Even for those who have not had the opportunity of a personal exploration of the Roman catacombs it may suffice, for the purpose of intelligible description, to say that they are "a vast labyrinth of galleries excavated in the bowels of the earth around the Eternal City"; that these galleries are excavated on various levels, or piani, three, four, or even five, one above the other, crossing and recrossing each other on each of these levels, and so numerous that at the lowest estimated measurement their total length does not fall short of three hundred and fifty miles. They vary from two to four feet in width, and in height according to the nature of the rock in which they are dug. The walls on both sides are pierced with horizontal niches, like sheives in a book-case or berths in a steamer, and every niche once contained one or more dead bodies. At various intervals this succession of shelves is interupted, that room may be made for a doorway opening into a small chamber; and the walls of these chambers are generally pierced with graves, in the same way as the galleries."

Such were the burial-places of the Christians of Rome. from the apostolic times down to the capture of the city by Alaric, in the beginning of the fifth century. Their number was very considerable, no fewer than twenty-five principal cemeteries being known as in existence in the third century, besides about twenty of less importance. Originally they were formed in the villas or gardens of private individuals, or in sites expressly purchased for the purpose; and the titles of many are still preserved which were situated upon the several great roads, the Via Ostiensis, the Via Tiburtina, the Via Appia, the Via Ardeatina, the Via Labicana, the Via Portuensis, the Via Salaria Vetus, and the Via Salaria. Nova.

One of the most important questions regarding the origin of the Roman catacombs is that as to their age; and there is no portion of our authors' subject which exhibits more pleasingly at once the ingenious learning of the original whom they follow, and the skill and fidelity with which they present in popular form every detail of the complicated argument upon which M. de Rossi's conclusions are founded.

The first difficulty which presents itself regarding the catacombs is the very problem of their formation. It is hard at first sight to realize how, in times of persecution such as those through which the early Christian Church in Rome. struggled into existence, a small and oppressed community could have contrived to execute, under the eyes of a watchful and jealous adversary, a work so vast, so complicated, and

of its own nature so likely to create suspicion and alarm, as the network of subterranean chambers, galleries, and passages which are found encircling the entire of the ancient city, and which, in the hands of a race politically obnoxious as were the Christians, would seem by their very construction to constitute a source of danger to the State. Without stating this difficulty in explicit form, Dr. Northcote's masterly sketch of the condition of the Christian community in Rome, of the Roman laws as to burial, of the character of Roman burialplaces, and of the usages of the Pagan Romans in regard to them, prepares the reader easily to understand, not only how all that we now see under our eyes might have grown up gradually during the centuries which preceded the Peace of the Church, but also how it naturally, and almost by necessity, resulted from the very circumstances and conditions under which the Christian community was living.

Perhaps the most novel part of the case is that which regards the social condition of the Christian community at Rome; and it is so interesting for its own sake that we think it right to transcribe the passage at length, as a specimen of the " easy learning" with which this admirable volume abounds :

We are not unmindful of the Apostle's testimony relative to the Church at Corinth-viz., that "there were not amongst them many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble ;" nevertheless everything combines to show that the spread of Christianity among the higher classes, and even among the imperial families at Rome, was more extensive, from the very earliest times, than either the records of ecclesiastical history or the pious legends of the Church would have led us to expect. Indeed, it is easy to see how scanty and imperfect these are. Thus no memorial has reached us of the names or condition of those "of Caesar's household" to whom S. Paul sent a special salutation; of Flavius Clemens, the consul and relative of Domitian, we know little beyond the fact of his martrydom; of Apollonius, the senator and martyr under Commodus, we only know that little which Eusebius has told us, writing so long after the event, and at so great a distance from the scene of it. Ancient metrical inscriptions have been found, celebrating the praises of another noble patrician, named Liberalis, holding the highest office in the State, and laying down his life for the faith, whose memory in all other respects is buried in oblivion. Other inscriptions also have been found, in more recent times, recording the burial, by their husbands, of noble Roman ladies of senatorial rank (clarissima), in the common graves of the galleries in the most ancient parts of the Roman cemeteries. It was only from the pages of a Pagan historian that we knew of the profession of Christianity, or at least of a great interest in it and partiality towards it, by Marcia, concubine of Commodus, until, in our own day, this intelligence has been confirmed and enlarged by the newlydiscovered Philosophumena. Tertullian, again, writing at the beginning of

