words are now engraved:
"On this marble of the gentiles incense was offered to the gods."
Another altar, in the church of S. Michele in Borgo, was covered with
bas-reliefs and legends belonging to the superstition of Cybele and
Atys; a third, in the church of the Aracoeli, had been dedicated to
the goddess Annona by an importer of wheat. The pavement of the
basilica of S. Paul was patched with nine hundred and thirty-one
miscellaneous inscriptions; and so were those of S. Martino ai Monti,
S. Maria in Trastevere, SS. Giovanni e Paolo, etc. We have one
specimen left of these inscribed pavements in the church of SS.
Quattro Coronati on the Caelian, which may be called an epigraphic
museum.

[Illustration: The Templum Sacrae Urbis (SS. Cosma e Damiano).]

In the third chapter I shall have occasion to describe the
transformation of nearly all the great public buildings of imperial
Rome into places of Christian worship, but it falls within the scope
of this chapter to remark that, in many instances, the pagan
decorations of those buildings were not affected by the change. When
Felix IV. took possession of the _templum sacrae urbis_, and dedicated
it to SS. Cosma and Damianus, the walls of the building were covered
with incrustations of the time of Septimius Severus representing the
wolf and other profane emblems. Pope Felix not only accepted them as
an ornament to his church, but tried to copy them in the apse which he
rebuilt. The same process was followed by Pope Simplicius (A. D.
468-483), in transforming the basilica of Junius Bassus on the
Esquiline into the church of S. Andrea.[19] The faithful, raising
their eyes towards the tribune, could see the figures of Christ and
his apostles in mosaic; turning to the side walls, they could see
Nero, Galba, and six other Roman emperors, Diana hunting the stag,
Hylas stolen by the nymphs, Cybele on the chariot drawn by lions, a
lion attacking a centaur, the chariot of Apollo, figures performing
mysterious Egyptian rites, and other such profanities, represented in
_opus sectile marmoreum_, a sort of Florentine mosaic. This unique set
of intarsios was destroyed in the sixteenth century by the French
Antonian monks for a reason worth relating. They believed that the
glutinous substance by which the layer of marble or mother-of-pearl
was kept fast was an excellent remedy against the ague; hence every
time one of them was attacked by fever, a portion of those marvellous
works was