Parents gave to their children, almost always, religious names, recognising each son and daughter as a gift from heaven, or placing them under the special protection of the gods generally, or of some single divinity.

It was piety, an earnest but mistaken piety, which so often caused the parent to sacrifice his child--the very apple of his eye and delight of his heart--that so he might make satisfaction for the sins which he felt in his inmost soul that he had committed.

It was piety that filled the temples with such throngs, that brought for sacrifice so many victims, that made the worshipper in every difficulty put up a vow to heaven, and caused the payment of the vows in such extraordinary profusion.

At Carthage alone there have been found many hundreds of stones, each one of which records the payment of a vow;[11143] while other sites have furnished hundreds or even thousands of _ex votos_--statues, busts, statuettes, figures of animals, cylinders, seals, rings, bracelets, anklets, ear-rings, necklaces, ornaments for the hair, vases, amphorae, oenochoae, paterae, jugs, cups, goblets, bowls, dishes, models of boats and chariots--indicative of an almost unexampled devotion.

A single chamber in the treasury of Curium produced more than three hundred articles in silver and silver-gilt;[11144] the temple of Golgi yielded 228 votive statues;[11145] sites in Sardinia scarcely mentioned in antiquity have sufficed to fill whole museums with statuettes, rings, and scarabs.