-peddlers, with vendors of cake and tripe and coke;
there were touts there too, altars to unimportant divinities, lying Jews
who dealt in old clothes, in obscene pictures and unmentionable wares;
at the crossings there were thimbleriggers, clowns and jugglers, who
made glass balls appear and disappear surprisingly; there were
doorways decorated with curious invitations, gossipy barber shops,
where, through the liberality of politicians, the scum of a great city was
shaved, curled and painted free; and there were public houses, where
vagabond slaves and sexless priests drank the mulled wine of Crete,
supped on the flesh of beasts slaughtered in the arena, or watched the
Syrian women twist to the click of castanets.
Beyond were gray quadrangular buildings, the stomach of Rome,
through which, each noon, ediles passed, verifying the prices, the
weights and measures of the market men, examining the fish and meats,
the enormous cauliflowers that came from the suburbs, Veronese
carrots, Arician pears, stout thrushes, suckling pigs, eggs embedded in
grass, oysters from Baiae, boxes of onions and garlic mixed, mountains
of poppies, beans and fennel, destroying whatever had ceased to be
fresh and taxing that which was.
On the Via Sacra were the shops frequented by ladies; bazaars where
silks and xylons were to be had, essences and unguents, travelling
boxes of scented wood, switches of yellow hair, useful drugs such as
hemlock, aconite, mandragora and cantharides; the last thing of Ovid's
and the improper little novels that came from Greece.
On the Appian Way, through green afternoons and pink arcades,
fashion strolled. There wealth passed in its chariots, smart young men
that smelt of cinnamon instead of war, nobles, matrons, cocottes.
At the other end of the city, beyond the menagerie of the Pantheon, was
the Field of Mars, an open-air gymnasium, where every form of
exercise was to be had, even to that simple promenade in which the
Romans delighted, and which in Caesar's camp so astonished the
Verronians that they thought the promenaders crazy and offered to lead
them to their tents. There was tennis for those who liked it; racquets,
polo, football, quoits, wrestling, everything apt to induce perspiration
and prepare for the hour when a gong of bronze announced the opening

of the baths--those wonderful baths, where the Roman, his slaves about
him, after pasing through steam and water and the hands of the masseur,
had every hair plucked from his arms, legs and armpits; his flesh
rubbed down with nard, his limbs polished with pumice; and then,
wrapped in a scarlet robe, lined with fur, was sent home in a litter.
"Strike them in the face!" cried Caesar at Pharsalus, when the young
patricians made their charge; and the young patricians, who cared more
for their looks than they did for victory, turned and fled.
It was to the Field of Mars that Agrippa came, to whom Rome owed
the Pantheon and the demand for a law which should inhibit the private
ownership of a masterpiece. There, too, his eunuchs about him,
Mecaenas lounged, companioned by Varus, by Horace and the mime
Bathylle, all of whom he was accustomed to invite to that lovely villa
of his which overlooked the blue Sabinian hills, and where suppers
were given such as those which Petronius has described so alertly and
so well.
In the hall like that of Mecaenas', one divided against itself, the upper
half containing the couches and tables, the other reserved for the
service and the entertainments that follow, the