So large is this hall that not one but _four_ tribunals have been set up in different quarters of the building, and litigation often proceeds before all four of them simultaneously, although in the absence of partitions strong-lunged advocates sometimes interfere with their neighbors; they tell of a certain stentorian Trachalus who once while speaking before one tribunal not merely was heard by but drew applause from the audiences in the other three. Here Quintilian, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, and other orators of the generation just departed, won their fame, and at present every windy amateur in the rhetoric schools dreams of the day when he can wave out his toga in the Basilica Julia before a crowded and cheering balcony. These are some of the more famous monuments in and around the Forum Romanum. Were one to descend to particulars the task were endless. Perhaps there should be mentioned a certain modest altar in the very center of the open plaza. This marks the so-called _Lacus Curtius_. Antiquarians give one several stories concerning it, but the accepted version is this.--Once in the good old days a yawning gulf opened at this very spot, the portent, perhaps, of the devouring of the entire city--when lo! the brave youth, Marcus Curtius “devoted” himself for his country and plunged unflinchingly into the abyss. The earth closed over him, he was seen no more, but Rome held his name in eternal remembrance. Doubtless he had thus taken upon himself the anger of the infernal gods and had saved the state![143] [Illustration: THE TARPEIAN ROCK: on slopes of the Capitol. (From this traitors were hurled in the time of the Republic.)] =237. The New Fora of the Emperors: the Temple of Peace.=--After surveying the Forum Romanum we are told that five other fora--the creations of high-minded Emperors--still await inspection. Truth to tell, however, these great plazas--not marking the growth and events of centuries, but the mandates of wealthy despots--give one a sense of anticlimax. Of them it will be properly written: “The fora of the Empire were as much superior in magnificence to the Forum Romanum as they were inferior in historical interest and association.” They are the work of master architects mobilizing armies of laboring slaves, stone cutters, and artists. The eye becomes weary with the incessant sheen of costly marble; the equestrian statues, the forests of ornate Corinthian pillars, the great reaches of tessellated pavements, the quantities of colored paint, enamel, and heavy gilding. At first these imperial fora appear to the visitor as a hopeless complex of pretentious splendor; but after a little, a clever method appears in their arrangement by which one great plaza or system of public buildings joins itself to another.