Similar cities of the dead were found in Upper Egypt, near the cities of the living, wherever the adjoining rocks allowed them to be excavated. Those of Syout—the ancient Lycopolis, where along an extent of several miles the whole declivity of the Libyan mountains is perforated with graves rising in terraces to their very summit—of El Kab (Eileithyia), of Assuan (Syene), of Madfuneh (Abydos), of Kan (Antæopolis), and of a hundred other places, would in any other country excite the wonder of the traveller; here, where along the Nile one gigantic necropolis follows upon another, they hardly attract any attention.
But the ancient Egyptians not only embalmed human bodies and preserved them in rock-tombs, they also converted into mummies the various animals to which they paid divine homage, and deposited them in subterranean cavities. This honour was paid to Apis, the ox-god, to the sacred Ibis, to dogs, cats, and even to the repulsive crocodile.
Besides the Rome of the Cæsars and the Rome of the Popes, there is a third Rome, scarcely less remarkable than the other two. The two former, gilded by the warm sunbeam, proudly rise above the banks of the Tiber with their ruins, palaces, and churches, while the latter lies hidden beneath the earth.
GALLERY WITH TOMBS.
From the cupola of St. Peter’s, the most favourable station for a panoramic view of all the monuments and buildings of the Eternal City, the eye is also best able to embrace at one glance the general topography of the catacombs or of subterranean Rome. Fifteen great consular roads, over which the victorious legions once marched out to subjugate the world, radiate from the centre of the town, and furrow the arid Campagna, until they are finally lost in the hazy distance. To the right and left of these causeways the catacombs have been hollowed out in the depths of the earth, and, though separated by the Tiber into two distinct regions, yet their various subdivisions trace a vast circle, the size of which may be measured by the circumference of the town itself. To form some idea of their extent, we must fancy an intricate wilderness of galleries and arched alcoves with their layers of sarcophagi, one above another; their lucernaria, for light or ventilation; their stairs, straight or winding; and all this, not on one level only, but floor beneath floor—one, two, three, four, five—hewn out on a labyrinthine, yet harmonious and economic plan. Network is perhaps a feeble description of these vast and intricate mazes; a spider’s web seen through the glass of a naturalist, or rather four or five spiders’ webs, one within the other, would seem a more fitting illustration.
Such is the immensity of this city of the dead that, according to the opinion of those who have made themselves best acquainted with all its subdivisions, their galleries, supposing them ranged in a line, would form a street 900 miles long, and lined by no less than six millions of tombs!
So vast a necropolis would command attention in any country, or as the memorial of any age, or of any part of the human race; but to us the catacombs of Rome are doubly interesting, as the mysterious crypts which served the first confessors of our faith for the purposes of sepulture and sometimes of concealment. Their extent at once precludes the idea of their having been excavated in a clandestine manner, as was at one time erroneously believed; and, moreover, history tells us that, apart from some passing storms of persecution, the Christians had as little reason as the Jews, their religious ancestors, for making a secret of their faith, or of their places of interment. From the times of the Apostles their community constantly grew and multiplied throughout the Roman world—in Rome especially, the centre of that world—and there can be little doubt that from Nerva to the middle of the reign of Marcus Aurelius (from 96 to about 166) and so onward to the great persecution under Decius (A.D. 249–256), the Christians, if exposed here and there and at times to local persecutions, were growing in unchecked and still expanding numbers. But as the living community increased, so also must the number of its dead, a reverence for whom was, among the survivors, not only a solemn duty but a deep-rooted passion. The Christians not only inherited from the Jews the ancient usage of interment, but this respect for the dead was strengthened by the belief that Christ had risen bodily from the grave, and that a bodily resurrection was to be their own glorious privilege. Hence the burning of the dead, customary among the wealthier pagans, was to them a profanation; and as the body of the slave was as holy as that of his master, it claimed the same right of decent burial.
But where was room for the spacious burial-places required for so vast a community?