In the same city also, there is a stone, known as the “Fugitive Stone;”[2617] the Argonautæ, who used it for the purposes of an anchor, having left it there. This stone having repeatedly taken flight from the Prytanæum,[2618] the place so called where it is kept, it has been fastened down with lead. In this city also, near the gate which is known as the “Trachia,”[2619] there are seven towers, which repeat a number of times all sounds that are uttered in them. This phenomenon, to which the name of “Echo,” has been given by the Greeks, depends upon the peculiar conformation of localities, and is produced in valleys more particularly. At Cyzicus, however, it is the effect of accident only; while at Olympia, it is produced by artificial means, and in a very marvellous manner; in a portico there, which is known as the “Heptaphonon,”[2620] from the circumstance that it returns the sound of the voice seven times. At Cyzicus, also, is the Buleuterium,[2621] a vast edifice, constructed without a nail of iron; the raftering being so contrived as to admit of the beams being removed and replaced without the use of stays. A similar thing, too, is the case with the Sublician Bridge[2622] at Rome; and this by enactment, on religious grounds, there having been such difficulty experienced in breaking it down when Horatius Cocles”[2623] defended it. CHAP. 24.—MARVELLOUS BUILDINGS AT ROME, EIGHTEEN IN NUMBER. But it is now time to pass on to the marvels in building displayed by our own City, and to make some enquiry into the resources and experience that we have gained in the lapse of eight hundred years; and so prove that here, as well, the rest of the world has been outdone by us: a thing which will appear, in fact, to have occurred almost as many times as the marvels are in number which I shall have to enumerate. If, indeed, all the buildings of our City are considered in the aggregate, and supposing them, so to say, all thrown together in one vast mass, the united grandeur of them would lead one to suppose that we were describing another world, accumulated in a single spot. Not to mention among our great works, the Circus Maximus, that was constructed by the Dictator Cæsar, one stadium in width and three in length, and occupying, with the adjacent buildings, no less than four jugera, with room for two hundred and sixty thousand spectators seated; am I not to include in the number of our magnificent constructions, the Basilica of Paulus,[2624] with its admirable Phrygian columns; the Forum of the late Emperor Augustus; the Temple of Peace, erected by the Emperor Vespasianus Augustus—some of the finest works that the world has ever beheld—the roofing, too, of the Vote-Office,[2625] that was built by Agrippa? not to forget that, before his time, Valerius of Ostia, the architect, had covered in a theatre at Rome, at the time of the public Games celebrated by Libo?[2626]