VICTORIA. REFRIGERER [ET] ISSPIRITVS. TVS IN BONO “Victoria, be refreshed, and may thy spirit be in enjoyment” (good). ] This last reminds us of a most peculiar inscription found scratched in the mortar beside a grave in the cemetery of Prætextatus, not many yards from that of Callistus. It is remarkable, first, for being in Latin written with Greek letters; then, for containing a testimony of the Divinity of our Lord; lastly, for expressing a prayer for the refreshment of the departed. We fill up the portions of words wanting, from the falling out of part of the plaster. [Illustration: “To the well-deserving sister Bon ... The eighth day before the calends of Nov. Christ God Almighty refresh thy spirit in Christ.”] In spite of this digression on prayers inscribed over tombs, the reader will not, we trust, have forgotten, that we were establishing the fact, that the Christian cemeteries of Rome owe their origin to the earliest ages. We have now to state down to what period they were used. After peace was restored to the Church, the devotion of Christians prompted them to desire burial near the martyrs, and holy people of an earlier age. But, generally speaking, they were satisfied to lie under the pavement. Hence the sepulchral stones which are often found in the rubbish of the catacombs, and sometimes in their places, bearing consular dates of the fourth century, are thicker, larger, better carved, and in a less simple style, than those of an earlier period, placed upon the walls. But before the end of that century, these monuments become rarer; and interment in the catacombs ceased in the following, at latest. Pope Damasus, who died in 384, reverently shrunk, as he tells us, in his own epitaph, from intruding into the company of the saints. [Illustration: A Lamb with a Milk Pail, emblematic of the Blessed Eucharist, found in the Catacombs.] Restitutus, therefore, whose sepulchral tablet we gave for a title to our chapter, may well be considered as speaking in the name of the early Christians, and claiming as their own exclusive work and property, the thousand miles of subterranean city, with their six millions of slumbering inhabitants, who trust in the Lord, and await His resurrection.[90] CHAPTER III. WHAT DIOGENES COULD NOT TELL ABOUT THE CATACOMBS. Diogenes lived during the first period in the history of the cemeteries, though near its close. Could he have looked into their future fate, he would have seen, near at hand, an epoch that would have gladdened his heart, to be followed by one that would have deeply afflicted him. Although, therefore, the matter of this chapter have no direct bearing upon our narrative, it will serve essentially to connect it with the present topography of its scene.