Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero | Page 8

Roman State. Here a way to the left
leads up to the Palatine the residence then of many of the leading men
of Rome, Cicero being one of them.
But our attention is not long arrested by these objects; it is soon riveted
on the Forum below and in front of us, to which the Sacred Way leads
by a downward slope, the Clivus sacer. At the north-western end it is
closed in by the Capitoline hill, with its double summit, the arx to the
right, and the great temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva facing
south-east towards the Aventine. It is of this view that Virgil must have
been thinking when he wrote of the happy lot of the countryman who
nec ferrea iura insanumque forum aut populi tabularia vidit.[28]
For the Forum is crowded with bustling human figures, intent on the
business of politics, or of the law-courts (ferrea iura), or of
money-making, and just beyond it, immediately under the Capitol, are
the record-offices (tabularia) of the Roman Empire. The whole Sacra
via from this point is crowded; here Horace a generation later was to
meet his immortal "bore," from whom he only escaped when the
"ferrea iura" laid a strong hand on that terrible companion. Down
below, at the entrance to the Forum by the arch of Fabius (fornix
Fabiana), the jostling was great. "If I am knocked about in the crowd at
the arch," says Cicero, to illustrate a point in a speech of this time, "I do

not accuse some one at the top of the via Sacra, but the man who jostles
me."[29]
The Forum--for from this point we can take it all in, geologically and
historically--lies in a deep hollow, to the original level of which
excavation has now at last reached. This hollow was formed by a
stream which came down between the Esquiline and the Quirinal
beyond it, and made its exit towards the river on the other side by way
of the Velabrum. As the city extended itself, amalgamating with
another community on the Quirinal, this hollow became a common
meeting-place and market, and the stream was in due time drained by
that Cloaca which we saw debouching into the Tiber near the bridge we
crossed. The upper course of this stream, between Esquiline and
Quirinal, is a densely populated quarter known as the Argiletum, and
higher up as the Subura,[30] where artisans and shops abounded. The
lower part of its course, where it has become an invisible drain, is also
a crowded street, the vicus Tuscus, leading to the Velabrum, and so to
our starting-point at the Forum Boarium.
Let us now descend the Clivus sacer, crossing to the right-hand side of
the slope, which the via Sacra now follows, and reach the Forum by the
fornix Fabiana. Close by to our left is the round temple of Vesta, where
the sacred fire of the State is kept ever burning by its guardians, the
Vestal Virgins, and here too is their dwelling, the Atrium Vestae, and
also that of the Pontifex Maximus (Regia), in whose potestas they were;
these three buildings, then insignificant to look at, constituted the
religious focus of the oldest Rome.[31] A little farther again to the left
is the temple of Castor and the spring of Juturna, lately excavated,
where the Twins watered their steeds after the battle of the lake
Regillus. In front of us we can see over the heads of the crowd the
Rostra at the farther end of the Forum, where an orator is perhaps
addressing a crowd (contio) on some political question of the moment,
and giving some occupation to the idlers in the throng; and to the right
of the Rostra is the Comitium or assembling-place of the people, with
the Curia, the ancient meeting-hall of the senate. In Cicero's day the
mere shopman had been got rid of from the Forum, and his place is
taken by the banker and money-lender, who do their business in

tabernae stretching in rows along both sides of the open space. Much
public business, judicial and other, is done in the Basilicae,--roofed
halls with colonnades, of which there are already five, and a new one is
arising on the south side, of which the ground-plan, as it was extended
soon afterwards by Julius Caesar, is now completely laid bare. But it is
becoming evident that the business of the Empire cannot be much
longer crowded into this narrow space of the Forum, which is only
about two hundred yards long by seventy; and the next two generations
will see new Fora laid out larger and more commodious, by Julius and
Augustus in the direction of the Quirinal.
Now making our way towards the Capitol, we pass the famous temple
or rather gate of the