sensuality, and Christianity became the means of uniting man and woman in the bonds of an immortal love.
Here is an inscription which, spite of the rudeness of its style, preserves the pleasant memory of a Roman child:--
ISPIRITO SANTO BONO
FLORENTIO QVI VIXIT ANIS XIII
QVAM SI FILIVM SVVM ET COTDEVS
MATER FILIO BENEMERETI FECERVNT.
To the good and holy spirit Florentius, who
lived thirteen years, Coritus, his master, who
loved him more than if he were his own son,
and Cotdeus, his mother, have made this for
her well-deserving son.[3]
[Footnote 3: Compare an inscription from a heathen tomb:--
C. JVLIVS MAXIMVS
ANN. II. M. V.
ATROX 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
well-deserving mother Regina, a widow, who
sat a widow sixty years, and never burdened
the church, the wife of one husband, who lived
eighty years, five months, twenty-six days.
The words of this inscription recall to mind those of St. Paul, in his First Epistle to Timothy, (v. 3-16,) and especially the verse, "If any man or woman that believeth have widows, let them relieve them, and let not the church be charged."
Some of the inscriptions preserve a record of the occupation or trade of the dead, sometimes in words, more often by the representation of the
