In the next scene (Fig. 17) four men are reading a notice posted on a long board, which is fastened to the pedestals of three equestrian statues. The sketchy character of the painting is especially obvious in the representations of the horses, which are nevertheless lifelike. It is also interesting to note that the heads of the men in these scenes are uncovered; in stormy weather pointed hoods (shown in a tavern scene, Fig. 234) were sometimes worn. The festoons suggest a trimming of the colonnade for some festal occasion. The last scene is from school life. A pupil is to receive a flogging. He is mounted on the back of one of his schoolmates, while another holds him by the legs; a slave is about to lay on the lash, and the teacher stands near by with an air of composure. It would not be safe to infer from this, however, that there was a school in the Forum; the columns in this scene are different from those in the others and are further apart. Possibly a part of the small portico north of the court of the temple of Apollo was at one time let to a schoolmaster. The most important religious festivals were celebrated in the Forum. Here naturally festal honors were paid to the highest of the gods--the whole area enclosed by the colonnade was the court of his temple; but we learn from an inscription, mentioned below, that celebrations were held here in honor of Apollo also, whose temple adjoined the Forum, and was at first even more closely connected with it than in later times. Vitruvius informs us that in Greek towns the market place, _agora_, was laid out in the form of a square (a statement which is not confirmed by modern excavations), but that in the cities of Italy, on account of the gladiatorial combats, the Forum should have an oblong shape, the breadth being two thirds of the length. The purpose in giving a lengthened form to the Forum, as also to the Amphitheatre, was no doubt to secure, at the middle of the sides, a greater number of good seats, from which a spectacle could be witnessed. In the Pompeian Forum, as may be seen from the dimensions given at the beginning of this chapter, the breadth is less than one third of the length. However, there can be little doubt that gladiatorial exhibitions were frequently held there before the building of the Amphitheatre, which dates from the earlier years of the Roman colony. After this time the Forum was still used for games and contests of a less dangerous character. The epitaph of a certain A. Clodius Flaccus, which is now lost, but was copied by a scholar in the seventeenth century, tells us at length how in his first, and again in his second, duumvirate (he was duumvir for the third time in 3 B.C.), in connection with the festival of Apollo, he not only gave gladiatorial exhibitions in the Amphitheatre, but also provided bullfights and other spectacles, as well as musical entertainments and pantomimes, in the Forum.