=226. Incessant Crowds at the Forum. The Centers of Gossip.=--If driving is impossible in the ordinary Roman streets by day, it is doubly impossible in this congested region where only those who delight in crowds should endeavor to force their way from one building to another. Nevertheless, with that informality so characteristic of Mediterranean countries, all the fora are allowed to be overrun with idlers. Ragged boys are scampering between the columns fronting the most sacred temples, and on the steps of the same adult idlers from morn till eve are playing “Robbers” on boards scratched upon the stonework,[138] or rattling dice (nominally forbidden) if the police are not too near. The foul and the elegant therefore are often in amazing juxtaposition. For the average senator or eques a morning visit to the Forum, after he has received his own callers or clients, is almost a required act of the day. All his associates are doing the same thing; he can easily meet almost any friend without making an appointment, he can read that “Daily Journal” presently to be described (see p. 282), hear the latest tittle-tattle from the palace and get all the trade reports--all this even if he has no real business at the Senate House, the government bureaus on the Palatine, or the Record Office on the slopes of the Capitol. If the great men do this, all the lesser fry and above all the genteel idlers must do the same. The women frequent the fora almost as much as do the men. If there is nothing else to busy one, one can always wedge into the crowds listening to the distinguished advocates in the Basilicas (Court Houses). It is quite a proper thing to imitate Horace who put in many days simply wandering around the business quarters. “I go on foot (said he) and go alone. I ask the price of kitchen-stuff and grain. I often stroll down toward the cheating [gambling] Circus and around the Forum; then perhaps I stop toward evening at the fortune tellers. Presently I go home to my supper of leeks, pulse, and macaroni.” Across the fora will parade all personages who wish to put men’s tongues to wagging. People laugh at a certain pretentious senator who likes to pass for a great hunter and who is incessantly sending his slaves around the plazas at the crowded morning hour, bearing nets and spears and driving a mule apparently bearing home a wild boar “which we all know,” whisper the cunning, “he has just bought in the game market.” Here in the fora also the magistrates with their lictoral fasces pass so often that it is really inconvenient the number of times you have to bow your head to them, or, if in a litter, to dismount and stand at polite attention: and in such frequented places the kissing nuisance takes on its greatest bane. The merest chance acquaintance, if only he is a citizen, will thrust his damp salute upon you, little heeding whether you have a vile cold or his own lips be ulcered and his breath foul.