Upon entering into the long gallery above stairs, you are shewn the late
King and Queen's pictures at full length, surrounded with the heads of
some hundred citizens; and in one corner of the room an ancient altar,
the _Taurabolium_, dug up in 1704, near the same place where
_Claudius's_ harangue was found; it is of common stone, well executed,
about four feet high, and one foot and a half square; on the front of
it is the bull's head, in demi relief, adorned with a garland of corn;
on the right side is the _victimary_ knife[A] of a very singular form;
and on the left the head of a ram, adorned as the bull's; near the point
of the knife are the following words, _cujus factum est_; the top of the
altar is hollowed out into the form of a shallow bason, in which, I
suppose, incense was burnt and part of the victims.
[A] The knife, which is cut in demi relief, on the _Taurobolium_,
is crooked upon the back, exactly in the same manner, and form, as
may be seen on some of the medals of the Kings of Macedonia.
The Latin inscription under the bull's head, is very well cut, and very
legible, by which it appears, that by the express order of CYBELE, the
reputed mother of the Gods, for the honour and health of the Emperor
_Antoninus Pius_, father of his country, and for the preservation of his
children, children, _Lucius AEmilius Carpus_[B] received the horns of
the bull, by the ministration of _Quintus Samius Secundus_, transported
them to the Vatican, and consecrated, at his own expence, this altar and
the head of the bull[C]; but I will send the inscription, and a
model[D] of the altar, as soon as I can have it made, as I find here a
very ingenious sculptor and modeller; who, to my great serprize, says
no one has hitherto been taken from it.
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