the Lateran palace after the victory of the Church,
was the last Pope buried near his predecessors _in coemeteris
Callisti in cripta_. Sylvester, his successor, was buried in a chapel
built expressly, above the crypt of Priscilla, Mark above the crypts
of Balbina, Julius above those of Calepodius, and so on. Still, the
desire of securing a grave in proximity to the shrine of a martyr was
so intense that the use of the catacombs lasted for a century longer,
although in diminishing proportions. When a gallery is discovered
which contains more graves than usual, and has been excavated even in
the narrow ledges of rock which separated the original loculi, or else
at the corners of the crossings, which were usually left untouched, as
protection against the caving-in of the earth, we may be sure we are
approaching a martyr's altar-tomb. Sometimes the paintings which
decorate a martyr's _cubiculum_ have been disfigured and their
inscriptions effaced by an overzealous devotee. The accompanying cut
shows the damage inflicted on a picture of the Good Shepherd in the
cubiculum of S. Januarius, in the Catacombs of Praetextatus, by an
unscrupulous disciple who wished to be buried as near as possible to
his patron-saint.

[Illustration: Cubiculum of Januarius.]

By the end of the fourth century burials in catacombs became rare, and
still more between 400 and 410. They were apparently given up
altogether after 410. The development of open-air cemeteries increased
in proportion, those of S. Lorenzo and S. Paolo fuori le Mura being
among the most popular. In 1863, when the entrance-gate to the modern
Camposanto adjoining S. Lorenzo was built, fifty tombs, mostly
unopened, were found in a space ninety feet long by forty feet wide.
Since that time five hundred tombstones have been gathered in the
neighborhood of that favorite church. As regards S. Paul's cemetery,
more than one thousand inscriptions, whole or in fragments, were found
in rebuilding the basilica and its portico, after the fire of
1823;[151] two hundred in the excavations of S. Valentine's basilica,
outside the Porta del Popolo. These last excavations are the only ones
illustrating a Christian cemetery which are left visible; but their
importance is limited. The cemeteries of Arles and Pola, alluded to by
Dante, have disappeared; and so has the magnificent one of the
officers and men employed in the Roman arsenal at Concordia
Sagittaria, which was discovered in 1873, near