There still remains the most interesting of all the subjects of inquiry which the Roman sepulcral inscriptions suggest, what was the state of religious feeling and belief among the people with whom they originated? The natural affections, springing from sources which exist in every human breast, will express themselves with a certain similarity in all ages and countries. But there is a wide difference in the religious faith and sentiment with which the bereavements of life are met, and which find their record on the funeral monument. One remarkable contrast strikes us on comparing ancient with modern, Heathen with Christian inscriptions--the entire absence in the former of anything like resignation to the will of a superior Power, or any acknowledgment of a benevolent purpose in a painful dispensation. If the gods are alluded to it is in the way of complaint. MANUS LEBO (levo) CONTRA DEUM QUI ME INNOCENTEM SUSTULIT,[110] is a bold defiance of Providence. Cornelius Victor, who died at the age of thirty-one, complains that his virtues had not secured him a longer life. VIXI SEMPER BENE UT VOLUI. NEMINEM LÆSI. CUR MORTUUS SIM NESCIO;[111] while Marsilia Stabilis regrets that her eminent piety could not purchase exemption from the common destiny. Si pietate aliquam redimi fatale fuisset, Marsilia Stabilis prima redemta forem.[112] If such a feeling of impatience and complaint could be allowed, we might sympathize with T. Claudius Hermes, who inscribes a monument, MERULÆ UXORI BENE DE SE MERENTI ET CAMPILIO ALBUNO INFANTI DULCISSIMO QUOS DII IRATI UNO DIE ÆTERNO SOMNO DEDERUNT.[113] Antinous and Panthea, who placed on the tomb of their infant daughter Isiatis the sentiment, QUAM DI AMAVERUNT HAC MORITUR INFAS, appear from their names to have been Greeks, and to have copied the Greek poet Menander.[114] Nor does the deceased speak from the tomb with any words of consolation to those who are left behind, except that cold comfort, the "solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris." C. Gavius Primigenius, who died at the age of seven, thus addresses his mother:-- Desine jam mater lacrimis renovare querelas Namque dolor talis non tibi contigit uni.[115] The possibility that longer life might have been vicious or unhappy is urged as a motive to abstain from grief, as in the inscription on Lucia Toreuma, who died at the age of nineteen:-- Exiguo, vitæ spacio feliciter acto Effugi crimen longa senecta tuum.[116] There would be no difficulty in deciding between the two following inscriptions, in each of which a deceased mother addresses her surviving husband and children, which of them proceeded from a Heathen and which from a Christian source:-- Care marite mihi, dulcissima nata valete, Et memores nostris semper date justa sepulcris.[117] Parcite vos lacrimis dulces cum conjuge natæ Viventemque Deo credits flere nefas.[118]