112. Symbolical Lamp.

374

..

377

81. The Story of Jonah..... 300 82. Jonah, Moses, and Oranti 301 113. Symbolical Lamp. 378 114. Vases from the Catacombs....

83. Jonah and the Great Fish. 302 84. Noah and Jonah....... 302

381

THE

CATACOMBS OF ROME,

BOOK FIRST.

STRUCTURE AND HISTORY OF THE CATACOMBS.

CHAPTER I.

STRUCTURE OF THE CATACOMBS.

"AMONG the cultivated grounds not far from the city of Rome," says the Christian poet Prudentius, “lies a deep crypt, with dark recesses. A descending path, with winding steps, leads through the dim turnings, and the daylight, entering by the mouth of the cavern, somewhat illumines the first part of the way. But the darkness grows deeper as we advance, till we meet with openings, cut in the roof of the passages, admitting light from above. On all sides spreads the densely-woven labyrinth of paths, branching into caverned chapels and sepulchral halls; and throughout the subterranean maze, through frequent openings, penetrates the light."*

* Haud procul extremo culta ad pomoeria vallo,

Mersa latebrosis crypta patet foveis. . . .—Peristephanon, iv. The origin of the word Catacombs is exceedingly obscure. Father Marchi derives it from karà, down, and rúμßos, a tomb; or from karù and кouw, to sleep. Mommsen thinks it comes from karà and cumbo, part of decumbo, to lie down. According to Schneider (Lex.

This description of the Catacombs in the fourth century is equally applicable to their general appearance in the nineteenth. Their main features are unchanged, although time and decay have greatly impaired their structure and defaced their beauty. These Christian cemeteries are situated chiefly near the great roads leading from the city, and, for the most part, within a circle of three miles from the walls. From this circumstance they have been compared to the "encampment of a Christian host besieging Pagan Rome, and driving inward its mines and trenches with an assurance of

Græk.) it is derived from Karù and kúußn, a boat or canoe, from the resemblance of a sarcophagus to that object. The more probable derivation seems to the present writer to be from Kaтù and Kúμßoç, a hollow, as if descriptive of a subterranean excavation. The name was first given in the sixth century to a limited area beneath the Church of St. Sebastian: "Locus qui dicitur catacumbas."-S. Greg., Opp., tom. ii, ep. 30. It was afterward generically applied to all subterranean places of sepulture. The earliest writers who mention those of Rome call them crypta, or crypts, or cameteria -- whence our word cemetery, literally, sleeping places, from Kouάw, to slumber. Similar excavations have been found in Syria, Asia Minor, Cyprus, Crete, the Ægean Isles, Greece, Sicily, Naples, Malta, and France.

final victory." The openings of the Catacombs are scattered over the Campagna, whose mournful desolation surrounds the city; often among the mouldering mausolea that rise, like stranded wrecks, above the rolling sea of verdure of the tomb-abounding plain.* On every side are tombs-tombs above and tombs below-the graves of contending races, the sepulchres of vanished generations: "Piena di sepoltura è la Campagna." t

How marvelous that beneath the remains of a proud pagan civilization exist the early monuments of that power before which the myths of paganism faded away as the spectres of darkness before the rising sun, and by which the religion and institutions of Rome were entirely changed. Beneath the ruined palaces and temples, the crumbling tombs and dismantled villas, of the august mistress of the world, we find the most interesting relics of early Christianity on the face of the earth. In traversing these tangled labyrinths we are brought face to face with the primitive ages; we are present at the worship of the infant Church; we observe its rites; we study its institutions; we witness the deep emotions of the first believers as they commit their dead, often

* These great roads for miles are lined with the sepulchral monuments of Rome's mighty dead, majestic even in decay. But only the wealthy could be entombed in those stately mausolea, or be wrapped in those “marble cerements.” For the mass of the population columbaria were provided, in whose narrow niches, like the compartments of a dove-cote- whence the name — the terra cotta urns containing their ashes were placed, sometimes to the number of six thousand in a single columbarium. They also contain sometimes the urns of the great.

† Ariosto, Orlando Furioso.

† Aringhi, in the elegant Latin ode prefixed to his great work, exclaims, "Sub Roma Romam quærito❞— Beneath Rome I seek the

true Rome.