pavement was often made of mosaic.

=Character of the Roman Architecture.=--The Romans,[162] unlike the
Greeks, did not always build in marble. Ordinarily they used the stone
that they found in the country, binding this together with an
indestructible mortar which has resisted even dampness for eighteen
hundred years. Their monuments have not the wonderful grace of the
Greek monuments, but they are large, strong, and solid--like the Roman
power. The soil of the empire is still covered with their debris. We
are astonished to find monuments almost intact as remote as the
deserts of Africa. When it was planned to furnish a water-system for
the city of Tunis, all that had to be done was to repair a Roman
aqueduct.

=Rome and Its Monuments.=--Rome at the time of the emperors was a
city of 2,000,000 inhabitants.[163] This population was herded in
houses of five and six stories, poorly built and crowded together. The
populous quarters were a labyrinth of tortuous paths, steep, and ill
paved. Juvenal who frequented them leaves us a picture of them which
has little attractiveness. At Pompeii, a city of luxury, it may be
seen how narrow were the streets of a Roman city. In the midst of
hovels monuments by the hundred would be erected. The emperor Augustus
boasted of having restored more than eighty temples. "I found a city
of bricks," said he; "I leave a city of marble." His successors all
worked to embellish Rome. It was especially about the Forum that the
monuments accumulated. The Capitol with its temple of Jupiter became
almost like the Acropolis at Athens. In the same quarter many
monumental areas were constructed--the forum of Caesar, the forum of
Augustus, the forum of Nerva, and, most brilliant of all, the forum of
Trajan. Two villas surrounded by a park were situated in the midst of
the city; the most noted was the Golden House, built for Nero.

THE LAW

=The Twelve Tables.=--The Romans, like all other ancient peoples, had
at first no written laws. They followed the customs of the
ancestors--that is to say, each generation did in everything just as
the preceding generation did.

In 450 ten specially elected magistrates, the decemvirs, made a
series of laws that they wrote on twelve tables of stone. This was the
Law of the Twelve Tables, codified in short, rude, and trenchant
sentences--a legislation severe and rude like the semi-barbarous
people for whom it was made. It punished the sorcerer who by magical
word