In the cemetery of St. Hippolytus Bosius read the following: REFRIGERI TIBI DOMNVS IPOLITVS refriger(et) tibi dom(i)nus Hippolytus—May the lord Hippolytus refresh
thee. Here is an invocation, in a fragmentary state, of St. Basilla: SERENVS FLENS DEPRECOR
IPSE deum…ET BEATA(m) BASILLA(m) VT VOBIS PRO M(eritis). Another appeal to St. Basilla may be seen in an epigraph now exposed in the Lateran museum. It is that of a bereaved father and mother who commend their departed daughter to the protection of the saint: Domina Basilla, commandamus tibi Crescentinus et Micina Filia(m) nostra(m) Crescen(tiam)—St. Basilla, we, Crescentius and Micina, recommend our daughter Crescentia to thee. Side by side with this is the epitaph of Aurelius Gemelli, a child of four years of age. It was written by his mother, of whose tender affection a more moving expression cannot be found than those four words: Commando Basilla Innocentia(m) Gemelli—Basilla, I recommend [to thee] Innocence Gemelli. She calls him not only innocent, but innocence itself. Since we have mentioned the above as a specimen of the tender affection of the Romans for their dead, and how they gave expression to it in their epitaphs, it may not be out of place to mention another, to be seen to-day in the hypogeum of the Church of St. Praxedes. It is in this form: Sancti Petre, Marcelline, suscipite vostrum alumnum!—Sts. Peter and Marcellinus, receive your pupil. The Chevalier de Rossi is of the opinion that this inscription belongs to the cemetery of St. Helen, on the Labican Way. As a sort of counterpart to it he gives another, of the same tenderness of tone, which he read in Carpentras: MARTER BAVDELI S PER PASSIONIS DIE DNO DVLCEM SVVM COMMENDAT ALMVNVM—Martyr Baudelius per passionis [suæ] die(m) Domino dulcem suum commendat alumnum—The martyr Baudelius, through the day of his passion, commends
his sweet pupil to the Lord. Hence we may conclude with the illustrious archæologist, whose erudition has borne us out so far, that the custom of burying the dead near the tombs of the martyrs, and of asking, as it were, their local protection for the dead, was universal in the first five or six centuries. He cites the only exception to this usage that has come within his extensive observation. It is a Greek epitaph, in which the three divine Persons, the archangels Michael and Gabriel, the prophets Jeremias and Henoch, the Blessed Virgin, and, finally, the sibyl are besought in behalf of the departed.
Thus far we have appealed almost exclusively to the testimony afforded us by inscriptions discovered in the Roman Catacombs. In conclusion we would transcribe entire two epitaphs which, though not Roman, are of the greatest importance in the matter we have been treating. One is the epitaph on the tomb of Cynesius, in the Church of St. Felix of Nola, the same of whom Paulinus wrote to St. Augustine, asking “whether it were efficacious to bury the dead near the tomb of the martyrs.” The inscription was probably dictated by Paulinus himself. We give it with the restorations:
ilium nuNC FELICIS HABET DOMVS ALMA BEATI
atque ita per loNGOS SVSCEPTVM POSSIDET ANNOS
patronus plACITO LAETATVR IN HOSPITE FELIX
sic protectVS ERIT IVVENIS SVB IVDICE CHRISTO
cum tuba terriBILIS SONITV CONCVSSERIT ORBEM