Pagan and Christian Rome

by Rodolfo Amedeo Lanciani

Surgeon's instruments; relief on a tombstone.

Another inscription, discovered in 1864, deserves attention on account of the instruments which are engraved upon it. It is a fragment from the tomb of a dentist named Victorinus, or Celerinus, with the representation of the instruments he used in extracting teeth. Such representations are by no means rare on gravestones. The other two specimens reproduced here are also from the catacombs. Alexander was a dentist; the unknown owner of the other slab was a general surgeon, yet the symbol of dentistry occupies the prominent place in his display of tools. In my experience of Roman or Latin excavations, in which thousands of tombs have been brought to light, I have hardly ever met with a skull the teeth of which showed symptoms of decay, or evidence of having been operated upon by a professional hand. Specimens of filling are even more rare than those of gold plating. Of this latter process we have now a beautiful sample in a skull discovered in the excavations of Faleria, and exhibited in the Faliscan Museum at the Villa Giulia, outside the Porta del Popolo. The gold socket or plating of three molar teeth is still in excellent condition. And here I may recall the ancient law, mentioned by Cicero (De Leg. ii. 24), which made it illegal to bury a body with gold, except such as had been used in fastening the teeth.

The Cemetery ad Duas Lauros (of SS. Peter and Marcellinus).[170] To the left of the second milestone of the Via Labicana there was an imperial villa, named ad Duas Lauros (the two laurels), where the empress Helena was buried by Constantine, and Valentinian III. was murdered when playing with other youths, in 455. Adjoining the tomb of the empress, which was described in chapter iv., pp. 197 sq., were two cemeteries,—one above ground, belonging to the "Equites Singulares," or body guards; the other, below. The latter was the largest of the Via Labicana, and was known in early Church annals under the same name as the imperial villa. In 1880-82 a third and deeper network of galleries was excavated for the sake of extracting the pozzolana, the beds of which support the tufa and the catacombs excavated in it. Some damage was done to the tombs, but the Italian proverb Non tutto il male viene per nuocere proved true once more on this occasion. The excavation of the catacombs, which is generally a difficult and costly work, and sometimes impossible, when the owner of the ground above them objects to this form of trespassing on his estate, here became an easy matter, the earth being simply thrown into the sandpits from the catacombs above. The discoveries made on this occasion, added to the descriptions and drawings left by former explorers, give us a thorough knowledge of these labyrinths. The impression which they make at first is rather poor; but this is due chiefly to the ravages committed by early explorers.

The inscriptions are few and not particularly interesting, excepting one, which was discovered in 1873, and is written in excellent style: "Aurelius Theophilus, a citizen of Carrhæ, a man of pure mind and great innocence, at the age of twenty-three has rendered his soul to God, his body to the earth." His native city, the Haran, or Charan of the Bible, where Abraham lived, is known in Church annals as one of the strongholds of paganism in Mesopotamia. When Julian the Apostate led the Roman armies against the Persians, in 362, he halted for some time at Carrhæ, to perform impious and cruel sacrifices in the sanctuary of Luno. A description of the crime is given by Theodoretus in Book III. ch. xxvi. At that time Carrhæ, in spite of its devotion to the old religion, had a bishop named Vitus, who died in 381, and was succeeded by Protogenes. According to Theodoretus, he succeeded in "cultivating that wild field which had been covered with idolatrous thorns." Aurelius Theophilus was probably a contemporary of these events, as the inscription on his tombstone belongs undoubtedly to the end of the fourth century. There are also a few inscriptions scratched on plaster, by pilgrims who visited the three historical crypts of Marcellinus and Peter, Gorgonius, and Tiburtius. To save devout visitors the trouble and danger of crossing the labyrinths, each of these crypts was made accessible directly from the ground above by means of a staircase. The graffiti are found mostly on the sides or at the foot of these staircases, or else on the door-posts of the crypts themselves.

The historical and religious associations of this catacomb are summed up and illustrated in a beautiful picture representing the Saviour with S. Paul on his right and S. Peter on his left: and, on a line below, the four martyrs who were buried in the cemetery, Gorgonius, Peter, Marcellinus, and Tiburtius, pointing with their right hands to the Divine Lamb on the mountain. The heads of the two apostles are particularly fine, and the shape of their beards most characteristic. This well-known fresco, preserved in cubiculum no. 25 of Bosio's plan, was discovered in 1851 by de Rossi, in a curious manner. Having obtained from padre Marchi permission to carry the excavations towards the cubiculum, and finding that the work proceeded too slowly for his impatience, he crept on his hands and feet for fifty yards along the narrow gap between the ceiling of the galleries and the earth with which they were filled, and reached the cubiculum nearly suffocated. Here, by means of a skylight which was not obstructed by rubbish, he found that the place was used as a deposit for carrion, as the half-putrefied carcass of a bull was lying under the famous fresco.

Many cubiculi were painted by one artist, whose power of invention was rather restricted. He has but two subjects: the story of Jonah, and the Symbolic Supper. Of this last there are four representations, all reproduced from the same pattern, of which I give an example. A family consisting of father, mother, and children, are sitting around a table, upon which the ιχθυς or fish is served; the banquet is presided over by two mystic figures, Irene or Peace on the left, Agape or Love on the right. The head of the family addresses Peace with these words: "Irene, da calda!" and Love, "Agape, misce mi!" The last words are easily understood: "Give me to drink," the verb mescere being still used in the same sense in Tuscany, where a wine-shop is sometimes called a mescita di vino. The meaning of the word calda is not certain. There is no doubt, as Bötticher says, that the ancients had something to correspond to our tea: but the calda seems to have been more than an infusion; apparently it was a mixture of hot water, wine, and drugs, that is, a sort of punch, which was drunk mostly in winter.[171] The names written in charcoal above the principal inscriptions in this illustration are those of Pomponio Leto and his academicians.[172]

The Symbolic Supper.