"Ipse loci custos, cujus sacrata vorago, Famosusque lacus nomen memorabile servat." _Silv._ i. 66. Here the Via Sacra turns, almost continuing the Vicus Tuscus. On its right, on a line with the Temple of the Dioscuri, has been discovered the base of the small Temple of Julius Cæsar (Ædes Divi Julii),[59] which was surrounded with a colonnade of closely-placed columns and surmounted by a statue of the deified triumvir. This was the first temple in Rome which was dedicated to a mortal. "Fratribus assimilis, quos proxima templa tenentes Divus ab excelsa Julius æde videt." _Ovid, Pont. El._ ii. 2. Dion Cassius narrates that this temple was erected on the spot where the body of Julius was burnt. It was adorned by Augustus with the beaks of the vessels taken in the battle of Actium, and hence obtained the name of Rostra Julia. He also placed here the statue of Venus Anadyomene of Apelles, because Cæsar had claimed descent from that goddess. Here, in A.D. 14, the body of Augustus, being brought from Nola, where he died, was placed upon a bier, while Tiberius pronounced a funeral oration over it, before it was carried to the Campus Martius. The road turns again in front of the remains of the _Temple of Antoninus and Faustina_, erected by the flattery of the senate to the memory of the licentious Empress Faustina, the faithless wife of Antoninus Pius, whom they elevated to the rank of a goddess. Her husband, dying before its completion, was associated in her honours, and the inscription, which still remains on the portico, is "DIVO ANTONINO ET DIVÆ FAUSTINÆ. EX. S. C." The front of the temple is adorned with eight columns of cipolino, forty-three feet high, supporting a frieze ornamented with griffins and candelabra. The effect of these remains would be magnificent if the modern road were removed, and the temple were laid bare in its full height, with the twenty-one steps which formerly led to it. It is also greatly injured by the hideous Church of S. Lorenzo in Miranda, which encloses the cella of the temple, and whose name, says Ampère, naively expresses the admiration in which its builders held these remains.[60] On the left we now reach the Church of SS. Cosmo and Damian, considered by Nibby and others to occupy the site of a temple of Remus. Ampère has since proved that this temple never existed, and that the remains are those of a _Temple of the Penates_, rebuilt by Augustus. Here Valerius Publicola had a house, to which he removed from the Velia, in deference to the wishes of the Roman people.