confessor in her garden on the Aurelian Way. It had probably been a cemetery before the deposition of the remains of the famous boy-martyr gave it a new name and not a little celebrity.
The story of S. Pancras has ever been an attractive one, and a certain number of churches named in his honour are scattered over many lands. A small basilica was built over the crypt containing his grave. Pope Siricius (end of fourth century) restored and adorned it. Honorius I, A.D. 620, rebuilt it. In the present Church of S. Pancras there are scarcely any traces of the original basilica. The remains of the martyr have disappeared. Strange to say, in the great translation of the ashes of saints and martyrs by Pope Paul I and Paschal I, S. Pancras was left undisturbed in his tomb. The corridors, however, have been completely wrecked, and have been very partially explored.
The site of the cemeteries mentioned in the Pilgrim Itineraries, named after two saints each bearing the name of Felix, has not been discovered.
The Via Portuensis
This road leads from the old Porta Navalis in the Trastevere, the city "across the Tiber," direct to Portus the port of Rome, a construction of Claudius when Ostia (Centumcellæ) was unable to cope with the commerce of the capital. Three cemeteries, according to the ancient Itineraries, were excavated on the Via Portuensis. That of Pontianus, the best known of the three, where lie the remains of SS. Abdon and Sennen; and a second, nearly five miles from the city, the Catacomb of Generosa. There is a third, the Cemetery of S. Felix, the position of which has not yet been discovered.
The Cemetery of Pontianus.—Pontianus was a wealthy Christian of the Trastevere quarter, who used in the second century—probably in the latter years of the century—to gather his fellow-Christians to prayer and teaching in his house. The cemetery which bears his name was originally excavated in one of his gardens. The old Pilgrim Itineraries speak of there being a vast number of martyrs in this Catacomb—"innumerabilis multitudo Martyrum." Several of these are
