VATVOR. MILI[=V]
S[=C]TOR[=V]. MARTIR[=V]. QVOR[=V]. IBI. CORPORA. IN. PACE. SEPVLTA.
S[=V][=T] VNA. C[=V]. QVADRAGINTA. SEX. PONTIFICIBVS. BEATIS. QVI.
OMNES EX MAGNA. TRIBVLATIONE. VENER[=V]T. ET. VT. HEREDES. IN. DOMO
DOMINI. FIER[=E]T. MORTIS. SVPPLICIVM. PRO. CRISTI. NOMINE PERTVLERVNT

"Here let the pious mind often visit the tombs of the saints,
Whose glory will be everlasting in Christ."

"Here is the cemetery of the blessed Calixtus, renowned Pope
and Martyr. Whoever shall have entered it contrite and after
confession, shall obtain full remission of all his sins,
through the glorious merits of 174,000 martyr saints, whose
bodies are buried here in peace, together with forty-six
blessed pontiffs, who all came out of great tribulation, and
suffered the punishment of death for Christ's name, that they
might become heirs in the Lord's house."

PAINTINGS.

If the tombs of the early martyrs, before "the peace of the church,"
were commonly decorated with paintings at all, which is not probable,
it is almost certain that some of those paintings have been renewed at
various subsequent periods. The best monuments of the first three
centuries are the tomb stones with inscriptions and small simple
emblems incised upon them.

It is difficult to decide by the art of drawing only between the end
of the third and the beginning of the fourth century. But this art was
in the height of perfection in the first century, in the second it was
still very good, in the third it had begun to decline, but not so
rapidly as to justify the assumption that the very bad drawings in the
catacombs belong to that period, with the exception of those already
mentioned as not Christian. The drawing of the figures in the mosaic
pictures in the vault of S. Constantia, which are of the first half of
the fourth century, are decidedly better than any of the Scriptural
subjects in the catacombs. The mosaic pictures of the fifth century on
the sides of the nave of S. Maria Maggiore, published by Ciampini,
are much more like them.

S. Paulinus, bishop of Nola, writing in the fifth century, says that
he had painted a catacomb, _for the pilgrims_, and gives his reasons
for doing so. He thought good to enliven the whole _temple_ of S.
Felix, in order that these colored representations might arrest the
attention of the rustics, and prevent their drinking too much at the
feasts. The _temple_ here evidently means