stands, was the Græcostasis, a platform so named, as it was originally assigned to the Greek envoys of Marseilles, and afterwards to the envoys of other foreign nations.

According to Varro, a temple was erected to Saturn by Tarquinius Priscus in the Forum; and Dionysius tells us it was on the lower part of the hill leading up to the Capitol. The situation has been further determined by other writers. Servius places it at the foot of the Clivus Capitolinus; and the inscription of Ancyra places the Basilica Julia between it and the temple of Castor. These indications completely identify its position with that of the temple with eight Ionic columns at the foot of the ascent from the Forum to the Capitol. It was not, however, dedicated until the times of the Republic, and, according to Livy, in the consulship of Sempronius and Mummius, B.C. 497. From the most ancient times the temple of Saturn served as an ærarium, or state treasury, where the public money, the military ensigns and important documents were preserved.

A little above the temple of Saturn are the so-called Schola Xantha. The inscriptions call the building schola, and the name Xantha is derived solely from the name of a Fabius Xanthus mentioned in them. The row of arched chambers, of which three are still visible, appear to have been the offices of the scribes, secretaries, clerks, and heralds of the Curule Ediles.

龙

THE FORUM IN IMPERIAL TIMES.

A CHANGE has come over the spirit of the scene. Many changes have taken place in the Forum since Republican times. New temples, new basilicæ, new curiæ, new arches have been erected in Imperial times. The Curia Hostilia, the Basilica Sempronia have disappeared, others have been erected on their site. The rostra have changed their place.

The Forum, as we now see it, is such as it was in Imperial times. By the late excavations we may say with confidence that we can now tread the very stones on which Augustus and Horace, Hadrian and Trajan trod, perhaps even those which resounded to the tramp of Cæsar's legions, or echoed the oratory of Cicero. There is no spot in the world which is so crowded with reminiscences of the great men and the great deeds of the ancient world as the Forum. To use the words of Cicero, 'Wherever we step an historical association is awakened.' Here we are surrounded with monuments which carry our thoughts far back into the past history of Rome and of the Roman people. How many reminiscences of Imperial times are connected with the Forum. Here were

erected those marble temples and buildings which led Augustus to boast that he found Rome in brick and left it in marble; but, as a lady remarks, there was a great deal of brick under the marble. Here, on its arrival from Nola, the corpse of Augustus was set down, the body being laid upon a bed of gold and ivory, trimmed with purple, covered over with a black pall. Here Tiberius pronounced a funeral oration over it. Suetonius tells us that the Emperor Vitellius was dragged half naked into the Forum, with his hands tied behind him, a rope about his neck and his clothes torn, amidst the most contemptuous abuse, both by word and deed, along the Via Sacra. On the rostra the Emperors Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius addressed their victorious armies.

The historian Ammianus Marcellinus tells us that the Emperor Constantine II. having entered Rome, the seat of empire and of every virtue, was overwhelmed with astonishment when he viewed the Forum, that most conspicuous monument of ancient power. On whatever side he cast his eyes he was struck with the thronging wonders.

Nothing affords a stronger proof of the cycle of development through which all things pass, than the various phases of rise, progress, maturity, decline and decay visible in the changes and vicissitudes of the Roman Forum. In the days of Evander it was nothing but a grassy plain, upon which his herds wandered and fed. Here the mythic Romulus established a meeting-place of the people. On this spot the glories of the Roman people rose, advanced, and

reached their culminating point in the age of Augustus. Then that decline, the invariable sequel to all maturity, set in, and Rome traced its downward steps until it reached the lowest depths of degradation and decay. The whole cycle of the development of the history of the Roman Forum was fully completed. What was once a pasture-ground for cattle in the days of Evander, returned to its former state, and became in the days of the Popes a 'Campo Vaccino.'

Our present purpose will be to describe the buildings of the Forum which belong to imperial times according to their several dates.

The age of the Republic had passed away. Rome had received a lord and master. To wipe away all reminiscences connected with former republican times, Julius Cæsar planned several changes in the Roman Forum. He first began by pulling down the Curia Hostilia, which was associated with the early days of the Republic as the meeting-place of the Senate, for the purpose of building a temple to Felicitas on its site. The sittings of the Senate were then removed from the neighbourhood of the Forum to a more distant place, the Curia of Pompey in the Campus Martius.

His second attack on early associations was the erection at the south-east end of the Forum of other rostra, for the sake of courting popularity from the plebeians, with whom this part of the Forum was connected from the earliest times. After his assassination his body was burnt between these very rostra and the Regia. These rostra were adorned by

Augustus, after the battle of Actium, with the beaks of the captured Egyptian ships.

Cæsar next began the large basilica called afterwards the Basilica Julia, on the site of the ancient Basilica Sempronia.

We now come to the buildings erected by Augustus in the Forum. In consequence of some prodigies that occurred in the year before Cæsar's assassination, a decree was passed to rebuild the Curia Hostilia. In pursuance of this decree, Augustus erected a Curia on this ancient spot, no longer, however, bearing the original name, but that of Julia, in honour of Julius Cæsar. Augustus placed a statue of Victory in it, which had been brought at an earlier period from Tarentum. On the death of Augustus it was removed from its pedestal and carried before his funeral bier. The altar which stood in front of it is mentioned by Herodian, writing in the reign of the Emperor Gordianus. It was finally removed by the Christian Emperor Gratianus, amidst the indignant murmurs of the pagans of Rome.

His next greatest undertaking was the completion of the Basilica Julia. It was burnt down during his reign, but was rebuilt, and finally completed by him on a more extensive scale, when it was dedicated in the names of his grandsons Caius and Lucius. In this basilica there were four tribunals, and consequently a great deal of legal business could be transacted. From the late excavations we find that its plan was a rectangle about 300 feet long and 159 wide. Along the four sides were double aisles, sepa