In the Vatican Museum are certain truculent-looking objects, said by the Roman custodians to be instruments of torture taken from the graves of the martyrs.[632] But the locality in which they were found is seldom recorded, which deprives them of much of their historic value; and many of them are probably fictitious. Dr. Northcote admits that they are often “of doubtful authenticity,” and that “many look more like domestic utensils, and seem to be of Etruscan workmanship.” “These,” he adds, “were probably never taken from the Catacombs at all.”[633] Others have too modern an appearance to admit such a supposition, and look rather, as Maitland suggests, as if “taken from the chambers of the Holy Inquisition.”[634] Among the most formidable of these alleged instruments of martyrdom, as well as the most probably genuine, are the terrible _plumbatæ_ and _ungulæ_. The former were scourges of small chains loaded with bronze or lead, with which, 375 it is recorded, the martyrs were often beaten to death.[635] Aringhi and others have affected to discover on the mouldering skeletons of the early Christians, after the lapse of fifteen hundred years, the marks made by these _plumbatæ_. In one exceptional instance given by Bosio,[636] an _orante_ is represented with this dreadful instrument of torture lying beside her. The _ungulæ_, as the name implies, are iron claws or hooks, described in the Acts of the Martyrs as employed for lacerating their flesh. The dreadful wounds they inflict are referred to by Prudentius in his account of the martyrdom of St. Vincent: “One covers with kisses the double furrows of the _ungulæ_; another is glad to wipe the purple stream from the body.”