numbers the holy bodies you are seeking.
These tombs contain their remains, but their souls are in the
heavenly kingdom. Here you see the companions of Sixtus waving the
trophies of victory; there the bishops [of Rome] who shielded the
altar of Christ; the pontiff who saw the first years of peace
[Melchiades, A. D. 311-314]; the noble confessors who came to us from
Greece [Hippolytus, Hadrias, Maria, Neon, Paulina], and others. I
confess I wished most ardently to find my last resting place among
these saints, but I did not dare to disturb their remains."

Callixtus (218-223), the founder of the cemetery, does not lie in it.
He perished in a popular outbreak, having been thrown from the windows
of his house into the square, the site of which corresponds with the
modern Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere, the _area Callisti_ of the
fourth century. The Christians recovered his body, and buried it in
the nearest cemetery at hand,--that of Calepodius by the Via Aurelia
(between the Villa Pamfili and the Casaletto di Pio V.).

Urban, his successor (A. D. 223-230), opens the series in the
episcopal crypt of the Appian Way. His name, OYPBANOC E ([Greek:
pischopos]), has been read on a fragment of a marble sarcophagus. Then
follow Anteros (A. D. 235-236), Fabianus (A. D. 236-251), Lucius (A.
D. 252-253), and Eutychianos (A. D. 275-283),--in all, five bishops
out of the eleven who are known to have been buried in the crypt.

In looking at these humble graves we cannot help comparing them with
the great mausolea of contemporary emperors. A war was then raging
between the builders of the catacombs and the occupants of the
imperial palace. It was a duel between principles and power, between
moral and material strength. In 296, bishop Gaius, one of the last
victims of Diocletian's persecution, was interred by the side of his
predecessors in the crypt; in 313, only seventeen years later,
Sylvester took possession of the Lateran Palace, which had been
offered to him by Constantine. Such is the history of Rome; such are
the events which the study of her ruins recalls to our memory.

THE TOMB OF GREGORY THE GREAT. In the account of his life given in the
"Liber Pontificalis," i. 312, two things especially attract our
attention: the mission sent by him to the British Isles, and his
entombment in the "Paradise" of S. Peter's. Beginning with the latter,
we are told that he died on March 12 of the year 604, and that his
remains were bu