"Hinc habitasse prius sanctos cognoscere debes, Nomina quisque Petri pariter Paulique requiris. Discipulos Oriens misit, quod sponte fatemur, Sanguinis ob meritum Christumque per astra sequuti, Aetherios petiere sinus et regna piorum. Roma suos potius meruit defendere cives. Hæc Damasus vestras referat sidera laudes." "Here you should know that saints dwelt. Their names, if you ask them, were Peter and Paul. The East sent disciples, which we freely acknowledge. For the merit of their blood they followed Christ to the stars, and sought the heavenly home and the kingdom of the blest. Rome however deserved to defend her own citizens. May Damasus record these things for your praise, O new stars." "The two Apostles, St. Peter and St. Paul, were originally buried, the one at the Vatican, the other on the Ostian Way, at the spot where their respective basilicas now stand; but, as soon as the Oriental Christians had heard of their death, they sent some of their brethren to remove their bodies, and bring them back to the East, where they considered that they had a right to claim them as their fellow-citizens and countrymen. These so far prospered in their mission as to gain a momentary possession of the sacred relics, which they carried off, along the Appian Way, as far as the spot where the church of St. Sebastian was afterwards built. Here they rested for a while, to make all things ready for their journey, or, according to another account, were detained by a thunderstorm of extraordinary violence, which delay, however occasioned, was sufficient to enable the Christians of Rome to overtake them and recover their lost treasure. These Roman Christians then buried the bodies, with the utmost secrecy, in a deep pit, which they dug on the very spot where they were. Soon, indeed, they were restored to their original places of sepulture, as we know from contemporary authorities, and there seems reason to believe the old ecclesiastical tradition to be correct, which states them to have only remained in this temporary abode for a year and seven months. The body of St. Peter, however, was destined to revisit it a second time, and for a longer period; for when, at the beginning of the third century, Heliogabalus made his circus at the Vatican, Calixtus, who was then pope, removed the relics of the Apostle to their former temporary resting-place, the pit on the Appian Way. But in A.D. 257, St. Stephen, the pope, having been discovered in this very cemetery and having suffered martyrdom there, the body of St. Peter was once more removed, and restored to its original tomb in the Vatican."--_Northcote's Roman Catacombs._