is also mentioned with extreme definiteness, as in the following:[687] SILVANA NICIATI MARITO BENE MERENTI CUM QVO VIXIT ANNIS TRIBVS MANSIBVS DVABVS HORIS UNDECIM,—“Silvana to her well-deserving husband Niciatis, with whom she lived three years, two months, eleven hours.”
The day of the month is generally indicated in the ordinary way with reference to the divisions of Calends, Nones, and Ides.[688] The days of the week are mentioned by their usual classical names, as Dies Solis, Sunday; Dies Lunæ, Monday; Dies Martis, Tuesday; Dies Mercurii, Wednesday; Dies Jovis, Thursday; Dies Veneris, Friday; and Dies Saturni, Saturday. Sometimes, however, the first and last days of the week are indicated by the Christian designations Dies Dominica, the day of the Lord, and Dies Sabbati, the day of rest.
The Christian inscriptions also habitually ignore all mention of the birth-place or country of the deceased, as if in recognition that the Christian’s true country is beyond the grave.[689] As if, also, in obedience to the injunction to forsake father and mother in order to follow after Christ, details of family or descent, which are so
conspicuous in some heathen inscriptions, almost never occur.
Mr. Burgon has briefly expressed the principal points of contrast between modern epitaphs and those of the early Christians, as follows: “They never mention the date of birth,[690] we seldom omit it. They constantly record the day of burial, we never. They seldom mention the year of death, we never omit it. We never allude to burial, they always. They frequently record the years of married life, we never. In theirs the survivors appear prominently, even by name, and are sometimes mentioned exclusively. With us the dead are always named, the living seldom.”[691]
There are among these inscriptions several examples of opisthographæ, as they are called,[692] that is, Christian epitaphs written on slabs that had originally borne one of pagan character. The latter are generally defaced or obliterated, filled with cement or turned to the wall, or placed upside down or sideways, so as to indicate their rejection by the Christian artist. Sometimes, however, they are still legible, but they have manifestly no connection with Christian sepulture whatever. Some are not funeral epitaphs at all, and some which are commemorate an entire family, though affixed to a single Christian grave. The appropriation of heathen monuments for the reception of Christian inscriptions will appear less strange when we reflect that the very temples of the gods have been the quarries from which many of the churches and palaces of later times were built.
Sometimes, as in the example given in [Fig. 59], the heathen formula of consecration to the “Divine Spirits”—D.
M., for Dis Manibus—is obliterated, and the sacred monogram gives the slab a Christian character. Occasionally, however, these letters appear in manifestly Christian inscriptions, in which case Fabretti and others have maintained that they were capable of the interpretation Deo Magno or Deo Maximo—“To the Supreme God.” With still less probability M. Rochette renders them Divis Martyribus—“To the divine martyrs,” for which expression no countenance is to be found in the entire range of the Catacombs. Both interpretations are entirely gratuitous suppositions, for which Christian epigraphy furnishes absolutely no warrant. It is more probable that they were careless or conventional imitations of a common heathen formula, which was occasionally adopted by the Christians without thought, or perhaps in ignorance of its meaning, just as they also imitated the winged genii and other classic accessories of pagan art in the ornamentation of the Catacombs. Dr. McCaul has suggested that the Roman mortuary sculptors probably kept sepulchral slabs on sale, as is often done now, with the common formulæ already engraved, which were purchased without regard to their appropriateness, and that in filling up the inscription the Christians sometimes neglected to obliterate the letters of pagan significance. Possibly, also, some lingering remnants of heathen superstition may sometimes be indicated by their use.
The letters BM., which frequently occur in these inscriptions, have been erroneously interpreted as standing for Beatus or Beata Martyr, for which there is no authority whatever. They unquestionably indicate the ever-recurring phrase, both in pagan and Christian epigraphy, Bene Merenti—“To the well-deserving,” or Bonæ Memoriæ—“Of happy memory.”
[ [666] It is eight hundred feet in extent, and contains about three thousand inscriptions.