Page:A Letter from Mr John Monro to the Publisher, concerning the Catacombs of Rome and Naples (IA paper-doi-10 1098 rstl 1700 0043).pdf/4

 of great discoveries, open'd them at last. Thus they conclude, the remains of the vilest part of Mankind are trump'd up in the Church for the Bodies of the most eminent Confessors and Martyrs.

To leave the latter part of this tale to shift for itself as well as it can, either the Catacombs are not that great work they are represented to be, nor to be found every where about the City, or 'twas very improper in Festus Pompeius to call them by the little name of Puticuli, and so confine them to one place only, that I mean unknown now without the Esquilin-Gate. Indeed the charaers of the places are so very unlike, that one wou'd wonder how a common Burying place, where in holes Bodies were thrown together to rot, came to be confounded with Repositories cut in the face of a long Gallery, one over another, sometimes to the number of seven, in which Bodies were singly laid, and handsomely done up again, so that nothing cou'd offend the view of those that went in, especially with the little rooms of the fashion of Chappels, that have all the appearences of being the Sepulchres of people of distinion.

The Remark, Puticulos Antiquissimum sepulturæ genus appellatos, quod ibi in puteis sepirentur hominesThe wells are called the most ancient type of burial, because people were buried there in the wells [sic], is that of an Etymologist, that would be now thought to speak against all the property of Language, if he apply'd the name to our Graves or Vaults, to which it may with more justice and reason be apply'd, than to the Galleries of the Catacombs, and the rooms that go off them. What the particulars were is not difficult to define, after what we have seen so often. When the Persecutors spilt the Blood of so many Martyrs, they us'd to dig holes perpendicularly in the ground, and to throw the Bodies promiscuously in them; of this the memory is still conserv'd, Churches being built in the places