Still more terrible in its wildness is an incident narrated by MacFarlane.[29] In the year 1798, after the return to Rome of the Republican army under Berthier, a party of French officers, atheistic disciples of Voltaire and Rousseau, and hardened by the orgies of the Revolution, visited the Catacombs. They caroused in the sepulchral crypts, and sang their bacchanalian songs among the Christian dead. They rifled the graves and committed sacrilege at the tombs of the saints. One of the number, a reckless young cavalry officer, “who feared not God nor devil, for he believed in neither,” resolved to explore the remoter galleries. He was speedily lost, and was abandoned by his companions. His excited imagination heightened the natural horrors of the scene. The grim and ghastly skeletons seemed an army of accusing spectres. Down the long corridors the wind mysteriously whispered, rising in inarticulate moanings and woeful sighs, as of souls in pain. The tones of the neighbouring convent bell, echoing through the stony vaults, sounded loud and awful as the knell of doom. Groping blindly in the dark, he touched nothing but rocky walls or mouldering bones, that sent a thrill of horror through his frame. Though but a thin roof separated him from the bright sunshine and free air, he seemed condemned to living burial. His philosophical skepticism failed him in this hour of peril. He could no longer scoff at death as “un sommeil éternel.” The palimpsest of memory recalled with intensest vividness the Christian teachings of his childhood. His soul became filled and penetrated with a solemn awe. His physical powers gave way beneath the intensity of his emotion. He was rescued the next day, but was long ill. He rose from his bed an altered man. His life was thenceforth serious and devout. When killed in battle in Calabria seven years after, a copy of the Gospels was found next to his heart.

Even as late as 1837 a party of students with their professor, numbering in all some sixteen, or, as some say, nearly thirty, entered the Catacombs on a holiday excursion, to investigate their antiquities, but became entangled amid their intricacies. Diligent search was made, but no trace of them was ever found. In some silent crypt or darksome corridor they were slowly overtaken by the same torturing fate as that of Ugolino and his sons in the Hunger Tower of Pisa.[30] The passage by which they entered has been walled up, but the mystery of their fate will never be dispelled till the secrets of the grave shall be revealed.

[1]

Haud procul extremo culta ad pomœria vallo,
 Mersa latebrosis crypta patet foveis...—Peristephanon, iv.

The origin of the word Catacombs is exceedingly obscure. Father Marchi derives it from κατὰ, down, and τύμβος, a tomb; or from κατὰ and κοιμάω, to sleep. Mommsen thinks it comes from κατὰ and cumbo, part of decumbo, to lie down. According to Schneider (Lex. Græk.) it is derived from κατὰ and κύμβη, 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 κατὰ and κύμβος, 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 cryptæ, or crypts, or cæmeteria—whence our word cemetery, literally, sleeping places, from κοιμάω, to slumber. Similar excavations have been found in Syria, Asia Minor, Cyprus, Crete, the Ægean Isles, Greece, Sicily, Naples, Malta, and France.

[2] 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.

[3] Ariosto, Orlando Furioso.

[4] Aringhi, in the elegant Latin ode prefixed to his great work, exclaims, “Sub Roma Romam quærito”—Beneath Rome I seek the true Rome.

[5] Even so accurate and philosophical a writer as the late Professor Silliman reports on their authority that the Catacombs extend twenty miles, to the port of Ostia, in one direction, and to Albano, twelve miles, in another. Visit to Europe, vol. i, p. 329. This is impossible, as will be shown, on account of the undulation of the ground, and the limited area of the volcanic tufa in which alone they can be excavated. The number of distinct Catacombs has also been magnified to sixty; and Father Marchi estimated the aggregate length of passages to be nine hundred miles.

[6] Fig. 1.

[7] Fig. 30.

[8] Fig. 29.

[9]

Primas namque fores summo tenus intrat hiatu
 Illustratque dies limina vestibuli.—Peristephanon, ii.

[10] In the single crypt of St. Lucina, one hundred feet by one hundred and eighty, De Rossi counted over seven hundred loculi, and estimated that nearly twice as many were destroyed, giving a total of two thousand graves in this area. The same space, with our mode of interment, would not accommodate over half the number, even though placed as close together as possible, without any room for passages.

