ian Eusebius, an
eye-witness, says that when the persecutors became tired of bloodshed,
they contrived a new form of cruelty. They put out the right eyes of
the confessors, cut the tendon of their left legs, and then sent them
to the mines, lame, half blind, half starved, and flogged nearly to
death. In book VIII., chapter 12, the historian says that the number
of sufferers was so great that no account could be kept of them in the
archives of the Church. The memory of this decade of horrors has never
died out in Rome. We have still a local tradition, not altogether
unfounded, of ten thousand Christians who were condemned to quarry
materials for Diocletian's Baths, and who were put to death after the
dedication of the building.

Towards the end of 306, Maxentius stopped the persecution, but the
true era of peace did not begin before 312, which is the date of
Constantine's famous "edict of Milan," granting to the Church liberty
and free possession of her places of worship and cemeteries forever.

The events of which I have given a summary sketch are beautifully
illustrated by the discoveries which have been made in early Christian
cemeteries, from May 31, 1578, which is the date of the discovery of
the first catacomb, to the present day.

From the time of the apostles to the first persecution of Domitian,
Christian tombs, whether above or below ground, were built with
perfect impunity and in defiance of public opinion. We have been
accustomed to consider the catacombs of Rome as crypts plunged in
total darkness, and penetrating the bowels of the earth at
unfathomable depths. This is, in a certain measure, the case with
those catacombs, or sections of catacombs, which were excavated in
times of persecution; but not with those belonging to the first
century. The cemetery of these members of Domitian's family who had
embraced the gospel--such as Flavius Clemens, Flavia Domitilla,
Plautilla, Petronilla, and others--reveals a bold example of
publicity.

The entrance to the crypt, discovered in 1714 and again in 1865, near
the farmhouse of Tor Marancia, at the first milestone of the Via
Ardeatina, is hewn out of a perpendicular cliff, which is conspicuous
from the high road (the modern Via delle Sette Chiese). The crypt is
approached through a vestibule, which was richly decorated with
terra-cotta carvings, and, on the frieze, a monumental inscription
enclosed by an elaborate frame. No pagan mausolea of the Via Appia or
t