Now all this fine series of accounts, though seeming to bear such an overwhelming weight of testimony in favor of the truth and reality of Simon Magus’s visit to Rome, is proved to be originally based on an absolute falsehood; and the nature of this falsehood is thus exposed. In the year 1574, during the pontificate of Pope Gregory XIII., there was an excavation made for some indifferent purpose in Rome, on the very island in the Tiber, so particularly described by Justin, as lying in the center of the river between two bridges, each of which rested an abutment on it, and ran from it to the opposite shores. In the progress of this excavation, the workmen, as is very common in that vast city of buried ruins, turned up, among other remains of antiquity, the remnant of a statue with its pedestal, which had evidently once stood erect upon the spot. Upon the pedestal was an inscription most distinctly legible, in these words: SEMONI SANGO DEO FIDIO SACRUM――SEX POMPEIUS S. P. F. COL. MUSSIANUS――QUINQUENNALIS DECUR. BIDENTALIS――DONUM DEDIT. (This was in four lines, each line ending where the blank spaces are marked in the copy.) In order to understand this sentence, it must be known, that the Romans, among the innumerable objects of worship in their complicated religion, had a peculiar set of deities which they called SEMONES. A SEMO was a kind of inferior god, of an earthly character and office, so low as to unfit him for a place among the great gods of heaven, Jupiter, Juno, Apollo, &c., and was accordingly confined in his residence entirely to the earth; where the Semones received high honors and devout worship, and were commemorated in many places, both in city and country, by statues, before which the passer might pay his worship, if devoutly disposed. These statues were often of a votive character, erected by wealthy or distinguished persons for fancied aid, received from some one of these Semones, in some particular season of distress, or for general prosperity. This was evidently the object of the statue in question. Priapus, Hipporea, Vertumnus, and such minor gods were included under the general title of Semones; and among them was also ranked a Sabine divinity, named SANGUS or SANCUS, who is, by some writers, considered as corresponding in character to the Hercules of the Greeks. Sangus or Sancus is often alluded to in the Roman classics. Propertius (book 4) has a verse referring to him as a Sabine deity. “Sic Sancum Tatiae composuere Cures.” Ovid also, “Quaerebam Nonas Sanco fidio ne referrem.” As to this providentially recovered remnant of antiquity, therefore, there can be no doubt that it was a votive monument, erected by Sextus Pompey to Sangus the Semo, for some reason not very clearly expressed.