The first lines of this inscription seem to allude to a number of martyrs laid together in one large tomb, such as we know from other witnesses were sometimes to be seen in the Roman Catacombs. The poet Prudentius, for instance, supposes a friend to ask him the names of those who have shed their blood for the faith in Rome, and the epitaphs inscribed on their tombs. He replies that it would be very difficult to tell this, for that “the relics of the saints in Rome are innumerable, since as long as the city continued to worship their Pagan gods, their wicked rage slew vast multitudes of the just. On many tombs, indeed,” he says, “you may read the name of the martyr, and some short inscription; but there are many others which are silent as to the name, and only express the number. You can ascertain the number which lie heaped up together (_congestis corpora acervis_), but nothing more;” and he specifies one grave in particular, in which he learnt that the relics of sixty martyrs had been laid, but their names were known only to Christ. To some such _polyandrium_, then, the words of Pope Damasus would seem to allude, and the martyrologies and other ancient documents speak of three or four such tombs “near St. Cecilia’s;” and here in this very chamber, just where (as we shall presently see) it touches the crypt of St. Cecilia, we can still recognise a pit of unusual size and depth, intended apparently for the reception of many bodies, or perhaps only of the charred remains of many bodies; for, where the victims were numerous, the capital sentence was not unfrequently executed by fire. Of the martyrdom of St. Sixtus we have already spoken as having taken place in the Catacomb of Pretextatus (page 31), but his body was brought here to be laid with those of his predecessors. Pope Damasus only mentions his deacons, and not St. Sixtus himself, because he had composed another set of verses in honour of the holy Pontiff alone, and had set them up in this same crypt. It is easy to see where they were placed, above and behind the altar, and a copy of them has been preserved to us by ancient pilgrims and scholars. Scarcely a dozen letters of them, however, were found when the chapel was cleared out in 1854; they have not, therefore, been restored to their place, and need not be reproduced in this manual. The _numerus procerum_ in the fifth line of our present inscription are, of course, the Popes whose epitaphs we have seen, and others who were buried here; nor can we fail to recognise in the Bishop who enjoyed a long life of peace Pope Melchiades, who lived when the persecutions had ended. Finally, we have heard the story of some at least of “the holy confessors who came from Greece,” Hippolytus Maria and Neo, Adrias and Paulina (page 37); and the _arenarium_ in which these martyrs were buried was in the immediate neighbourhood of the Papal crypt which we are describing. CHAPTER II. THE CRYPT OF ST. CECILIA.