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 the mosaic. Under
Claudius, between the years 51 and 54 A.D., a portico was decorated with
marble and a coating of marble facing. That this was a very splendid
ornamentation is shown by the fact that it is mentioned so particularly
in the inscription. And if in 54 A.D. marble and marble facing were