THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
about twenty feet), the excavation continued horizontally in a main gallery and others roughly parallel with it, connected by cross passages into a regular network. The dead were interred usually in the walls, less often in the floor of the passages. Here and there, at the side, end, or intersection of passages, doors were cut which led to one or more chambers (cubicula). The shape of these was as a rule nearly rectangular, less often polygonal, semicircular, or circular; the roof nearly or quite flat or cross-vaulted in the rectangular ones, and of the nature of a cupola in the polygonal or circular. The later catacombs usually have smaller chambers, sometimes not more than about four square yards in extent.
As to the form of the tombs, the loculus here is the most frequent, larger than necessary in the oldest cases, but later closely following the shape of the body. Sometimes they were dug in deep enough to afford room for several bodies. Above the arcosolia there was usually a nearly or quite semicircular arch. If two bodies were to be buried together in these, a loculus was cut at the back of the hollowed-out space, or sometimes the arch was carried further back and two spaces hollowed out side by side; or again loculi were cut, especially for children, in the lunette of the arch. A combination of the loculus and the arcosolium is the so-called loculus a mensa or " table-tomb." The grave dug in the floor is found less often than in southern Italy and Sicily, and most of those which exist probably date from a time when the walls were already full. Sarcophagi were also used, made of marble in most cases; these were placed mostly in the cubicula and galleries, but sometimes on the side of the stairs. When the wall-space of a catacomb was filled, the fossores gained more room by digging the floor of the passages deeper. When this had gone so far as to threaten the stability of the walls, a second shaft or gallery was begun at a downward angle from the first, and the whole process repeated. Thus in the catacombs of St. Calixtus and St. Domitilla five different levels are found, the lowest more than eighty feet beneath the surface. An approximate conception of the vast extent of the Roman catacombs may be gained from the calculations of Michele Stefano de Rossi and of Marchi. The former estimated the total length of the passages at 550 miles, the latter at 750. The number of bodies buried there is variously given as from three and a half to six millions.
The catacombs of the towns around Rome and in Etruria resemble the Roman, it is true, more than the Sicilian; but there are striking differences, as in the typical ones of Bolsena, Chiusi, and Soriano, which, when examined in detail, lead to the conclusion that the influence of the ancient Etruscan burial-customs had much to do with them. It extended, in fact, very nearly to the gates of Rome, and some of its characteristics are found in the catacombs of Riynaiio and at the twentieth milestone on the Via Flaminia.
2. Cemeteries Above Ground.— a. Plan and Construction: The simplest form of cemeteries in the open air is found in Upper Egypt, where, in order
to save the soil available for agriculture and at the
same time to protect the graves from inundation,
the Christians laid their dead to rest
1. In the on the border of the desert, in large Open Air. cemeteries used by a considerable district. They seldom used wooden coffins, but tied the corpse, mummified with asphalt or natron, to a sycamore board, then wrapped cloths around it and buried it in an ordinary grave.
The discovery in 1873 of a cemetery dating from the fourth and fifth centuries at Portogruaro, the ancient Julia Concordia, gives an accurate idea of other vanished burying-grounds, especially in northern Italy. Several hundred sarcophagi of Istrian limestone rest either directly on the ground or on large square bases. They are carved out of a single block of stone, usually without anything on their sides except inscriptions, and covered with heavy roof-shaped covers. The cemeteries of Aries, Vienne, and Treves were similarly laid out. At Aries five layers of graves ultimately existed, one above another, separated only by a layer of earth — the lowest heathen, the upper ones Christian. Much the same was the arrangement at Vienne and at Treves, except that in the latter there are both sarcophagi and graves lined with masonry or brick and covered with slabs of brick, limestone, or sandstone. Here again the lowest layer contains a number of pagan inscriptions and sarcophagi, the most probable inference being that the Christians in Gaul and the Rhine country occupied former pagan burial-places. The area of northern Africa attained a certain celebrity even during the epoch of persecution, and were carefully investigated by French scholars during the nineteenth century. One at Lambese, about sixty-five by fifty-three yards in extent, was surrounded by a slight wall, and apparently contained nothing but ordinary graves. Elsewhere, in addition to these, small vaulted structures were erected over the bodies, as at Cssarea (modern Cherchel) in Mauretania. Two important openair cemeteries existed at Tipasa; in the center of one was a basilica erected over the body of the martyr Salsa.
The word "mausoleum," now usually restricted to large and imposing monuments, was used in ancient times for less important tombs, and memoria is also frequently employed. These small memorial buildings have mostly disappeared. They must have been particularly numerous in regions where the small family burial-place was the rule, and where the custom of Buildings. erectmg them had been prevalent in pre-Christian times. Syria and Mesopotamia have supplied a considerable proportion of them, and Asia Minor probably had as many; but they existed also in countries where the common burying-ground was the rule. Some stood among graves in the open air, as above the Catacomb of St. Calixtus in Rome; others near or attached to churches, as at Tipasa and two that adjoined the old St. Peter's in Rome; others, again, were isolated, like the tomb of Galla Placidia and that of Theodoric at Ravenna.
The frequency of nearly or quite rectangular
2. Memorial