That these monumental doorways with their rich decorations were reserved for pedestrians, is proved by the flight of steps. It was not thought desirable to subject their sculptures to the dangers of vehicular traffic. In the _portes simples_ the marks of wheels can be distinctly traced on the pavements.[89] Each of these gateways, whether for carriages or foot passengers, was a complicated edifice, and the arrangement of their 10,000 square yards of passage and chamber could scarcely have been explained without the use of plans. Military necessities are insufficient to explain such elaborate contrivances. The existence of barbican and flanking towers is justified by them, but hardly the size of the court and the two great transepts. We cease to be surprised at these, however, when we remember the part played by the city gates in the lives of the urban populations of the Levant. [Illustration: FIG. 27.--Longitudinal section through the archway of one of the city gates, Khorsabad; from Place.] In the East the town gate is and always has been what the _agora_ was to the cities of Greece and the _forum_ to those of Italy. Doubtless it was ill-adapted to be used as a theatre of political or judicial debate, like the public places of the Græco-Roman world. But in the East the municipal life of the West has never obtained a footing. The monarchy and patriarchal _régime_ have been her two forms of government; she had no need of wide spaces for crowds of voters or for popular tribunals. Nothing more was required than a place for gossip and the retailing of news, a place where the old men could find themselves surrounded by a circle of fellow townsmen crouched upon their heels, and, after hearing plaintiffs, defendants and their witnesses, could give those awards that were the first form of justice. Nothing could afford a better _rendezvous_ for such purposes than the gate of a fortified city or village. Hollowed in the thickness of a wall of prodigious solidity it gave a shelter against the north wind in winter, while in summer its cool galleries must have been the greatest of luxuries. Husbandmen going to their fields, soldiers setting out on expeditions, merchants with their caravans, all passed through these resounding archways and had a moment in which to hear and tell the news. Those whom age or easy circumstances relieved from toil or war passed much of their time in the gates talking with all comers or sunk in the sleepy reverie in which orientals pass so much of their lives.