Pagan and Christian Rome

by Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani

In the persecution of Diocletian two brothers, Simplicius and Faustinus, were tortured and put to death for their faith, and their bodies were thrown into the Tiber from the bridge of Æmilius Lepidus. The stream carried them to a considerable distance, and their young sister Beatrix, who was anxiously watching the banks of the river for the recovery of their dear remains, discovered them lying in the shallows of la Magliana, near the grove of the Arvales. She buried them in a small Christian cemetery which a certain Generosa had excavated close by, under the boundary line of the grove itself. Beatrix, left alone in the world, found shelter in the house of one of the Lucinas; but the persecutors, to whom her pious action had evidently been reported, discovered her retreat, and killed her by suffocation, seven months after the execution of Simplicius and Faustinus. Lucina laid her to rest in the same cemetery of Generosa, by the side of her brothers. This touching story is related in contemporary documents.

Sancta Viatrix.

Pope Damasus, who in his younger days had been notary and stenographer of the church of Rome, and was acquainted with every detail of the last persecution, raised a small oratory to the memory of the three martyrs, and sanctified the ground which for eleven centuries had been the seat of the worship of the Dea Dia. The chapel lasted until the pontificate of Leo II., when it became evident that the only way of saving the remains of Beatrix, Simplicius, and Faustinus from profanation and robbery, was to remove them from a place so conspicuous for many miles around, and directly in the path of pirates and invaders from the sea, and to place them under the protection of the city walls. The translation took place in 682; the bodies were removed to the church of Santa Biviana, or the Bibiana, on the Esquiline, and placed in a sarcophagus, with the record: "Here lie in peace Simplicius and Faustinus, martyrs, drowned in the Tiber and buried in the cemetery of Generosa, above the landing-place called ad Sextum Philippi." Sarcophagus and inscription are still in existence. The discovery of the oratory of Pope Damasus and the cemetery of Generosa took place, as already stated, in the spring of 1867, when a fragment of the architrave of the altar was found in front of the apse, inscribed with the names, ······ STINO · VIATRICI, engraved in the best Damasian calligraphy. The spelling of the second name deserves attention, because it is certainly intentional, as Damasus and his engraver Furius Dionysius Philocalus are distinguished for absolute epigraphic correctness. Viatrix, the feminine of Viator, is altogether different from Beatrix, and has its own Christian meaning, as an allusion to the eventful journey of human life. Must we take the word Beatrix as a new form, more or less connected with the adjective beatus, or as a corruption of the genuine name? No doubt it is a corruption, as the oldest martyrologies and liturgies have the genuine spelling. The substitution of the B instead of the V took place in the eighth or ninth century, and appears for the first time in the Codex of Berne. The grammarian who wrote it was evidently of the opinion that Viatrix was not the right spelling; and so the true and beautiful name of the sister of Faustinas and Simplicius became corrupted.

The accompanying illustration represents the portrait of Viatrix discovered in the Catacomb of Generosa in the spring of 1868.

The Cemetery of Domitilla. The farm of Torre Marancia, at the crossing of the Via Ardeatina and the Via delle Sette Chiese, is familiar to archæologists on account of the successful excavations which the duchess of Chablais made there in the spring of the years 1817 and 1822. Bartolomeo Borghesi, who first visited them in April, 1817, describes the remains of a noble villa of the first century, with mosaic pavements, fountains, statuary, candelabra, and frescos. The pictures of Pasiphae, Canace, Phædra, Myrrha, and Scylla, which are now in the Cabinet of the Aldobrandini Marriage, in the Vatican Library, were discovered in one of the bedrooms of the villa. Other works of art, now exhibited in the third compartment of the Galleria dei Candelabri, were found in the peristyle. An exact description of these discoveries, with maps and illustrations, is given by Marchese Biondi in a volume called "Monumenti Amaranziani," published in Rome in 1825.

