Scott compares him to a prodigal who strips an aged parent of the ornaments of her youth in order to decorate a flaunting paramour. But New Rome shared the decline of the mother city, as a graft taken from an old tree partakes of the decay of the parent stem. As the ancient liberties died out, the gorgeous but degrading despotisms of the East usurped their place. The emperors assumed the style and titles of gods. The most unmanly adulation was at length lavished on the slave or herdsman elevated by capricious fortune to the throne of the world. At the time of the princess Anna Comnena this degradation seems to have reached its nadir. “Your Eternity” was the blasphemous epithet of the ephemeral puppet flaunting for a moment in the livery of infamy. “If I may speak and live,” whispered with bated breath the titled slave—Prospathaire, or Acolyte—who stood nearest the throne, shading his eyes with his hands, as if overpowered by the effulgence of the imperial countenance. The rude Latin Crusaders made short work of these lofty titles and this solemn etiquette.
[196] Roma Sotterranea, pp. 95, 96. During the lifetime of Constantine subterraneous sepultures seem to have been generally prevalent.
[197] These were called martyria or memoriæ. See Euseb., Vit. Const., iii, 48.
[198] The effects of this practice are apparent at S. Agnese fuori le Mura, erected over the tomb of the virgin martyr, and at San Lorenzo, where the galleries of the Catacomb of Cyriaca have been exposed and in part destroyed.
[199] In extending the Catacombs for the purpose of burial it was sometimes found easier to cut new galleries at a higher level, using the bed of earth in the old as the floor of the new. Sometimes the new galleries cut right through the loculi of the old.
[200] Chap. i, [p. 11]. To the same period belongs the description of the Catacombs by Jerome, quoted on [page 36]. Jerome at one time acted as secretary to Damasus.
[201] St. Ambrose, about this time, censures the constructing of costly sepulchres, as if they were to be the receptacle of the soul instead of the body.—Frustra struunt homines pretiosa sepulchra, quasi ea animæ, nec solius corporis, receptacula essent.—De Bono Mortis.
Basil urges men to prepare their funeral by works of piety while they live. “For what need have you,” he asks, “of a sumptuous monument, or a costly entombing?”—Hom. in Divites.
[202] Ignat., Ep. ad Rom., § iv. Euseb., Hist. Eccles., iii, 36.
[203] Acts of Martyrdom, § xii.