t, for appreciating its information; a few words will
suffice for our purpose.

The state prison, then, was arranged on pretty much one and the same plan
through the Roman empire, nay, we may say, throughout the ancient world.
It was commonly attached to the government buildings, and consisted of two
parts. The first was the vestibule, or outward prison, which was a hall,
approached from the praetorium, and surrounded by cells, opening into it.
The prisoners, who were confined in these cells, had the benefit of the
air and light, which the hall admitted. Such was the place of confinement
allotted to St. Paul at Caesarea, which is said to be the "praetorium of
Herod." And hence, perhaps, it is that, in the touching Passion of St.
Perpetua and St. Felicitas, St. Perpetua tells us that, when permitted to
have her child, though she was in the inner portion, which will next be
described, "suddenly the prison seemed to her like the praetorium."

From this vestibule there was a passage into the interior prison, called
Robur or Lignum, from the beams of wood, which were the instruments of
confinement, or from the character of its floor. It had no window or
outlet, except this door, which, when closed, absolutely shut out light
and air. Air, indeed, and coolness might be obtained for it by the
_barathrum_, presently to be spoken of, but of what nature we shall then
see. The apartment, called Lignum, was the place into which St. Paul and
St. Silas were cast at Philippi, before it was known that they were
Romans. After scourging them severely, the magistrates, who nevertheless
were but the local authorities, and had no proper jurisdiction in criminal
cases, "put them in prison, bidding the jailer to keep them carefully;
who, on receiving such a command, put them in the inner prison, and
fastened them in the lignum." And in the Acts of the Scillitane Martyrs we
read of the Proconsul giving sentence, "Let them be thrown into prison,
let them be put into the Lignum, till to-morrow."

The utter darkness, the heat, and the stench of this miserable place, in
which the inmates were confined day and night, is often dwelt upon by the
martyrs and their biographers. "After a few days," says St. Perpetua, "we
were taken to the prison, and I was frightened, for I never had known such
darkness. O bitter day! the heat was excessive by reason of the crowd
there." In the Acts of St. Pionius, and others of Smyrna, we read that the
jailers "shut th