ssible. Of these "sports"
we have to treat in a later chapter. Coming nearer to the Tiber, while
returning towards the city proper, we pass in succession the three
great theatres, lofty semicircular constructions of stone and concrete
faced with marble, one computed to hold 40,000 spectators, but
probably accommodating not more than 25,000, and the others some
20,000 and 12,000 respectively. In these matters we must allow both
for Roman exaggeration and Roman close-packing. The theatres rise in
three stories, of which the outward sides consist of open arcades
adorned with pillars in varied styles, while round their bases are
shops for the sale of sweetmeats, beverages, perfumes, and other
articles which the theatre-goer or the loitering public may require.
What a theatrical Performance was like is a matter belonging to the
question of spectacles and amusements. At the back of the largest
theatre--that of Pompey--lies a large square surrounded by colonnades
of a hundred pillars, where sycamores form avenues and fountains play,
while statues of finished workmanship stand where they produce the
best effect. Particularly grateful to the Roman lounger were the seats
in the large semi-circular bays, so placed as to offer full protection
from too hot a sun or too cold a wind.

[Illustration: FIG. 25.--THEATRE OF MARCELLUS. (Restored.)]

[Illustration: FIG. 27.--CIRCUS MAXIMUS (restored); Imperial Palaces
on Palatine to left.]

By the time that we have passed the last theatre of the three we have
arrived at the river end of the low valley leading into the Forum
between the Capitoline Hill and the Palatine, a place which had once
been a cattle-market but had now become an open place surrounded by
dwellings of the humbler sort. It still, however, bore the name of
"Cattle-Market." If from this point we followed the river bank, we
should come to the wharves, to which the smaller ships bring up the
Tiber the freights of grain transhipped from the larger vessels from
Alexandria or Carthage, or of marble from the quarries of Numidia,
Greece, and Phrygia, or of granite and porphyry from Upper Egypt. All
along this bank are the offices and storehouses of such cargoes, and
here too is performed much of the shaping of those blocks which Rome
is using in such astonishing profusion. Along the river by the stone
embankment the ships are moored, with their cables passed through huge
stone corbels or sculptured lions' mouths. No busier part