The fact that the Christians were always anxious not to burn their dead, but to bury them, in these rock-hewn sepulchres, was probably owing to the remembrance that our Lord was himself laid "in a new tomb hewn out of the rock," and perhaps also for this reason the bodies were wrapt in fine linen cloths, and buried with precious spices, of which remains have been found in the tombs. The Catacomb which is known as St. Calixtus, is composed of a number of catacombs, once distinct, but now joined together. Such were those of Sta. Lucina; of Anatolia, daughter of the consul Æmilianus; and of Sta. Soteris, "a virgin of the family to which St. Ambrose belonged in a later generation," and who was buried "in cœmeterio suo," A.D. 304. The passages of these catacombs were gradually united with those which originally belonged to the cemetery of Calixtus. The high mass of ruin which meets our eyes on first entering the vineyard of St. Calixtus, is a remnant of the tomb of the Cæcilii, of which family a number of epitaphs have been found. Beyond this is another ruin, supposed by Marangoni to have been the basilica which St. Damasus provided for his own burial and that of his mother and sister; which Padre Marchi believed to be the church of St. Mark and St. Marcellinus;--but which De Rossi identifies with the _cella memoriæ_, sometimes called of St. Sistus, sometimes of St. Cecilia (because built immediately over the graves of those martyrs), by St. Fabian in the third century.[204] Descending into the Catacomb by an ancient staircase restored, we reach (passing a sepulchral cubiculum on the right) the _Chapel of the Popes_, a place of burial and of worship of the third or fourth century, (as it was restored after its discovery in 1854) but still retaining remains of the marble slabs with which it was faced by Sixtus III. in the fifth century, and of marble columns, &c. with which it was adorned by St. Leo III. (795--816). The walls are lined with graves of the earliest popes, many of them martyrs--viz. St. Zephyrinus, (202--211); St Pontianus, who died in banishment in Sardinia, (231--236); St. Anteros, martyred under Maximian in the second month of his pontificate, (236); St. Fabian, martyred under Decius, (236--250); St. Lucius, martyred under Valerian, (253--255); St. Stephen I., martyred in his episcopal chair under Valerian, (255--257); St. Sixtus II., martyred in the catacombs of St. Pretextatus, (257--260); St. Dionysius, (260--271); St. Eutychianus, martyr, (275--283); and St. Caius, (284--296). Of these, the gravestones of Anteros, Fabian, Lucius, and Eutychianus, have been discovered, with inscriptions in Greek, which is acknowledged to have been the earliest language of the Church,--in which St. Paul and St. James wrote, and in which the proceedings of the first twelve Councils were carried on.[205] Though no inscriptions have been found relating to the other popes mentioned, they are known to have been buried here from the earliest