Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero | Page 7

point to the agricultural character of the
early Romans; both cattle and harvesting have their appropriate myth.
But nothing is visible here now, except the pretty little round temple of
a later date, which is believed to have been that of Portunus, the god of
the landing-place from the river.[20]
The Circus, some six hundred yards long, at the time of Cicero was still
mainly a wooden erection in the form of a long parallelogram, with
shops or booths sheltering under its sides; we shall visit it again when
dealing with the public entertainments.[21] Above it on the right is the
Aventine hill, a densely populated quarter of the lower classes,
crowned with the famous temple of Diana, a deity specially connected
with the plebs.[22] The Clivus Patricius led up to this temple; down
this slope, on the last day of his life, Gaius Gracchus had hurried, to
cross the river and meet his murderers in the grove of Furrina, of which
the site has lately been discovered. If we were to ascend it we should

see, on the river-bank below and beyond it, the warehouses and
granaries for storing the corn for the city's food-supply, which
Gracchus had been the first to extend and organise.
But to ascend the Aventine would take us out of our course. Pushing on
to the farther end of the Circus, where the chariots turned at the metae,
we may pause a moment, for in front of us is a gate in the city wall, the
Porta Capena, by which most travellers from the south, using the via
Appia or the via Latina, would enter the city.[23] Outside the wall there
was then a small temple of Mars, from which the procession of the
Equites started each year on the Ides of Quinctilis (July) on its way to
the Capitol, by the same route that we are about to take. We shall also
be following the steps of Cicero on the happy day September 4, 57 B.C.,
when he returned from exile. "On my arrival at the Porta Capena," he
writes to Atticus, "the steps of the temples were already crowded from
top to bottom by the populace; they showed their congratulations by the
loudest applause, and similar crowds and applause followed me right
up to the Capitol, and in the Forum and on the Capitol itself there was
again a wonderful throng" (ad Att. iv. 1).
We are now, as the map will show, at the south-eastern angle of the
Palatine, of which, in fact, we are making the circuit;[24] a and here we
turn sharp to the left, by what is now the via di San Gregorio, along a
narrow valley or dip between the Palatine and Caelian hills--the latter
the first we have met of the "hills" which are not isolated, but spurs of
the plain of the Campagna. The Caelian need not detain us; it was
thickly populated towards the end of the Republican period, but was
not a very fashionable quarter, nor one of the chief haunts of social life.
It held many of those large lodging-houses (insulae) of which we shall
hear more in the next chapter; one of these stood so high that it
interfered with the view of the augur taking the auspices on the Capitol,
and was ordered to be pulled down.[25] Going straight on reach the
north-eastern angle of the Palatine, where now stands the arch of
Constantine, with the Colosseum beyond it, and turning once more to
the left, we begin to ascend a gentle slope which will take us to a ridge
between the Palatine and the Esquiline[26]--another of the spurs of the
plain beyond--known by the name of the Velia. And now we are

approaching the real heart of the city.
At this point starts the Sacra via,[27] so called because it is the way to
the most sacred spots of the ancient Roman city,--the temples of Vesta
and the Penates, and the Regia, once the dwelling of the Rex, now of
the Pontifex Maximus; and it will lead us, in a walk of about eight
hundred yards, through the Forum to the Capitol. It varied in breadth,
and took by no means a straight course, and later on was crowded,
cramped, and deflected by numerous temples and other buildings; but
as yet, so far as we can guess, it was fairly free and open. We follow it
and ascend the slope till we come to a point known as the summa sacra
via, just where the arch of Titus now stands, and where then was the
temple of Jupiter Stator, and where also a shrine of the public Penates
and another of the Lares (of which no trace is now left) warn us that we
are close on the penetralia of the