The Temples of Pudicitia Patricia, of Mater Matuta, and of Fortune have been severally identified with these ruins by the writers of Roman topography. But it has been shown already that the first of these was probably a mere chapel, and that the other two must be placed nearer to the Carmental gate, and therefore the conjecture of Canina that the church of S. Maria in Cosmedin was the Temple of Ceres, Liber, and Libera appears much more likely to be true. For that temple is included in the eleventh region by the Curiosum and Notitia, and is placed by Vitruvius, Tacitus, and Pliny close to the Circus Maximus, while Dionysius expressly says that it stood just over the barriers of the Circus Maximus. The account of Vitruvius answers to the ruins which still remain. For he says that the temple was of the description called aræostyle, i.e. with wide intercolumnar intervals, and it will be found that the intervals between the columns now standing are nearly four times their diameter. Vitruvius also says that it was of the Tuscan order of architecture, and in this seems to contradict Pliny who, quoting Varro’s authority, speaks of it as the first temple at Rome which had Greek ornamental work. Their statements may be reconciled by observing that Pliny is speaking of the decorations of the temple by Damophilus and Gorgasis, and not of the style of architecture. The aræostyle arrangement of the columns was probably preserved even after the complete restoration by Tiberius, at which time, as Pliny relates, the old Greek frescoes were cut out and framed, and the terra cotta statues removed from the roof. The temple was first vowed by A. Postumius, the dictator in the Latin war of B.C. 497, on account of the great scarcity of provisions which then prevailed. It was dedicated three years afterwards by the Consul Spurius Cassius, a statesman who showed a disposition to imitate the great architectural works of the regal period, contrary to the generally frugal spirit of the early republican fathers. In the year B.C. 31, a destructive fire, which raged between the Circus and the Forum Olitorium, destroyed the Temple, and with it some of the most valuable treasures of Greek art which it contained. Among these, besides the frescoes of Damophilus and Gorgasis above mentioned, was the famous pictures of Dionysius by Aristides, for which Attalus bid sixteen talents, a price which excited the attention of Mummius, and induced him, although unable himself to appreciate the merits of such works of art, to suspect its value, and carry it to Rome in spite of the remonstrances of Attalus. The restoration was undertaken by Augustus, and finished by Tiberius in A.D. 17. This temple was to the Plebeian Ædiles what the Temple of Saturn was to the quæstors, and it was enacted that the decrees of the Senate should be delivered over to the Ædiles there, an enactment which seems never to have been carried out.[82]