The caves of the earth : their natural history, features, and incidents.

Date:
[1848?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The caves of the earth : their natural history, features, and incidents. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    copying their antiquities, meeting vith adven- tures in these gloomy crypts, similar to those of Belzoni in the tombs of Thebes. Eventually, they were despoiled of their inscriptions, sepul- chral tablets, bas-reliefs, and other monuments, which arc now in the museums of Rome, parti- cularly in the Galleria Lapidaria of the Vatican. The occupancy of the Catacombs by the Christians in life and death is beyond dispute. It has been supposed, that Christianity, .spread- ing among the “sand-diggers,” or pozzuolana excavators—an extremely loAv grade in the city, well acquainted with the intricate subterranean passages—they pointed them out as places of asylum for the living, Avhen pressed by perse- cution, (often, alas 1 in vain, for they were tracked and slain in these retreats,) and of deposit for the bodies of the martyrs, whose remains their brethren Avere naturally anxious to preserve fi'om further outrage. Other con- A'crts Avishing to be buried near them, the catacombs thus became the common cemetery (T the church in Rome. Jerome, in the foTirth century, tells us, that the devout on Sunda3-s Avere accustomed to go doAvn into the crypts dug in the heart of the earth, Avhere the Avails on either side Avere lined Avith the dead, to visit