f Rome--in which the burgess-assemblies, the seats of the chief courts,
the exchange, and the daily business-traffic as well as
the daily idleness, still were crowded together--at least
from the assemblies and the courts by constructing for the former
a new -comitium-, the Saepta Julia in the Campus Martius,
and for the latter a separate place of judicature, the Forum Julium
between the Capitol and Palatine. Of a kindred spirit is the arrangement
originating with him, by which there were supplied to the baths
of the capital annually three million pounds of oil, mostly from Africa,
and they were thereby enabled to furnish to the bathers gratuitously
the oil required for the anointing of the body--a measure
of cleanliness and sanitary policy which, according
to the ancient dietetics based substantially on bathing and anointing,
was highly judicious.

But these noble arrangements were only the first steps towards
a complete remodelling of Rome. Projects were already formed
for a new senate-house, for a new magnificent bazaar, for a theatre
to rival that of Pompeius, for a public Latin and Greek library
after the model of that recently destroyed at Alexandria--
the first institution of the sort in Rome--lastly for a temple of Mars,
which was to surpass all that had hitherto existed in riches and glory.
Still more brilliant was the idea, first, of constructing a canal
through the Pomptine marshes and drawing off their waters
to Tarracina, and secondly, of altering the lower course of the Tiber
and of leading it from the present Ponte Molle, not through
between the Campus Vaticanus and the Campus Martius, but rather
round the Campus Vaticanus and the Janiculum to Ostia,
where the miserable roadstead was to give place to an adequate
artificial harbour. By this gigantic plan on the one hand
the most dangerous enemy of the capital, the malaria of the neighbourhood
would be banished; on the other hand the extremely limited facilities
for building in the capital would be at once enlarged by substituting
the Campus Vaticanus thereby transferred to the left bank of the Tiber
for the Campus Martius, and allowing the latter spacious field
to be applied for public and private edifices; while the capital
would at the same time obtain a safe seaport, the want of which
was so painfully felt. It seemed as if the Imperator would remove
mountains and rivers, and venture to contend with nature herself.

Much however as the city of Rome