[11] Compare Bryant’s Thanatopsis:

  “All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.”

[12] Rom. Sott., ii, 127.

[13] D’Agincourt, Histoire de l’art par les Monumens, i, 20.

[14] Literally, little sleeping chambers, from cubo, I lie down. The same name was also given to the cells for meditation and prayer attached to the Church of Nola. Paulin., ep. 12, ad Sever.

[15] Book II.

[16] See Fig. 130 and context, where the entire subject is discussed.

[17] See in the Cemetery of St. Helena, Fig. 29.

[18] As in Fig. 12, and more strikingly in Fig. 76.

[19] An organized body of diggers, by whom the Catacombs were excavated. See Book III, chap. iv.

[20] See Fig. 29.

[21] “Dum essem Romæ puer, et liberalibus studiis erudirer, solebam cum cæteris ejusdem ætatis et propositi, diebus Dominicis sepulchra apostolorum et martyrum circuire, crebròque cryptas ingredi, quæ in terrarum profunda defossæ, ex utraque parte ingredientium per parietes corpora sepultorum, ... ‘Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent.’”—Hieron. in Ezech., Cap. xl.

[22] Unfortunately for Protestant visitors most of the Catacombs are open for inspection only on Sunday, when the work of exploration is suspended.

[23]

“And now through narrow, gloomy paths we go,

’Tween walls of earth and tombs.”—Inferno.

[24] “Com’io discerno per lo fioco lume.”—Inferno.

[25] “Full of the dead this far extending field.”

[26] Childe Harold, iv, 104.

[27] Hymnos et psalmos decantans.—Hieron., Vit. Pauli.

[28] From “L’Imagination,” by Abbé de Lille, MacFarlane’s translation.

[29] Catacombs of Rome. London, 1852. P. 94, et seq.

[30] Inferno, Canto xxxiii, vv. 21-75.

It is highly probable that the first Roman Catacombs were excavated by the Jews.[31] Many Hebrew captives graced the triumph of Pompey after his Syrian conquests, B. C. 62. The Jewish population increased by further voluntary accessions. They soon swarmed in that Trans-Tiberine region which formed the ancient Ghetto of Rome. They made many proselytes from paganism to the worship of the true God, and thus, to use the language of Seneca, “The conquered gave laws to their conquerors.”[32]

All the national customs and prejudices of the Jews were opposed to the Roman practice of burning the dead, which Tacitus asserts they never observed;[33] and they clung with tenacity to their hereditary mode of sepulture. Wherever they have dwelt they have left traces of subterranean burial. The hills of Judea are honeycombed with sepulchral caves and galleries. Similar excavations have been found in the Jewish settlements of Asia Minor, the Ægean Isles, Sicily, and Southern Italy.[34] So also in Rome they sought to be separated in death, as in life, from the Gentiles among whom they dwelt. They had their Catacombs apart, in which not a single Christian or pagan inscription has been found. Bosio describes one such Catacomb, which he discovered on Monte Verde, which was much more ancient than the Christian Catacomb of St. Pontianus in the same vicinity. It was of very rude construction, and contained not a single Christian monument, but numerous slabs bearing the seven-branched Jewish candlestick, and one inscription on which the word ϹΥΝΑΓΩΓ—Synagogue—was legible.[35] It was situated near that Trans-Tiberine quarter of the city inhabited at the period of the Christian era by the numerous Jewish population of Rome. It cannot now, however, be identified, having been obliterated or concealed by the changes of the last two centuries. Maitland gives the following Jewish inscription from a MS. collection in Rome. The figure to the left may be a horn for replenishing the lamp with oil. The letters at the right are probably intended for the Hebrew word שָׁלוֹם, Shalom, or Peace, so common in its classical equivalent upon Christian tombs. The palm branch is a Pagan as well as Jewish and Christian symbol of victory. The central figure is a rude representation of the seven-branched candlestick which appears also in bass-relief on the Arch of Titus at Rome.

