St. Agnes also belongs to the same period which we are trying to illustrate, but she belongs to its very last stage, during the persecution of Diocletian, when, as we have said, the Catacombs were altogether confiscated. Still this did not succeed in rigorously excluding the faithful. We know, from the irrefragable testimony of dated inscriptions, that even at such times as these the Christians managed to gain admission and to bury there. There is nothing, therefore, strange or inconsistent with history in the story of her parents having been engaged in prayer at her tomb two days after her martyrdom, when they were consoled by the vision of her glory in heaven; nor in that other story that her foster-sister, St. Emerentiana, was in the same place baptized in her own blood. CHAPTER III. THEIR HISTORY FROM A.D. 310 TO A.D. 850. The persecution of Diocletian ended in 306, but it was not until 311 that the Catacombs were restored to their natural owners and protectors, the Bishops of Rome. In that year the Pope Melchiades sent, by the hands of some of his deacons, letters from the Emperor Maxentius to the Prefect of the city, that he might recover legal possession of all “the ecclesiastical places” of which the Christians had been plundered; and amongst these places, the cemeteries were the most precious. About this time, if not earlier, other cemeteries also were made, more easily and at less cost, above ground instead of below; and during the next hundred years both places of burial were in use. If we may take the dated inscriptions as a guide in estimating the relative proportions in which they were used, we should say that burial in the Catacombs remained in the greatest favour until the latter half of the century. From the year 364 to the end, the balance is considerably on the other side; only one-third of the burials appear to have been in the subterranean cemeteries, and two-thirds above ground. Then from the year 400 to 410, burial in the Catacombs became more and more rare, until in that year it ceased altogether.