It is evident from an examination of the earliest Catacombs that they were not the offspring of fear on the part of the Christians. There was no attempt at secrecy in their construction. They were, like the pagan tombs, situated on the high roads entering the city. Their entrances were frequently protected and adorned by elegant structures of masonry, such as that which is still visible at the Catacomb of St. Domitilla on the Via Ardeatina;[48] and their internal decorations and frescoes, which in the most ancient examples are of classic taste and beauty, were manifestly not executed by stealth and in haste, but in security and at leisure. There was, in classic times, a sacred character attached to _all_ places set apart for the purposes of sepulture. They enjoyed the especial protection of the law, and were invested with a sort of religious sanctity.[49] This protection was asserted in many successive edicts, and the heaviest penalties were inflicted on the violators of tombs, as guilty of sacrilege.[50] Reverence for the sepulchres of the dead was regarded by the ancient mind as a religious virtue; and the neglect of the ancestral tomb even involved disability for municipal office.[51] Being situated along the public highway, these pagan tombs were liable 59 to various pollutions, to which numerous inscriptions refer. Hence the frequent CAVE VIATOR--“Traveller, beware!”--so common in classic epitaphs. The SCRIPTOR PARCE HOC OPVS--“Writer, spare this work”--sometimes met with, is, as Kenrick well remarks,[52] not the address of an author to a critic, but of a relative of the deceased, entreating the wall-scribbler not to disfigure a tomb. Electioneering notices were sometimes written upon these wayside monuments--a practice which is deprecated in the following: CANDIDATVS FIAT HONORATVS ET TV FELIX SCRIPTOR SI HIC NON SCRIPSERIS--“May your candidate be honoured and yourself happy, O writer, if you write not on this tomb!” INSCRIPTOR, ROGO TE VT TRANSEAS MONVMENTVM--“Inscriber, I pray you pass by this monument.” As these sepulchral areas, often of considerable extent, were taken from the fields in the vicinity of a great city, where the land was very valuable for the purpose of tillage, they were in continual danger of invasion from the cupidity of the heirs or of adjacent land-owners, but for this legal protection. On many of the _cippi_, or funereal monuments, which line the public roads in the vicinity of Rome, the extent of these areas is set forth. Some of them are quite small, as is indicated in the following inscription: TERRENVM SACRATVM LONGVM P[EDES] · X · LAT · P[EDES] · X · FODERE NOLI · NE SACRILEGIVM COMMITTAS[52a]--“A consecrated plot of earth, ten feet long and ten feet broad. Do not dig here, lest you commit sacrilege.”