The whole Sacra via from this point is crowded; here Horace a generation later was to meet his immortal "bore," from whom he only escaped when the "ferrea iura" laid a strong hand on that terrible companion.

Down below, at the entrance to the Forum by the arch of Fabius (fornix Fabiana), the jostling was great.

"If I am knocked about in the crowd at the arch," says Cicero, to illustrate a point in a speech of this time, "I do not accuse some one at the top of the via Sacra, but the man who jostles me."[29] The Forum--for from this point we can take it all in, geologically and historically--lies in a deep hollow, to the original level of which excavation has now at last reached.

This hollow was formed by a stream which came down between the Esquiline and the Quirinal beyond it, and made its exit towards the river on the other side by way of the Velabrum.

As the city extended itself, amalgamating with another community on the Quirinal, this hollow became a common meeting-place and market, and the stream was in due time drained by that Cloaca which we saw debouching into the Tiber near the bridge we crossed.
The upper course of this stream, between Esquiline and Quirinal, is a densely populated quarter known as the Argiletum, and higher up as the Subura,[30] where artisans and shops abounded.