No one custom of antiquity is so frequently mentioned by ancient historians, as the practice which was so common among the _heathens_, of making votive offerings to their deities, and hanging them up in their temples, many of which are preserved to this day, viz., images of metal, stone, or clay, as well as legs, arms, and other parts of the body, _in testimony of some divine cure effected in that particular member_.[259:5] Horace says: "----Me tabula sacer Votivâ paries indicat humida Suspendisse potenti Vestimenta maris Deo." (Lib. 1, Ode V.) It was the custom of offering _ex-votos_ of _Priapic_ forms, at the church of Isernia, in the _Christian_ kingdom of Naples, during the last century, which induced Mr. R. Payne Knight to compile his remarkable work on Phallic Worship. Juvenal, who wrote A. D. 81-96, says of the goddess _Isis_, whose religion was at that time in the greatest vogue at Rome, that the painters get their livelihood out of her. This was because "the most common of all offerings (made by the heathen to their deities) were _pictures_ presenting the history of the miraculous cure or deliverance, vouchsafed upon the vow of the donor."[260:1] One of their prayers ran thus: "Now, Goddess, help, for thou canst help bestow, _As all these pictures round thy altars show_."[260:2] In _Chambers's Encyclopædia_ may be found the following: "Patients that were cured of their ailments (by _Æsculapius_, or through faith in him) hung up a tablet in his temple, recording the name, the disease, and the manner of cure. _Many of these votive tablets are still extant._"[260:3] Alexander S. Murray, of the department of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the British Museum, speaking of the miracles performed by _Æsculapius_, says: "A person who had recovered from a local illness would dictate a sculptured representation of the part that had been affected. _Of such sculptures there are a number of examples in the British Museum._"[260:4] Justin Martyr, in his _Apology_ for the Christian religion, addressed to the Emperor Hadrian, says: "As to _our_ Jesus curing the lame, and the paralytic, and such as were crippled from birth, this is little more than what you say of your _Æsculapius_."[260:5] At a time when the Romans were infested with the plague, having consulted their sacred books, they learned that in order to be delivered from it, they were to go in quest of _Æsculapius_ at Epidaurus; accordingly, an embassy was appointed of ten senators, at the head of whom was Quintus Ogulnius, and the worship of Æsculapius was established at Rome, A. U. C. 462, that is, B. C. 288. But the most remarkable coincidence is that the worship of this god continued with scarcely any diminished splendor, for several hundred years after the establishment of Christianity.[260:6]