The institution was accepted by the Church, and _ponderaria_ were set up in the principal basilicas. The best set which has come down to us is that of S. Maria in Trastevere, but there is hardly a church without a "stone" weighing from five or ten to a hundred pounds. The popular superstition by which these practical objects were transformed into relics of martyrdoms is very old. Topographers and pilgrims of the seventh century speak of a stone exhibited in the chapel of SS. Abundius and Irenæus, under the portico of S. Lorenzo fuori le Mura, "which, in their ignorance, pilgrims touch and lift." They mention also another weight, exhibited in the church of S. Stephen, near S. Paul's, which they believed to be one of the stones with which the martyr was killed. In 1864 a _schola_ (a memorial and banqueting hall) was discovered in the burial grounds adjoining the prætorian camp, which had been used by members of a corporation called the _sodalium serrensium_, that is, of the citizens of Serræ, a city of Samothrake, I believe. Among the objects pertaining to the hall and its customers were two measures for wine, a _sextarium_, and a _hemina_, marked with the monogram of Christ and the name of the donor.[28] They are now exhibited in the _sala dei bronzi_ of the Capitoline museum. The hall of the citizens of Serræ, discovered in 1864, belongs to a class of monuments very common in the suburbs of Rome. They were called _cellæ, memoriæ, exedræ_, and _scholæ_, and were used by relatives and friends of the persons buried under or near them, in the performance of expiatory ceremonies or for commemorative banquets, for which purpose all the necessaries, from the table-service to the festal garments, were kept on the spot, in cabinets entrusted to the care of a watchman. This practice--save the expiatory offerings--was adopted by the Christians. The _agapai_, or love-feasts, before degenerating into those excesses and superstitions so strongly denounced by the Fathers of the Church, were celebrated over or near the tombs of martyrs and confessors, the treasury of the local congregation supplying food and drink, as well as the banqueting robes. In the inventory of the property confiscated during the persecution of Diocletian, in a house at Cirta (Constantine, Algeria), which was used by the faithful as a church, we find registered, chalices of gold and silver, lamps and candelabras, eighty-two female tunics, sixteen male tunics, thirteen pairs of men's boots, forty-seven pairs of women's shoes, and so on.[29] A remarkable discovery, illustrating the subject, has been lately made in the Catacombs of Priscilla; that of a _graffito_ containing this sentence: "February 5, 375, we, Florentinus, Fortunatus, and Felix, came here AD CALICE[M] (for the cup)." To understand the meaning of this sentence, we must compare it with others engraved on pagan tombs. In one, No. 25,861 of the "Corpus," the deceased says to the passer-by: "Come on,