by some prisoner
taken by Istrian pirates; also stones with these whorls half
obliterated, and hollows sunk here and there, which, it is thought, were
a kind of star map made by shepherds when Istria was wooded, to direct
them in driving their flocks. Here are two inscriptions mentioning an
entirely unknown god and goddess, and the inscription of Gordian in
which the name of Nesactium occurs, the discovery of which fixed the
site of the most important of the Istrian cities, the scene of the
massacre of the women and children by the hands of their husbands and
fathers, to prevent them from being taken by the Romans.

Many things found there are also in the museum--skulls, an ivory
spindle, fragments of pottery and glass, and two curious statues, very
archaic in style, from a tomb-building. One is a nude rider upon a
horse, the other an unclothed woman suckling a child, thought to be the
indigenous god Melescos and one of the goddess mothers. There are also a
prehistoric oven, bronze vases found in the well at Tivoli, near Pola,
fragments from S. Maria in Canneto and other destroyed churches; and
here also the chapter of the cathedral has deposited portions of the
cathedral ciborium and other architectural fragments.

Pola was founded as a Roman colony in 129 B.C., at the same time as
Trieste. It fought for Pompey, and was punished by destruction, but was
restored in 33 B.C. as "Pietas Julia"; and in 27 B.C. Augustus raised
the Istrian cities to the rank of _municipia_ by adding the province to
Italy. The Polese were inscribed in the tribe Valeria. Pola was also
called Polentia in honour of the mother of Vespasian, and Herculanea in
honour of Commodus. It had been the judicial capital under the Republic,
and was prosperous under the Empire, being the place where two lines of
traffic crossed, that from Rome through Ancona and so to the Danube, and
that from Britain to Constantinople, and also had agricultural riches
and manufactures of its own. It was the base of operations during the
reconquest of Italy from the Goths, both for Belisarius and for Narses,
and was made the principal city and harbour on the east coast of the
Adriatic. It was also the granary of the Exarchate, owing to the Lombard
destruction in Italy, and had a population of some 25,000. During the
plague of 1348, which lasted for several months, a fifth of the
population died, fifty patrician families became entirely extinct, and
privileges were offered t