r_, is
altogether different from _Beatrix_, and has its own Christian
meaning, as an allusion to the eventful journey of human life. Must we
take the word _Beatrix_ as a new form, more or less connected with the
adjective _beatus_, or as a corruption of the genuine name? No doubt
it is a corruption, as the oldest martyrologies and liturgies have the
genuine spelling. The substitution of the B instead of the V took
place in the eighth or ninth century, and appears for the first time
in the Codex of Berne. The grammarian who wrote it was evidently of
the opinion that _Viatrix_ was not the right spelling; and so the true
and beautiful name of the sister of Faustinas and Simplicius became
corrupted.

[Illustration: Sancta Viatrix.]

The accompanying illustration represents the portrait of Viatrix
discovered in the Catacomb of Generosa in the spring of 1868.

THE CEMETERY OF DOMITILLA. The farm of Torre Marancia, at the crossing
of the Via Ardeatina and the Via delle Sette Chiese, is familiar to
archaeologists on account of the successful excavations which the
duchess of Chablais made there in the spring of the years 1817 and
1822. Bartolomeo Borghesi, who first visited them in April, 1817,
describes the remains of a noble villa of the first century, with
mosaic pavements, fountains, statuary, candelabra, and frescos. The
pictures of Pasiphae, Canace, Phaedra, Myrrha, and Scylla, which are
now in the Cabinet of the Aldobrandini Marriage, in the Vatican
Library, were discovered in one of the bedrooms of the villa. Other
works of art, now exhibited in the third compartment of the Galleria
dei Candelabri, were found in the peristyle. An exact description of
these discoveries, with maps and illustrations, is given by Marchese
Biondi in a volume called "Monumenti Amaranziani," published in Rome
in 1825.

The Villa Amaranthiana, from which the modern name of Torre Marancia
is derived, belonged to two ladies, one of imperial descent, Flavia
Domitilla, a relative of Domitian and Titus, the other of patrician
birth, Munatia Procula, the daughter of Marcus. Domitilla's name
appears twice in documents attesting her ownership of the ground; the
first is the grant of a sepulchral area, measuring thirty-five feet by
forty, to Sergius Cornelius Julianus _ex indulgentia Flaviae
Domitillae_; the other mentions the construction of another tomb,
_Flaviae Domitillae divi Vespasiani neptis beneficio_.[158] These
concessions refer to buri