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A lame soldier of the Revolutionary War pointed out to him the squares named Campus Martius and Capitolium, and directed him to follow the Sacra Via, through a covert way, to the wonderful ancient earthworks hard by vast enclosures, terraces and tumuli, resembling natural hills, but, in fact, the piled-up monuments of the Mound Builders.

Hortensius Martius' proposal pleased because it opened out such magnificent possibilities: the imperium itself, which had seemed infinitely remote from so many, now appeared within reach of all. Anyone who was young, well-favoured, and of patrician birth might aspire to the hand of the Augusta, and not one of those who possessed at least two of those qualifications doubted his own ability to win.

"Fuit assiduus mecum," he says a little farther on. This kind of pupilage was called the tirocinium fori, in which a lad should be pursuing his studies for the legal profession, and also his bodily exercises in the Campus Martius, so that he might be ready to serve in the army for the single campaign which was still desirable if not absolutely necessary.

The Romans carried many of them from Egypt to Rome, Arles, and Constantinople, most of which were afterwards overturned, but have been put together and replaced in modern times. Augustus, for instance, had two large obelisks brought from Heliopolis to Rome, one of which he placed in the Campus Martius.

Before him still, though inclining a little to the left hand, lay a broader hollow, presenting the long vista of the sacred way, leading directly to the capitol, and thence to the Campus Martius, the green expanse of which, bedecked with many a marble monument and brazen column, and already studded with quick moving groups, hurling the disc and javelin, or reining the fierce war-horse with strong Gaulish curbs, lay soft and level for half a league in length, till it was bounded far away by a gleaming reach of the blue Tiber.

If the thing given be one of those of which private ownership is impossible, such, for instance, as the Campus Martius, a basilica, a church, or a thing devoted to public use, not even its value can be claimed, for the legacy is void.

Of nineteen which are mentioned, the Campus Martius was the principal. It was near the Tiber, whence it was called Tiberinus. The epithet Martius was derived from the plain being consecrated to Mars, the god of war. In the later ages it was surrounded by several magnificent structures, and porticoes were erected, under which, in bad weather, the citizens could go through their usual exercises.

In the Campus Martius, the temple of the War-God, from whom the founder of Rome had sprung, was struck by a thunderbolt. The nightly heavens glowed several times, as if on fire. Many comets blazed forth together; and fiery meteors shaped like spears, had shot from the northern quarter of the sky, down into the Roman camps.

I lie a-bed to the fourth hour; after that I take a ramble, or having read or written what may amuse me in my privacy, I am anointed with oil, but not with such as the nasty Nacca, when he robs the lamps. But when the sun, become more violent, has reminded me to go to bathe, I avoid the Campus Martius and the game of hand-ball.

Peter's of pagan Rome; this indeed was the hill steep on the side of the Forum, and a precipice on that of the Campus Martius where the thunder of Jupiter fell, where in the dimmest of the far-off ages the Asylum of Romulus rose with its sacred oaks, a spot of infinite savage mystery.