erywhere is haunted ground: there is the
bronze wolf of the Capitol, "thunder-stricken nurse of Rome," and the
Tarpeian rock, from which "the Traitor's leap cured all ambition."
There is the mythical gulf of Curtius, and the Mamertine prison where
the Catiline conspirators were strangled, with its vault into which
Jugurtha, after gracing the triumph of Marius, was hurled to die.
Maiden-hair fern grows profusely in the crevices of Juturna's well,
hard by the spring where the great twin brethren gave their horses drink
after the battle of the Lake Regillus. Half covered with a mass of green
acanthus is the base of Vesta's Temple, adjoining the atrium of the
Virgins' house surrounded with their portrait statues: their names are
engraved on each pedestal, but one is carefully erased, its original
having, it is supposed, violated her vestal vow. We pause upon the spot
where Caesar's body was burned, and beside the rostra whence Cicero
thundered, and Antony spoke his "Friends, Romans, countrymen"; return
finally to the Capitoline Museum, nucleus and centre of the ancient
mistress of the world, to gaze upon gods, senators, emperors, shining
still in undiminished majesty; on the Antinous, the Amazon, the Juno,
the Dying Gladiator, and the Grecian masterpiece of Praxiteles.

[Illustration: _Alinari photo._

THE ROMAN FORUM.]

Of his life in Rome Horace has given us a minute account (Sat. I, vi,
110, etc.). "Waking usually about six, I lie in bed or on my sofa,
reading and writing, till nearly ten o'clock; anoint myself, go to the
Campus for a game at ball, return home to a light luncheon. Then perhaps
I amuse myself at home, perhaps saunter about the town; look in at the
Circus and gossip with the fortune-tellers who swarm there when the
games are over; walk through the market, inquiring the price of garden
stuff and grain. Towards evening I come home to my supper of leeks and
pulse and fritters, served by my three slave-boys on a white marble
slab, which holds besides two drinking cups and ladle, a saltcellar
shaped like a sea-urchin, an oil flask, and a saucer of cheap Campanian
ware; and so at last I go to bed, not harassed by the thought that I
need rise at day-break." Sometimes, to his great annoyance, he would be
roused early to become sponsor in the law courts for a friend; shivering
in the morning cold, pelted by falling hailstones, abused by the crowd
through which he had to force his way. Or he would accompany Maecen