The sepulchral halls of the catacombs do not resemble those of the Egyptians or those of the Etruscans; they are bare and severe.  The Christians knew that a corpse had no bodily wants and so they did not adorn the tombs.  The most important halls are decorated with very simple ornaments and paintings which almost always represent the same scenes.  The most common subjects are the faithful in prayer, and the Good Shepherd, symbolical of Christ.  Some of these halls were like chapels.  In them were interred the bodies of the holy martyrs and the faithful who wished to lie near them; every year Christians came here to celebrate the mysteries.  During the persecutions of the third century the Christians of Rome often took refuge in these subterranean chapels to hold their services of worship, or to escape from pursuit.  The Christians could feel safe in this bewildering labyrinth of galleries whose entrance was usually marked by a pagan tomb.

THE MONKS OF THE THIRD CENTURY

=The Solitaries.=—­It was an idea current among Christians, especially in the East, that one could not become a perfect Christian by remaining in the midst of other men.  Christ himself had said, “If any man come to me and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters ... he cannot be my disciple.”  The faithful man or woman who thus withdrew from the world to work out his salvation the more surely, was termed an Anchorite (the man who is set apart), or a Monk (solitary).  This custom began in the East in the middle of the third century.  The first anchorites established themselves in the deserts and the ruins of the district of Thebes in Upper Egypt, which remained the holy land of the solitaries.

Paul (235-340), the oldest of the monks, lived to his ninetieth year in a grotto near a spring and a palm-tree which furnished him with food and clothing.  The model of the monks was St Anthony.[167] At the age of twenty he heard read one day the text of the gospel, “If thou wilt be perfect, sell all thy goods and give to the poor.”  He was fine looking, noble, and rich, having received an inheritance from his parents.  He sold all his property, distributed it in alms and buried himself in the desert of Egypt.  He first betook himself to an empty tomb, then to the ruins of a fortress; he was clad in a hair-shirt, had for food only the bread that was brought to him every six months, fasted, starved himself, prayed day and night.  Often sunrise found him still in prayer.  “O sun,” cried he, “why hast thou risen and prevented my contemplating the true light?” He felt himself surrounded by demons, who, under every form, sought to distract him from his religious thoughts.  When he became old and revered by all Egypt, he returned to Alexandria for a day to preach against the Arian heretics, but soon repaired to the desert again.  They besought him to remain:  he replied, “The fishes die on land, the monks waste away in the city; we return to our mountains like the fish to the water.”