"[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.
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