ral times necessary for even the church to prohibit the
solicitation of martyrdom.

=The Catacombs.=--The ancient custom of burning the dead was repugnant
to the Christians. Like the Jews, they interred their dead wrapped
with a shroud in a sarcophagus. Cemeteries[166] were therefore
required. At Rome where land was very high in price the Christians
went below ground, and in the brittle tufa on which Rome was built may
be seen long galleries and subterranean chambers. There, in niches
excavated along the passages, they laid the bodies of their dead. As
each generation excavated new galleries, there was formed at length a
subterranean city, called the Catacombs ("to the tombs"). There were
similar catacombs in several cities--Naples, Milan, Alexandria, but
the most celebrated were those in Rome. These have been investigated
in our day and thousands of Christian tombs and inscriptions
recovered. The discovery of this subterranean world gave birth to a
new department of historical science--Christian Epigraphy and
Archaeology.

The sepulchral halls of the catacombs do not resemble those of the
Egyptians or those of the Etruscans; they are bare and severe. The
Christians knew that a corpse had no bodily wants and so they did not
adorn the tombs. The most important halls are decorated with very
simple ornaments and paintings which almost always represent the same
scenes. The most common subjects are the faithful in prayer, and the
Good Shepherd, symbolical of Christ. Some of these halls were like
chapels. In them were interred the bodies of the holy martyrs and the
faithful who wished to lie near them; every year Christians came here
to celebrate the mysteries. During the persecutions of the third
century the Christians of Rome often took refuge in these subterranean
chapels to hold their services of worship, or to escape from pursuit.
The Christians could feel safe in this bewildering labyrinth of
galleries whose entrance was usually marked by a pagan tomb.

THE MONKS OF THE THIRD CENTURY

=The Solitaries.=--It was an idea current among Christians, especially
in the East, that one could not become a perfect Christian by
remaining in the midst of other men. Christ himself had said, "If any
man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and
children, and brethren, and sisters ... he cannot be my disciple." The
faithful man or woman who thus withdrew from the world to work out his
salvation the more surely