In the year 1859 another Jewish Catacomb was discovered in the Vigna Randanini, on the Appian Way, about two miles from Rome. It has been minutely described by Padre Garrucci.[36] In this the graves and sarcophagi are sunk in the floor as well as in the walls. They are closed with terra cotta or marble slabs, and are otherwise similar to those of the Christian Catacombs. It contains several vaulted chambers, one of which has some very remarkable paintings of the seven-branched candlestick on the roof and walls. The same figure is frequently scratched on the mortar with which the graves are closed. The dove and olive branch and the palm are also frequently repeated. Although nearly two hundred inscriptions have been discovered, not one of either pagan or Christian character has been met with.

The names are sometimes strikingly Jewish in form, and where the epitaphs refer to the station of the deceased it is always to officers of the synagogue, as ΑΡΚΟΝΤΕϹ, rulers, ΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΕΙϹ, scribes. The following examples are from the Kircherian Museum:

This inscription will recall another “ruler of the Synagogue” of the same name. Many of the sleepers in this Jewish Cemetery were evidently, from their names,[37] Greek or Latin proselytes. Sometimes, indeed, this is expressly asserted, as in the following:

Mannacivs sorori Crysidi dvlcissime proselyte.—Mannacius to his sweetest sister Chrysis, a proselyte.

It may be assumed that this Catacomb was exclusively Jewish, and we know, from the testimony of Juvenal[38] and others, that numbers of the Jews inhabited the adjacent part of Rome, about the Porta Capena and the valley of Egeria. It is not, however, certain whether it is the original type, or a later imitation, of the Christian cemetery. But the Jewish population must have had extra-mural places of sepulture before the Christian era; and it is probable that the early Jewish converts to Christianity may have merely continued a mode of burial already in vogue, substituting the emblems of their newly adopted faith for those which they had forsaken; or, rather—for we find that they frequently retained certain Jewish symbols, as the dove, olive branch, and palm—supplementing them with the emblems of Christianity. De Rossi has expressed the opinion that the earliest mode of Christian burial was in sarcophagi, as in the Jewish cemetery above described.

The date of the planting of Christianity in Rome is uncertain. Probably some of the “strangers of Rome” who witnessed the miracle of the Pentecost, or, perhaps, the Gentile converts of the “Italian band” of Cornelius, brought the new evangel to their native city.[39] But certain it is that as early as A. D. 58 the faith of the Roman Church was “spoken of throughout the whole world.” “Christianity,” says Tertullian, “grew up under the shadow of the Jewish religion, to which it was regarded as akin, and about the lawfulness of which there was no question;”[40] and it doubtless adopted the burial usages of Judaism.

But even without the example of the Jews the Roman Christians would naturally revolt from the pagan custom of burning the dead, with its accompanying idolatrous usages,[41] and would prefer burial, after the manner of their Lord. They showed a tender care for the remains of the dead, under a vivid impression of the communion of saints and the resurrection of the body. They seemed to regard the sepulchre as “God’s cabinet or shrine, where he pleases to lay up the precious relics of his dear saints until the jubilee of glory.”[42] Even the Jews designated the grave as Beth-ha-haim, the “house of the living,” rather than the house of the dead. It is probable, therefore, that the origin of the Christian Catacombs dates from the death of the first Roman believer in Christ.

Many of the Catacombs were probably begun as private sepulchres for single families; indeed, some such tombs have been discovered in the vicinity of Rome, which never extended beyond a single chamber. They were excavated in the gardens or vineyards of the wealthy converts to Christianity, in imitation of that rock-hewn sepulchre consecrated by the body of Christ. The following inscription, which may still be seen in the most ancient part of the Catacombs of Sts. Nereus and Achilles, seem to refer to such a family tomb. Another inscription, found in the Catacomb of St. Nicomedes, restricts the use of the sepulchre to the original owner, and those of his dependents who belong to his religion—AT [AD] RELIGIONEM PERTINENTES MEAM.

