Let us go over in brief detail the various objects of interest that may now be seen in the centre of Roman greatness.  Numerous sources of information exist which enable us to identify these monuments, and to form some idea of what they were in their prime.  Among these may be mentioned coins and medals of the emperors, with representations upon them of buildings and sculptures in the Forum; a marble stone found at Ancyra, now Angouri in Phrygia, on which is a long inscription regarding the acts and achievements of Augustus, which is of the greatest value in determining the topography of the city; the bas-reliefs on the Arch of Constantine, and on the marble screens of Trajan, recently excavated in the Forum itself, giving a view of its north-western and south-eastern ends; and the remains of the antique marble plan of Rome, now preserved in the Capitoline Museum, originally affixed to the wall of the superb Temple of Rome, and discovered in fragments in 1867 in the garden of the monastery of SS.  Cosma e Damiano.  We also get most valuable help in the work of identification from the Itineraries of the middle ages—­especially from that of the celebrated pilgrim from Einsiedlen, Zwingli’s town in Switzerland—­who visited Rome in the eighth century, and left his manuscript to his own abbey, where it may still be seen.  A vast apparatus of learning has been accumulated from the works of ancient classic authors by the great scholars who have written on the historical localities and buildings of the Forum, from Donati to Becker.  Nibby, Canina, Ampere, Bunsen, Plattner, and Uhrlich, in their magnificent works have supplied a mine of wealth from which most subsequent writers on the Forum have enriched their descriptions.

The direction of the Forum is nearly from north to south, trending a little from north-east to south-west.  It is surprisingly small to have contained such a large number of buildings, and to have bulked so prominently in the eye of the world; its greatest length being only six hundred and seventy-one feet, and its greatest breadth about two hundred and two feet.  Beginning at the north end, we see before us the vast mass of the ancient Capitol, the proudest symbol of the majesty of Rome, crowned with the great staring medieval structures of the Roman municipality, rising up into the campanile of Michael Angelo.  Until of late years, this renowned building was completely buried beneath a huge mound of rubbish.  Now that it has been removed, the venerable fabric stands out distinctly to view, and we behold the massive walls of the Treasury, the Record Office, and the Senate House.  The lowest part, constructed of huge blocks of volcanic stones, was the AErarium or Public Treasury, and is supposed to have been formed out of the original wall of the city of the Sabines, which surrounded the hill of Saturn, as the Capitoline Mount was originally called, long before Romulus laid the foundation of Rome.  As the Roman army was paid in coppers, spacious cellars