Nor is it only in these domestic and intimate inscriptions that the habitual temper and feeling of the Christians is shown, but even still more in those that were placed over the graves of such members of the household of faith as had made public profession of their belief, and shared in the sufferings of their Lord. There is no parade of words on the gravestones of the martyrs. Their death needed no other record than the little jar of blood placed in the mortar, and the fewest words were enough where this was present. Here is an inscription in the rudest letters from a martyr's grave:-- SABATIVS BENEMERENTI QVI VIXIT ANNOS XL To the well-deserving Sabatias, who lived forty years. And here another:-- PROSPERO INNOCENTI ANIMAE IN PACE. To Prosperus, innocent soul, in peace. And here a third, to a child who had died as one of the Innocents:-- MIRAE INNOCENTIAE ANIMA DULCIS AEMILEANVS QVI VIXIT ANNO VNO, MENS. VIII D. XXVIII DORMIT IN PACE Aemilian, sweet soul of marvellous innocence, who lived one year, eight months, twenty-eight days. He sleeps in peace. At this grave was found the vase of blood, and on the gravestone was the figure of a dove. Another inscription, which preserves the name of one of those who suffered in the most severe persecution to which the ancient Church was exposed, and which, if genuine, is, so far as known, the only monument of the kind, is marked by the same simplicity of style:-- LANNVS XPI MA RTIR HC*[Hic?] REQVIESC IT SVR [E-P-S] DIOCLITI ANO PASSVS Lannus Martyr of Christ here rests. He suffered under Diocletian. The three letters EPS have been interpreted as standing for the words _et posteris suis_, and as meaning that the grave was also for his successors. Not yet, then, had future saints begun to sanctify their graves, and to claim the exclusive possession of them. But there is another point of contrast between the inscriptions of the un- Christianized and the Christian Romans, which illustrates forcibly the difference in the regard which they paid to the dead. To the one the dead were still of this world, and the greatness of life, the distinctions of class, the titles of honor still clung to them; to the other the past life was as nothing to that which had now begun. The heathen epitaphs are loaded with titles of honor, and with the names of the offices which the dead had borne, and, like the modern Christian (?) epitaphs whose style has been borrowed from them, the vanity of this world holds its place above the grave. But among the early Christian inscriptions of Rome nothing of this kind is known. Scarcely a title of rank or a name of office is to be found among them. A military title, or the name of priest or deacon, or of some other officer in the Church, now and then is met with; but even these, for the most part, would seem to belong to the fourth century, and never contain any expression of boastfulness or flattery.