Christian antiquities -- Italy -- Rome; Rome (Italy) -- Antiquities
By the end of the fourth century burials in catacombs became rare, and
still more between 400 and 410. They were apparently given up
altogether after 410. The development of open-air cemeteries increased
in proportion, those of S. Lorenzo and S. Paolo fuori le Mura being
among the most popular. In 1863, when the entrance-gate to the modern
Camposanto adjoining S. Lorenzo was built, fifty tombs, mostly
unopened, were found in a space ninety feet long by forty feet wide.
Since that time five hundred tombstones have been gathered in the
neighborhood of that favorite church. As regards S. Paul's cemetery,
more than one thousand inscriptions, whole or in fragments, were found
in rebuilding the basilica and its portico, after the fire of
1823;[151] two hundred in the excavations of S. Valentine's basilica,
outside the Porta del Popolo. These last excavations are the only ones
illustrating a Christian cemetery which are left visible; but their
importance is limited. The cemeteries of Arles and Pola, alluded to by
Dante, have disappeared; and so has the magnificent one of the
officers and men employed in the Roman arsenal at Concordia
Sagittaria, which was discovered in 1873, near Portogruaro, by Perulli
and Bartolini. This cemetery, which contains, in the section already
explored, nearly two hundred sarcophagi, cut in limestone, in the
shape of Petrarch's coffin, at Arquà, or Antenor's at Padua, was
wrecked by Attila in 452, and buried soon after by an inundation of
the river Tagliamento, which spread masses of mud and sand over the
district, and raised its level five feet. The accompanying plate is
from a photograph taken at the time of the discovery.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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