HELIODORA Marcian's abode was in the Via Lata, the thoroughfare which ran straight and broad, directly northwards, from the Capitoline Hill to the Flaminian Gate.

Hard by were the headquarters of the city watch, a vast building, now tenanted by a few functionaries whose authority had fallen into contempt; and that long colonnade of Hadrian, called the Septa, where merchants once exposed their jewels and fabrics to the crowd of sauntering wealthy, and where nowadays a few vendors of slaves did their business amid the crumbling columns.

Surrounded by these monuments of antiquity, the few private residences still inhabited had a dreary, if not a mean, aspect.

Some of them--and Marcian's dwelling was one--had been built in latter times with material taken from temple or portico or palace in ruins; thus they combined richness of detail with insignificant or clumsy architecture.

An earthquake of a few years ago, followed by a great inundation of the Tiber, had wrought disaster among these modern structures.