The Romans arose from their couches by the light of the morning stars. Carts from the Campagna rolled in the darkness through the tortuous streets, slaves awakened by the crowing of the cock trudged along carrying baskets and farm utensils, and by the hour of dawn all the houses had their doors thrown open, and the citizens not employed in the fields gathered in the Forum, that centre of traffic and of public business, that had begun to be adorned with the earlier temples, but still retained broad barren spaces upon which in later centuries were to rise the architectural glories of Rome, mistress of the world. Actæon had been in the great city for two days, lodged in an extramural inn established by a Greek. He never ceased to marvel at this austere Republic, existing almost in poverty, a hardy nation of farmers and soldiers who filled the world with their fame while they endured greater privation than any hamlet on the outskirts of Athens. Actæon expected to appear before the Senate that very day. The majority of the Fathers of the Republic lived in the country, in rustic villas with walls of unseasoned adobe roofed with branches, overseeing the work of their slaves, guiding the plow like Cincinnatus and Camillus; when affairs of state called them to the Senate they came into Rome in their carts, drawn by oxen, riding among baskets of vegetables and sacks of grain, and with their toil-calloused hands they arrayed themselves in the toga before entering the Forum, transfigured by the majesty lent by their flowing vestments. The Greek arrived at the Forum by sunrise, encountering the customary crowd--venerable Romans wrapped in their togas discoursing before the young men and their clients on the art of prudently placing money upon good security, the chief attainment of every citizen; and hungry Greek pedagogues scheming ever, in search of a situation among that sombre people more apt in war than in culture; old legionaries, their gray military cloaks covered with patches, their thoughts yearning back to the by-gone wars against Pyrrhus and Carthage, persecuted by debts and threatened with slavery by their creditors, in spite of the cicatrices all over their bodies; and the plebe, with no other clothing than the _lacerna_--a short cape of coarse cloth finished with the _cucullus_ or pointed hood--the multitudinous Roman plebe, exploited and oppressed by the patricians, ever dreaming, as a remedy for their ills, of new divisions of the public lands which, by means of usury, gradually fell into the hands of the rich. On the steps of the Comitium the members of a tribe were gathered to probate the will of one of their people who had just died. Near the military tribune veteran centurions wearing greaves and helmets of bronze stood leaning on staves of vine-wood, the badge of their military rank, discussing the siege of Saguntum and the audacity of Hannibal, eager to march immediately against the Carthaginian.