the third century, tells us that Septimius Severus protected Christian senators and their wives, but says nothing as to their names or number, excepting indeed that in another place he says boldly, before the whole Pagan world, that not only were the cities of the Roman empire full of Christian people, but even the senate and the palace.

One cause of the extreme scantiness of our information as to the early Christians in Rome is doubtless the destruction of all ecclesiastical records during the last terrible persecution by Diocletian; and there was nothing in the temper or practices of Christianity to commend it as a special theme for Pagan writers. Nevertheless it was not altogether overlooked by them; and we know, from the testimony of Eusebius, that some at least wrote about it whose histories have not reached us. Indeed it is to Pagan rather than to Christian writers that we are indebted for our knowledge of some of the most interesting and remarkable facts in the annals of the early Church. One of these it will be well for us to dwell upon at some length in this place, as the history of a catacomb depends upon it: we allude to the early conversion of some of the family of the Flavii Augusti, that is, of the family which gave Vespasian to the throne. His elder brother, Titus Flavius Sabinus, had been Prefect of the city in the year in which the Princes of the Apostles, SS. Peter and Paul, suffered martyrdom; and it is certain, therefore, that he must have been brought into contact with them, and heard something of the Christian faith. He is described by the great historian of the empire as a man whose innocence and justice were unimpeachable; a mild man, who had a horror of all unnecessary shedding of blood and violence. Towards the close of his life, he was accused by some of great inactivity and want of interest in public affairs; others thought him only a man of moderation, anxious to spare the lives of his fellow-citizens; others again spoke of his retiring habits as the natural result of the infirmities of old age. Whilst we listen to all these conjectures as to the cause of a certain change which seems to have come over him in his declining years, the question naturally occurs to us, whether it is possible that he can have had some leanings towards the Christian faith, or even been actually converted to it? It is a question which cannot now be answered; but at least it is certain that charges of this kind were commonly urged against Christians; and the fact that some of his descendants in the next generation were undoubtedly of this faith, gives a certain degree of probability to the conjecture. Flavius Sabinus seems to have had four children, of whom the most conspicuous was Titus Flavius Clemens, the consul and martyr. He married the daughter of his cousin, who was sister to the Emperor Domitian, and called by the same name as her mother, Flavia Domitilla. Flavia Domitilla the younger bore her husband, the consul, two sons, who were named respectively Vespasian junior, and Domitian junior, having been intended to succeed to the throne; and the famous Quinctilian was appointed by the Emperor himself to be their tutor. At what time their parents became Christians, and what was the history of their conversion, we do not know; but the facts of Clement's martyrdom and Domitilla's banishment are attested by Dio Cassius (pp. 36-38).

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Dr. Northcote truly observes, that had the facts which are thus obscurely but yet decisively indicated by Suetonius and Dio Cassius, that immediately after the death of the apostles, Christianity had thus made its way to the very steps of the imperial throne, been found in any Acts of Martyrs or similar record, "the pious legend would have been laughed to scorn by modern critics." Yet it is impossible to resist the inference which he draws from these facts, coupled with the further indications which we subjoin, that the number of converts from the higher and wealthier ranks to Christianity, almost from its very infancy in Rome, was far beyond what is popularly believed.

