"L'ironie était d'autant plus amère, que l'on vendait auprès du temple de Cérès ceux qui avaient offensé au tribun.
"Ce temple, mis particulièrement sous la surveillance des édiles et où ils avaient leurs archives, était le temple de la démocratie romaine. Le farouche patricien le choisit pour lui faire adresser par son fils mort au service de la démocratie un dérisoire hommage."—Ampère, Hist. Rom. ii. 416.
We must now retrace our steps for a short distance, and descend into a hollow on the left, which we have passed, between the churches of S. Teodoro and Sta. Anastasia.
Here an interesting group of buildings still stands to mark the site of the famous ox-market, Forum Boarium. In its centre a brazen bull, brought from Egina,[80] once commemorated the story of the oxen of Geryon, which Hercules left to pasture on this marshy site, and which were stolen hence by Cacus,—and is said by Ovid to have given a name to the locality:
"Pontibus et magno juncta est celeberrima Circo
Area, quæ posito de bove nomen habet."
Fast. vi. 478.
The fact of this place being used as a market for oxen is mentioned by Livy.[81]
The Forum Boarium is associated with several deeds of cruelty. After the battle of Cannæ, a male and female Greek and a male and female Gaul were buried alive here;[82] and here the first fight of gladiators took place, being introduced by M. and D. Brutus, at the funeral of their father in B.C. 264.[83] Here the Vestal virgins buried the sacred utensils of their worship, at the spot called Doliola, when they fled from Rome after the battle of the Allia.[84]
Amongst the buildings which once existed in the Forum Boarium, but of which no trace remains, were the Temple of the Sabine deity Matuta, and the Temple of Fortune, both ascribed to Servius Tullius.
"Hac ibi luce ferunt Matutæ sacra parenti,
Sceptiferas Servi templa dedisse manus."
Ovid, Fast. vi. 479.
"Lux eadem, Fortuna, tua est, auctorque, locusque,
Sed superinjectis quis latet æde togis?
Servius est: hoc constat enim——"
Fast. vi. 569.