the sides a few beautiful columns are yet standing with carved
marble at the top connecting them. But others lie broken, and most of
them are gone entirely. This is all that is left of the porches where
men used to walk and talk of business and war and politics and gossip.

At one end of the forum is a high stone platform and wide stone steps
leading up to a row of broken columns in front of a fallen wall. This is
the ruin of the temple of Jupiter, the great Roman god. Daily, men used
to come here to pray before a statue in a dim room. Here, in the ruins,
the excavators found the head of that statue--a beautiful marble thing
with long curling hair and beard, and calm face. They found, too, a
great broken body of marble. And in that large body a smaller statue was
partly carved. This was a puzzling thing, but the excavators studied it
out at last. They said:

"Old Roman books tell us that sixteen years before the great eruption
there had been another earthquake. It had shaken down many buildings and
had cracked many walls. But the people loved their city, and when the
earthquake was over, they began to rebuild and to make their houses and
temples better than ever. We have found many signs of that earthquake.
We have found uncarved blocks of marble in the forum. Evidently masons
were at work there when the eruption stopped them. We have found rebuilt
walls in some of the houses. And here is the temple of Jupiter being
used as a marble shop. Probably the early earthquake had shaken down and
broken the statue of the god. A sculptor was set to work to carve a new
one from the ruin. But suddenly the volcano burst forth, the artist
dropped his chisel and mallet, and here we have found his unfinished
work--a statue within a statue."

Behind the roofless porches of the forum are other ruined
buildings--where the officers of the city did business, where the
citizens met to vote, where tailors spread out their cloth and sold
robes and cloaks. One large market building is particularly interesting.
You will enter a courtyard with walls all around it and signs of lost
porches. Broken partitions show where little stalls used to open upon
the court. Other stalls opened upon the street. In some of these the
excavators found, buried in the ashes and charred by the fire, figs,
chestnuts, plums, grapes, glass dishes of fruit, loaves of bread, and
little cakes. Were customers buying the night's dessert when Vesuvius
frightened them away?