[78] "There is no doubt that many of the amusements, still more many of the religious practices now popular in this capital, may be traced to sources in Pagan antiquity. The game of morra, played with the fingers (the micare digitis of the ancients); the rural feasting before the chapel of the Madonna del divino Amore on Whit Monday; the revelry and dancing sub diu for the whole night on the Vigil of St. John, (a scene on the Lateran piazza, riotous, grotesque, but not licentious); the divining by dreams to obtain numbers for the lottery; hanging ex voto pictures in churches to commemorate escapes from danger or recovery from illness; the offering of jewels, watches, weapons, &c., to the Madonna; the adorning and dressing of sacred images, sometimes for particular days; throwing flowers on the Madonna's figure when borne in processions (as used to be honoured the image, or stone, of Cybele); burning lights before images on the highways; paying special honour to sacred pictures, under the notion of their having moved their eyes; or to others, under the idea of their supernatural origin—made without hands; wearing effigies or symbols as amulets (thus Sylla wore, and used to invoke, a little golden Apollo hung round his neck); suspending flowers to shrines and tombs; besides other uses, in themselves blameless and beautiful, nor, even if objectionable, to be regarded as the genuine reflex of what is dogmatically taught by the Church. This enduring shadow thrown by Pagan over Christian Rome is, however, a remarkable feature in the story of that power whose eminence in ruling and influencing was so wonderfully sustained, nor destined to become extinct after empire had departed from the Seven Hills."—Hemans' Monuments of Rome.
[79] Made to flow with wine under Heliogabalus.
[80] Pliny, xxxiv. 2.
[81] Livy, xxi. 62.
[82] Ampère, Hist. Rom. i.
[83] Dyer, 104.
[84] Livy, v. 40.
[85] Dion Cassius, lxiii. 21.
[86] Ampère, iii. 48.
[87] Vitruvius, iii. 3.