There was yet a third lady of the same noble family, bearing the same name of Flavia Domitilla, who was a granddaughter (on the mother's side) of Titus Flavius Sabinus, and consequently a niece of the consul. She, too, suffered banishment, like her aunt, and for the same cause-profession of the Christian faith. It is in speaking of this lady that Eusebius has that striking passage to which we have already referred, and which testifies so clearly to the marvellous spread of the Christian religion, even before the expiration of the first century. He has just had occasion to mention the latter part of Domitian's reign, and] he says: "The teaching of our faith had by this time shone so far and wide, that even Pagan historians did not refuse to insert in their narratives some account of the persecution and the martyrdoms that were suffered in it. Some, too, have marked the time accurately, mentioning, amongst many others, in the fifteenth year of Domitian (A.D. 97), Flavia Domitilla, the daughter of a sister of Flavius Clemens, one of the Roman consuls of those days, who, for her testimony for Christ, was punished by exile to the island of Pontia." The same writer, in his Chronicon," gives the name of one of the authors to whom he refers, and that name is Bruttius. It is worth remembering, for we shall meet it again in the cemetery of the very same S. Domitilla whose exile he had recorded. He was a friend the younger Pliny, and the grandfather of Crispina, wife of the Emperor Commodus.

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It is generally supposed that there is another still more ancient notice, by a Pagan writer, of the conversion to Christianity of a Roman lady of rank, which ought not, therefore, to be altogether omitted; we mean that by Tacitus, of Pomponia Grecina, the wife of Plautius, who conquered Britain under Claudius. We read that, in the year 58, this lady was accused of having embraced the rites of "a foreign superstition;" that the matter was referred to the judgment of her husband, in the presence of a number of her relations, who pronounced her innocent; that she lived afterwards to a great age, but "in continual sadness" no one, however, interfered with her in this matter any more, and in the end it was considered the glory of her character. It must be confessed that the language in which this history is recorded is not so precise as what we have read from Dio about the Flavii, neither has the history itself so intimate a connection with the catacombs ;

nevertheless it has its point of contact with them, and the ordinary interpretation of the "foreign superstition," as having been intended for Christianity, has lately received considerable confirmation from an inscription found in the Catacomb of S. Callixtus, showing that a person of the same name and family was certainly a Christian in the next generation, and buried in that cemetery.

These glimpses at the social condition of the first Roman Christians, slight and imperfect as they are, are valuable; and when we come to study the first period in the history of the catacombs, they will be found to furnish some very interesting examples of "undesigned coincidences" (pp. 39-41).

The Roman law with regard to burial-places, which protected a spot once devoted to the purposes of burial, made it easy for a Christian possessing a certain social rank to secure permanently for himself, his family, and his poorer brethren, an area which might at least serve as the spot from which, without risk of discovery, subterranean excavations could be extended in any required direction; and M. de Rossi has ascertained by actual measurement that the crypt of S. Lucina, which now forms part of the catacomb of S. Callixtus, in which 700 loculi (grave-niches) are still to be seen and which must anciently have contained at least 2,000, was originally confined at the surface within an area of 100 ft. in front, and 180 in depth. Besides the area thus acquired by private individuals, the provisions of the Roman law relating to collegia or fraternities, associated for the due performance of funeral rites, afforded a further cover for the legal occupation of burial-places by the Christian community, for their unsuspected extension beneath the surface of the earth to any degree which might be necessary, and for their being occupied for the other religious uses of the faithful without suspicion, or at least without molestation. And, in fact, it is not till the beginning of the third century that we have any historical notice of popular violence being directed against them; and this occurs not at Rome, but at Carthage, where the outcry of the populace, "Areæ, non sint!" recorded by Tertullian, shows that they had at length attracted observation, and were marked out for destruction.

It would carry us quite beyond the prescribed limits to pursue the evidence by which M. de Rossi traces back the origin of the Roman catacombs to the time of the Apostles, or the immediately succeeding age. And yet this part of the subject is so peculiarly M. de Rossi's own, that we must at least transcribe Dr. Northcote's lucid summary, as well of the process of the investigation, as of the conclusions to which it has led.