And now let us look at the survival of convention under a form that is even more distressing. Is it true that in many times and lands human beings have been sacrificed not to bridges, but to the spirits of floods and storms which have been feared as destroyers of bridges? One good reference to this question will be found in Francis M. Crawford’s “Ave Roma Immortalis.” The most venerated bridge in ancient Rome was the Pons Sublicius, whose history dated from the time of Ancus Marcius, who reigned twenty-four years--B.C. 640-616. In much later times, long after the good fight that made Horatius Cocles famous for ever, strange ceremonies and superstitions lingered around the Pons Sublicius. On the Ides of May, which were celebrated on the fifteenth of the month, Pontiffs and Vestals came in solemn state to the bridge, accompanied by men who carried thirty effigies representing human bodies. The effigies were made of bulrushes, and one by one they were thrown into the Tiber, while the Vestals sang hymns or the priests chanted prayers. What did this rite signify? A tradition popular in Rome taught children to believe that the effigies took the place of human beings, once sacrificed to the river in May. This tradition is attacked by Ovid, “but the industrious Baracconi quotes Sextus Pompeius Festus to prove that in very early times human victims were thrown into the Tiber for one reason or another, and that human beings were otherwise sacrificed until the year of the City 657, when, Cnæus Cornelius Lentulus and Publius Licinius Crassus being consuls, the Senate made a law that no man should be sacrificed thereafter.” It is possible, if not, indeed, probable, that the effigies were made at first in order to placate the common people who were indignant over the loss of a festival. We can imagine what would be said to-day if Cup-finals were stopped by Act of Parliament; and the Romans, in their fool-fury over “sport” at second-hand, were always glad to appease their curiosity with shows of bloodshed. Further, in the folk-lore of later times bridges and rivers are connected with the primitive rite of killing women and men as a sacrifice to evil spirits. This dread tradition is related now in the Asiatic provinces of Turkey, as I learn from Sir Mark Sykes, whose “Dar-Ul-Islam” is a book for pontists to read. It was at Zakho that Sir Mark heard the following legend:-- “Many years ago workmen under their master were set to build the bridge; three times the bridge fell, and the workmen said, ‘The bridge needs a life.’ And the master saw a beautiful girl, accompanied by a bitch and her puppies, and he said, ‘We will give the first [life] that comes by.’ But the dog and her little ones hung back, so the girl was built alive into the bridge, and only her hand with a gold bracelet upon it was left outside.