well knew how to operate for practical ends. It is not surprising, therefore, to find about the Forum the ruins of many temples. There is the temple of Saturn, now only a group of columns. It rests on an unusually high foundation. Within this basement were chambers which contained the treasury of the state. It was largely by the control of the treasury that the senate long maintained its political supremacy.

A few steps from the temple is the pavement of a great oblong building, of whose superstructure there are but scant remains. This was the Basilica Julia, erected by Julius Cæsar, and rebuilt, after a destructive fire, by Augustus. A basilica was used for law courts and for business purposes. The style of building was borrowed from Greece; but the architect at Rome wrought in the spirit of her people. He left the exterior plain and unattractive, to devote his whole attention to the interior. It is essentially a vast hall, with aisles separated from nave by a row of arched piers in this case, in other basilicas by colonnades. The designer molded, as it were, the interior space, so as to express in the language of art the grandeur of the empire, and in the severe harmony of the lines the orderliness and symmetry of Roman law. No other architectural type so well embodied the imperial idea.

Of the other buildings connected with the Forum the most conspicuous is the temple of Castor and Pollux, just beyond the Basilica Julia. The ruins consist of three slender columns, standing on a high foundation and supporting a fragment of the entablature. These remains belong to the reconstruction of the temple under Augustus. The worship of the twin gods, Castor and Pollux, patrons of cavalry, had been introduced from Greece into Rome in the early republic. The front porch of the temple often served as a platform for party leaders while addressing the crowd in the Forum. On such occasions it sometimes became the center of violent political conflicts out of keeping with the beauty of the surroundings. This temple and nearly all others at Rome are of the Corinthian order of architecture, distinguished by the capital of clustered acanthus leaves surmounting the graceful fluted column. It is one of the best of its class; and the three columns with their entablature form the most beautiful architectural fragment still preserved from classical Rome.

TRIUMPHAL PROCESSION ON THE ARCH OF TITUS

EMPEROR TITUS

The present level of the Forum is many feet lower than that of its immediate surroundings. During the three thousand years that separate us from the beginnings of the city the valleys have been gradually filling through the accumulation of debris of ruined buildings, the washings of earth from the surrounding hills, and various other means. Recently scholars have excavated nearly the whole Forum down to the earliest level, laying bare the lower parts of buildings, the earlier pavements, altars, a primeval cemetery, and many other objects. Nearly everything found has been identified and clothed in the historical imagination with the associations of the time when it had a purpose and a meaning. But the spot, once the abode of intense life, is now still; it seems the burial place of a dead society and government; state officials keep drowsy guard over the remains. Tourist and scholar walk undisturbed through this sepulcher of a mighty empire, their senses awakened to the ancient life only by the rush of waters through the subterranean Cloaca Maxima, and to the life of our day by the roses, geraniums, and wild Italian flowers that grow luxuriantly wherever a bit of soil is left.

THE ARCH OF TITUS

Beyond the Forum and on the