ancient arenarium, and shows how unsuited these excavations were for the purposes of Christian sepulture. Long walls of solid masonry and numerous pillars of brick work have been built for supporting the roof and giving space for loculi. A large shaft for removing pozzolana has been transformed into a luminare by being bricked up to about half its original dimensions. Only one of the four piani in which the Catacomb is constructed being easily accessible, it has been but partially explored. The ancient records assert that Marcellinus and Marcellus, martyr-bishops of the church. in the time of Diocletian, are buried here; also Crescentianus and Silvester; and we have already seen the memorial inscription of three thousand other martyrs, whose remains are said to hallow these sacred crypts.

On this same road are the Catacomb of St. Felicitas, with three piani of galleries much dilapidated; that of Thraso and Saturninus, of considerable extent but difficult of access; and the crypt of Chrysanthus and Daria, in which these martyrs were blocked up alive by command of the Emperor Numerian. On the old Salarian Way is the Catacomb of Hermes, who is said to have suffered in the time of Hadrian. It is partially constructed, as we have seen, in an arenarium, and contains the largest subterranean church yet found, with remarkable mosaics of Daniel and of the resurrection of Lazarus in the vaulting of the roof.

There are comparatively few Catacombs of interest on the northwest bank of the Tiber, owing to the smaller population of that part of Rome in ancient times. We shall briefly enumerate the more important. On the Flaminian Way is the cemetery of St. Valentinus. On the Aurelian Way are those of Agatha, Pancratius, and Calepodius. The latter, the reputed burial place of Callixtus

and of many martyrs, is beneath the church dedicated to Pancratius-the English Pancras-and on the supposed scene of his sufferings. On the Via Portuensis, near the city, is the Catacomb of Pontianus, a patrician Roman of the third century. It is remarkable for the very perfect subterranean baptistery to be hereafter described. On the Ostian Way, near the basilica of S. Paolo fuori le Mura, is the ancient cemetery of Commodilla, or Lucina, in which tradition asserts that the body of the apostle Paul was laid after his martyrdom. It is in a very ruinous condition, most of the galleries being choked up and impassable; but here Boldetti found the two oldest extant inscriptions. On this road also is the Catacomb of St. Zeno, in which were said to be buried twelve thousand Christians employed in building the Baths of Diocletian.

On the Vatican Hill, now crowned with the grandest temple in Christendom, is said to have existed the oldest Christian cemetery of Rome. Tradition asserts that the remains of St. Peter were interred on this spot, on the site of an ancient temple of Apollo, and near the alleged scene of the apostle's martyrdom in the circus of Nero, and that hither they were restored after their removal to the crypt of Sebastian.* Here also ancient ecclesiastical documents record the burial of ten of the Roman bishops of the first and second centuries; † after which, we have seen, the Catacomb of Callixtus became their

*This is probably "the trophy on the Vatican," mentioned by the Roman presbyter Caius, quoted by Eusebius, Hist. Eccles., ii, 25. When Heliogabalus made his circus on the Vatican the body was said to have been again transferred to St. Sebastian; but it is impossible to unravel the tangled accounts of the ancient documents.

On this spot De Rossi says was discovered in the seventeenth century the sepulchre of the very first bishop after Peter, (?) bearing simply the name LINVS.

chief place of burial. The series of papal interments in this place again begins with that of Leo the Great, A. D. 461. In the dim crypts beneath the high altar of St. Peter's are shown the tombs of most of his successors, many of them far removed in life and character from the lowly Galilean fisherman.*

We cannot better conclude this necessarily imperfect survey of these ancient Christian cemeteries than by quoting the following passage, though characterized by a somewhat fervid rhetoric, from "Les Trois Romes of the Abbé Gaume: "Here is the glorious monument," he exclaims, "of the faith and charity of our forefathers! This work of giants was completed by a community of poor men, destitute of resources, without talent as without fortune, incessantly persecuted and frequently decimated. What, then, was the secret of their power? This is the problem suggested by the sight of the Catacombs in general, and of the Catacombs on the Appian Way in particular. The solution is in one wordFAITH. This power-unknown to the ancient world,

* Of especial interest to English-speaking visitors to this shrine of departed greatness will be three urns containing the ashes of “James III.," "Charles III.," and "Henry IX.," as they are designated, the last princes of the unfortunate house of Stewart. The third of these, Henry Benedict Maria Clement, second son of James the Pretender, took orders at Rome, was advanced to the purple, and during the lifetime of his brother, Charles Edward, was known as Cardinal York. On the death of his brother he assumed the regal style of Henry IX:, King of England. The usurpation of Bonaparte caused his flight to Venice, where, aged and infirm, the descendant of a line of kings sank into absolute poverty. His successful rival for the British throne, George III., learning his deplorable situation, generously settled on him an annuity of £4,000, which he enjoyed till his death in 1807, at the age of eighty-two. With the worn old man, dying upon a foreign shore, passed away the last survivor of the ill-starred dynasty which has contributed through successive generations so many tragic and romantic episodes to the drama of history.

and too little recognized in the modern world—this faith, was the lever by which the early Christians could remove mountains, and turn and change the universe. With one hand they constructed in the bowels of the earth a city more astonishing than Babylon or the Rome of the Cæsars; and with the other, seizing on the pagan world in the abyss of degradation into which it was plunged, they raised it to the virtue of angels, and suspended it to the cross."

I

BOOK SECOND.

THE ART AND SYMBOLISM OF THE CATACOMBS.

CHAPTER I.

EARLY CHRISTIAN ART.

THE Conditions under which Christian art was cultivated in the early centuries were eminently unfavourable to its highest development. It was not, like pagan art, the aesthetic exponent of a dominant religion, enjoying the patronage of the great and the wealthy, adorning the numerous temples of the gods and the palaces and banquet chambers of the emperors and senators, commemorating the virtues of patriots and heroes, and bodying forth the conceptions of poets and seers. There was no place in the Christian system for such representations as the glorious sun-god, Apollo, or the lovely Aphrodite, or the sublime majesty of Jove, which are still the unapproached chefs d'œuvre of the sculptor's skill. The beautiful myths of Homer and Hesiod were regarded with abhorrence, and the Christians were expressly, forbidden to make any representation of the supreme object of their worship, a prohibition which in the early and purer days of Christianity they never transgressed.

Nevertheless, the testimony of the Catacombs gives evidence that art was not, as has been frequently asserted, entirely abjured by the primitive Christians on account of its idolatrous employment by the pagans.