ly erroneous idea was that these vast burial-places of the
early Christians remained entirely concealed from the eyes of their
pagan neighbours, and were constructed not only without the permission
of the municipal authorities but without their cognizance. Nothing can
be farther from the truth. Such an idea is justly stigmatized by Mommsen
as ridiculous, and reflecting a discredit as unfounded as it is unjust
on the imperial police of the capital. That such vast excavations should
have been made without attracting attention, and that such an immense
number of corpses could have been carried to burial in perfect secrecy
is utterly impossible. Nor was there any reason why secrecy should have
been desired. The decent burial of the dead was a matter especially
provided for by the Roman laws. No particular mode was prescribed.
Interment was just as legal as cremation, and had, in fact, been
universally practised by the Romans until the later days of the
republic.[4] The bodies of the Scipios and Nasos were buried in still
existing catacombs; and if the Christians preferred to adopt that which
Minucius Felix calls "the better, and more ancient custom of inhumation"
(_Octavius_, c. 2), there was absolutely nothing, to quote the words of
Northcote (_Roma sotterran_. pp. 56, 61), "either in their social or
religious position to interfere with their freedom of action. The law
left them entire liberty,... and the faithful did but use their liberty
in the way that suited them best, burying their dead according to a
fashion to which many of them had been long accustomed, and which
enabled them at the same time to follow in death the example of him who
was also their model in life." Interment in rock-hewn tombs, "as the
manner of the Jews is to bury," had been practised in Rome by the Jewish
settlers for a considerable period anterior to the rise of the Christian
Church. A Jewish catacomb, now lost, was discovered and described by
Bosio (_Rom. sott._ p. 141), and others are still accessible. They are
to be distinguished from Christian catacombs only by the character of
their decorations, the absence of Christian symbols and the language of
their inscriptions. There would, therefore, be nothing extraordinary in
the fact that a community, always identified in the popular heathen mind
with the Jewish faith, should adopt the mode of interment belonging to
that religion. Nor have we the slightest trace of any official
interference with Chri