[2] These great roads for miles are lined with the sepulchral monuments of Rome’s mighty dead, majestic even in decay. But only the wealthy could be entombed in those stately mausolea, or be wrapped in those “marble cerements.” For the mass of the population columbaria were provided, in whose narrow niches, like the compartments of a dove-cote—whence the name—the terra cotta urns containing their ashes were placed, sometimes to the number of six thousand in a single columbarium. They also contain sometimes the urns of the great.
[3] Ariosto, Orlando Furioso.
[4] Aringhi, in the elegant Latin ode prefixed to his great work, exclaims, “Sub Roma Romam quærito”—Beneath Rome I seek the true Rome.
[5] Even so accurate and philosophical a writer as the late Professor Silliman reports on their authority that the Catacombs extend twenty miles, to the port of Ostia, in one direction, and to Albano, twelve miles, in another. Visit to Europe, vol. i, p. 329. This is impossible, as will be shown, on account of the undulation of the ground, and the limited area of the volcanic tufa in which alone they can be excavated. The number of distinct Catacombs has also been magnified to sixty; and Father Marchi estimated the aggregate length of passages to be nine hundred miles.
Primas namque fores summo tenus intrat hiatu
Illustratque dies limina vestibuli.—Peristephanon, ii.
[10] In the single crypt of St. Lucina, one hundred feet by one hundred and eighty, De Rossi counted over seven hundred loculi, and estimated that nearly twice as many were destroyed, giving a total of two thousand graves in this area. The same space, with our mode of interment, would not accommodate over half the number, even though placed as close together as possible, without any room for passages.