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The seven original hills were covered with palaces and temples, while the valleys were centres of a great population, in which were the forums, the suburra, the quarter of the shops, the circus, and the velabrum. The Palatine, especially, was occupied by the higher nobility.
And as he spoke, he flung wide both his arms; pointing with this hand to the row of glittering blades which shone above the head of the chief magistrate, with that, through the open door-way of the temple, to the bold front of the precipitous and fatal rock, all lighted up by the gay sunbeams, as it stood fronting them, beyond the hollow Velabrum, crowned with the ramparts of the capitol.
The Roman gods, the ritual, military, and juristic terms of the Romans, present a strange appearance amid the Greek world; Roman -aediles- and -tresviri- are grotesquely mingled with -agoranomi- and -demarchi-; pieces whose scene is laid in Aetolia or Epidamnus send the spectator without scruple to the Velabrum and the Capitol.
Tarquinius Priscus constructed the Cloaca Maxima, that vast sewer which drained the Forum and Velabrum, and which is regarded by Niebuhr as one of the most stupendous monuments of antiquity. Along the southern side of the Forum this enlightened monarch constructed a row of shops occupied by butchers and other tradesmen.
It was left for the poorer inhabitants to crowd themselves into the valleys of the town, either between the Forum and the spurs of the several hills which trend towards the centre up under Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, or Caelian to the left behind the buildings as you now go from the bottom of the Forum to the Colosseum; or between the Forum and the Tiber in the low-lying ground called the Velabrum and there-abouts; or else across the river in that "Transtiberine" region which still bears the name of Trastevere.
Still on his left, in the valley between the Palatine and the Capitoline, though he could not see it, concealed from view by the great Temples of Vesta and of Castor, and the still greater edifice known as the Basilica Julia, was the quarter called the Velabrum, extending to the river, where the Pons Aemilius crossed it, a low quarter of narrow streets and tall houses where the rabble lived and died.
Northeastward lies the seething Suburra; the yellow river runs beyond the Velabrum and the cattle market to the west; southward rise the enchanted palaces of Cæsar; due east is the Esquiline of evil fame, redeemed and made lovely with trees and fountains by Mæcenas, but haunted even today, say modern Romans, by the spectres of murderers and thieves who there died bloody deaths of quivering torture.
The people of the greatest influence were the freedmen of the emperors men who had been slaves, Egyptians and Bithynians who had come to Rome with bored ears and with chalk on their naked feet to show that they were for sale, or who had bawled "sea-urchins all alive" in the Velabrum or the Saburra who had acquired enormous wealth by means often the most unscrupulous and the most degraded, and whose insolence and baseness had kept pace with their rise to power.
Every available inch of ground in the suburra and velabrum was filled with dwellings, rising to great altitudes, even to the level of the Capitoline summit. The temples were all constructed after the Grecian models. The houses of the great were of immense size. The suburbs were of extraordinary extent. The population exceeded that of all modern cities, although it has been, perhaps, exaggerated.
It was celebrated, in commemoration of a victory obtained over the Latians, the news of which was said to have been brought by Castor and Pollux, in person. This festival, was, at first, consecrated to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. But it was afterwards made more general, and celebrated in honor of all the Gods. This procession was in the month of September. It began at the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, proceeded to the Forum Romanum, from thence to the Velabrum, and afterwards to the Grand Circus. You have in Onuphrius Panvinius, the order of this procession at large, of which the directors were the chief magistrates of the city: the sons of the nobility leading the van. Those of the Equestrian order, whose fathers were worth a hundred and fifty thousand sesterces, followed on horseback. It would be here foreign from my purpose to give the whole description of this procession, and of those who composed it. It is sufficient to observe, that processional dancing constituted a considerable part of it. The Pirrhic dance, executed to a martial air, called the Proceleumaticus, employed the men of arms. These were followed by persons who danced and leaped, in the manner of Satirs, some of them in the dress ascribed to Silenus, attended by performers on instruments adapted to that character of dance. These made the comic part of the procession, and the persons representing Satirs, took care to divert the people by leaps, by a display of agility, and by odd uncouth attitudes, such as were in the character they had assumed. There were also in another part of the procession twelve Salii, or priests of Mars, so called from their making sacred dances in honor of that God, the most considerable part of their worship; these were headed by their master or Præsul, the leader of the dance, a
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