[20]
The Circus, some six hundred yards long, at the time of Cicero was
still mainly a wooden erection in the form of a long parallelogram,
with shops or booths sheltering under its sides; we shall visit it
again when dealing with the public entertainments.[21] Above it on the
right is the Aventine hill, a densely populated quarter of the lower
classes, crowned with the famous temple of Diana, a deity specially
connected with the plebs.[22] The Clivus Patricius led up to this
temple; down this slope, on the last day of his life, Gaius Gracchus
had hurried, to cross the river and meet his murderers in the grove of
Furrina, of which the site has lately been discovered. If we were to
ascend it we should see, on the river-bank below and beyond it,
the warehouses and granaries for storing the corn for the city's
food-supply, which Gracchus had been the first to extend and organise.
But to ascend the Aventine would take us out of our course. Pushing
on to the farther end of the Circus, where the chariots turned at the
_metae_, we may pause a moment, for in front of us is a gate in the
city wall, the Porta Capena, by which most travellers from the south,
using the via Appia or the via Latina, would enter the city.
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