Above the niche, two "forms" or lasts are represented, one of them inside a _caliga_. They are evidently the signs of the trade carried on by the owner of the tomb, which is announced in his epitaph: "Caius Julius Helius, shoemaker at the Porta Pontinalis, built this tomb during his lifetime for himself, his daughter Julia Flaccilla, his freedman Caius Julius Onesimus and his other servants."
[Illustration: Tomb of Helius, the shoemaker.]
Julius Helius was therefore a shoe-merchant with a retail shop near the modern Piazza di Magnanapoli on the Quirinal. Although the qualification of _sutor_ is rather indefinite and can be applied indifferently to the _solearii_, _sandaliarii_, _crepidarii_, _baxearii_ (makers of slippers, sandals, Greek shoes), etc., as well as to the _sutores veteramentarii_ or menders of old boots, yet Julius Helius, as shown by the specimen represented on his tomb, was a _caligarius_, or maker of _caligæ_, which were used chiefly by military men. Boot and shoe makers and purveyors of leather and lacings (_comparatores mercis sutoriæ_) seem to have been rather proud men in their day, and liked to be represented on their tombs with the tools of their trade. A bas-relief in the Museo di Brera represents Caius Atilius Justus, one of the fraternity, seated at his bench, in the act of adjusting a _caliga_ to the wooden last. A sarcophagus inscribed with the name of Atilius Artemas, a local shoemaker, was discovered at Ostia in 1877, with a representation of a number of tools. The reader is probably familiar with the fresco from Herculaneum representing two Genii seated at a bench; one of them is forcing a last into a shoe, while his companion is busy mending another. Class XVI. of the Museo Cristiano at the Lateran contains several tombstones of Christian _sutores_ with various emblems of their calling.
The shoemakers formed a powerful corporation from the time of the kings; their club called the _Atrium sutorium_ was the scene of a religious ceremony called _Tubilustrium_, which took place every year on March 23. They seem to have been also an irritable and violent set. Ulpianus[131] speaks of an action for damages brought before the magistrate by a boy whose parents had placed him in a boot-shop to learn the trade, and who, having misunderstood the directions of his master, was struck by him so heavily on the head with a wooden form that he lost the sight of one eye.