ple, but must mean
either the upper one, or still another out on the new forum, for there
is where the stone is reported to have been found. The first inscription
records a work of some consequence done by a woman in remembrance of her
husband.[118] There are no remains to show that the forum below the town
had any temple of such consequence, so it seems best to refer both these
inscriptions to the upper temple, which, as we know, was rich in
marble.[119]

Now after having brought together all the usages of the word aedes in
its application to the temple of Praeneste, it seems that Delbrueck has
very small foundation for his argument which assumes as settled the
exact meaning and location of the aedes Fortunae.

From the temple itself we turn now to a brief discussion of a space on
the tufa wall which helps to face the cave on the west. This is a
smoothed surface which shows a narrow cornice ledge above it, and a
narrow base below. In it are a number of irregularly driven holes.
Delbrueck calls it a votive niche,[120] and says that the "viele
regellos verstreute Nagelloecher" are due to nails upon which votive
offerings were suspended.

This seems quite impossible. The holes are much too irregular to have
served such a purpose. The holes show positively that they were made by
nails which held up a slab of some kind, perhaps of marble, on which
were displayed the replies from the goddess[121] which were too long to
be given by means of the lettered blocks (sortes). Most likely, however,
it was a marble slab or bronze tablet which contained the lex templi,
and was something like the tabula Veliterna.[122]

On the floor of the two caves were two very beautiful mosaics, one of
which is now in the Barberini palace, the other, which is in a sadly
mutilated condition, still on the floor of the west cave. The date of
these mosaics has been a much discussed question. Marucchi puts it at
the end of the second century A.D., while Delbrueck makes it the early
part of the first century B.C., and thinks the mosaics were the gift of
Sulla. Delbrueck does not make his point at all, and Marucchi is carried
too far by a desire to establish a connection at Praeneste between
Fortuna and Isis.[123] Not to go into a discussion of the date of the
Greek lettering which gives the names of the animals portrayed in the
finer mosaic, nor the subject of the mosaic itself,[124] the inscription
given above[118] should help to settle the date of t