cellent. In this, the Basilica Aemilia, the chief business was that
of the bankers and money-changers, although it served various other
purposes according to convenience.

If you could see round the farther end of this basilica to the right,
you would perceive the beginning of one of the busiest streets in
Rome--the Argiletum--chiefly known to fame as a favourite quarter of
the booksellers, who fasten on their door-posts, or on the pillars
which support a balcony or upper floor, the lists of the newest or
most popular publications to be bought within. And where that street
enters the Forum, though standing back a little from your line of
vision--perhaps you can catch sight of the top of it over the corner
of the Basilica--is the temple-like Senate-House with its offices.
Here is the meeting-place of the six hundred who nominally govern
jointly with the emperor. If you visit Rome to-day you will find the
greater part of the actual chamber, though miserably despoiled,
bearing the name of the church of S. Adriano.

[Illustration: FIG. 19.--N.E. OF FORUM, A.D. 64. (Complementary to
frontispiece.)

From left: in background, Record Office, with Temple of Concord and
Rostra below; on summit, Temple of Juno and Citadel; below, Prison,
with shrine of Janus in front. To right: Basilica Aemilia, with gable
of Senate-House beyond. (Largely after Tognetti.)]

The little building, half arch, half shrine, which you observe
standing free where the roads converge upon the Forum, is the famous
sanctuary of Janus, of which the doors are never shut unless there is
complete peace throughout the Roman world. So long as Rome is anywhere
engaged in a great or little war, the open doors of Janus tell the
fact to a people which might otherwise be unconscious of so slight or
remote a circumstance.

* * * * *

[Illustration: FIG. 20.--TEMPLE OF FORTUNA AUGUSTA. (Pompeii.)]

We need not describe in detail the temple of Castor, or rather of the
"Twin Brethren," which stands immediately to your left, or that of the
deified Julius Caesar, which is just behind you, on the spot where the
body of the great dictator was burned. It is perhaps more interesting
to note the ordinary--though not by any means the only--form of the
Roman temple in general. Those who have seen the so-called Maison
Carree at Nimes will possess a fair notion of the commonest or most
typical shape and arrangement. For the most part we have a ra