Our first story belongs to the Pontificate of St. Stephen, and therefore to the year 256 or thereabouts. We gather it partly from the Acts of the Martyrs, and partly from the inscriptions which were set up at their tombs before those Acts were written, or certainly before that particular edition of the Acts was written which alone is now extant. The incidents of the story are these:—A wealthy Greek family, consisting of a gentleman and his wife and two children, and his brother, set sail for Italy. They were overtaken in their voyage by a storm, during which they made a vow to Pluto, and finally they reached their destination in safety. During their stay in Rome the brother (Hippolytus) renounced idolatry, and became a convert to the Christian faith, whereupon he devoted himself to the laborious and heroic work of a _fossor_. This probably happened during an interval when the Catacombs were under the ban of the Government, for we read that the scene of his labours was an _arenarium_ or sandpit, and that he lived as well as worked in it. Certainly, the conditions of life would have been much more tolerable in a sandpit than in a proper Catacomb; and we have seen that, during times of persecution, a connection was often made between the cemeteries and any adjacent sandpit, in order to facilitate the means of entrance and of exit for the poor hunted Christians. The fact of Hippolytus leading a solitary life in the sandpit is mentioned as though it were a singularity, as, indeed, we should have expected it to be; and it is added, that his niece and nephew, aged nine and thirteen, used to visit and bring him food there, until at length, at the suggestion of Stephen, Hippolytus detained them one day, and so drew their parents to seek them in his hiding-place, where they were eventually converted by means of a miracle which they witnessed. Then, after being duly instructed and baptized, they distributed their wealth to the poor; and having all received the crown of martyrdom, they were buried in the same _arenarium_ in which they had been wont to assemble during life. It was the _arenarium_ connected with the third story of the Catacomb of St. Callixtus, to which a grand staircase was once made straight down from the surface of the soil, for the convenience of the numerous pilgrims who came to do honour to Hippolytus, Adrias and Paulina, Neo and Maria. The staircase has been rediscovered, but the extremely friable nature of the soil has hitherto baffled every attempt thoroughly to explore the sandpit.