statement of the facts of construction.  Over the Anio in Italy, on a bridge which Narses, the great general of Justinian, restored, the Roman, as he passed, read in graceful verse:[62] “We go on our way with the swift-moving waters of the torrent beneath our feet, and we delight on hearing the roar of the angry water.  Go then joyfully at your ease, Quirites, and let the echoing murmur of the stream sing ever of Narses.  He who could subdue the unyielding spirit of the Goths has taught the rivers to bear a stern yoke.”

It is an interesting thing to find that the prettiest of the dedicatory poems are in honor of the forest-god Silvanus.  One of these poems, Titus Pomponius Victor, the agent of the Caesars, left inscribed upon a tablet[63] high up in the Grecian Alps.  It reads:  “Silvanus, half-enclosed in the sacred ash-tree, guardian mighty art thou of this pleasaunce in the heights.  To thee we consecrate in verse these thanks, because across the fields and Alpine tops, and through thy guests in sweetly smelling groves, while justice I dispense and the concerns of Caesar serve, with thy protecting care thou guidest us.  Bring me and mine to Rome once more, and grant that we may till Italian fields with thee as guardian.  In guerdon therefor will I give a thousand mighty trees.”  It is a pretty picture.  This deputy of Caesar has finished his long and perilous journeys through the wilds of the North in the performance of his duties.  His face is now turned toward Italy, and his thoughts are fixed on Rome.  In this “little garden spot,” as he calls it, in the mountains he pours out his gratitude to the forest-god, who has carried him safely through dangers and brought him thus far on his homeward way, and he vows a thousand trees to his protector.  It is too bad that we do not know how the vow was to be paid—­not by cutting down the trees, we feel sure.  One line of Victor’s little poem is worth quoting in the original.  He thanks Silvanus for conducting him in safety “through the mountain heights, and through Tuique luci suave olentis hospites.”  Who are the hospites?  The wild beasts of the forests, we suppose.  Now hospites may, of course, mean either “guests” or “hosts,” and it is a pretty conceit of Victor’s to think of the wolves and bears as the guests of the forest-god, as we have ventured to render the phrase in the translation given above.  Or, are they Victor’s hosts, whose characters have been so changed by Silvanus that Victor has had friendly help rather than fierce attacks from them?

A very modern practice is revealed by a stone found near the famous temple of AEsculapius, the god of healing, at Epidaurus in Argolis, upon which two ears are shown in relief, and below them the Latin couplet:[64] “Long ago Cutius Gallus had vowed these ears to thee, scion of Phoebus, and now he has put them here, for thou hast healed his ears.”  It is an ancient ex-voto, and calls to mind on the one hand the cult of AEsculapius, which Walter Pater has