waters, according
to the popular idea, were afterwards found, and carefully preserved as
holy relics in the churches in which they are now to be seen. Beyond
doubt they are genuine remains of antiquity, and some of them at least
may have been used for the purpose alleged; although we cannot be
sure, in any case, that the story connected with particular stones is
authentic. St. Sabine desired that the stone which was to be tied to
him when thrown in the river should be buried with his body, and this
might have been done in the case of other martyrs. The stones in the
church of SS. Cosma e Damiano are supposed to have been the very ones
that were fastened to the necks of these devoted Christians when they
were thrown into the Tiber in the reign of Maximian. But as the place
and manner of their martyrdom are involved in hopeless obscurity, the
various accounts given of both being contradictory, the ecclesiastical
legend has no weight. Cosma and Damian were Arabian doctors who were
converted to Christianity, and belonged to the class called
"silverless martyrs"--that is, physicians who took no fee from those
whom they cured, but only stipulated that they should believe in
Christ the Great Physician. They occupied in Christian hagiology the
same place as the ancient myth of Esculapius occupied in pagan
mythology.

Around the stone in the church of Santa Sabina a curious legend has
gathered. The sacristan, a Dominican friar of the neighbouring
convent, is in the habit of telling the visitors that the devil one
day, while St. Dominic was kneeling on the pavement as usual, hurled
the huge stone in question, with his utmost force, against the head of
the saint; but, strange to say, it either missed him altogether or
failed to do him any injury, the saint going calmly on with his
devotions as if nothing had happened. On the stone in the church of
Santa Maria in Trastevere there is an inscription in Latin, informing
us that it was fastened round the neck of St. Calixtus, the Bishop of
Rome, who, after having been scourged during an outbreak of pagan
hostility, was thrown out of a window in his house in the Trastevere,
and flung into a well. The stone in the Basilica of S. Lorenzo is
connected with the sufferings and death either of St. Justinian or of
St. Stephen, the proto-martyr, who was stoned to death in Palestine,
and whose remains, miraculously recovered, are supposed to rest in the
crypt below, along with those of St. Lau