ong as the
young men of the hills do today, and the one who could reach the goal
with the smallest number of throws was the winner,--there, under the
summer sun and in the biting wind of winter, half naked, and tough as
wolves, the boys of Rome laboured to grow up and be Roman men.

There, also, the great assemblies were held, the public meetings and the
elections, when the people voted by passing into the wooden lists that
were called 'Sheepfolds,' till Julius Caesar planned the great marble
portico for voting, and Agrippa finished it, making it nearly a mile
round; and behind it, on the west side, a huge space was kept open for
centuries, called the Villa Publica, where the censors numbered the
people. The ancient Campus took in a wide extent of land, for it
included everything outside the Servian wall, from the Colline Gate to
the river. All that visibly bears its name today is a narrow street that
runs southward from the western end of San Lorenzo in Lucina. The Region
of Campo Marzo, however, is still one of the largest in the city,
including all that lies within the walls from Porta Pinciana, by Capo le
Case, Via Frattina, Via di Campo Marzo and Via della Stelletta, past the
Church of the Portuguese and the Palazzo Moroni,--known by Hawthorne's
novel as 'Hilda's Tower,'--and thence to the banks of the Tiber.

[Illustration: PIAZZA DI SPAGNA]

From the Renascence until the recent extension of the city on the south
and southeast, this Region was the more modern part of Rome. In the
Middle Age it was held by the Colonna, who had fortified the tomb of
Augustus and one or two other ruins. Later it became the strangers'
quarter. The Lombards established themselves near the Church of Saint
Charles, in the Corso; the English, near Saint Ives, the little church
with the strange spiral tower, built against the University of the
Sapienza; the Greeks lived in the Via de' Greci; the Burgundians in the
Via Borgognona, and thence to San Claudio, where they had their Hospice;
and so on, almost every nationality being established in a colony of its
own; and the English visitors of today are still inclined to think the
Piazza di Spagna the most central point of Rome, whereas to Romans it
seems to be very much out of the way.

The tomb of Augustus, which served as the model for the greater
Mausoleum of Hadrian, dominated the Campus Martius, and its main walls
are still standing, though hidden by many modern houses. The tomb of th