ocution which the Romans so
zealously cultivated, and which the Italians still affect with no
little success. It is not indeed the same platform as was used by
Cicero and the orators of the republic: this stood elsewhere, and
doubtless the substance of public speaking had declined deplorably
since that day. Nevertheless many a torrent of rich and sonorous Latin
must have streamed over the Forum from that noble standing-place, and
it must still have been worth while for a Roman to develop both his
speaking voice and his oratorical art. Still further back, to the
right behind the Rostra, there stands the Temple of Concord, where the
Senate in older times gathered on more than one occasion to listen to
Cicero, and where the emperors have formed practically a gallery of
works of art; to the left is the Temple of Saturn, long used as the
Roman Treasury, of which eight pillars still remain as perhaps the
most conspicuous feature among the existing ruins. Another object in
the background to the left, at the rear of the Rostra, will be a stone
pillar coated with gilded bronze, upon which the first emperor,
Augustus, inscribed the names of the great roads leading out from Rome
into the length and breadth of the empire, with a list of the chief
towns to which those roads would take you, and their distances. The
name of this pillar is the "Golden Milestone." Behind these objects,
running along the high face of the Capitoline Hill, are visible the
arcades of the Record Office, of which the greater portion still
exists, though stripped of its architectural graces and built over and
about in more modern times, in the state represented in FIG. 18. Still
higher on the summit to the left, with its gilded tiles glistening in
the sun--at least they were gilded within the next few years--rises
the most sacred structure of all, the building most closely identified
in the Roman mind with the eternity of the empire. This is the
splendid temple of Jove, Supreme and Most Benign. Of this edifice
nothing considerable except its platform now remains, its site being
occupied by an object of which the existence would have been
inconceivable to the ancient Roman--to wit, the German Embassy. On the
other summit, a fortified citadel to your right stands the temple of
the consort of Jupiter. In this shrine she was known as Juno Moneta,
and since, attached to her temple in this citadel, was the office of
the Roman coinage, her name Moneta has become famil