, now the
headquarters of the Royal Engineers. The monument is a parallelogram
in shape, thirty-five feet long by nineteen feet wide, with walls of
travertine, and decorations of white marble; and it is surrounded by
votive altars and pedestals of statues. I am not sure whether the
remarkable work of art which I shall describe presently was found in
this very place, but it is a strange coincidence that, during the
progress of the excavations at S. Silvestro, a statue of Semo Sancus
and a pedestal inscribed with his name should have appeared in the
antiquarian market of the city.

The statue, reproduced here from a heliogravure, is life-sized, and
represents a nude youth, of archaic type. His attitude may be compared
to that of some early representations of Apollo, but the expression of
the face and the modelling of some parts of the body are realistic
rather than conventional. Both hands are missing, so that it is
impossible to state what were the attributes of the god. Visconti
thinks they may have been the _avis Sanqualis_ or _ossifraga_, and the
club of Hercules. The inscription on the pedestal is very much like
that seen by S. Justin:--

SEMONI. SANCO. DEO. FIDIO. SACRUM. DECURIA. SACERDOT[UM] BIDENTALIUM.

According to Festus, _bidentalia_ were small shrines of second-rate
divinities, to whom _bidentes_, lambs two years old, were sacrificed.
For this reason the priests of Semo were called _sacerdotes
bidentales_. They were organized, like a lay corporation, in a
_decuria_ under the presidency of a _magister quinquennalis_. Their
residence, adjoining the chapel, was ample and commodious, with an
abundant supply of water. The lead pipe by which this was distributed
through the establishment was discovered at the same time and in the
same place with the bronze statues of athletes described in chapter
xi. of my "Ancient Rome."

The pipe has been removed to the Capitoline Museum, the statue and its
pedestal have been purchased by Pope Leo XIII. and placed in the
Galleria dei Candelabri, and the foundations of the shrine have been
destroyed.

FOOTNOTES:

[34] On the almanacs (_Notitia, Curiosum_), containing catalogues and
statistics of Roman buildings in the fourth century, see Mommsen:
_Chronograph von 354_, etc., in the _Abhandlungen der Saechsischen
Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften_, vols. ii. 549; iii. 269; viii.
694.--Preller: _Die Regionen der Stadt Rom_. Jena: Hochhausen,
1846.--Jordan: _Topographie der S