Servius, in giving an account of the unhappy death of his colleague Marcellus, which happened in Greece, says that he could not by any means obtain leave of the Athenians to allow him a burying-place _within_ the city. The Romans observed the same custom from the first building of their city; it afterwards became a law, as settled by the Decemviri, “Neither burn nor bury within the city.” They generally buried near the highways, in fields appropriated for the purpose. Their reason seems to have been founded on sacred as well as civil considerations: among the former, that passengers might see the graves, and be reminded of their own mortality--hence, as Varro tells us, the inscription on the monuments, ‘Sta viator!’--among the latter, “that the air might not be corrupted by the stench of putrifying bodies.” It is related of Propertius, that he was very earnest in desiring that he might not be buried after the ordinary custom, near a _road_, for fear it should disturb his shade. There were, however, exceptions amongst the Romans to the prohibition of intramural burials, as in the case of the Vestal Virgins, who, Servius informs us, were allowed by law a burying-place within the city. The same privilege or honour was permitted to some extraordinary persons, as to Valerius Publicola and to Fabricius, to continue to their heirs; yet none of their families were afterwards interred there, but the body being carried thither, some one placed a burning torch under it, and then immediately took it away, as an attestation of the deceased’s privilege, and his receding from the honour. The body was then removed for burial to another place without the city. The ancient Persians never buried in cities or towns. Their kings were interred on a high hill on the east of Persepolis: generally throughout Persia and the Levant, there were no burying-places except those without the city. The cemeteries of the Turks were always without the towns, that the air might not be corrupted by the vapours arising from the graves: they, in like manner as the Romans, also bury by the sides of highways, that travellers may be reminded to pray to God for the deceased. The Chinese adopt a similar kind of sepulture. Eusebius informs us that when the Christians, by favour of Constantine, built churches in the cities, they had their burial-places allotted them outside the cities and towns. According to Gregory of Tours, it was not until the latter part of the sixth century, about A.D. 590, that funeral places and cemeteries within the towns were consecrated.