The Villa Amaranthiana, from which the modern name of Torre Marancia is derived, belonged to two ladies, one of imperial descent, Flavia Domitilla, a relative of Domitian and Titus, the other of patrician birth, Munatia Procula, the daughter of Marcus. Domitilla's name appears twice in documents attesting her ownership of the ground; the first is the grant of a sepulchral area, measuring thirty-five feet by forty, to Sergius Cornelius Julianus ex indulgentia Flaviæ Domitillæ; the other mentions the construction of another tomb, Flaviæ Domitillæ divi Vespasiani neptis beneficio.[158] These concessions refer to burial-plots above ground, on the Via Ardeatina. Much more important was the permission given by Domitilla for the excavation of a catacomb in the service of the Church, which had just been established in Rome by the apostles. The catacomb consisted originally of two sections; one for the use of those members of the imperial Flavian family who had been converted to the gospel, and one for common use. I have already given a brief account of the first (see [p. 10]). The entrance to the crypts was built in a conspicuous place, under the safeguard of the law which guaranteed the inviolability of private tombs. The place can still be visited. On each side of the entrance are apartments for the celebration of anniversary banquets, the αγαπαι or love-feasts of the early Church. Those on the left are decorated in the so-called Pompeian style, with birds and festoons on a red ground. Here is the well, the drinking-fountain, the washing-trough, and the wardrobe. On the opposite side is the schola, or banqueting-room, with benches on three sides. There is no doubt that the builders and owners of these crypts were Christians; because the graves within were arranged for the interment of bodies, not for cremation; that is, for sarcophagi and coffins, not for cinerary urns; and, as I stated at the beginning of the previous chapter, the pagans of the first century, and of the first half of the second, were never interred. The Domitilla after whom the catacombs were named was a niece of Vespasian, Divi Vespasiani neptis. The reader will remember that in chapter i. I quoted Xiphilinus as saying that in the year 95 some members of the imperial family were condemned by Domitian on the charge of atheism, together with other leading personages, who had adopted "the customs and persuasion of the Jews,"—an expression which means the Christian faith. Among those condemned he mentions Clemens and Domitilla, whose genealogy is still subject to some uncertainty.

A tombstone discovered in 1741, by Marangoni, in these very catacombs, mentions two names, Flavius Sabinus and Flavia Titiana. They are descendants, perhaps grandchildren, of Flavius Sabinus, the brother of Vespasian. Sabinus was prefect of Rome during the persecution of Nero; but Tacitus[159] describes him as a gentle man, who hated violence (mitem virum abhorrentem a sanguine et cædibus). His second son, Titus Flavius Clemens, consul a. d. 82, was executed in 95 on account of his Christian faith; and Flavia Domitilla, his daughter-in-law, was banished for the same cause to the island Pandataria. There is a record of the banishment of another Flavia Domitilla to the island of Pontia; but her genealogy and relationship with the former have not been yet clearly established. Some writers, however, have identified her with the niece of Vespasian, mentioned in the inscription referred to above, as owner of the villa of Torre Marancia and founder of the catacombs. The small island, where she spent many years in solitary confinement, is described by S. Jerome as one of the leading places of pilgrimage in the fourth century of our era.

The "Acta Martyrum" state that Flavia Domitilla, niece of Flavius Clemens, was buried at Terracina, with her attendants, Theodora and Euphrosyne; and that her body-servants, or cubicularii, Nereus and Achilleus, who were executed for the same reason, were laid to rest in the crypts of the Villa Amaranthiana, half a mile from Rome, near the tomb of Petronilla, the so-called daughter of S. Peter. In the early itineraries the place is also indicated as the "cemetery of Domitilla, Nereus, and Achilleus, near Santa Petronilla." Bosio discovered it towards the end of the sixteenth century, and mistook it for the Cemetery of Callixtus. The discoveries made in 1873 leave no doubt as to its identification with the famous burial-place of the Flavians; they brought to light, not a crypt of ordinary dimensions, but a basilica equal in size to the one dedicated to S. Lorenzo by Constantine.