An Arcosolium.
“True, Diogenes; but a brave officer prefers the plain soldier’s grave, on the field of battle, to the carved sarcophagus on the Via Appia. But are such scenes as you describe common, in times of persecution?”
“By no means uncommon, my good young master. I am sure a pious youth like you must have visited, on his anniversary, the tomb of Restitutus in the cemetery of Hermes.”
“Indeed I have, and often have I been almost jealous of his early martyrdom. Did you bury him?”
“Yes; and his parents had a beautiful tomb made, the arcosolium of his crypt.[76] My father and I made it of six slabs of marble, hastily collected, and I engraved the inscription now beside it. I think I carved better than Majus there,” added the old man, now quite cheerful.
“That is not saying much for yourself, father,” rejoined his son, no less smiling; “but here is the copy of the inscription which you wrote,” he added, drawing out a parchment from a number of sheets.
“I remember it perfectly,” said Pancratius, glancing over it, and reading it as follows, correcting the errors in orthography, but not those in grammar, as he read:
AELIO FABIO RESTVTO
FILIO PIISIMO PARI N
TES FECERVNT QVIVI
XITY ANNI. S XVIII MENS
VII INIRENE.
“To Ælius Fabius Restitutus, their most pious son, his parents erected (this tomb). Who lived eighteen years and seven months. In peace.”