The names of many of the burial crypts commemorate these original owners. Among others those of Lucina, Priscilla, and Domitilla are considered to belong to the First Century, and the two former to the times of the Apostles. Some of these may have been originally designed, or afterwards opened, for the reception of the poor belonging to the Church; and thus the Catacombs would be indefinitely extended till they attained their present dimensions. Tertullian expressly declares that the provision made for the poor included that for their burial—egenis humandis.[44]

There is reason to believe that, even from the very first, the Christian Church at Rome contained not a few who were of noble blood and of high rank. In one of the apostolic epistles Paul conveys the salutation of Pudens, a Roman Senator, of Linus, reputed the first Roman bishop, and of Claudia, daughter of a British king;[45] and we know that even in the Golden House of Nero, the scene of that colossal orgy whose record pollutes the pages of Suetonius and Tacitus, were disciples of the crucified Nazarene. In remarkable confirmation of this fact is the discovery in the recent explorations of the ruins of the Imperial Palace of several Christian memorials, including one of those lamps adorned with evangelical symbols, so common in the Catacombs. Much of the evidence on this subject has been lost by the zealous destruction of ecclesiastical records during the terrible Diocletian persecution; but from inscriptions in the Catacombs, and from the incidental allusions of early writers, we learn that persons of the highest position, and even members of the Imperial family, were associated with the Christians in life and in death. Some of the noblest names of Rome occur in funeral epitaphs in some of the most ancient galleries of the Catacombs. There is evidence that even during the first century some who stood near the throne became converts to Christianity, and even died as martyrs for the faith.[46]

But doubtless the preservation and advancement of true religion was better secured amid the dark recesses of the Catacombs, during the fiery persecutions that befel the Church, than it would have been in the sunshine of imperial favour, in an age and court unparalleled for their corruptions. The sad decline of Christianity after the accession of Constantine makes it a matter of congratulation that in the earlier ages it was kept pure by the wholesome breezes of adversity.

The new religion, notwithstanding all the efforts that were made for its suppression, rapidly spread, even in the high places of the earth. “We are but of yesterday,” writes Tertullian at the close of the second century, “yet we fill every city, town, and island of the empire. We abound in the very camps and castles, in the council chamber and the palace, in the senate and the forum; only your temples and theatres are left.”[47]

It is evident from an examination of the earliest Catacombs that they were not the offspring of fear on the part of the Christians. There was no attempt at secrecy in their construction. They were, like the pagan tombs, situated on the high roads entering the city. Their entrances were frequently protected and adorned by elegant structures of masonry, such as that which is still visible at the Catacomb of St. Domitilla on the Via Ardeatina;[48] and their internal decorations and frescoes, which in the most ancient examples are of classic taste and beauty, were manifestly not executed by stealth and in haste, but in security and at leisure.

There was, in classic times, a sacred character attached to all places set apart for the purposes of sepulture. They enjoyed the especial protection of the law, and were invested with a sort of religious sanctity.[49] This protection was asserted in many successive edicts, and the heaviest penalties were inflicted on the violators of tombs, as guilty of sacrilege.[50] Reverence for the sepulchres of the dead was regarded by the ancient mind as a religious virtue; and the neglect of the ancestral tomb even involved disability for municipal office.[51]

Being situated along the public highway, these pagan tombs were liable to various pollutions, to which numerous inscriptions refer. Hence the frequent CAVE VIATOR—“Traveller, beware!”—so common in classic epitaphs. The SCRIPTOR PARCE HOC OPVS—“Writer, spare this work”—sometimes met with, is, as Kenrick well remarks,[52] not the address of an author to a critic, but of a relative of the deceased, entreating the wall-scribbler not to disfigure a tomb. Electioneering notices were sometimes written upon these wayside monuments—a practice which is deprecated in the following: CANDIDATVS FIAT HONORATVS ET TV FELIX SCRIPTOR SI HIC NON SCRIPSERIS—“May your candidate be honoured and yourself happy, O writer, if you write not on this tomb!” INSCRIPTOR, ROGO TE VT TRANSEAS MONVMENTVM—“Inscriber, I pray you pass by this monument.”

