[687] The relationship is generally expressed by such phrases as _vixit mecum_, _duravit mecum_,_ vixit in conjugio_, _fecit mecum_, _fecit cum compare_. McCaul, _Christ. Epitaphs_, Introd. xv. [688] _Ib._, xxvii. [689] Of 5,000 epitaphs in Squier’s Index, only forty-five mention the country of the deceased. See one example, page 401, second footnote, and also the following, of date A. D. 388: _Rapetiga, medicus, civis Hispanus, qui vixit in pace annos plus minus XXV_,--“Rapetiga, a physician, a citizen of Spain, who lived in peace twenty-five years, more or less.” [690] This is not quite correct. [691] _Letters from Rome_, pp. 202, 203. [692] From ὀπίσθιος and γράφω, _to write again_. CHAPTER II. 415 THE DOCTRINAL TEACHINGS OF THE CATACOMBS. “What insight into the familiar feelings and thoughts of the primitive ages of the church,” remarks the learned and eloquent Dean Stanley,[693] “can be compared with that afforded by the Roman Catacombs! Hardly noticed by Gibbon or Mosheim, they yet give us a likeness of those early times beyond that derived from any of the written authorities on which Gibbon and Mosheim repose.... The subjects of the painting and sculpture place before us the exact ideas with which the first Christians were familiar; they remind us, by what they do not contain, of the ideas with which the first Christians were not familiar.... He who is thoroughly steeped in the imagery of the Catacombs will be nearer to the thought of the early church than he who has learned by heart the most elaborate treatise even of Tertullian or of Origen.” By the study of the inscriptions, paintings, and sculpture of this subterranean city of the dead, we may follow the development of Christian thought from century to century; we may trace the successive changes of doctrine and discipline; we may read the irrefragable testimony, written with a pen of iron in the rock forever, of the purity of the primitive faith, and of the gradual corruption which it has undergone. In this era of critical investigation of the very foundations of the faith it will be well to examine this vast body of Christian evidences 416 as to the doctrinal teachings of the primitive times, which has been handed down from the believers living in or near the apostolic age, and thus providentially preserved in these subterranean excavations, as a perpetual memorial of the faith and practice of the golden prime of Christianity.