Plutarch speaks of it as "a great house." Ovid says the house of Numa, the Regia, was "small," showing that the house of Cæsar and the Regia were two distinct edifices. This old house of which we have been speaking fronted towards the Temple of Vesta, whilst the portico and shops, built at a late period over its ruins, ran parallel with the Via Sacra. The house side of the atrium is plainly marked by the fragments of columns, composed of travertine coated with stucco, and frescoed. There is the base of an isolated column near what must have been the middle of the house side; and to its right there is a half column of the same workmanship, and between these two bases runs a travertine gutter which drained the atrium. Amidst the shops built over the atrium are remains of beautiful black and white mosaic pavement, the fragments of the borders showing that they once belonged to the older edifice. On the right of the atrium, towards the Via Sacra, was an area-vestibulum, giving access to the house from the Via Sacra, and, like it, paved with polygonal blocks of silex. There was another entrance to the house at the point where it nearly touched, at its north-eastern corner, the Via Sacra. The bases of two columns mark the ingress into a small vestibule which has a mosaic pavement, on the right of which was the entrance to the house, the threshold of travertine stone being _in situ_. There are the two holes at the ends where the doors turned on their pivots, and the bolt-hole in the middle. THE PORTICUS MARGARITARIA. After the fire, the site of Cæsar's house was occupied by shops and dwellings, along the front of which was an arcade. As these shops were mostly kept by pearl-dealers, the arcade was known as the Porticus Margaritaria. It is mentioned in the "Curiosum" and the "Notitia" of the fourth century as in the eighth region, Forum Romanum Magnum. In the recent excavations along the line of the Via Sacra, the remains of an arcade 201 feet long by 24 feet wide, and consisting of two rows of piers, have been found running parallel with the street, and having shops on either side. This no doubt is the Porticum Margaritarium of the catalogues. Beneath the arcade and the shops are the remains of Cæsar's house. Judging from the monumental stones, the pearl trade was an extensive one in Rome; and from the same authority we learn that the shops were on the Sacra Via. This is mentioned on the tomb of Ateilius Evhodus at the sixth mile on the Via Appia. THE SACRA CLIVUS. Horace was wont to come down the Sacred Way ("S." i. 9), and talks of Britons descending it in chains ("Ep." vii.). Now we are free to ascend it. Where the Sacred Way ascends the Velia ridge it will be noticed that the road is extraordinarily wide (45 feet). This was no doubt made after the great fire under Commodus, for four feet below the pavement was found the original and narrower street, and beneath that the drain in the reticulated work of the republic.