Just as St. Paul had not refrained from taking possession of the Unknown God whom the Athenians ignorantly worshipped, by declaring Him to be precisely the God whom he had come among them to proclaim, so Christianity did not refrain from incorporating all the suitable features of the Pagan faith into its own creed. The Pagan type was thus the first thing to be assimilated and absorbed, and in the early Christian paintings of the catacombs you must not be surprised to find the Saviour depicted with all the beauties and charms of the classical god or hero. Here he appears as a Hermes, there as an Apollo, and yonder as an Orpheus.[7] Beardless, young, and strong, Christ stalks towards you. His gait is free his carriage majestic. Across his shoulders you will sometimes see, as in the catacombs of the Via Appia in Rome, that he bears a sheep, and he looks for all the world like a young Hermes, who, as you know, was the Greek god of flocks. Elsewhere he looks like a Roman senator, as in the catacomb of St. Callixtus, for instance; his mother Mary looks like a Roman matron, praying with uplifted hands, and the apostles Peter and Paul, together with the prophets, appear as peripatetic philosophers, grasping learned-looking scrolls of manuscript, while Daniel is presented as a Hercules.[8] Even the famous bronze statue of St. Peter in his great church at Rome is in fact an antique statue of a consul which has been transformed into a Peter, and the original of this monument was probably quite innocent of the sanctity which has caused the foot of his effigy to be worn away by the kisses of the faithful.[9] This bold manner of appropriating the Pagan ideal in Art was but the symbol of what was actually occurring in the outside world; for the object was not to glorify the Pagan type, but to overthrow it, to transform it by degrees into the type which was compatible with Christian values, and thus to obliterate it. We can watch this process. We can see the classic features and form of body surely and permanently vanishing from the wall decorations of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries A.D., and the Christian type asserting itself with ever greater assurance. Already in San Paolo fuori-le-mura in Rome, which had been decorated about the middle of the fifth century,[10] Christ appears bearded,[11] ugly and gloomy, and his apostles reflect his appearance and mood. In the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna, of the sixth century, the spirit of the antique had almost passed away;[12] in the basilica of San Lorenzo fuori-le-mura the bearded Christ is no longer sublime and dignified, but wan and emaciated;[13] while in the Church of SS. Nazarus and Celsus at Ravenna, there is a mosaic of the fifth century in which even the sheep are beginning to look with gloomy and dissatisfied eyes upon the world about them.