o you to come and see the
Asiatic giant, or the mermen, or the two-headed baby. The old sailor
who has been wrecked, or pretends to have been, is walking about with
a harrowing picture of the scene painted on a board and is soliciting
alms. The busybody is gossiping among little knots of people and
telling, manufacturing, or magnifying the latest scandal, or the
latest news from the frontier, from Antioch, from the racing-stables,
the law-courts, or the palace. Perhaps Silius has a little banking
business to do, and he enters the Basilica to give instructions as to
sending a draft to Athens or Alexandria in favour of some friend or
relative there who is in want of money, or whom he has instructed to
make artistic or other purchases. In about seven days his
correspondent will obtain the cash through a banker at Athens, or in
about twelve or fourteen days at Alexandria.

Perhaps, however, one of his clients has asked for his help in a case
at law, which is being tried either over the way in the Basilica of
Julius, or round the corner to the right in the Forum of Augustus. If
a man of study and eloquence, he may have consented to act as
pleader--taking no fee, because he is merely performing a patron's
duty. _Noblesse oblige_. In the year 64 a pleader who has taken up a
cause for some one else than a dependant is allowed by law to charge a
fee not exceeding L100, but the law says nothing, or at least can do
no thing, as to the liberal presents which are offered him under some
other pretext. If he is not to plead, Silius may at any rate have been
requested to lend moral support by seating himself beside the favoured
party and perhaps appearing as a witness to character. If he pleads in
any complicated or technical case, it will generally be after careful
consultation with an attorney or professional lawyer. Round the apse
or recess in which the court sits there will stand a ring of
interested spectators, and among them will be distributed as many as
possible of his own dependants, who will religiously applaud his
finely-turned periods and his witticisms. There was generally little
chance of missing a Roman forensic witticism; its character was for
the most part highly elaborate and its edge broad. In a later
generation it was not rare for chance bystanders to be hired on the
spot as _claqueurs_. The court itself consists of a large body of
jurymen of position empanelled, not for the particular case, but for
particular kind