The day of the month is generally indicated in the ordinary way with reference to the divisions of Calends, Nones, and Ides.[688] The days of the week are mentioned by their usual classical names, as _Dies Solis_, Sunday; _Dies Lunæ_, Monday; _Dies Martis_, Tuesday; _Dies Mercurii_, Wednesday; _Dies Jovis_, Thursday; _Dies Veneris_, Friday; and _Dies Saturni_, Saturday. Sometimes, however, the first and last days of the week are indicated by the Christian designations _Dies Dominica_, the day of the Lord, and _Dies Sabbati_, the day of rest. The Christian inscriptions also habitually ignore all mention of the birth-place or country of the deceased, as if in recognition that the Christian’s true country is beyond the grave.[689] As if, also, in obedience to the injunction to forsake father and mother in order to follow after Christ, details of family or descent, which are so conspicuous in some heathen inscriptions, almost never occur. 413 Mr. Burgon has briefly expressed the principal points of contrast between modern epitaphs and those of the early Christians, as follows: “They never mention the date of birth,[690] we seldom omit it. They constantly record the day of burial, we never. They seldom mention the year of death, we never omit it. We never allude to burial, they always. They frequently record the years of married life, we never. In theirs the survivors appear prominently, even by name, and are sometimes mentioned exclusively. With us the dead are always named, the living seldom.”[691] There are among these inscriptions several examples of _opisthographæ_, as they are called,[692] that is, Christian epitaphs written on slabs that had originally borne one of pagan character. The latter are generally defaced or obliterated, filled with cement or turned to the wall, or placed upside down or sideways, so as to indicate their rejection by the Christian artist. Sometimes, however, they are still legible, but they have manifestly no connection with Christian sepulture whatever. Some are not funeral epitaphs at all, and some which are commemorate an entire family, though affixed to a single Christian grave. The appropriation of heathen monuments for the reception of Christian inscriptions will appear less strange when we reflect that the very temples of the gods have been the quarries from which many of the churches and palaces of later times were built.