There was to be seen down at the end of a straight street, where the buildings widened out, forming an enormous right-angled space, a great square plaza with beautiful structures sustained by arches, beneath which the people were swarming. It was the Forum. Above the roofs at the lower end could be seen houses and more houses with white walls climbing up the mountain slope; and in the background the walls of the Acropolis, the colonnades of the temples sustaining the friezes consisting of enormous carved stones.
Actæon, following the road leading to the Forum, was reminded of the maritime suburb of the Piræus. This was the merchants' district, inhabited mainly by Greeks. The stir of traffic could be seen through the windows of the lower stories; slaves were piling up bales; young men with curly hair and aquiline noses were tracing on their wax tablets their complicated business accounts, and samples of their wares were exposed on small tables before the doors of the houses; there were piles of wheat or wool and heavy rough pieces of marble from the quarries. The merchants, standing in their doorways and leaning against the jambs, talked with their customers, gesticulating and with smooth accent calling upon the gods as witnesses that they were being ruined in their business.
In some shops, the proprietors, in vestments embroidered with golden flowers, wearing tall mitres and purple sandals, with light, sphinx-like eyes, and stroking the curls of their perfumed beards, listened in silence to their customers. They were traders from Africa and Asia, Carthaginians, Egyptians, Phœnicians, who dealt in costly merchandise—trinkets of gold, tusks of ivory, ostrich feathers, and pieces of amber. Before their doors paused rich women clad in white mantles, followed by slaves, and as they talked they peeped their rosy faces into the shop, fascinated by the exotic aroma of stimulating spices from Asia and mysterious perfumes from the Orient. Rare birds brought from the East strode majestically among the bales with strident calls, trailing their multicolored plumage like a royal mantle.
Actæon, after hastily examining these shops, entered the Forum. It was market day, and the life of the city streamed to the great square. Farmers spread out their garden stuff near the porticos; shepherds from the public domain piled their cheeses in pyramids in front of little pitchers of milk, and women of the port, brown and almost naked, called attention to their fresh fish, arranged upon beds of leaves in flat rush baskets. At one end shepherds from the mountain, dressed in esparto, ferocious of aspect, and armed with lances, watched over cattle and horses offered for sale. These were Celtiberians, of whom it was told with horror that they sometimes ate human flesh, and they seemed to feel imprisoned inside the plaza, contemplating with hostile eyes that bee-like activity, so different from the independent solitude they enjoyed in their wandering life. The riches excited their appetites for robbing and horse-stealing, and, grasping their lances, they stared with ferocious eyes at the group of armed mercenaries in the service of the city, who at the lower end of the Forum, on the steps of the temple, guarded the senator charged with dispensing justice on market days.
In the centre of the square swarmed the multitude, buying and dickering, dressed in a thousand colors, and speaking diverse tongues. The virtuous women of the city, simply dressed in white, passed along, followed by slaves who deposited in netted sacks the provision for the week; the Greeks, in long, saffron-colored chlamydes investigated everything, haggling tediously before making an insignificant purchase; the Saguntine citizens, Iberians who had lost their primitive rudeness through infinite intermarriages, imitated the manner and bearing of the Romans who were at the moment the people in highest esteem. Mingled with these were natives from the interior, bearded, begrimed, with long dishevelled hair, attracted by the market in spite of their dislike for the city, and particularly for the Greeks on account of their refinement and riches.
Some Celtiberians, chiefs of the tribes nearest to Saguntum, remained on horseback in the centre of the Forum, without putting aside their lances, and still clinging to their shields of woven bull-sinews. They wore triple-crested helmets and leather cuirasses, as if they were on hostile soil and feared treachery. Meanwhile their women, agile, brown, and masculine, moved from place to place, their ample vestments, embroidered in gayly colored flowers, fluttering as they walked, and anon they stopped with childish admiration before the table of some Greek selling crystal beads and coarsely engraved necklaces and trinkets of bronze.
Mantles of finest linen and costly purple brushed against the naked limbs of slaves or against the Celtiberian sagum of black wool buckled at the shoulder. Coiffures in Grecian style with red ribbons plaited in, the tuft of curls at the back of the head resembling the flame of a torch, the forehead small as a sign of supreme beauty, mingled with coiffures of the Celtiberian women, who wore their foreheads shaven and shiny to make them larger, their hair curled around a little stick placed on their heads, forming a sharp horn from which hung a black veil. Other Celtiberian women wore strong steel collars with little wires which were brought together above the coiffure, and from this cage, which enclosed the head, hung the veil, proudly displaying their enormous foreheads, brilliant and luminous as the moon in her first quarter.
Actæon lingered wondering at the costumes of these women, and at their masculine and warlike aspect. His quick Grecian perceptions divined danger as he contemplated the barbarians motionless on their steeds in the centre of the Forum, from that height dominating with looks of hatred this nation of merchants and farmers. They were like birds of prey that were compelled to come down to the plain as thieves in order to find food for existence in their arid mountains. Saguntum surrounded by such peoples would some day have to struggle for supremacy against them.
The Greek pondering this, entered the colonnades where the idle of the city were gathered before the shops of barbers, money changers, and vendors of wines and refreshments. Actæon could imagine himself still in the Agora of Athens. Although smaller, this was the same world as his native city. Sedate citizens had themselves carried by a slave in a wicker chair to take seats before the door of some shop to learn the news. Newsmongers circulated from group to group spreading the most stupendous lies; parasites seeking an invitation to dine flattered the rich whom they chanced to meet, and spoke ill of everything that happened; unemployed pedagogues disputed in loud tones over a point in Greek grammar, and youthful citizens grumbled against the old senators, declaring that the Republic needed newer blood.
The recent expedition against the Turdetani, and the great victory gained over them, was much discussed. They would no longer dare to raise their heads; their king Artabanes, a fugitive in the most remote of their territories, must be punished for the late defeat. And the young Saguntines looked proudly at the trophies of lances, shields, and helmets, hanging from the pilasters of the porticos. They were the arms of some hundreds of Turdetani killed or taken prisoner on the last expedition. Furniture and ornaments stolen in the villages of the enemy by the warriors of Saguntum were offered for sale at low prices in the barber-shops. Nobody wanted them. The city was filled with such spoils. The Saguntine soldiers had returned, dragging in their wake a veritable army of loaded wagons and an interminable horde of men and beasts. As they thought of the triumph they smiled with the grim ferocity of ancient warfare, incapable of forgiving, and in which the greatest of mercies for the conquered was slavery.