Quo Vadis | Page 9

hindered them.
From the Vicus Apollinis they turned to the Boarium, and then entered
the Forum Romanum, where on clear days, before sunset, crowds of
idle people assembled to stroll among the columns, to tell and hear
news, to see noted people borne past in litters, and finally to look in at
the jewellery-shops, the book-shops, the arches where coin was
changed, shops for silk, bronze, and all other articles with which the
buildings covering that part of the market placed opposite the Capitol
were filled.
One-half of the Forum, immediately under the rock of the Capitol, was
buried already in shade; but the columns of the temples, placed higher,
seemed golden in the sunshine and the blue. Those lying lower cast
lengthened shadows on marble slabs. The place was so filled with
columns everywhere that the eye was lost in them as in a forest.
Those buildings and columns seemed huddled together. They towered
some above others, they stretched toward the right and the left, they
climbed toward the height, and they clung to the wall of the Capitol, or
some of them clung to others, like greater and smaller, thicker and
thinner, white or gold colored tree-trunks, now blooming under
architraves, flowers of the acanthus, now surrounded with Ionic corners,
now finished with a simple Doric quadrangle. Above that forest
gleamed colored triglyphs; from tympans stood forth the sculptured
forms of gods; from the summits winged golden quadrigæ seemed
ready to fly away through space into the blue dome, fixed serenely
above that crowded place of temples. Through the middle of the market
and along the edges of it flowed a river of people; crowds passed under
the arches of the basilica of Julius Cæsar; crowds were sitting on the
steps of Castor and Pollux, or walking around the temple of Vesta,
resembling on that great marble background many-colored swarms of
butterflies or beetles. Down immense steps, from the side of the temple
on the Capitol dedicated to Jupiter Optimus Maximus, came new waves;
at the rostra people listened to chance orators; in one place and another
rose the shouts of hawkers selling fruit, wine, or water mixed with

fig-juice; of tricksters; of venders of marvellous medicines; of
soothsayers; of discoverers of hidden treasures; of interpreters of
dreams. Here and there, in the tumult of conversations and cries, were
mingled sounds of the Egyptian sistra, of the sambuké, or of Grecian
flutes. Here and there the sick, the pious, or the afflicted were bearing
offerings to the temples. In the midst of the people, on the stone flags,
gathered flocks of doves, eager for the grain given them, and like
movable many-colored and dark spots, now rising for a moment with a
loud sound of wings, now dropping down again to places left vacant by
people. From time to time the crowds opened before litters in which
were visible the affected faces of women, or the heads of senators and
knights, with features, as it were, rigid and exhausted from living. The
many-tongued population repeated aloud their names, with the addition
of some term of praise or ridicule. Among the unordered groups pushed
from time to time, advancing with measured tread, parties of soldiers,
or watchers, preserving order on the streets. Around about, the Greek
language was heard as often as Latin.
Vinicius, who had not been in the city for a long time, looked with a
certain curiosity on that swarm of people and on that Forum Romanum,
which both dominated the sea of the world and was flooded by it, so
that Petronius, who divined the thoughts of his companion, called it
"the nest of the Quirites--without the Quirites." In truth, the local
element was well-nigh lost in that crowd, composed of all races and
nations. There appeared Ethiopians, gigantic light-haired people from
the distant north, Britons, Gauls, Germans, sloping-eyed dwellers of
Lericum; people from the Euphrates and from the Indus, with beards
dyed brick color; Syrians from the banks of the Orontes, with black and
mild eyes; dwellers in the deserts of Arabia, dried up as a bone; Jews,
with their flat breasts; Egyptians, with the eternal, indifferent smile on
their faces; Numidians and Africans; Greeks from Hellas, who equally
with the Romans commanded the city, but commanded through science,
art, wisdom, and deceit; Greeks from the islands, from Asia Minor,
from Egypt, from Italy, from Narbonic Gaul. In the throng of slaves,
with pierced ears, were not lacking also freemen,--an idle population,
which Cæsar amused, supported, even clothed,--and free visitors,
whom the ease of life and the prospects of fortune enticed to the

gigantic city; there was no lack of venal persons. There were priests of
Serapis, with palm branches in their hands; priests of Isis, to whose
altar more offerings were brought than to the