You may wish to know my sensations on traversing this sacred ground. The
_Via Sacra_ recalled to me Horace meeting the _bavard_ who addresses him:
_Quid agis, dulcissime rerum_?[85] I then thought of the Sabine rape; of
Brutus' speech over the body of Lucretia; then I almost fancied I could see
the spot where stood the butcher's shop, from whence Virginius snatched the
knife to immolate his daughter at the shrine of Honor; next the shade of
Regulus flitted before my imagination, refusing to be exchanged; then I
figured to myself Cicero thundering against Catiline; or the same with
delicate irony ridiculing the ultra-rigor of the Stoics, so as to force
even the gravity of Cato to relax into a smile; then the grand, the heroic
act of Marcus Brutus in immolating the great Caesar at the altar of
liberty. All these recollections and ideas crowded on my imagination
without regard to order or chronology, and I remained for some time in a
state of the most profound reverie, from which I was only roused by my
friend the Jew reminding me that we had a quantity of other things to see.
The first object that engaged my attention on being roused from my reverie,
was the Arch of Severus at the foot of the Capitol which towers above it.
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