There are 1569 paces from the top of Palatine hill to the foot. A man walks this in no less time than the sun makes his course in the sky by 2 and half degrees. Perhaps the worst part about being a slave is the monotony.This slave made a habit of throwing a pebble down a deep well somewhere along the way each two trips down he made. The mound is now grown to such a size that were each pebble a grain of salt he might have afforded a palace of his own. From the top the forum was just a camp of dull, white marble to which a more striking contrast could hardly have been provided for than by the stretching blue - marvelous but dead, like an ivory anthill. Down, down, however, it was very much alive. The crowd was so thick a man was guaranteed not to see the same face twice in his life. Shrines and temples of every sort are found here. Incidentally it had not occurred to the gods to afflict the city with the plague, which, owing to the density of the people, could spread as quickly as it took to walk from one end of the market to the other.
