Actæon with his Grecian sagacity thought over what he had seen within the two days; the cruel discipline of the family, of the religion, and of the State, which held the citizens in subjection; their absolute ignorance of poetry and art; that stern training, sad, based only on duty, which obliged every Roman to a long and painful obedience so that he might some day be able to command.
The father, who in Greece was a friend, in Rome was a tyrant. For the Latin city there existed no other member of the family than the father; the wife, the children, the clients, were almost on the level of slaves; they were instruments of toil, without rights and without name. The gods heard only him; in his house he was priest and judge; he could kill his wife, sell the children three times over, and his authority over the offspring persisted down the years; the conquering consul, the omnipotent senator, trembled when in his father's presence; and in this gloomy and despotic organization, more stern even than that of Sparta, Actæon divined a latent force cradled in mystery which some day should burst its bonds, clasping the world as in an embrace of iron. The Greek detested this gloomy nation, but it held his admiration.
Its stamina, the tough and bellicose spirit of the race, were revealed in the Forum. The Capitol on the summit of the sacred mount was a veritable fortress, with naked and gloomy walls, destitute of such decorations as made the citadel of Athens glow with an eternal smile. The temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, with its low roof and its row of flattened, tower-like columns, barely rose above the city ramparts. Below, in the Forum, prevailed a similar grave and gloomy ugliness. The buildings were low and heavy; they seemed rather constructions of war than temples of the gods and public buildings. The great network of highroads starting from the Forum was the only embellishment in which Rome interested herself, and that because of their usefulness in transporting her legions and in the hauling of farm products. From the Forum the Appian Way could be seen stretching in a straight line, paved with blue stone, with its two rows of tombs which loomed up in the suburbs of the city, fading in the distance through the Campagna in the direction of Capua; and at the opposite extreme led off the Flaminian Way, which ran by the coast, extending into Cisalpine Gaul. Upon the immense Campagna rose like fluttering red banners the first aqueducts constructed during the reign of Appius Claudius to supply the city with fresh water from the mountains, combating thus the malaria of the Pontine marshes.
But aside from these crude monuments, the extensive, gigantic city, which of itself could arm over a hundred and fifty thousand men, presented a savage and wretched aspect, almost like that of those tribes which Actæon had seen on his trip through Celtiberia.
There were few houses of more than a single story; the majority were great cabins of round walls of stone or clay, and conical roofs of boards and logs. After the Gauls burned Rome the city had been reconstructed in a year, haphazard, with precipitate celerity. In some wards the houses were huddled so closely together that they barely gave room for a man to pass between them, while in others they stood apart as if they were country villas surrounded by small fields inside the city walls. Streets did not exist; they were but tortuous prolongations of the roads which led to Rome; arteries formed at random, twisting hither and thither, following the sinuosities of a disorderly construction, and suddenly broadening into wide, untilled lands where the refuse of the houses was accumulating in piles, and where crows croaked by night, pecking at the carrion of dead dogs and asses.
The crude simplicity of this city of farmers, money lenders, and soldiers, was reflected in the appearance of its inhabitants. Patrician matrons spun wool and hemp at the doors of their houses, clad only in tunics of coarse weave, and wearing bronze ornaments on their breasts and in their ears. The first coinage of silver had taken place subsequent to the war with the Samnites; the clumsy and heavy copper as was the current money, and the rich Grecian objects of virtu brought by the legions after the war with Sicily almost received adoration in the homes of the patricians, but were viewed askance by many as amulets which might corrupt the old sturdy Roman customs. Senators who owned extensive territories and hundreds of slaves, paraded their togas covered with patches in civic pride through the Forum. In all Rome there existed but a single table-service of silver, the property of the Republic, which passed from the house of one patrician to that of another when an envoy arrived from Greece, an ambassador from Sicily, or an opulent merchant from Carthage, habituated to Asiatic refinements and in whose honor banquets had to be given.
Actæon, accustomed to philosophic arguments in the Athenian Agora, to dialogues on poetry or on the mysteries of the soul wherever two unoccupied Greeks chanced to meet, strolled through the Forum listening to the conversations carried on in that rude and inflexible Latin which wounded an Athenian's ears. In one group they were discussing the health of the flocks and the price of wool; in another they were closing the sale of an ox in the presence of five adult citizens who served as witnesses. The purchaser placed the bronze, the value of the purchase, in a balance, and touching the ox with his hand he said in solemn accent, as if reciting an oration:
"This is mine, according to the law of the Quirites. I have paid for it with this metal duly weighed."
Farther on, a legionary with hungry face was adjusting a loan with an old man, offering as security his helmet and his greaves, and pronouncing the formulas of the law in such a case:
"Dari spondes?" (Do you promise to give?) the soldier asked.