SUBTERRANEAN ROME. 



649 



title and estates of his brother, and his own 

 failing health, made a change necessary. He 

 continued to prosecute his favorite studies, 

 however, till his death ; but, with singular 

 modesty, he seldom published any thing, though 

 he wrote much. His few papers in the Trans- 

 actions of the Eoyal Society, the Royal Geo- 

 graphical Society, and the Royal Asiatic Soci- 

 ety, of which last he was president, gave evi- 

 dence of vast learning, and careful, almost 

 painful, research. His death occurred from 

 apoplexy. In the summer of 1869 his widow, 

 the accomplished daughter of Admiral Beau- 

 fort, edited and published two 8vo volumes of 

 Lord Strangford's "Selected Writings on So- 

 cial, Political, and Geographical Subjects," 

 which contain many very valuable papers. 



SUBTERRANEAN ROME. Although most 

 educated people have a tolerably well-defined 

 impression of the nature and appearance of 

 the subterranean primitive Christian ceme- 

 teries of Rome, there are yet many facts con- 

 cerning them of which they must necessarily 

 be in ignorance, because as time goes on fresh 

 discoveries are made which furnish new in- 

 formation. Most people, for instance, will be 

 surprised to hear that the extent of galleries 

 now found, would, if drawn out in a straight 

 line, stretch from the northernmost part of 

 Italy to its southernmost shores. In many 

 particulars, too, the newest information re- 

 quires us to throw away opinions that were 

 supposed to be founded on facts. Thus it is 

 now ascertained, and demonstrated too, that 

 the subterranean galleries and chambers are 

 not adaptations of old sand-pits, or arenaria, 

 but were originally made by the early Chris- 

 tians for the purpose to which they put them. 

 It used to be looked upon as certain that the 

 pozzolana so largely used in building opera- 

 tions in Rome was found here, and that the 

 workings, when abandoned because exhausted, 

 were thus utilized. Ordinary visitors to the 

 dim, narrow labyrinthine passages, and the 

 crypts opening out of them, looked into their 

 guide-book, and read: "The origin of these 

 subterranean cemeteries was evidently for the 

 purpose of extracting that peculiar species of 

 volcanic ashes called pozzolana, so extensively 

 used by the ancient and modern inhabitants in 

 their constructions. Nearly all the catacombs 

 can be traced to no other cause. Originally 

 arenarice, the classical designation of these 

 sand-pits, they were arranged by the primitive 

 Christians for their new destinations of dwell- 

 ings, places of worship, and retirement;" and, 

 having read,, they believed. More earnest 

 students consulted bulkier volumes, but found 

 the same opinion expressed. Looked at from 

 an artistical point of view, too, the paintings 

 with which they are decorated were formerly 

 described as poor, meagre, and feeble. To en- 

 tertain these opinions to-day, however, is to 

 have fallen out of the ranks in the grand 

 march of progress, to be behind the time, and 

 of the old school. The catacombs were exca- 



vated out of the tufa granulare, which mate- 

 rial was useless for any other purpose, showing 

 that it must have been selected by the early 

 Christians as suitable for graves, and not 

 adapted by them because it was already hol- 

 lowed out to their hand. Again, the lan- 

 guage of the old criticism of the worth and 

 date of the art-work no longer applies. Speci- 

 mens that were inaccessible and scarcely to be 

 made out have in these latter days been 

 opened out ; many others have been found, and 

 a certain degradation from simplicity and ex- 

 cellence, to be noted in those examples that 

 are clearly the first steps of mediaeval effort, 

 points out that many works of much richness, 

 freedom, and variety, must be of earlier date 

 than those of this stiff and meaner type. And 

 when this poorer style of art is known to be- 

 long to the end of the third century, it follows 

 that the earlier specimens must have been 

 painted in days that were close upon those we 

 term Apostolic. 



Who is it that makes these discoveries, asks 

 the English Journal of Engineering, and comes 

 to these conclusions? As is well known, a 

 Commission of Sacred Archaeology has been 

 directing excavations for some years, and 

 among the members was the late Padre 

 Marchi, who published a work upon the mon- 

 uments of the primitive Christians, and gave 

 great impulse to the interest felt about them ; 

 and the Commendatore de Rossi, who has given 

 nearly thirty years of his life to a minute ex- 

 amination and classification of the same relics 

 of early Christian art. For the last few years 

 all eyes in Rome have been directed to the ap- 

 pearance of a rumored work by this last- 

 mentioned authority, which was expected not 

 only to recount the proceedings of the society, 

 or the results of them, but to give to the world 

 a narrative of surpassing interest, which his 

 discoveries would enable him to relate. Padre 

 Marchi's work was published in 1841. The 

 twenty-nine years that have elapsed since that 

 date have proved more fruitful than the two 

 centuries that preceded it ; and De Rossi's in- 

 dustry has been rewarded with the discovery of 

 six or seven historical monuments of great in- 

 terest, to the position of which, owing to his in- 

 timate acquaintance with all the old records, 

 and, specially, two ancient itineraries, he was 

 able to point beforehand with sufficient pre- 

 cision to lead to a successful search. 



To study these ancient catacombs, where not 

 " cooked," is to take up the history of Chris- 

 tianity from the time and place where the New 

 Testament breaks off the wondrous thread. 

 Immediately we approach them we are trans- 

 ported back to those old times when the 

 bodies of St. Peter and St. Paul were but 

 newly buried ; and when many, who had lis- 

 tened to their stirring words entranced, were 

 still living. De Rossi speaks positively on this 

 head : " Precisely in those cemeteries to which 

 history or tradition assigns apostolic origin, I 

 see, in the light of the most searching archee- 



