She Was Not
Wakened By The Fall Of My Ten-Centime Piece In Her Tray, But The Boy
Drowsing Beside Her Roused Himself, And Roused Her To The Dreamy
Expression Of A Gratitude Quite Out Of Scale With My Alms.
V
AN EFFORT TO BE HONEST WITH ANTIQUITY
My visit to the Roman Forum when the Genius Loci verified to my
ignorance and the intelligence of my companions the well-conjectured
site of the Temple of Jupiter Stator was not the first nor yet the
second visit I had paid the place. There had been intermediate mornings
when I met two friends there, indefinitely more instructed, with whom I
sauntered from point to point, preying upon their knowledge for my
emotion concerning each. Information is an excellent thing - in others;
and but for these friends I should not now be able to say that this
mouldering heap of brickwork, rather than that, was Julius Caesar's
house; or just where it was that Antony made his oration over the waxen
effigy which served him for Caesar's body. They helped me realize how
the business life and largely the social life of Rome centred in the
Forum, but spared me so much detail that my fancy could play about among
its vanished edifices without inconvenience from the clutter of shops
and courts and monuments which were ultimately to hem it in and finally
to stifle it. They knew their Forum so well that they could not only
gratify any curiosity I had, but could supply me with curiosity when I
had none. For the moment I was aware that this spot or that, though it
looked so improbable, was the scene of deeds which will reverberate
forever; they taught me to be tolerant of what I had too lightly
supposed fables as serious traditions closely verging on facts. I
learned to believe again that the wolf suckled Romulus and Remus,
because she had her den no great way off on the Palatine, and that
Romulus himself had really lived, since he had died and was buried in
the Forum, where they showed me his tomb, or as much of it as I could
imagine in the sullen little cellar so called. 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. You cannot be stayed there, however, by the wonders which
archaeology will yet reveal in them (for archaeology has its relentless
eye upon every inch of the ground above them), but you will certainly
pause at the Forum of Trajan, where archaeology, as it is in
Commendatore Boni, has had its way already. In fact, until his work in
the Roman Forum is finished, the Forum of Trajan must remain his
greatest achievement, and the sculptured column of the great emperor
must serve equally as the archaeologist's monument. I do not remember
why in the old time I should have kept coming to look at that column and
study the sculptured history of Trajan's campaigns, toiling around it to
its top. I think one could then get close to its base, as now one
cannot, what with the deepening of the Forum to its antique level and
the enclosure of the whole space with an iron rail. The area below is
free only to a large company of those cats which seem to have their
dwelling among all the ruins and restorations of ancient Rome. People
come to feed the Trajan cats with the fish sold near by for the purpose,
and one morning, in pausing to view his column from the respectful
distance I had to keep, I counted no less than thirteen of his cats in
his forum. They were of every age and color, but much more respectable
in appearance than the cats of the Pantheon, which have no such sunny
expanse as that forum for their quarters, but only a very damp corner
beside the temple, and seem to have suffered in their looks and health
from the situation. It was afterward with dismay that I realized the
fatal number of the Trajan cats coming to their breakfast that morning
so unconscious of evil omen in the figure; but as there are probably no
statistics of mortality among the cats of Rome, I shall never know
whether any of the thirteen has rendered up one of their hundred and
seventeen lives.
However, if I allowed myself to go on about the cats of Rome, either
ancient or modern, there would be no end.
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