Downright thieves, professional robbers, and petty pilferers are held in reasonable restraint by the active police, but the absence of street lights makes it risky business to go about after dark without torches and a good escort. Serious burglaries are often reported, and every now and then the body is found of some wayfarer who was stabbed while resisting a hold-up. As for certain districts going down the river toward Ostia, or along the Via Appia toward the Pomptine Marshes, their reputation is so bad that even in daylight a company of armed slaves is desirable. CHAPTER XIV THE FORA, THEIR LIFE AND BUILDINGS. THE DAILY JOURNAL =225. The Fora, the Centers of Roman Life.=--Hitherto in our prolonged “day” in Rome we have carefully avoided visiting those famous quarters or buildings which are the glory of the imperial city. These can only take on true significance when we have first seen the ordinary life of rich and poor. It is now time, however, to visit the “Heart of Rome”--the splendid system of fora in that great hollow where five of the “Seven Hills” almost come together just north of the Palatine, and then to visit the Palatine itself with its abodes of official majesty. [Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF OLD FORUM AND CAPITOL: a simplified restoration.] The renowned and original “Forum” is known technically as the _Forum Romanum_, or the Old Forum, and down to Julius Cæsar’s time it was the only great plaza inside the official limits of the city. Under the emperors it is still revered and famous, but the needs of an enormous metropolis have caused first Cæsar, then Augustus, Vespasian, Nerva, and finally Trajan to add other wide public squares surrounded by buildings far more magnificent than most of those around the ancient rallying spot of the men of the Republic. [Illustration: OLD FORUM: present state, looking towards the Capitol.] All these fora are closely connected together, sometimes by no very sharp lines of demarkation. You can start in near the Flavian Amphitheater and follow down the Sacred Way across the Old Forum, with one soaring edifice, triumphal arch, or memorial column succeeding another until at the Temple of Trajan you find yourself on “Broadway” (_Via Lata_), upon the great avenue leading through the select shopping districts, and then past the Campus Martius, and onward to the northern suburbs. “Going to the Forum” means visiting any place in this crowded, swarming district, where every public and private interest seems to have its stronghold, and where the litters of Senators go past so frequently that nobody stops to count them.