Livy, the most illustrious of Roman historians (born B. C. 61), tells us that temples of heathen gods were rich in the number of offerings which the people used to make in return for the cures and benefits which they received from them.[259:3]
A writer in Bell's Pantheon says:
"Making presents to the gods was a custom even from the earliest times, either to deprecate their wrath, obtain some benefit, or acknowledge some favor. These donations consisted of garlands, garments, cups of gold, or whatever conduced to the decoration or splendor of their temples. They were sometimes laid on the floor, sometimes hung upon the walls, doors, pillars, roof, or any other conspicuous place. Sometimes the occasion of the dedication was inscribed, either upon the thing itself, or upon a tablet hung up with it."[259:4]
No one custom of antiquity is so frequently mentioned by ancient historians, as the practice which was so common among the heathens, of making votive offerings to their deities, and hanging them up in their temples, many of which are preserved to this day, viz., images of metal, stone, or clay, as well as legs, arms, and other parts of the body, in testimony of some divine cure effected in that particular member.[259:5]
Horace says:
"——Me tabula sacer
Votivâ paries indicat humida
Suspendisse potenti
Vestimenta maris Deo." (Lib. 1, Ode V.)
It was the custom of offering ex-votos of Priapic forms, at the church of Isernia, in the Christian kingdom of Naples, during the last century, which induced Mr. R. Payne Knight to compile his remarkable work on Phallic Worship.
Juvenal, who wrote A. D. 81-96, says of the goddess Isis, whose religion was at that time in the greatest vogue at Rome, that the painters get their livelihood out of her. This was because "the most common of all offerings (made by the heathen to their deities) were pictures presenting the history of the miraculous cure or deliverance, vouchsafed upon the vow of the donor."[260:1] One of their prayers ran thus:
"Now, Goddess, help, for thou canst help bestow,
As all these pictures round thy altars show."[260:2]