They Also Showed Me The
Rostrum Where The Roman Orators Addressed The Mass-Meetings Of The
Republican Times, And They
Showed me the lake, or the puddle left of it,
into which Curtius (or one of three heroes of the
Name) leaped at an
earlier day as a specific for the pestilence which the medical science
of the period had failed to control. In our stroll about the place we
were joined by one of the several cats living in the Forum, which
offered us collectively its acquaintance, as if wishing to make us feel
at home. It joined us and it quitted us from time to time, as the whim
took it, but it did not abandon us wholly till we showed a disposition
to believe in that lake of Curtius, so called after those three
public-spirited heroes, the first being a foreigner. Then the cat, which
had more than once stretched itself as if bored, turned from us in
contempt and went and lay down in a sunny corner near the tomb of
Romulus, and fell asleep.
It is quite possible that my reader does not know, as lately I did not,
that the Roman Forum is but one of several forums connected with it by
ways long centuries since buried fathoms deep and built upon many
stories high. But I am now able to assure him that in the whole region
between the Roman Forum and the Forum of Trajan, which were formerly
opened into each other by the removal of a hill as tall as the top of
Trajan's Column, you pass over other forums hidden beneath your feet or
wheels.
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