[I] Recently, Signor Fiorelli has found another bronze statuette of a bent and crooked Silenus worth both the others.
[J] A badly interpreted inscription on the gate of Nola had led, for a moment, to the belief that the importation of this singular worship dated back to the early days of the little city; but we now know that it was introduced by Sylla into the Roman world. Isis was Nature, the patroness of the Pompeians, who venerated her equally in their physical Venus. This form of religion, mysterious, symbolical, full of secrets hidden from the people, as it was; these goddesses with heads of dogs, wolves, oxen, hawks; the god Onion, the god Garlic, the god Leek; all that Apuleius tells about it, besides the data furnished by the Pompeian excavations, the recovered bottle-brushes, the basins, the knives, the tripods, the cymbals, the citheræ, etc.,—were worth the trouble of examination and study.
Upon the door of the temple, a strange inscription announced that Numerius Popidius, the son of Numerius, had, at his own expense, rebuilt the temple of Isis, thrown down by an earthquake, and that, in reward for his liberality, the decurions had admitted him gratuitously to their college at the age of six years. The antiquaries, or some of them, at least, finding this age improbable, have read it sixty instead of six, forgetting that there then existed two kinds of decurions, the ornamentarii and prætextati—the honorary and the active officials. The former might be associated with the Pompeian Senate in recompense for services rendered by their fathers. An inscription found at Misenum confirms this fact. (See the Memorie del l'Academia Ercolanese, anno 1833)—The minutes of the Herculaneum Academy, for the year 1833.
[K] M. Campfleury has reproduced this design in his very curious book on Antique Caricature.