The upper course of this stream, between Esquiline and Quirinal, is a
densely populated quarter known as the Argiletum, and higher up as the
Subura,[30] where artisans and shops abounded. The lower part of its
course, where it has become an invisible drain, is also a crowded
street, the vicus Tuscus, leading to the Velabrum, and so to our
starting-point at the Forum Boarium.

Let us now descend the Clivus sacer, crossing to the right-hand side
of the slope, which the via Sacra now follows, and reach the Forum by
the fornix Fabiana. Close by to our left is the round temple of
Vesta, where the sacred fire of the State is kept ever burning by its
guardians, the Vestal Virgins, and here too is their dwelling, the
Atrium Vestae, and also that of the Pontifex Maximus (Regia), in whose
potestas they were; these three buildings, then insignificant to look
at, constituted the religious focus of the oldest Rome.[31] A little
farther again to the left is the temple of Castor and the spring of
Juturna, lately excavated, where the Twins watered their steeds after
the battle of the lake Regillus. In front of us we can see over the
heads of the crowd the Rostra at the farther end of the Forum, where
an orator is perhaps addressing a crowd (_contio_) on some political
question of the moment, and giving some occupation to the idlers
in the throng; and to the right of the Rostra is the Comitium
or assembling-place of the people, with the Curia, the ancient
meeting-hall of the senate. In Cicero's day the mere shopman had been
got rid of from the Forum, and his place is taken by the banker and
money-lender, who do their business in _tabernae_ stretching in rows
along both sides of the open space. Much public business, judicial and
other, is done in the Basilicae,--roofed halls with colonnades, of
which there are already five, and a new one is arising on the south
side, of which the ground-plan, as it was extended soon afterwards by