Come along." Agias followed, with his head again in a whirl.
III The little company worked its way back to the Forum, not, as now, a half-excavated ruin, the gazing-stock for excursionists, a commonplace whereby to sum up departed greatness: the splendid buildings of the Empire had not yet arisen, but the structures of the age were not unimposing.

Here, in plain view, was the Capitoline Hill, crowned by the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus and the Arx.

Here was the site of the Senate House, the Curia (then burned), in which the men who had made Rome mistress of the world had taken counsel.

Every stone, every basilica, had its history for Drusus--though, be it said, at the moment the noble past was little in his mind.

And the historic enclosure was all swarming, beyond other places, with the dirty, bustling crowd, shoppers, hucksters, idlers.