As these sepulchral areas, often of considerable extent, were taken from the fields in the vicinity of a great city, where the land was very valuable for the purpose of tillage, they were in continual danger of invasion from the cupidity of the heirs or of adjacent land-owners, but for this legal protection. On many of the cippi, or funereal monuments, which line the public roads in the vicinity of Rome, the extent of these areas is set forth. Some of them are quite small, as is indicated in the following inscription: TERRENVM SACRATVM LONGVM P[EDES] · X · LAT · P[EDES] · X · FODERE NOLI · NE SACRILEGIVM COMMITTAS[52a]—“A consecrated plot of earth, ten feet long and ten feet broad. Do not dig here, lest you commit sacrilege.”

More generally the size of the area is expressed, as in the following: IN FRONTE P[EDES] · IX IN AGRO P[EDES] · X; that is, “Frontage on the road, nine feet; depth in the field, ten feet.” This area, small as it is, was designed for several families. The limited space occupied by the cinerary urns rendered this quite possible. Frequently, however, the size was much larger. An area one hundred and twenty-five feet square would be of very moderate extent. Horace mentions one one thousand feet by three hundred,[53] and sometimes they greatly exceed this, as one on the Via Labicana, five hundred by eighteen hundred feet, or over twenty English acres. There were also frequently exhedræ, or seats by the wayside, for passers-by, who were sometimes exhorted to pause and read the inscription, or to pour a libation for the dead, as in the following: SISTE VIATOR TV QVI VIA FLAMINIA TRANSIS, RESTA AC RELEGE—“Stop, traveller, who passest by on the Flaminian Way; pause and read, and read again!” MISCE BIBE DA MIHI—“Mix, drink, and give to me.” VIATORES SALVETE ET VALETE—“Travellers, hail and farewell.”

These burial plots were incapable of alienation or transfer from the families for whom they were originally set apart; who are sometimes enumerated in the inscription, or more generally expressed by the formulæ, SIBI SVISQVE FECIT, SIBI ET POSTERIS SVIS, or with the addition, LIBERTIS LIBERTABVSQVE POSTERISQVE, that is, “He made this for himself and his family,” or “for himself and his descendants;” also “for his freedmen and freedwomen and their descendants.” Sometimes this limitation is plainly asserted to be, VT NE VNQVAM DE NOMINE FAMILIAE NOSTRAE HOC MONVMENTVM EXEAT—“That this monument may not go out of the name of our family.” The cupidity of the inheritor of the estate is especially guarded against by the ever-recurring formula, H · M · H · N · S ·, that is, Hoc monumentum hæredem non sequitur—“This monument descends not to the heir.” Sometimes within a stately mausoleum reposed in solitary magnificence the dust of a single individual, who in sullen exclusiveness declares in his epitaph that he has no associate even in the grave, or that he made his tomb for himself alone—IN HOC MONVMENTO SOCIVM HABEO NVLLVM, or, HOC SOLO SIBI FECIT.

The violation of the monument is earnestly deprecated in numerous inscriptions in some such terms as these: ROGO PER DEOS SVPEROS INFEROSQVE NE VELITIS OSSA MEA VIOLARE—“I beseech you, by the supernal and infernal gods, that you do not violate my bones.” Sometimes this petition is accompanied by an imprecation of divine vengeance if it should be neglected, as, QVI VIOLAVERIT DEOS SENTIAT IRATOS—“May he feel the wrath of the gods[54] who shall have violated [this tomb.]” Another invokes the fearful curse, QVISQVIS HOC SVSTVLERIT AVT LAESERIT VLTIMVS SVORVM MORIATVR[55]—“Whoever shall take away or injure this [tomb] let him die the last of his race.”

From a distrust of posterity many erected their monuments during their life-time, and wrote their own epitaphs, leaving only a space for the age. This is sometimes expressed by the words, SIBI VIVVS FECIT, or, SE VIVO, SE VIVIS, or even by such solecisms as ME VIVVS, or SE VIVVS. The following records the strange fact of the erection of a funereal monument by one living person to another: SEMIRAMIAE LICINIAE QVAM LOCO FILIAE DILIGO OB MERITA EIVS VIVVS VIVAE FECI—“To Semiramia Licinia, whom I love in place of my daughter: on account of her merits, alive, I made this to her alive.”

