with statues; and it is lighted from above by a clerestory.  Though the question has been debated, it is almost certain that it was mainly from buildings like this, or from rooms similarly constructed in palatial houses, that the early Church developed its basilicas—­with their nave, aisles, and clerestory, and with their railed apse at the end, where was placed the chair of the bishop on its dais.  Across the Forum on the opposite side, to your right, lies another structure of the same kind, in artistic respects more excellent.  In this, the Basilica Aemilia, the chief business was that of the bankers and money-changers, although it served various other purposes according to convenience.

If you could see round the farther end of this basilica to the right, you would perceive the beginning of one of the busiest streets in Rome—­the Argiletum—­chiefly known to fame as a favourite quarter of the booksellers, who fasten on their door-posts, or on the pillars which support a balcony or upper floor, the lists of the newest or most popular publications to be bought within.  And where that street enters the Forum, though standing back a little from your line of vision—­perhaps you can catch sight of the top of it over the corner of the Basilica—­is the temple-like Senate-House with its offices.  Here is the meeting-place of the six hundred who nominally govern jointly with the emperor.  If you visit Rome to-day you will find the greater part of the actual chamber, though miserably despoiled, bearing the name of the church of S. Adriano.

[Illustration:  FIG. 19.—­N.E.  OF FORUM, A.D. 64. (Complementary to frontispiece.)

From left:  in background, Record Office, with Temple of Concord and Rostra below; on summit, Temple of Juno and Citadel; below, Prison, with shrine of Janus in front.  To right:  Basilica Aemilia, with gable of Senate-House beyond. (Largely after Tognetti.)]

The little building, half arch, half shrine, which you observe standing free where the roads converge upon the Forum, is the famous sanctuary of Janus, of which the doors are never shut unless there is complete peace throughout the Roman world.  So long as Rome is anywhere engaged in a great or little war, the open doors of Janus tell the fact to a people which might otherwise be unconscious of so slight or remote a circumstance.

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[Illustration:  FIG. 20.—­TEMPLE OF FORTUNA AUGUSTA. (Pompeii.)]

We need not describe in detail the temple of Castor, or rather of the “Twin Brethren,” which stands immediately to your left, or that of the deified Julius Caesar, which is just behind you, on the spot where the body of the great dictator was burned.  It is perhaps more interesting to note the ordinary—­though not by any means the only—­form of the Roman temple in general.  Those who have seen the so-called Maison Carree at Nimes will possess a fair notion of the commonest or most typical shape and arrangement.