stian burials, such as would render secrecy
necessary or desirable. Their funerals were as much under the protection
of the law, which not only invested the tomb itself with a sacred
character, but included in its protection the area in which it stood,
and the _cella memoriae_ or chapel connected with it, as those of their
heathen fellow-citizens, while the same shield would be thrown over the
burial-clubs, which, as we learn from Tertullian (_Apolog._ c. 39),
were common among the early Christians, as over those existing among the
heathen population of Rome.

Mode of formation.

We may then completely dismiss the notion of there being any studied
secrecy in connexion with the early Christian cemeteries, and proceed to
inquire into the mode of their formation. Almost without exception, they
had their origin in small burial areas, the property of private persons
or of families, gradually ramifying and receiving additions of one
subterranean storey after another as each was required for interments.
The first step would be the acquisition of a plot of ground either by
gift or purchase for the formation of a tomb, Christians were not beyond
the pale of the law, and their faith presented no hindrance to the
property being secured to them in perpetuity. To adapt the ground for
its purpose as a cemetery, a gallery was run all round the area in the
tufa rock at a convenient depth below the surface, reached by staircases
at the corners. In the upright walls of these galleries _loculi_ were
cut as needed to receive the dead. When these first four galleries were
full others were mined on the same level at right angles to them, thus
gradually converting the whole area into a net-work of corridors. If a
family vault was required, or a burial chapel for a martyr or person of
distinction, a small square room was excavated by the side of the
gallery and communicating with it. When the original area had been mined
in this way as far as was consistent with stability, a second storey of
galleries was begun at a lower level, reached by a new staircase. This
was succeeded by a third, or a fourth, and sometimes even by a fifth.
When adjacent burial areas belonged to members of the same Christian
confraternity, or by gift or purchase fell into the same hands,
communications were opened between the respective cemeteries, which thus
spread laterally, and gradually acquired that enormous extent which,
"even when their fabulous dimensions ar