These classic usages have been thus detailed because traces of their influence may be observed in many practices adopted by the primitive Christians, and because they furnish an explanation of those remarkable immunities and privileges which the Catacombs so long enjoyed. These latter were constructed in separate and limited areas, in like manner as the pagan sepulchres. De Rossi has given a map of the Catacomb of Callixtus, in which these areas are accurately defined. They vary in size and shape, that of the crypt of St. Lucina being one hundred feet in fronte and one hundred and eighty in agro, that of St. Cecilia two hundred and fifty feet in fronte and one hundred in agro, and others still larger. By the very tenor of the law these areas enjoyed the same protection as those of the pagan sepulchres, of which protection it required a special edict to deprive them. Even when Christianity fell under the ban of persecution that freedom of sepulture was not at first interfered with. Having wreaked his cruel rage upon the living body, the pagan magistrate at least did not deny right of burial to the martyr’s mutilated remains. A beneficent Roman law declared that the bodies even of those who died by the hand of the public executioner might be given up to any who asked for them.[56] So that even the sentence of outlawry against the Christians did not affect the bodies of the dead. Indeed, we know from ecclesiastical history that frequently the faithful received the remains of the martyrs and gave them Christian burial. It was not till the third century, when the pagan opposition to Christianity became intense and bitter, that the persecutors waged war upon the dead. Although both Diocletian and Maximian confirmed the decree just cited, it often happened that, in order that the Christians might not have even the melancholy consolation of gathering up the martyrs’ bones, and honouring the remains of their fallen heroes, those sacred relics were denied the rites of sepulture which were freely accorded to the body of the vilest malefactor.

The Christian inscriptions often strongly deprecate the violation of the graves to which they are attached, in like manner as we have seen in pagan epitaphs, and against this crime the Fathers intensely inveigh. Sometimes the petition assumes a most solemn character, as this: [ADIVRO] VOS PER C[H]RISTVM, NE MIHI AB ALIQVO VIOLENTIAM [sic] FIAT ET NE SEPVLCRVM MEVM VIOLETVR—“[I conjure] you by Christ that no violence be offered me by any one, and that my sepulchre may not be violated.” Still more awful in its adjuration is the following: CONIVRO VOS PER TREMENDVM DIEM IVDICII VT HANC SEPVLTVRAM NVLLI VIOLENT[57]—“I conjure you by the dreadful day of judgment that no one violate this sepulchre.”

Sometimes a most terrible imprecation is expressed, as in the following:

MALE · PEREAT · INSEPVLTVS
IACEAT · NON · RESVRGAT
CVM · IVDA · PARTEM · HABEAT
SI · QVIS · SEPVLCHRVM · HVNC · VIOLAVERIT—

If any one shall violate this sepulchre,
Let him perish miserably and remain unburied;
Let him lie down and not rise again,
Let him have his portion with Judas.[58]

....[EMI]GRAVIT AD XPM
....SEPVLCRVM VIOLARE
....SIT ALIENVS A REGNO DEI.

... Has departed to Christ. [If any one dare] to violate this sepulchre, let him ... and be far from the kingdom of God.[59]

It is probable that this dread of the violation of the grave arose, in part at least, from the fear that the dispersion of the remains might impede the resurrection of the body; and also from that natural aversion to the disturbance of the slumbering dust, so passionately expressed on the tombstone of England’s greatest dramatist.[60]

We sometimes find also the announcement upon Christian as well as upon pagan tombs, that they have been prepared while the tenants were yet alive, as in the following: LOCVS BASILIONIS SE BIBO FECIT—“The place of Basilio, he made it when alive;” SABINI BISOMVM SE BIBVM FECIT SIBI IN CEMETERIVM BALBINAE IN CRYPTA NOBA [sic]—“The bisomus of Sabinus, he made it for himself during his life-time, in the cemetery of Balbina, in the new crypt.” As Sabinus could only occupy one half of this, the other half was probably intended for his wife. Observe in the following the beautiful euphemism for the grave. It is calmly chosen as the last long home, as the “house appointed for all living.” (Fig. 19.[61])