business of some client’s suit at last decided, and were journeying to his estate in Venefrum or to Tarentum that the Spartan built. Horace, _Od._ iii. 5. 13-56. Marcus Curtius What were Rome’s most precious possessions? To this question a splendid answer was given by Marcus Curtius. In the midst of the Forum--the market-place in the heart of the city where public business was transacted and men met daily to discuss politics and listen to speeches--the citizens found one morning that a yawning gulf had opened. This, so the priests declared, would not close until the most precious thing that Rome possessed had been thrown into it. Then the republic would be safe and everlasting. For a time men puzzled and pondered over the meaning of this dark saying. Marcus Curtius, a youth who had covered himself with honour in many battles, solved the riddle. Brave men, he said, had made Rome great: the city had nothing so precious. Clad in full armour and mounted on his war-horse he leaped into the gulf. It closed over him at once, nor ever opened again. _The Devotion of Marcus Curtius_ During the same year, as the story goes, a cavern of measureless depth was opened in the middle of the Forum, either from the shock of an earthquake or from some other hidden force; and though all did their best by throwing soil into it, the gulf could not be filled up till, warned by the gods, the people began to inquire what was Rome’s greatest treasure. For that treasure, so the prophets declared, must be offered in it, if the Roman commonwealth was to be safe and lasting. Whereupon Marcus Curtius, a warrior renowned in war, rebuked them for doubting whether the Romans had any greater blessing than arms and valour. Amid a general silence he devoted himself, looking to the Capitol and the temples of the immortal gods that overhang the Forum, and stretching out his hands, at one time to the sky, at another to the yawning chasm that reached to the world below. Then, fully armed and seated on a horse splendidly caparisoned, he plunged into its depths, while a crowd of men and women showered corn and other offerings after him. Thus we may suppose that the Curtian Lake got its name from him, and not from Curtius Mettus, in old time the famous soldier of Titus Tatius. Livy, vii. 6. [Illustration: LACUS CURTIUS Restored] In Mucius Scaevola, in Regulus, in Marcus Curtius, and many others the fine qualities of the old Roman temper, pride, courage, will, devotion, a love of their country that went beyond all other feelings, even unto death, stand out. One can see the main lines of the character that made the Romans what they afterwards became--the conquerors and law-givers first of a single city, Rome, then of the whole plain of Latium in which that city stood: then, after driving back barbarian invaders from the north and Greek invaders from the south, of all Italy: later of the known world. Coriolanus