rence. All these relics are
devoutly worshipped, and they are believed to cure diseases, and to
protect against evil those who touch them.

Examining the martyr-stones more closely, we find abundant evidence to
confirm the account which is usually given of their origin, viz. that
they were first used as Roman measures of weight. Several of them have
inscribed upon their upper surface the names of the quaestors or
prefects who issued them, as well as the number of pounds and ounces
which they represented; the pounds being distinguished by figures, and
the ounces expressed by dots or small circles. Numbers of such ancient
Roman weights of stone, similarly inscribed, may be seen in the
Kircherian Museum in the Collegio Romano. One specimen bears an
inscription which signifies that, by the authority of Augustus, the
weight was preserved in the temple of the goddess Ops, the wife of
Saturn, and one of the most ancient deities of Italy, where the public
money was deposited. Montfaucon, in the third volume of his learned
and elaborate work on Antiquity, has a plate illustrating a number of
characteristic specimens of these weights from the cabinet of St.
Germain's. This previous use would lead us to suspect that all the
stones in the Roman churches did not figure in scenes of martyrdom.
Some of them, indeed, were found in the _loculi_ or graves of the
Catacombs; but this circumstance of itself does not prove that the
body interred therein had been that of a martyr, and that the stone
had been employed in his execution. We know that the early Christians
were in the habit of depositing in the graves of their friends the
articles that were most valued by them during life. And hence, in the
Catacombs, a singular variety of objects have been found. Stone
weights, therefore, may have been put into the graves of Christians,
not as instruments of suffering but as objects typical of the
occupation of the departed in this life, in accordance with the habit
of their pagan forefathers, which the Roman Christians had adopted.
Some, however, of the stones, as I have said, may have been used
according to the popular legend for the drowning of martyrs; and these
weights were conveniently at hand in places of public resort, and lent
themselves readily, by the rings inserted in many of them, to the
persecutor's purpose.

The material of which they are composed is in nearly all cases the
same. It is a stone of extreme hardness and of various s