And here a third, to a child who had died as one of the Innocents:--
MIRAE INNOCENTIAE ANIMA DULCIS AEMILEANVS
QVI VIXIT ANNO VNO, MENS. VIII D. XXVIII
DORMIT IN PACE
Aemilian, sweet soul of marvellous innocence,
who lived one year, eight months, twenty-eight
days. He sleeps in peace.
At this grave was found the vase of blood, and on the gravestone was the
figure of a dove.
Another inscription, which preserves the name of one of those who suffered
in the most severe persecution to which the ancient Church was exposed,
and which, if genuine, is, so far as known, the only monument of the kind,
is marked by the same simplicity of style:--
LANNVS XPI MA
RTIR HC*[Hic?] REQVIESC
IT SVR [E-P-S] DIOCLITI ANO PASSVS
Lannus Martyr of Christ here rests. He
suffered under Diocletian.
The three letters EPS have been interpreted as standing for the words _et
posteris suis_, and as meaning that the grave was also for his successors.
Not yet, then, had future saints begun to sanctify their graves, and to
claim the exclusive possession of them.
But there is another point of contrast between the inscriptions of the un-
Christianized and the Christian Romans, which illustrates forcibly the
difference in the regard which they paid to the dead. To the one the dead
were still of this world, and the greatness of life, the distinctions of
class, the titles of honor still clung to them; to the other the past life
was as nothing to that which had now begun.
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