There are comparatively few Catacombs of interest on the northwest bank of the Tiber, owing to the smaller population of that part of Rome in ancient times. We shall briefly enumerate the more important. On the Flaminian Way is the cemetery of St. Valentinus. On the Aurelian Way are those of Agatha, Pancratius, and Calepodius. The latter, the reputed burial place of Callixtus
and of many martyrs, is beneath the church dedicated to Pancratius—the English Pancras—and on the supposed scene of his sufferings. On the Via Portuensis, near the city, is the Catacomb of Pontianus, a patrician Roman of the third century. It is remarkable for the very perfect subterranean baptistery to be [hereafter described]. On the Ostian Way, near the basilica of S. Paolo fuori le Mura, is the ancient cemetery of Commodilla, or Lucina, in which tradition asserts that the body of the apostle Paul was laid after his martyrdom. It is in a very ruinous condition, most of the galleries being choked up and impassable; but here Boldetti found the two oldest extant inscriptions. On this road also is the Catacomb of St. Zeno, in which were said to be buried twelve thousand Christians employed in building the Baths of Diocletian.
On the Vatican Hill, now crowned with the grandest temple in Christendom, is said to have existed the oldest Christian cemetery of Rome. Tradition asserts that the remains of St. Peter were interred on this spot, on the site of an ancient temple of Apollo, and near the alleged scene of the apostle’s martyrdom in the circus of Nero, and that hither they were restored after their removal to the crypt of Sebastian.[322] Here also ancient ecclesiastical documents record the burial of ten of the Roman bishops of the first and second centuries;[323] after which, we have seen, the Catacomb of Callixtus became their
chief place of burial. The series of papal interments in this place again begins with that of Leo the Great, A. D. 461. In the dim crypts beneath the high altar of St. Peter’s are shown the tombs of most of his successors, many of them far removed in life and character from the lowly Galilean fisherman.[324]
We cannot better conclude this necessarily imperfect survey of these ancient Christian cemeteries than by quoting the following passage, though characterized by a somewhat fervid rhetoric, from “Les Trois Romes” of the Abbé Gaume: “Here is the glorious monument,” he exclaims, “of the faith and charity of our forefathers! This work of giants was completed by a community of poor men, destitute of resources, without talent as without fortune, incessantly persecuted and frequently decimated. What, then, was the secret of their power? This is the problem suggested by the sight of the Catacombs in general, and of the Catacombs on the Appian Way in particular. The solution is in one word—Faith. This power—unknown to the ancient world,
and too little recognized in the modern world—this faith, was the lever by which the early Christians could remove mountains, and turn and change the universe. With one hand they constructed in the bowels of the earth a city more astonishing than Babylon or the Rome of the Cæsars; and with the other, seizing on the pagan world in the abyss of degradation into which it was plunged, they raised it to the virtue of angels, and suspended it to the cross.”
[291] This book, so often referred to, has been ascribed to Damasus but much of it is unquestionably of much later origin. While much of its information is valuable, more of it is quite unauthentic.
“Qua limite noto
Appia longarum teritur Regina Viarum.”—Stat. Syl., II, 2.
[293] Often mere vulgar wealth exhibited its ostentation even in death by the magnitude and magnificence of these tombs designed to perpetuate the memory of their occupants forever. But, as if to rebuke that posthumous pride, they are now mere crumbling ruins, often devoted to ignoble uses, the very names of whose tenants are forgotten. Many of them, during the stormy period of the Middle Ages, were occupied as fortresses. More recently that of Augustus, on the Campus Martius, was used as an arena for bull-fights, and as a summer theatre, where Harlequin played his pranks upon an emperor’s grave. Some of the tombs have been converted into stables, pig-styes, or charcoal cellars. The cinerary urn of Agrippina, wife of Germanicus, was long used as a measure for corn. In many a vignarolo’s hovel in the Campagna swine may be seen eating out of sculptured sarcophagi, and in the imperial halls where banqueted the masters of the world they hold their unclean revels. “Expende Hannibalem,” says the Roman satirist, “quot libras in duce summo invenies?”