During one of the latter years of Emperor Tiberius’s reign, a poor vinedresser and his wife came and settled in a solitary hut among the Sabine mountains. They were strangers and lived in absolute solitude, without ever receiving a visit from a human being. But one morning when the laborer opened his door, he found, to his astonishment, that an old woman sat huddled up on the threshold. She was wrapped in a plain gray mantle and looked very poor. Nevertheless, she impressed him as compelling so much respect, as she rose and came to meet him, that it made him think of what the legends had to say about goddesses who, in the form of old women, had visited mortals.

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