authorities. Over the site of the altar is one of the beautifully-cut inscriptions of Pope St. Damasus (366--384), "whose labour of love it was to rediscover the tombs which had been blocked up for concealment under Diocletian, to remove the earth, widen the passages, adorn the sepulchral chambers with marble, and support the friable tufa walls with arches of brick and stone."[206] "Hic congesta jacet quæris si turba Piorum Corpora Sanctorum retinent veneranda sepulchra, Sublimes animas rapuit sibi Regia Cœli: Hic comites Xysti portant qui ex hoste tropæa; Hic numerus procerum servat qui altaria Christi; Hic positus longâ vixit qui in pace Sacerdos; Hic Confessores sancti quos Græcia misit; Hic juvenes, puerique, senes, castique nepotes, Quis mage virgineum placuit retinere pudorem. Hic fateor Damasus volui mea condere membra, Sed cineres timui sanctos vexare Piorum. "Here, if you would know, lie heaped together a number of the holy, These honoured sepulchres inclose the bodies of the saints, Their lofty souls the palace of heaven has received. Here lie the companions of Xystus, who bear away the trophies from the enemy; Here a tribe of the elders which guards the altars of Christ; Here is buried the priest who lived long in peace;[207] Here the holy confessors who came from Greece;[208] Here lie youths and boys, old men and their chaste descendants, Who kept their virginity undefiled. Here I Damasus wished to have laid my limbs, But feared to disturb the holy ashes of the saints."[209] From this chapel we enter the _Cubiculum of Sta. Cecilia_, where the body of the saint was buried by her friend Urban after her martyrdom in her own house in the Trastevere (see Chap. XVII.) A.D. 224, and where it was discovered in 820 by Pope Paschal I. (to whom its resting-place had been revealed in a dream), "fresh and perfect as when it was first laid in the tomb, and clad in rich garments mixed with gold, with linen cloths stained with blood rolled up at her feet, lying in a cypress coffin."[210]