porting her legions and in the hauling of farm products. From the
Forum the Appian Way could be seen stretching in a straight line, paved
with blue stone, with its two rows of tombs which loomed up in the
suburbs of the city, fading in the distance through the Campagna in the
direction of Capua; and at the opposite extreme led off the Flaminian
Way, which ran by the coast, extending into Cisalpine Gaul. Upon the
immense Campagna rose like fluttering red banners the first aqueducts
constructed during the reign of Appius Claudius to supply the city with
fresh water from the mountains, combating thus the malaria of the
Pontine marshes.

But aside from these crude monuments, the extensive, gigantic city,
which of itself could arm over a hundred and fifty thousand men,
presented a savage and wretched aspect, almost like that of those tribes
which Actaeon had seen on his trip through Celtiberia.

There were few houses of more than a single story; the majority were
great cabins of round walls of stone or clay, and conical roofs of
boards and logs. After the Gauls burned Rome the city had been
reconstructed in a year, haphazard, with precipitate celerity. In some
wards the houses were huddled so closely together that they barely gave
room for a man to pass between them, while in others they stood apart as
if they were country villas surrounded by small fields inside the city
walls. Streets did not exist; they were but tortuous prolongations of
the roads which led to Rome; arteries formed at random, twisting hither
and thither, following the sinuosities of a disorderly construction, and
suddenly broadening into wide, untilled lands where the refuse of the
houses was accumulating in piles, and where crows croaked by night,
pecking at the carrion of dead dogs and asses.

The crude simplicity of this city of farmers, money lenders, and
soldiers, was reflected in the appearance of its inhabitants. Patrician
matrons spun wool and hemp at the doors of their houses, clad only in
tunics of coarse weave, and wearing bronze ornaments on their breasts
and in their ears. The first coinage of silver had taken place
subsequent to the war with the Samnites; the clumsy and heavy copper as
was the current money, and the rich Grecian objects of virtu brought by
the legions after the war with Sicily almost received adoration in the
homes of the patricians, but were viewed askance by many as amulets
which might corrupt the old sturdy Roman custom