merit of the poetry of St. Damasus; but the sense of the lines may be given as follows: Here dwelt the Saints aforetime, as thou must know, whosoever thou art that seekest the names of Peter and Paul. It was the East— we gladly admit it-that sent forth these disciples, who by the merit of their blood followed Christ to the stars and sought the depths of heaven and the realms of the pious: but Rome earned the right to claim them as her citizens by a higher title. Let Damasus recount your glories, ye new stars.

The poem is coloured by the great debate between East and West in which Damasus played a leading rôle as the protagonist of Papal claims; but we may dismiss at once the naïve legend, best known from a letter of St Gregory the Great to the Empress Constantina, that Jewish Christians endeavoured to carry off the bodies of the Apostles to Palestine at the time of their martyrdom and were defeated in open fight! It clearly arose from a quaint misunderstanding of St Damasus' text. It is not so easy to be sure of the meaning of habitasse, and it has been much disputed whether it refers to the abode of the Apostles when alive or to their restingplace in death, a use which can be paralleled from St Damasus' own poems. Here we must seek light from the excavations carried on in recent years.

Behind the apse of the basilica of S. Sebastiano is a roughly semicircular crypt, to which the name Platonia (which arises from a misspelling and misunderstanding of the platoma of the 'Liber Pontificalis ') has been given. It is surrounded by arched niches adorned with paintings of which but faint traces remain, perhaps of the fourth century, and decorative stucco work which may be considerably earlier. In the centres, beneath the altar, is a structure in the form of a bisomus or double grave with a barrel vault, the sides of which are decorated in fresco with figures of the Apostles, while on one of the lunettes is represented the so-called traditio legis, in which Our Lord hands the Roll of the Law to a youthful figure, while a bearded figure stands by-a remarkable variant of the familiar scene in which St Peter-the New Moses-receives the roll in the presence of St Paul. Excavations undertaken in 1892-93 brought to light the fragments of a monumental inscription in honour of St

Quirinus running round the crypt; and it was at once recognised that this was the memorial referred to in the 'Salzburg Itinerary,' a guide-book for pilgrims, containing an entry which may be thus translated:

'Afterwards you will come by the Appian Way to St Sebastian the Martyr, whose body lies at a lower level, and there are the tombs of the Apostles Peter and Paul in which they rested forty years. And in the western part of the church you will descend by a stair to the place where St Cyrinus, Pope and martyr, reposes.'

But what was to be said of the double tomb? Was this a memorial of the temporary resting-place of the Apostles ?

The excavations of recent years have brought no final solution of the problem, but they have led to startling discoveries. In 1909 there was found in an apsidal chamber adjacent to the Platonia,' the inscription-not earlier in date than the fifth century-DOMVS PETRI; but it was pointed out that the 'house' might well be a tomb, as in the expression domus martyris Hippolyti found in an epitaph composed after the manner of St Damasus. At length in 1915 a determined effort to discover the site of the Apostolic memorial was made under the auspices of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology by Dr Paul Styger, who commenced excavations in the interior of the Church of S. Sebastiano, which were continued in the following year by the Italian Government, and carried on with interruptions until the end of 1919, with the cooperation of Orazio Marucchi, acting for the Pontifical Commission.

The results were remarkable. It appeared that the basilica was built in part on the edge of a tufa cliff, roughly semicircular in outline, which bordered a depression of about eight metres in depth. Hence was evidently derived the name Catacumba, a popular Latinisation of the Greek Karà Kúμẞaç, 'in the hollows.' On the brow of the cliff stood a row of pagan columbaria, dating from the last quarter of the first century A.D. in one of them a slave of the Emperor Vespasian had been buried. Immediately to the north of these are the remains of what is apparently a private residence or villa, built about A.D. 120; and it is possible that the 'Platonia,'

with its paved court-yard, originally formed part of this, as the level is almost the same (see Fig. below). At the foot of the cliff was a level space upon which opened three tombs, each with several chambers, cut in the face of the rock. The first two were originally designed as columbaria, perhaps about A.D. 100, but changed hands in the course of the second century and were converted into burial-vaults. The second came into the possession of a burial-club whose members were known as Innocentii, and the presence of the scratched inscription ITXOYC, which combines the symbols of the fish and the cross, leaves no doubt that some at least of the associates were Christians. Signor Mancini, indeed, sees 'something indefinitely Christian' in the title of the guild, and suggests that Innocentiorum may be the genitive of the comparative Innocentior (which Marucchi more positively asserts). But this is wrong. Innocentius is already known from an inscrip

tion found at Milan as a signum, that is, a group-name borne in addition to their personal names by the members of an association, which very often had a common burialplace. The period at which the tomb which we are describing was used by the Innocentii is determined by the fact that their name is coupled with those of the Emperors Balbinus and Pupienius ‡ (A.D. 238) as well as that of Gordian (A.D. 238-244); and that they belonged to the Imperial household may possibly be inferred from

* Dessau, 'Inscriptiones Latina Selectæ,' 6730.

†There are many examples both in pagan and Christian burial-grounds. It is a curious fact that the signum is always masculine in grammatical gender, even when applied to a woman.

This, and not Pupienus, is doubtless the correct spelling.

the pagan epitaph of Elpisius, 'the slave of Augustus,' found in the tomb. It is unfortunate that the massive foundation-wall of the basilica bars the way to the complete excavation of this region; but definitely Christian

epitaphs have come to light on the face of the rock adjacent to the tomb-chambers.

It is thus established that shortly before A.D. 250

Christians and pagans were buried side by side ad catacumbas; but about the middle of the third century a great change took place. The 'villa' was pulled down, the whole of the depression was filled up with earth, and on the level summit, abutting on the rear wall of the range of columbaria, were built a large open court or atrium with a colonnade, and a partly roofed chamber (see plan, p. 402) with seats running round three of its sides and a fountain. On its walls, which were decorated with fresco with one of the representations of a garden with flowers and animals so common in

Roman villas, are two hundred or more inscriptions scratched in the plaster, written both in Latin and Greek, which contain invocations of the Apostles Peter and Paul, e.g. PAULE ED PETRE PETITE PRO VICTORE,* and frequently refer to the rite of refrigerium; for example, PETRO ET PAULO TOMIVS COELIVS REFRIGERVM FECI or AT PAULO ET PET[ro] (i.e. ad Paulum et Petrum) REFRIGERAVI[Mus]. The practice of partaking of 'refreshment,' i.e. wine, at the graves is well known to us owing to the abuses to which it led and the denunciations of the great Churchmen of the fourth century. It was combated by St Ambrose, St Zeno, St Paulinus of Nola, and above all by St Augustine, who speaks of cometeriis ebrietates et luxuriosa convivia with reference to the

* It should be noted that the order of names varies (as is shown in the examples cited above), so that no special pre-eminence is assigned to St Peter. The above diagram reproduces a section of the wall.