There Had Been Intermediate Mornings
When I Met Two Friends There, Indefinitely More Instructed, With Whom I
Sauntered From Point To Point, Preying Upon Their Knowledge For My
Emotion Concerning Each.
Information is an excellent thing - in others;
and but for these friends I should not now be able to
Say that this
mouldering heap of brickwork, rather than that, was Julius Caesar's
house; or just where it was that Antony made his oration over the waxen
effigy which served him for Caesar's body. They helped me realize how
the business life and largely the social life of Rome centred in the
Forum, but spared me so much detail that my fancy could play about among
its vanished edifices without inconvenience from the clutter of shops
and courts and monuments which were ultimately to hem it in and finally
to stifle it. They knew their Forum so well that they could not only
gratify any curiosity I had, but could supply me with curiosity when I
had none. For the moment I was aware that this spot or that, though it
looked so improbable, was the scene of deeds which will reverberate
forever; they taught me to be tolerant of what I had too lightly
supposed fables as serious traditions closely verging on facts. I
learned to believe again that the wolf suckled Romulus and Remus,
because she had her den no great way off on the Palatine, and that
Romulus himself had really lived, since he had died and was buried in
the Forum, where they showed me his tomb, or as much of it as I could
imagine in the sullen little cellar so called.
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