STONE COFFIN WITH OPEN SIDE.[ToList]
Many inscriptions are preserved relating to the preservation of a tomb with the land belonging to it in perpetuity, and they frequently mention the number of feet along the road and in the field. Their size varies enormously. Horace mentions one that was 1,000 feet by 300 feet. The inscription of one dug up in the Via Labicana gives 1,800 feet by 500 feet; another was only twenty-four feet by fifteen feet, and another sixteen feet square. In the case of one of the larger tombs belonging to a family that became Christian, it was easy for them to make a catacomb under it and allow their fellow-Christians to be buried there, or to sell portions of the large space for separate vaults. Many vaults of sixteen feet square might be made in the space of 1,800 feet long by 500 feet wide, as the one on the Via Labicana. If the adjoining field belonged to the same family, the catacomb might be extended as far as the family property itself extended. This is the most probable explanation of the prædium of the Lady Lucina and other Christian martyrs. They were heiresses to whom such a tomb and meadow belonged. When the space was limited, three or four stories were excavated in succession, one under the other, as we see in many instances.
The measurements of Michele de Rossi coincide with this in a remarkable manner. He finds the area of each separate catacomb to be respectively 100, 125, 150, 180 and 250 feet. None of these spaces are at all too large for the area commonly left round a tomb of importance, and the family property of this area would extend to any depth. Each cemetery was complete in itself, but sometimes connected with others by subterranean roads.
These tombs were protected by special laws, and the area in which the tomb stood was included with it. The area was often of considerable extent, and was intended for the burial-place of succeeding generations of the family to whom it belonged. The tombs of the period of the early empire were by no means exclusively for the columbaria for cinerary urns. The instances in which there are both places for bodies and urns are perhaps more numerous than those for urns only. The fine sarcophagi now found in museums, or applied to all sorts of uses, as water-troughs, vases for flowers, and various other purposes, were all originally in tombs, and generally in tombs in which there were also columbaria for cinerary urns. Some Pagan tombs on the Via Latina have catacombs for the interment of bodies under them, and often bodies were put in them.
The custom of burning the bodies was never universal, and lasted only for a certain period; the custom of burying bodies came in again soon after the Christian era, and probably was influenced by the strong feeling which sprung up among the Christians on this subject. The sumptuous painted chambers in the upper part of the tombs of the first and second centuries on the Via Latina were evidently imitated by the poor in the catacombs in the fourth and fifth centuries and later; but there is no evidence of any Scriptural or religious subjects for paintings before the time of Constantine. The character of the paintings is almost universally later, and the few that are early are not Christian nor Scriptural.
INSIDE VIEW OF CATACOMBS.[ToList]