From that time, it seems, the
ornament called _Caput Bovis_ was in a manner consecrated to Diana, and
her particular votaries used it on their tombs. Nor could one easily
account for the decorations of many Roman sarcophagi, till one
recollects that they were probably adapted to that divinity in whose
temple they were to be placed, rather than to the particular person
occupying the tomb, or than to our general ideas of death, time, and
eternity. It is probably for this reason that the immense sarcophagus
lately dug up from under the temple of Bacchus without the walls, cut
out of one solid piece of red porphyry, has such gay ornaments round it,
relative to the sacrifices of Bacchus, &c.; and I fancy these stone
coffins, if we may call them so, were often made ready and sold to any
person who wished to bury their friend, and who chose some story
representing the triumph of whatever deity they devoted themselves to.
Were the modern inhabitants of Rome who venerate St. Lorenzo, St.
Sebastiano, &c. to place, not uncharacteristically at all--a gridiron,
or an arrow on their tombstone, it might puzzle succeeding antiquarians,
and yet be nothing out of the way in the least.
[Footnote AF: A circumstance alluded to and parodied by Ben Johnson in
his Alchemist.
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