Sectional View of Gallery and Chambers, Showing Light and air Shaft
As they advanced, a faint light in the distance seemed to penetrate the gloom. It grew brighter as they approached, and attracted by the sound of the footsteps, a venerable figure emerged from a doorway and stood in the flood of light which poured down from an opening in the vaulted roof, which extended to the bright free air above. Almost like an apparition from the other world, in the strong, Rembrandt-like illumination in which he stood, looked the venerable Primitius, clothed in white, with silvery hair and flowing beard, and high, bare brow. As Isidorus glanced up the shaft, he saw the blue sky shining far above, and the waving of the long grass that fringed the opening for light and air. This construction—a very frequent one in the Catacombs—is shown in sectional view on the previous page. On each side of the corridor was a chamber about twelve feet square, also lit up by this shaft, which, plastered with white stucco, reflected the light into every part.
"Welcome, my son," said the venerable presbyter, as he sat down on a bench hewn out of the dry pummice-like rock "Welcome to these abodes of death; may they prove to thee the birthplace to eternal life;" and he laid his hand benignantly on the head of the young man, whom he had motioned to a seat beside him.
"Sire," said the youth, all the nobler feelings of his nature deeply moved, "I wish above all things to sit at your feet and to learn the lessons of wisdom which you are so well able to impart But are these seemly surroundings for a man of your years and condition?—this rocky vault, this utter loneliness, and these crumbling relics of mortality?" and he shuddered as he glanced at the shattered sepulchral slabs, which revealed the remains of what was once man in his strength, woman in her beauty, or a sweet child in its innocence and glee.
"Why not, my son? soon I must lie down with them and be at rest. The thought has no terrors to my soul I know no loneliness, and through the care of kind friends my wants are all supplied. But your young blood and sensitive imagination, I perceive, shrink from these things to which, by long use, I have become accustomed. Let us go into the adjoining chamber, which you will find more cheerful, and, I trust, not less instructive."
Early Christian Sculpture—Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, Rome.
Ceiling Painting From Catacomb Of St. Calixtus, Rome.