e. They clung, as Jews have clung wherever
they have been scattered, to the memories and to the customs of their
country,--and that they retained their ancient mode of sepulture was
curiously ascertained by Bosio, the first explorer of the catacombs.
In the year 1602, he discovered a catacomb on what is called Monte
Verde,--the southern extremity of the Janiculum, outside the walls of
Rome, near to the Porta Portese. This gate is in the Transtiberine
district, and in this quarter of Rome the Jews dwelt. The catacomb
resembled in its general form and arrangements those which were of
Christian origin;--but here no Christian emblem was found. On the
contrary, the only emblems and articles that Bosio describes as having
been seen were plainly of Jewish origin. The seven-branched candlestick
was painted on the wall; the word "Synagogue" was read on a portion of
a broken inscription and the whole catacomb had an air of meanness and
poverty which was appropriate to the condition of the mass of the Jews
at Rome. It seemed to be beyond doubt that it was a Jewish cemetery. In
the course of years, through the changes in the external condition and
the cultivation of Monte Verde, the access to this catacomb has been
lost. Padre Marchi made ineffectual efforts a few years since to find
an entrance to it, and Bosio's account still remains the only one that
exists concerning it. Supposing the Jews to have followed this mode of
interment at Rome, it would have been a strong motive for its adoption
by the early Christians. The first converts in Rome, as St. Paul's
Epistle shows, were, in great part, from among the Jews. The Gentile and
the Jewish Christians made one community, and the Gentiles adopted the
manner of the Jews in placing their dead, "wrapped in linen cloths, in
new tombs hewn out of the rock."

Believing, then, the catacombs to have been begun within a few years
after the first preaching of Christianity in Rome, there is abundant
evidence to prove that their construction was continued during the time
when the Church was persecuted or simply tolerated, and that they were
extended during a considerable time after Christianity became the
established creed of the empire. Indeed, several catacombs now known
were not begun until some time after Constantine's conversion.[C] They
continued to be used as burial-places certainly as late as the sixth
century. This use seems to have been given up at the time of the
frequent desolation