It was now the hour to go to the Senaculum, the ancient building at the foot of the Tarpeian peak between the Capitolium and the Forum, which many years later was converted into the temple of Concord. On the steps which gave access to the temple Actæon met the two legates sent by Saguntum before the siege began; two old farmers who had gone away from home for the first time, and who seemed to be dazed by their long months of waiting in Rome, with their audiences which never terminated, and with their interviews and resultless supplications. The two perturbed Saguntines, impotent before a city which never responded definitely to their words, followed like automata the self-confident Greek who went everywhere as if he were in his own house, and who spoke many languages as if the entire world were his country. The senators began to arrive. Some came from their business in the city and presented themselves garbed in the white toga with purple border, followed by their clients who turned their gaze in all directions as if to attract public attention to their majestic protector. Others came from the country, drawing up their carts before the steps of the Senaculum, and, handing the reins to a slave, ascended to the temple with their togas flung over their arms, dressed in the short cloak of coarse wool worn by farmers, and emitting the odors of their stables and crops. They were mature men who displayed in the firmness of their strong muscles the activity of their life of continued struggle with the soil and with enemies; old men with long beards and wizened faces, tremulous with age, who still revealed in their unflinching eyes reliance on their departing strength. The crowd from the Forum, surging toward the steps of the Senaculum, watched them with admiration and respect. They were the fathers of the Republic, the heads of Rome.