figures
with large openings on the front, through which the intestines are
seen. Professor Tommasi-Crudeli, who has made a study of this class of
curiosities, says that they cannot be considered as real anatomical
models, because the work is too rough and primitive to enable us to
distinguish one intestine from the other. The number of objects
collected by Lord Savile may be estimated at three thousand.

[Illustration: The stern of the ship of the Island of the Tiber.]

Characteristic objects of a like nature--breasts cut open and showing
the anatomy--have been found in large numbers in and near the island
of the Tiber, where the Temple of AEsculapius stood, at the stern of
the marble ship. It seems that the street leading from the Campus
Martius to the Pons Fabricius, and across it to the temple, was lined
with shops and booths for the sale of ex-votos, as is the case now
with the approaches to the sanctuaries of Einsiedeln, Lourdes,
Mariahilf, and S. Jago. In the foundations of the new quays of the
Tiber, above and below the bridge, the ex-votos have been found in
regular strata along the line of the banks, whereas in the island
itself they have come to light in much smaller quantities. As the
votive objects deposited in this sanctuary, from the year 292 before
Christ to the fall of the Empire, may be counted not by thousands, but
by millions of specimens, I believe that the bed of the Tiber must
have been used as a _favissa_.

The name of Minerva Medica is familiar to students and visitors of old
Rome;[39] but the monument which bears it, a nymphaeum of the gardens
of the Licinii, near the Porta Maggiore, has no connection whatever
with the goddess of wisdom. Minerva Medica was the name of a street on
the Esquiline, so called from a shrine which stood at the crossing, or
near the crossing, with the Via Merulana, not far from the church of
SS. Pietro e Marcellino. Its foundations and its deposit of ex-votos
were discovered in 1887. The shape and nature of the offerings bear
witness to numberless cases of recovery performed by the merciful
goddess, the Athena Hygieia or Paionia of the Greeks. There is a
fragment of a lamp inscribed with her name, which leaves no doubt as
to the identity of the deposit. There is also a votive head, not cast
from the mould, but modelled _a stecco_, which alludes to Minerva as a
restorer of hair. The scalp is covered with thick hair in front and on
the top, while the sides are bald, o