so far succeeded as to gain possession of the bodies, and to carry them as far as the second milestone on the Appian Way.  Here they paused, and when they attempted to carry the bodies farther, so great a storm of thunder and lightning arose, that they were terrified, and did not venture to repeat their attempt.  By this time, also, the Romans had become aware of the carrying off of the sacred bodies, and, coming out from the city, recovered possession of them.  One of the old pictures on the wall of the portico of the ancient basilica of St. Peter’s preserved a somewhat different version of the legend, representing the Romans as falling violently upon the Oriental robbers, and compelling them, with a storm of blows, to yield up the possession of the relics they were carrying away by stealth.

But the legend went on further to state, that, on the spot where they thus had regained the bodies of their saints, the Romans made a deep hole in the ground, and laid them away within it very secretly.  Here for some time they rested, but at length were restored to their original tombs, the one on the Ostian Way, the other on the Vatican.  But St. Peter was again to be laid in this secret chamber in the earth on the Appian Way.  In the episcopate of the saint and scoundrel Callixtus, the Emperor Elagabalus, with characteristic extravagance and caprice, resolved to make a circus on the Vatican, wide enough for courses of chariots drawn by four elephants abreast.  All the older buildings in the way were to be destroyed, to gratify this imperial whim; and Callixtus, fearing lest the Christian cemetery, and especially the tomb of the prince of the apostles might be discovered and profaned, removed the body of St. Peter once more to the Appian Way.  Here it lay for forty years, and round it and near it an underground cemetery was gradually formed; and it was to this burial-place, first of all, that the name Catacomb,[B] now used to denote all the underground cemeteries, was applied.

[Footnote B:  A word, the derivation of which is not yet determined.  The first instance of its use is in the letter of Gregory from which we derive the legend.  This letter was written A.D. 594.]

Though at length St. Peter was restored to the Vatican, from which he has never since been removed, and where his grave is now hidden by his church, the place where he had lain so long was still esteemed sacred.  The story of St. Sebastian relates how, after his martyred body had been thrown into the Cloaca Maxima, that his friends might not have the last satisfaction of giving it burial, he appeared in a vision to Lucina, a Roman lady, told her where his body might be found, and bade her lay it in a grave near that in which the apostles had rested.  This was done, and less than a century afterward a church rose to mark the place of his burial, and connected with it, Pope Damasus, the first great restorer and adorner of the catacombs, [A.D. 266-285,] caused the chamber that was formed