and with the names of the offices which the dead had borne, and, like the modern Christian (?) epitaphs whose style has been borrowed from them, the vanity of this world holds its place above the grave.  But among the early Christian inscriptions of Rome nothing of this kind is known.  Scarcely a title of rank or a name of office is to be found among them.  A military title, or the name of priest or deacon, or of some other officer in the Church, now and then is met with; but even these, for the most part, would seem to belong to the fourth century, and never contain any expression of boastfulness or flattery.

  FL.  OLIVS PATERNVS
  CENTVRIO CHOR.  X VRB. 
  QVI VIXIT AH XXVII
  IN PACE

  Flavius Olius Paternus, Centurion of the
  Tenth Urban Cohort, who lived twenty-seven
  years.  In peace.

It is true, no doubt, that among the first Christians there were very few of the rich and great.  The words of St. Paul to the Corinthians were as true of the Romans as of those to whom they were specially addressed:  “For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called.”  Still there is evidence enough that even in the first two centuries some of the mighty and some of the noble at Rome were among those called, but that evidence is not to be gathered from the gravestones of the catacombs.  We have seen, in a former article, that even the grave of one of the early bishops,—­the highest officer of the Church,—­and one who had borne witness to the truth in his death, was marked by the words,

  CORNELIVS MARTYR
  EP.

  The Martyr Cornelius, Bishop.

Compare this with the epitaphs of the later popes, as they are found on their monuments in St. Peter’s,—­“flattering, false insculptions on a tomb, and in men’s hearts reproach,”—­epitaphs overweighted with superlatives, ridiculous, were it not for their impiety, and full of the lies and vanities of man in the very house of God.

With this absence of boastfulness and of titles of rank on the early Christian graves two other characteristics of the inscriptions are closely connected, which bear even yet more intimate and expressive relation to the change wrought by Christianity in the very centre of the heathen world.

“One cannot study a dozen monuments of pagan Rome,” says Mr. Northcote, in his little volume on the catacombs, “without reading something of servus or libertus, libertis libertabusque posterisque eorum; and I believe the proportion in which they are found is about three out of every four.  Yet, in a number of Christian inscriptions exceeding eleven thousand, and all belonging to the first six centuries of our era, scarcely six have been found containing any allusion whatever—­and even two or three of these are doubtful—­to this fundamental division of ancient Roman society.