Down in the Forum there stood no Basilica of Constantine; the place of several later temples and shrines was occupied by edifices of less dignity; many columns and statues, and much ornament of gilt or marble, were still to come.  Beside and beyond the two embellished public places which had been added to the public comfort and convenience by Julius Caesar and Augustus, and which were known respectively as the Julian and the Augustan Forum, lay only the houses of citizens or streets of shops.  Up from the Forum towards the later Arch of Titus and the Colosseum, the “Upper Sacred Way” ran as but a narrow road between buildings for the most part of ordinary character, principally shops catering for luxury.  It was later by two centuries and a half that this street was converted into a broad avenue forming a worthy approach to the “hub of the universe.”

In the ruins which lie on the Palatine Hill, or along the valley of the Forum below, or up the Sacred Slope towards the Colosseum, or across where the streets wind round from the “Roman” Forum through the Forum of Trajan to the Corso, the modern visitor to the Eternal City does not behold simply the remnants of the temples, halls, squares, and arches which actually existed in the days of Nero.  We must not say of these places that St. Paul trod the very paving-stones or gazed on the very walls which we now find in their worn and broken state.  In a few cases it may be so; in most it is certainly otherwise.  Either the building was not there, or what we now behold is part of a reconstruction or an enlargement.  Fire, flood, earthquake and the wear and tear of time called for many a rebuilding or restoration.  In the very year upon which we have fixed, there swept over all this part of the city perhaps the most disastrous fire that it ever experienced.  Another only a little less destructive occurred in A.D. 283, and when we say that the remains of the glory of ancient Rome are still visible in the excavated Forum, we must recognise that the glory which they represent is the glory of the place as restored after that year.

This does not mean that the general plan and appearance were markedly different under Nero, nor that there was any lack of magnificence; it is only meant by way of caution against a frequent misconception.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

If there was no Arch of Severus in the Forum, there was an Arch of Augustus, near the Temple of Castor, surmounted by his statue in the four-horsed chariot of the conqueror, and there was an Arch of Tiberius near the temple of Saturn.  If to the north there was as yet no bridge or “castle” of Sant’ Angelo to celebrate the dead Hadrian, there was, on the near side of the Tiber, not far from the modern Piazza del Popolo, a splendid Mausoleum of the deified Augustus and his family.  In the chief Forum the Temples of Vesta, of Julius Caesar, of Castor, Saturn, and Concord existed under Nero in the same spots and