Roman Holidays and Others

My visit to the Roman Forum when the Genius Loci verified to my ignorance and the intelligence of my companions the well-conjectured site of the Temple of Jupiter Stator was not the first nor yet the second visit I had paid the place. There had been intermediate mornings when I met two friends there, indefinitely more instructed, with whom I sauntered from point to point, preying upon their knowledge for my emotion concerning each. Information is an excellent thing–in others; and but for these friends I should not now be able to say that this mouldering heap of brickwork, rather than that, was Julius Caesar’s house; or just where it was that Antony made his oration over the waxen effigy which served him for Caesar’s body.