--
ANGELICE BENE IN PACE
To Angelica well in peace.
CVRRENTIO SERVO DEI DEP. D. XVI. KAL
NOVEM.
To Currentius, the servant of God, laid in
the grave on the sixteenth of the Kalends of
November.
MAXIMINVS QVI VIXIT ANNOS XXIII
AMICVS OMNIVM
Maximin, who lived twenty-three years, the
friend of all.
SEPTIMVS MARCIANE
IN PACE QUE BICSIT MECV
ANNOS XVII. DORMIT IN PACE
Septimus to Marciana in peace. Who lived
with me seventeen years. She sleeps in peace.
GAVDENTIA
PAVSAT DVLCIS
SPIRITVS ANNORVM II
MENSORVM TRES.
Gaudentia rests. Sweet spirit of two years
and three months.
Here is a gravestone with the single word VIATOR; here one that tells only that Mary placed it for her daughter; here one that tells of the light of the house,--[Greek: To phos thaes Oikias].
Nor is it only in these domestic and intimate inscriptions that the habitual temper and feeling of the Christians is shown, but even still more in those that were placed over the graves of such members of the household of faith as had made public profession of their belief, and shared in the sufferings of their Lord. There is no parade of words on the gravestones of the martyrs. Their death needed no other record than the little jar of blood placed in the mortar, and the fewest words were enough where this was present. Here is an inscription in the rudest letters from a martyr's grave:--
SABATIVS BENEMERENTI QVI VIXIT ANNOS XL
To the well-deserving Sabatias, who lived
forty years.
And here another:--
PROSPERO INNOCENTI ANIMAE IN PACE.
To Prosperus, innocent soul, in peace.
And here a third, to a child who had died as one of the Innocents:--
MIRAE INNOCENTIAE ANIMA DULCIS AEMILEANVS
QVI VIXIT ANNO VNO, MENS. VIII D. XXVIII
DORMIT IN PACE
Aemilian, sweet soul of marvellous innocence,
who lived one year, eight months, twenty-eight
days. He sleeps in peace.
At this grave was found the vase of blood, and on the gravestone was the figure of a dove.
Another inscription, which preserves the name of one of those who suffered in the most severe persecution to which the ancient Church was exposed, and which, if genuine, is, so far as known, the only monument of the kind, is marked by the same simplicity of style:--
LANNVS XPI MA
RTIR HC*[Hic?] REQVIESC
IT SVR [E-P-S] DIOCLITI ANO PASSVS
Lannus Martyr of Christ here rests. He
suffered under Diocletian.
The three letters EPS have been interpreted as standing for the words _et posteris suis_, and as meaning that the grave was also for his successors. Not yet, then, had future saints begun to sanctify their graves, and to claim the exclusive possession of them.
But there is another point of contrast between the inscriptions of the un- Christianized and the Christian Romans, which illustrates forcibly the difference in the regard which they paid to the dead. To the one the dead were still of this world, and the greatness of life, the distinctions of class, the titles of honor still clung to them; to the other the past life was as nothing to that which had now begun. The heathen epitaphs are loaded with titles of honor, and with the names of the offices which the dead had borne, and, like the modern Christian (?) epitaphs whose style has been borrowed from them, the vanity of this world holds its place above the grave. But among the early Christian inscriptions of Rome nothing of this kind is known. Scarcely a title of rank or a name of office is to
