ABSTRACT
Visitors to one of the many shrines or sanctuaries of Republican central Italy would have found its sacred spaces littered with objects dedicated to the divine. This chapter investigates for the first time the relationship between votive models of babies and other aspects of the human sensorium. An enquiry such as this involves a more critical appraisal of the materiality of these objects than has been achieved to date. The chapter argues that infant ex-votos were objects not only to be observed but through which ancient participants in religious ritual could think, feel and, most importantly, know. In ancient Italy the relationship between mortals and deities was reciprocal and based in large part around the concept of do ut des. Votives in the form of terracotta mould-made models of swaddled infants were part of this trend for purpose-made offerings, reaching their peak in the third and second centuries BCE.
