Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/226

Rh 214 adopt precautions to conceal the entrance to the cemeteries, which Became the temporary hiding-places of the Christian fugitives, and to baffle the search of their pursuers. To these stormy periods we may safely assign the alterations which may be traced in the staircases, which are sometimes abruptly cut off, leaving a gap requiring a ladder, and the formation of secret passages communicating with the arenarice, and through them with the open country. When the storms of persecution ceased and Christianity had become the imperial faith, the evil fruits of prosperity were not slow to appear. Cemetery interment became a regular trade in the hands of the fossores, or grave-diggers, who app3ar to have established a kind of property in the Catacombs, and whose greed of gain led to that destruc tion of the religious paintings with which the walls were decorated, for the quarrying of fresh loculi, to which we have already alluded. Monumental epitaphs record the purchase of a grave from the fossores, in many cases during the Ufa time of the individual, not unfrequently stating the price. A very curious fresco, found in the cemetery of Callistus, preserved by the engravings of the earlier investigators (Bottari, torn. ii. p. 12(5, tav. 99), represents a &quot; fossor&quot; with his lamp in his hand and his pick over his shoulder, and his tools lying about him. Above is the inscription, &quot; Diogenes Fossor in Pace depositus.&quot; Our space forbids us to enter on any detailed description of the frescos which cover the walls and ceilings of the burial-chapels in the richest abundance. It must suffice to say that the earliest examples are only to be distin guished from the mural decorations employed by their pagan contemporaries (as seen at Pompeii and elsewhere) by the absence of all that was immoral or idolatrous, and that it was only very slowly and timidly that any distinctly religious representations were introduced. These were at first purely symbolical, meaningless to any but a Christian eye, such as the Vine, the Good Shepherd, the Sheep, the Fisherman, the Fish, &c. Even the personages of ancient mythology were pressed into the service of early FIG. 17. Fresco Ceiling. From Bosio. The subjects, beginning at the top and going to the right, are (1.) The para lytic carrying his bed; (2.) The seven baskets full of fragments; (3) Raising &amp;gt;l Lazarus; (4.) Daniel in the lions den; (5.) Jonah swallowed by the fish- IB.) Jonah vomited forth ; (7.) Moses striking the rock; (8.) Noah and the dove In the centre, the Good Shepherd. Christian art, and Orpheus, taming the wild beasts with his lyre, symbolized the peaceful sway of Christ; and Ulysses, deaf to the Siren s song, represented the Reliever triumphing over the allurements of sensual pleasure. The person of Christ appeared but rarely, and then commonly simply as the chief personage in an historical picture. The events depicted from our Lord s life are but few, and always conform rigidly to the same traditional type. The most frequent are the miracle at Cana, the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, the paralytic carrying his bed, the healing of the woman with the issue of bloud, the raising of Lazarus, Zacchseus, and the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The Crucifixon, and subjects from the Passion, are never represented. The cycle of Old Testament subjects is equally limited. The most common are the history of Jonah as a type of the Resurrection, the Fall, Noah receiving the dove with the olive branch, Abraham s sacrifice of Isaac, Moses taking off his shoes, David with Fid. 18. Fresco Ceiling. From Bosio. The subjects, beginning at the bottom and going to the right, are (1.) Moses striking the rock; (2.) Noah and the dove; (3.) The three children in the fur nace; (4.) Abraham s sacrifice ; (5.) The miracle of the loaves. the sling, Daniel in the lions den, and the Three Chil dren in the fiery furnace. The mode of representation is always conventional, the treatment of the subject no less than its choice being dictated by an authority to which the artist was compelled to bow. Whatever be the date of the original pictures, a point on which considerable doubt exists, it is tolerably certain that the existing frescos are restorations of the 8th or even a later century, from which the character of the earlier work can only very imperfectly be discovered. All the more valuable of these paintings have been reproduced in Mr Parker s magnificent series of photographs taken in the Catacombs by the magnesium light. The contrast between these rude inartistic per formances and the finished drawings, which profess to be accurate copies, in Perret s costly work, fully warrants the late Dean Milman s severe strictures on that &quot; beautiful book,&quot; &quot;so beautiful as to be utterly worthless to the archse- ologist and historian, which wants only two things, truth and fidelity.&quot; Not the frescos alone, but also every point of interest in the plan, structure, and decoration of the Catacombs has been illustrated by Mr Parker in the same series of photographs, an examination of which is almost as instructive as a personal visit to the Catacombs themselves. 1 Mr Parker s invaluable series of Roman photographs may be seen at the library of the South Kensington Museum, and at Mr Stanford s, Charing Cross, as well as in the Ashmolean Museum, and the Bodleian Library, Oxford.