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 passing 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.