The name Catacombs is modern, having originally been only applied to S. Sebastiano "ad catacumbas." The early Christians called their burial-places by the Greek name Cœmeteria, sleeping-places. Almost all the catacombs are between the first and third mile-stones from the Aurelian wall, to which point the city extended before the wall itself was built. This was in obedience to the Roman law which forbade burial within the precincts of the city.
The fact that the Christians were always anxious not to burn their dead, but to bury them, in these rock-hewn sepulchres, was probably owing to the remembrance that our Lord was himself laid "in a new tomb hewn out of the rock," and perhaps also for this reason the bodies were wrapt in fine linen cloths, and buried with precious spices, of which remains have been found in the tombs.
The Catacomb which is known as St. Calixtus, is composed of a number of catacombs, once distinct, but now joined together. Such were those of Sta. Lucina; of Anatolia, daughter of the consul Æmilianus; and of Sta. Soteris, "a virgin of the family to which St. Ambrose belonged in a later generation," and who was buried "in cœmeterio suo," A.D. 304. The passages of these catacombs were gradually united with those which originally belonged to the cemetery of Calixtus.
The high mass of ruin which meets our eyes on first entering the vineyard of St. Calixtus, is a remnant of the tomb of the Cæcilii, of which family a number of epitaphs have been found. Beyond this is another ruin, supposed by Marangoni to have been the basilica which St. Damasus provided for his own burial and that of his mother and sister; which Padre Marchi believed to be the church of St. Mark and St. Marcellinus;—but which De Rossi identifies with the cella memoriæ, sometimes called of St. Sistus, sometimes of St. Cecilia (because built immediately over the graves of those martyrs), by St. Fabian in the third century.[204]
Descending into the Catacomb by an ancient staircase restored, we reach (passing a sepulchral cubiculum on the right) the Chapel of the Popes, a place of burial and of worship of the third or fourth century, (as it was restored after its discovery in 1854) but still retaining remains of the marble slabs with which it was faced by Sixtus III. in the fifth century, and of marble columns, &c. with which it was adorned by St. Leo III. (795—816). The walls are lined with graves of the earliest popes, many of them martyrs—viz. St. Zephyrinus, (202—211); St Pontianus, who died in banishment in Sardinia, (231—236); St. Anteros, martyred under Maximian in the second month of his pontificate, (236); St. Fabian, martyred under Decius, (236—250); St. Lucius, martyred under Valerian, (253—255); St. Stephen I., martyred in his episcopal chair under Valerian, (255—257); St. Sixtus II., martyred in the catacombs of St. Pretextatus, (257—260); St. Dionysius, (260—271); St. Eutychianus, martyr, (275—283); and St. Caius, (284—296). Of these, the gravestones of Anteros, Fabian, Lucius, and Eutychianus, have been discovered, with inscriptions in Greek, which is acknowledged to have been the earliest language of the Church,—in which St. Paul and St. James wrote, and in which the proceedings of the first twelve Councils were carried on.[205] Though no inscriptions have been found relating to the other popes mentioned, they are known to have been buried here from the earliest authorities.
Over the site of the altar is one of the beautifully-cut inscriptions of Pope St. Damasus (366—384), "whose labour of love it was to rediscover the tombs which had been blocked up for concealment under Diocletian, to remove the earth, widen the passages, adorn the sepulchral chambers with marble, and support the friable tufa walls with arches of brick and stone."[206]
"Hic congesta jacet quæris si turba Piorum
Corpora Sanctorum retinent veneranda sepulchra,
Sublimes animas rapuit sibi Regia Cœli:
Hic comites Xysti portant qui ex hoste tropæa;
Hic numerus procerum servat qui altaria Christi;
Hic positus longâ vixit qui in pace Sacerdos;
Hic Confessores sancti quos Græcia misit;
Hic juvenes, puerique, senes, castique nepotes,
Quis mage virgineum placuit retinere pudorem.
Hic fateor Damasus volui mea condere membra,
Sed cineres timui sanctos vexare Piorum.
"Here, if you would know, lie heaped together a number of the holy,
These honoured sepulchres inclose the bodies of the saints,
Their lofty souls the palace of heaven has received.
Here lie the companions of Xystus, who bear away the trophies from the enemy;
Here a tribe of the elders which guards the altars of Christ;
Here is buried the priest who lived long in peace;[207]
Here the holy confessors who came from Greece;[208]
Here lie youths and boys, old men and their chaste descendants,
Who kept their virginity undefiled.
Here I Damasus wished to have laid my limbs,
But feared to disturb the holy ashes of the saints."[209]
From this chapel we enter the Cubiculum of Sta. Cecilia, where the body of the saint was buried by her friend Urban after her martyrdom in her own house in the Trastevere (see Chap. XVII.) A.D. 224, and where it was discovered in 820 by Pope Paschal I. (to whom its resting-place had been revealed in a dream), "fresh and perfect as when it was first laid in the tomb, and clad in rich garments mixed with gold, with linen cloths stained with blood rolled up at her feet, lying in a cypress coffin."[210]
Close to the entrance of the cubiculum, upon the wall, is a painting of Cecilia, "a woman richly attired, and adorned with bracelets and necklaces." Near it is a niche for the lamp which burnt before the shrine, at the back of which is a large head of Our Saviour, "of the Byzantine type, and with rays of glory behind it in the form of a Greek cross. Side by side with this, but on the flat surface of the wall, is a figure of St. Urban (the friend of Cecilia, who laid her body here) in full pontifical robes, with his name inscribed." Higher on the wall are figures of three saints, "executed apparently in the fourth, or perhaps even the fifth century"—Polycamus, an unknown martyr, with a palm branch; Sebastianus; and Curinus, a bishop (Quirinus bishop of Siscia—buried at St. Sebastian). In the pavement is a gravestone of Septimus Pretextatus Cæcilianus, "a servant of God, who lived worthy for three-and-thirty years;"—considered important as suggesting a connection between the family of Cecilia and that of St. Prætextatus, in whose catacomb on the other side of the Appian Way her husband and brother-in-law were buried, and where her friend St. Urban was concealed.