Its stamina, the tough and bellicose spirit of the race, were revealed in the Forum. The Capitol on the summit of the sacred mount was a veritable fortress, with naked and gloomy walls, destitute of such decorations as made the citadel of Athens glow with an eternal smile. The temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, with its low roof and its row of flattened, tower-like columns, barely rose above the city ramparts. Below, in the Forum, prevailed a similar grave and gloomy ugliness. The buildings were low and heavy; they seemed rather constructions of war than temples of the gods and public buildings. The great network of highroads starting from the Forum was the only embellishment in which Rome interested herself, and that because of their usefulness in transporting her legions and in the hauling of farm products. From the Forum the Appian Way could be seen stretching in a straight line, paved with blue stone, with its two rows of tombs which loomed up in the suburbs of the city, fading in the distance through the Campagna in the direction of Capua; and at the opposite extreme led off the Flaminian Way, which ran by the coast, extending into Cisalpine Gaul. Upon the immense Campagna rose like fluttering red banners the first aqueducts constructed during the reign of Appius Claudius to supply the city with fresh water from the mountains, combating thus the malaria of the Pontine marshes. But aside from these crude monuments, the extensive, gigantic city, which of itself could arm over a hundred and fifty thousand men, presented a savage and wretched aspect, almost like that of those tribes which Actæon had seen on his trip through Celtiberia. There were few houses of more than a single story; the majority were great cabins of round walls of stone or clay, and conical roofs of boards and logs. After the Gauls burned Rome the city had been reconstructed in a year, haphazard, with precipitate celerity. In some wards the houses were huddled so closely together that they barely gave room for a man to pass between them, while in others they stood apart as if they were country villas surrounded by small fields inside the city walls. Streets did not exist; they were but tortuous prolongations of the roads which led to Rome; arteries formed at random, twisting hither and thither, following the sinuosities of a disorderly construction, and suddenly broadening into wide, untilled lands where the refuse of the houses was accumulating in piles, and where crows croaked by night, pecking at the carrion of dead dogs and asses.