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.
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