Two of the most interesting monuments which have been brought to light by the recent excavations in Rome were discovered in 1872, near the base of the column of Phocas, where they have been re-erected. They consist of marble slabs, sculptured with bas-reliefs and forming low screens. Each screen is constructed of slabs of unequal size, and some of these have been unfortunately lost. Their original position has been restored as nearly as possible, and they stand parallel to each other in a line crossing the area of the Forum. On the inner sides of both of these sculptured screens, the sacrificial animals, the boar, sheep and bull, always offered up at the Suovetaurilia, are represented. The other sides, which are turned outwards, represent scenes in the Forum, and are commemorative of some public benefaction of one of the emperors, probably Trajan or Hadrian. On one of them Italia is represented thanking the emperor for establishing some “alimenta publica,” public relief institutions, and for apportioning lands to encourage needy parents to rear their children. Such relief funds and lands intended to supply the defective population of Italy were first established by the Emperor Nerva, and afterwards by Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, and are frequently commemorated on medals, and mentioned by the historians Dion Cassius and Aurelius Victor, and the authors of the Augustan history.[49] The emperor is represented in a sitting posture, and stretching out his hand towards a child presented by a woman in the character of Italia, who apparently holds another child ready for presentation. Behind the emperor’s seat is the fig-tree called Navia or Ruminalis, which is said to have grown near the rostra, and also the figure of Marsyas which stood in the same place. At the other end of this sculptured scene stands a speaker with a roll in his hand, addressing a crowd of citizens from a rostrum, which may perhaps represent the publication of the edict establishing alimenta. The other bas-relief scene shows a rostrum at one end, from which a sitting figure is superintending the burning of large bundles of books, carried and placed in front of him in a heap. The outline of a figure applying a torch can be traced, and also of several attendants. At the opposite end to the sitting figure the fig-tree and Marsyas are placed as in the other relief. The style of art in which the reliefs are executed cannot, in Professor Henzen’s opinion, belong to an earlier period than Trajan’s reign. The treatment corresponds to that on those reliefs taken from Trajan’s arch, and set up on Constantine’s arch. After Trajan’s time the style of bas-relief was so much altered that we cannot suppose them to have been sculptured later than the first year of Hadrian.