O FORTVNA TRVCI QVAE FVNERR GAVDES
QVID MIHI TAM SVBITO MAXIMVS ERIPITVR
QVI MODO JVCVNDVS GREMIO SVPERESSE SOLEBAT
HIC LAPIS TN TVMVLO NVNC JACET ECCE MATER

C. Julius Maximus,
Two years, five months old.

Harsh Fortune, that in cruel death finds't joy,
Why is my Maximus thus sudden reft,
So late the pleasant burden of my breast?
Now in the grave this stone lies: lo, his mother!]

And Coritus, his master, and Cotdeus, his mother, might have rejoiced in
knowing that their poor, rough tablet would keep the memory of her boy
alive for so many centuries; and that long after they had gone to the
grave, the good spirit of Florentius should still, through these few
words, remain to work good upon the earth.--Note in this inscription (as
in many others) the Italianizing of the old Latin,--the _ispirito_, and
the _santo_; note also the mother's strange name, reminding one of Puritan
appellations,--Cotdeus being the abbreviation of _Quod vult Deus_, "What
God wills."[4]

[Footnote 4: Other names of this kind were _Deogratias_, _Habetdeum_, and
_Adeodatus_.]

Here is an inscription set up by a husband to his wife, Dignitas, who was
a woman of great goodness and entire purity of life:--

QUE SINE LESIONE ANIMI MEI VIXI MECVM
ANNOS XV FILIOS AVTEM PROCREAVIT VII
EX QVIBVS SECV ABET AD DOMINVM IIII

Who, without ever wounding my soul, lived
with me for fifteen years, and bore seven
children, four of whom she has with her in
the Lord.

We have already referred to the inscriptions which bear the name of some
officer of the early Church; but there is still another class, which
exhibits in clear letters others of the designations and customs familiar
to the first Christians. Thus, those who had not yet been baptized and
received into the fold, but were being instructed in Christian doctrine
for that end, were called _catechumens_; those who were recently baptized
were called _neophytes_; and baptism itself appears sometimes to have
been designated by the word _illuminatio_. Of the use of these names the
inscriptions give not infrequent examples. It was the custom also among
the Christians to afford support to the poor and to the widows of their
body. Thus we read such inscriptions as the following:--

RIGINE VENEMEREMTI FILIA SVA FECIT
VENERIGINE MATRI VIDVAE QVE SE
DIT VIDVA ANNOS LX ET ECLESA
VIXIT ANNOS LXXX MESIS V
DIES XXVI

Her daughter Reneregina made this for her