"This was the fate, also, of Trajan's forum, until some papal antiquary, a few hundred years ago, began to hollow it out again, and disclosed the whole height of the gigantic column, wreathed round with bas-reliefs of the old emperor's warlike deeds (rich sculpture, which, twining from the base to the capital, must be an ugly spectacle for his ghostly eyes, if he considers that this huge, storied shaft must be laid before the judgment seat, as a piece of the evidence of what he did in the flesh). In the area before the column stands a grove of stone, consisting of the broken and unequal shafts of a vanished temple, still keeping a majestic order, and apparently incapable of further demolition. The modern edifices of the piazza (wholly built, no doubt, out of the spoil of its old magnificence) look down into the hollow space whence these pillars rise. "One of the immense gray granite shafts lies in the piazza, on the verge of the area. It is a great, solid fact of the Past, making old Rome actually visible to the touch and eye; and no study of history, nor force of thought, nor magic of song, can so vitally assure us that Rome once existed, as this sturdy specimen of what its rulers and people wrought. There is still a polish remaining on the hard substance of the pillar, the polish of eighteen centuries ago, as yet but half rubbed off."--_Hawthorne, Transformation._ On the north of this forum are two churches: that nearest to the Corso is _Sta. Maria di Loreto_ (founded by the corporation of bakers in 1500), with a dome surmounted by a picturesque lantern by Giuliano di Sangallo, c. 1506. It contains a statue of Sta. Susanna (_not_ the Susanna of the Elders) by _Fiammingo_ (François de Quesnoy), which is justly considered the chef-d'œuvre of the Bernini School. The companion church is called _Sta. Maria di Vienna_, and (like Sta. Maria della Vittoria) commemorates the liberation of Vienna from the Turks in 1683, by Sobieski, king of Poland. It was built by Innocent XI. Leaving the forum at the opposite corner by the Via Alessandrina, and passing under the high wall of the Convent of the Nunziatina, a street, opening on the left, discloses several beautiful pillars, which, after having borne various names, are now declared to be the remains of the _Temple of Mars Ultor_, built by Augustus in his new forum, which was erected in order to provide accommodation for the crowds which overflowed the Forum Romanum and Forum Julium. "The title of Ultor marked the war and the victory by which, agreeably to his vow, Augustus had avenged his uncle's death. "'Mars ades, et satia scelerato sanguine ferrum; Stetque favor causa pro meliore tuus. Templa feres, et, me victore, vocaberis Ultor.'[51]