Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/220

208 CATACOMBS In complete agreement with Jerome s vivid picture the visitor to the Roman Catacombs finds himself in a vast labyrinth of narrow galleries, usually from 3 to 4 feet in width, interspersed with small chambers, excavated at suc cessive levels, in the strata of volcanic rock subjacent to the city and its environs, constructed originally for the interment of the Christian dead. The galleries are not the way of access to the cemeteries, but are themselves the cemeteries, the dead being buried in long low horizontal recesses, excavated in the vertical walls of the passages, rising tier above tier like the berths in a ship, from a few inches above the floor to the springing of the arched ceiling, to the number of five, six, or even sometimes twelve ranges. These galleries are not arranged on any definite plan, but, as will be seen from the woodcut (fig. 1), they intersect one another at different angles, producing an intricate net- FIG. 1. Plan of part of the Cemetery of St Agnes. From Martigny. A, Entrance from the Basilica of St Agnes. 1, 2. Ancient staircases leading to the first story 3 Corridors from the staircases 4. Two ruined staircases leading to the lower story 6. Steps of the rock. 6 Air-shafts, or luminaria. 7. Ruined mult 8 ISHnd ways. 9. Passages built up or ruined. 10. Passages obstructed by landslip*. 11. Unfinished passage. 12. Passages destitute of tombs. 13. Narrow apertures between adjoining galleries. 14-17. Areosolia. 18-32. Cubicula. 33. Chapel with vestibule and apse, and two chairs. 34. Double chapel with three chairs. 35 Large chapel in five divisions. Work which it is almost impossible to reduce to any system. They generally run in straight lines, and as a rule preserve the same level. The different stories of galleries lie one below the other (fig. 2) to the number of four or five (in one part of the cemetery of St Callistus they reach seven Btories), and communicate with one another by stairs cut out of the living rock. Light and air are introduced by means of vertical shafts (luminaria) running up to the outer air, and often serving for several stories. The drawing (fig. 3) from Northcote gives a very correct idea of these gal leries, with the tiers of graves pierced in the walls. The doorways which are seen interrupting the lines of graves are those of the family sepulchral chambers, or cubicula, of which we shall speak more particularly hereafter. The graves, or loculi, as they are commonly designated, ^vere, in the Christian cemeteries, with only a few excep tions (Padre Marchi produces some from the cemetery of St Cyriaca, Monum. Primitiv., tav. xiv. xliii. xliv.), parallel tvith the length of the gallery. In the pagan cemeteries, on the other hand, the sepulchral recess as a rule entered the rock like an oven at right angles to the corridor, the body being introduced endways. The plan adopted by the Christians saved labour, economized space, and consulted reverence in the deposition of the corpse. These loculi were usually constructed for a single body only. Some, however, were formed to contain two, three, or four, or even more corpses. Such recesses were known respectively as bisomi, trisomi, quadrisomi, &c., terms which often appear in the sepulchral inscriptions. After the introduction of the body the loculi were closed with the greatest care, either with slabs of marble the whole length of the aperture, or with huge tiles, three being generally employed, cemented together with great exactness, so as to prevent the escape of the products of decomposition (fig. 4). Where any epitaph was set up an immense number are destitute of any inscription at all it is always painted or engraved on these slabs or tiles. In the earlier interments the epitaph is simply daubed on the slab in red or black paint. In later examples it is incised in the marbles, the letters being rendered clearer by being coloured with vermilion. The enclosing slab very often bears one or more Christian

symbols, such as the dove, the anchor, the olive-branch, or