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.”