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 CASTLEFORD — CATACOMBS Castleford, a township in the Osgoldcross parliamentary division of Yorkshire, England, on the Aire, 10 miles S.E. of Leeds by rail. Old Watling Street ran through the parish, and Koman remains have been found in the neighbourhood. There are Established, Roman Catholic, and numerous Nonconformist churches; also a market-hall. Large glass-bottle and earthenware-jar works, chemical works, and neighbouring collieries employ the inhabitants. Area of township (an urban district), 564 acres : population (1881), 10,530; (1901), 17,380. Castlemaine, a town of Victoria, Australia, in the county of Talbot, 78 miles by rail N.N.W. from Melbourne. There are important gold-mines in the district, which is also a fine agricultural one. Slate and flagstone are quarried. The gold-diggings were amongst the first discovered in the colony. Population (1881), 5787 ; (1901), 5704. Cast rogfiovan ni, a fortified town of Sicily, Italy, province of Caltanissetta, from which it is 8 miles distant by rail. It has a public library, with fine incunabula, a museum, and sulphur mines, mineral springs, olive-oil mills, and macaroni factories. Population, about 22,700.

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Flavia Domitilla, suffered martyrdom with their mistress, Petronilla, of the Aurelian family closely connected with the Flavii, and the spiritual daughter of St Peter, was buried in a sarcophagus, with the inscription :— AYRELIAE • PETRONILLAE • FIL • D VLCISSIMAE This is now in St Peter’s, but was probably originally behind the apse of this basilica, for there is a fresco of her in an arcosolium, with a matron named Yeneranda. The original entrance to the cemetery leads directly into a spacious corridor with no loculi, but recesses for sarcophagi, and decorations of the classical style of the 2nd century. 1 rom this a wide staircase leads directly down to a chamber, discovered in March 1881, of a very early date. AYithin an arcosolium is a tablet set up by Aurelius Ampliatus and his son Gordian, to Aurelia Bonifatia, his incomparable wife, a woman of true chastity, who lived 25 years, 2 months, 4 days, and 2 hours. The letters are of the 2nd century; but above the arcosolium was found a stone with great letters, 5 or 6 inches high: “Ampliati, the tomb of Ampliatus.” Now Ampliatus is a servile name : how comes it to be set up with such distinction in the sepulchre of the Flavii ? Romans xvi. 8 supplies the answer: “Salute Ampliatus, most beloved to me in the Lord.” De Rossi thinks the identification well grounded (Bullettino, 1881, p. 74). Epitaphs of members of the Flavian family have been found here, and others stating that they are put up “Ex indulgentia flaviae domitillae vespasiani neptis.” So that De Rossi did not hesitate to complete an inscription on a broken stone thus :— Sl'plllt" / RVM Flavi / orvm

Castro Urdtales, a seaport of Spain, in the province of Santander. This town has increased in size, population, and importance very rapidly since 1879, owing to the development of mining interests in its environs. The total amount of iron ore shipped rose from 277,200 tons in 1894 to 413,369 in 1898. The total exports of tinned sardines in 1898 were valued at <£21,300, all prepared in the town. Castro is now connected with Bilbao by the coast line between the capital of Biscay and Santander. The movement of British shipping at the port in 1898 was as follows : 102 vessels in ballast with a tonnage of 133,105 entered, and 60 vessels with 101,587 tons of cargoes, valued at £40,634, De Rossi began his excavations in the cemetery of St cleared for Great Britain. Population (1897), 12,268. Prisalla in 1851, but for thirty years nothing but what had been described by Bosio came to light. In 1880 Castrovillari, a fortified town of the province of Cosenza, Calabria, Italy, 44 miles N. from Cosenza. It is he unearthed a portion near the Capella Greca, and situated in a wide fertile valley around the foot of an old found galleries that had not been touched since they The Norman castle. The people press out olive oil and make were filled in during the Diocletian persecution. loculi were intact and the epitaphs still in their places, casks. Population, about 11,500. so that “they form a kind of museum, in which the Catacombs of Rome —Discoveries since 1870. development, the formulae, and the symbolic figures of In 1873 was discovered, near the cemetery of St Domi- Christian epigraphy, from its origin to the end of the tilla, the semi-subterranean basilica of SS. Nereus and 3rd or 4th century, can be notified, and contemplated, Achilleus, 100 feet by 60 feet. This is now covered not in artificial specimens as in the Lateran, but in the with a roof, and the fallen columns have been raised genuine and living reality of their original condition ” up. The lower part of a pillar, which once supported {Bullett., 1884, p. 68). Many of the names mentioned a baldachino over the altar, still preserves the name in St Paul’s Epistles are found here: Phoebe, Prisca, A.cilleus, and beneath it a bas-relief of the martyr, with Aquilius, Felix Ampliatus, Epenetus, Olympias, Onesimus, his hands bound, receiving his death - bloAv from the Philemon, Asyncritus, Lucius, Julia, Caius, Timotheus, executioner. The base of a similar column has only Tychicus, Crescens, Urbanus, Hermogenes, Tryphsena and feet in the same attitude, and probably bore the Trypho(sa) on the same stone. Petrus, a very rare name Nereus. In a grave in the apse was found a name in the Catacombs, is found here several times, large fragment of an inscription, composed by Pope both in Greek and Latin. The neighbouring Gcemeterium Damasus, but set up by his successor Siricius, which, from Ostrianum was anciently known as “ Fons S. Petri,” “ ubi the note-book of a Salzburg pilgrim of the 8th century, Petrus baptizavit,” ubi Petrus prius sedit.” This cemetery can be completed thus :— derives its name from Priscilla, mother of Pudens, who is said to have given hospitality to St Peter the Apostle. We Militise nomen dederant saevum fQ'V. ue gerebant are reminded of St Paul, and of his friends Aquila and Prisca, Officium pariter spectantes juss 'atyr^v anni by a monument erected by a freedman of an emperor, both Prseceptis pulsante metu servi RE par^V ati Mira fides rerum subito posue RE FVRORE* of whose names have perished, but the freedman was Conversi fugiunt ducis impia castr A RELINQVVN'f' praepositvs tabernacvlorvm—chief tentmaker. In Projiciunt clypeos faleras tel AQ. CRVENTA 1888 a corridor was discovered which had at one time Confess! gaudent Christi portar E TRIVMFOS been isolated from the rest of the cemetery. It had no Credite per Damasum possit quid GLORIA CHRISTI loculi, but recesses in the wall to receive sarcophagi. Nereus (see Rom. xvi. 15) and Achilleus, said to have At the end of the corridor there was a large chamber, been baptized by St Peter, refused to do the bidding of 23 feet by 13 feet, once lined with marble and the Domitian as praetorians, and entering the service of ceiling covered with mosaic, a few fragments of which