It is of this view that
Virgil must have been thinking when he wrote of the happy lot of the
countryman who
nec ferrea iura
insanumque forum aut populi tabularia vidit.[28]
For the Forum is crowded with bustling human figures, intent on the
business of politics, or of the law-courts (ferrea iura), or of
money-making, and just beyond it, immediately under the Capitol, are
the record-offices (tabularia) of the Roman Empire. The whole Sacra
via from this point is crowded; here Horace a generation later was to
meet his immortal "bore," from whom he only escaped when the "ferrea
iura" laid a strong hand on that terrible companion. Down below, at
the entrance to the Forum by the arch of Fabius (fornix Fabiana), the
jostling was great. "If I am knocked about in the crowd at the arch,"
says Cicero, to illustrate a point in a speech of this time, "I do not
accuse some one at the top of the via Sacra, but the man who jostles
me."[29]
The Forum--for from this point we can take it all in, geologically and
historically--lies in a deep hollow, to the original level of which
excavation has now at last reached.
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