all worked to embellish Rome.  It was especially about the Forum that the monuments accumulated.  The Capitol with its temple of Jupiter became almost like the Acropolis at Athens.  In the same quarter many monumental areas were constructed—­the forum of Caesar, the forum of Augustus, the forum of Nerva, and, most brilliant of all, the forum of Trajan.  Two villas surrounded by a park were situated in the midst of the city; the most noted was the Golden House, built for Nero.

THE LAW

=The Twelve Tables.=—­The Romans, like all other ancient peoples, had at first no written laws.  They followed the customs of the ancestors—­that is to say, each generation did in everything just as the preceding generation did.

In 450 ten specially elected magistrates, the decemvirs, made a series of laws that they wrote on twelve tables of stone.  This was the Law of the Twelve Tables, codified in short, rude, and trenchant sentences—­a legislation severe and rude like the semi-barbarous people for whom it was made.  It punished the sorcerer who by magical words blasted the crop of his neighbor.  It pronounced against the insolvent debtor, “If he does not pay, he shall be cited before the court; if sickness or age deter him, a horse shall be furnished him, but no litter; he may have thirty days’ delay, but if he does not satisfy the debt in this time, the creditor may bind him with straps or chains of fifteen pounds weight; at the end of sixty days he may be sold beyond the Tiber; if there are many creditors, they may cut him in parts, and if they cut more or less, there is no wrong in the act.”  According to the word of Cicero, the Law of the Twelve Tables was “the source of all the Roman law.”  Four centuries after it was written down the children had to learn it in the schools.

=The Symbolic Process.=—­In the ancient Roman law it was not enough in buying, selling, or inheriting that this was the intention of the actor; to obtain justice in the Roman tribunal it was not sufficient to present the case; one had to pronounce certain words and use certain gestures.  Consider, for example, the manner of purchasing.  In the presence of five citizens who represent an assembly and of a sixth who holds a balance in his hand, the buyer places in the balance a piece of brass which represents the price of the thing sold.  If it be an animal or a slave that is sold, the purchaser touches it with his hand saying, “This is mine by the law of the Romans, I have bought it with this brass duly weighed.”  Before the tribunal every process is a pantomime:  to reclaim an object one seizes it with the hand; to protest against a neighbor who has erected a wall, a stone is thrown against the wall.  When two men claim proprietorship in a field, the following takes place at the tribunal:  the two adversaries grasp hands and appear to fight; then they separate and each says, “I declare this field is mine by the law of the Romans; I cite