650 



SUBTERRANEAN ROME. 



ological criticism, the cradle of Christian art 

 and Christian inscriptions; there I find me- 

 morials of persons who appear to belong to 

 the times of the Flavii and of Trajan ; and, 

 finally, I discover precise dates of those times." 

 There is one inscription known bearing date 

 the third year of Vespasian, i. e., A. D. 72, but 

 no record has been kept of the site on which 

 it was found. In the catacomb of St. Lucina, 

 however, scratched on the mortar of one of 

 the loculi, was found by Boldetti a record of 

 the time of the consulate of Sura et Senecio, 

 which marks the year A. D. 107 ; and another 

 on marble in the same place recording Piso et 

 Bolano, consuls, A. D. 110; as well as a third 

 inscription which De Rossi considers marks 

 the burial of a Christian within forty years of 

 the time that the body of St. Paul was deposit- 

 ed in the same place. This interesting record 

 runs thus : 



" PORMITIONI 



T . FLA . EVTY 



CHIO . QVI . VI 



XIT . ANN . XVIJ1I 



MES . XI . D . Ill 



HVNC . LOCVM 



DON ABIT . M 



ORBIVS HELI 



VS . AMICVS 



KARISSIMVS 



K ARE BALE" 



" As a resting-place for Titus Flavius Eutychius, -who 

 lived nineteen years, eleven months, three days, his 

 dearest friend, Marcus Orbius, gave this spot. Fare- 

 well, beloved." 



The cemetery of St. Priscilla, on the Via 

 Salaria Nova, always said to have been dug on 

 the property of the family of Pudens, convert- 

 ed by the Apostles, also presents evidences 

 that confirm the statement of this antiquity. 

 The catacomb of St. Agnes is supposed to be 

 no other than the cemetery of Ostrianus, de- 

 scribed by Pauvinus, the Augustinian friar, as 

 the oldest of all, " because it was in use when 

 St. Peter preached the faith of the Romans ;" 

 and, again, the sepulchre at Tor Marancia is 

 now identified as that cemetery which was 

 formerly called by the name of St. Domitilla, 

 or by that of her chamberlains, Sts. Nereus 

 and Achilles, for two inscriptions found there 

 clearly state that the ground formerly belonged 

 to this member of the imperial family. After 

 glancing in succession at the principal cata- 

 combs supposed to be of apostolic antiquity, 

 the authors of a summary of De Rossi's work 

 (Northcote & Brownlow's "Roma Sotterra- 

 nea") thus draw up the facts of the position: 



The local traditions of ancient Christian Rome 

 have come down to us, partly embodied in the acts 

 of the martyrs : partly in the stories that were told 

 to foreigners visiting the city in the seventh and 

 eighth centuries, and by them committed to writing 

 in itineraries ; partly in the " Books of Indulgences," 

 and in the " Book of the Wonders of Rome 2 " com- 

 piled both for the use of strangers and of citizens ; 

 partly also, but more sparingly, in the scattered 

 notices of a few mediaeval writers. From a diligent 

 comparison of all these various authorities, it is 

 gathered that some five or six of the subterranean 

 cemeteries of Rome were believed to have had their 



origin in apostolic times ; and in every one of these 

 instances, so far as we have an opportunity of ex- , 

 aminino- them, something peculiar has been either 

 noted by our predecessors, or seen by ourselves, 

 which gives countenance to the tradition. When 

 these peculiarities are brought together, they are 

 found to be in perfect harmony, not only with one 

 another, but also with what we should have been led 

 to expect from a careful consideration of the period 

 to which they are supposed to belong. The pecu- 

 liarities are such as these : Paintings in the most 

 classical style, and scarcely inferior in execution to 

 the best specimens of contemporary pagan art: a 

 system of ornamentation, in fine stucco, such as has 

 not yet been found in any Christian subterranean 

 work later than the second century ; crypts of con- 

 siderable dimensions, not hewn out of the bare rock, 

 but carefully, and even elegantly, built with pilasters 

 and cornices of bricks or terra-cotta; no narrow gal- 

 leries, with shelf-like graves thickly pierced in their 

 walls, but spacious ambulacra with painted walls, and 

 recesses provided only for the reception of sarco- 

 phagi ; wnole families of inscriptions, with classical 

 names, and without any distinctly Christian forms 

 of speech ; and, lastly, actual dates of the first or 

 second century. It is impossible that such a mar- 

 vellous uniformity of phenomena, collected with 

 most patient accuracy from different and distant 

 cemeteries on all sides of the citv, and from authors 

 writing at so many different periods, should be the 

 result of accident or of preconceived opinion. 



Two of the itineraries, mentioned as having 

 conveyed useful information to the archaeolo- 

 gist, were discovered only about a hundred 

 years ago in the library of Salzburg, and were 

 therefore unknown to Bosio and other writers 

 on the Christian remains after their discovery 

 in A. D. 1578. One of these important guides 

 was written between the years 625-638, and 

 the other within a few years of the same date. 

 The first starts from the centre of Rome, pass- 

 ing out through the Flaminian Gate, and 

 passes to the principal roads from one to the 

 other by by-paths, some of which can be still 

 pointed out; the other follows a similar plan, 

 but is second to it in interest, because the 

 writer does not seem to have actually made the 

 survey himself, but rather to have compressed 

 the descriptions he gives from some larger 

 work ; but both of them are useful in contain- 

 ing mention of topographical details con- 

 cerning the cemeteries before the great 

 work of emptying them of their choicest con- 

 tents was commenced. A third document that 

 has been useful in pointing out the locality of 

 particular tombs is a list of relics collected 

 by Abbot John from the various shrines in the 

 catacombs, in the days of St. Gregory the 

 Great, for Theolinda, Queen of the Lombards, 

 which list is written on papyrus, and preserved 

 with some of the relics in the Cathedral of 

 Mouza. But the chief clew to the success of 

 De Rossi's labors was the tact which enabled 

 him, instead of rejecting these authorities as 

 worthless, to accept their help. He saw that, 

 where St. Damasus and other early popes had 

 been at the trouble to build spacious stair- 

 cases down to particular spots in the catacombs, 

 would be found the tombs of martyrs that 

 were once visited by pilgrims, for whose ac- 

 commodation these means of access had been 



