Приложение

I. Apology for funeral customs How did the concept of the need to bury the dead develop? Funeral rites in the Greco-Roman world and among the early Christians. Burial is a duty of the living towards the dead, according to the view of the ancients. Zeal of Christians for the burial of the dead; incentives to fulfill this duty. Funeral rites of the ancient Greeks and Romans and in the early Christian world: their similarities and differences. That aspect of church cult that we are touching upon has its long history in the manners and customs of the distant pre-Christian world and can only be understood in connection with the latter. As one of the facts of the history of civilization, the funeral customs of ancient peoples reveal to us a picture of their moral and aesthetic development; they end up in the everyday life of man, still untouched by civilization, and then, going further and further along the historical path, they move us towards cultural times; Finally, they are introduced into the area of ​​everyday life, beliefs, moral and aesthetic needs of the already civilized world. As with other aspects of the religious and everyday life of the ancient world, we find in Greco-Roman practice a more complete form of funeral ceremonies, which was destined to have a strong influence on Christian practice and here receive a kind of modification and processing. We are well aware of the funeral ceremonies of the Greeks and Romans, and knowledge of them, of course, would be enough to understand the genealogy of the Christian funeral cult, but the Greco-Roman form of burial is already a product of a high civilization. There was a time, there were entire tribes who, apparently, did not suspect any moral relations towards the dead, did not hesitate to look at them as carrion, give them up as sacrifices to wild animals and leave them to their fate. Even before the eyes of recent history, Christian missionaries have seen similar phenomena among the peoples to whom they appeared preaching the Gospel. Among savages, where relations between the living are based on crude material concepts, where there can be no mention of moral relations towards a person as a person, it was completely in the order of things if a son killed his seventy-year-old father in order to save him from the burden of senile life and himself from an unprofitable and superfluous person who needed to be fed. In the same way, it was completely appropriate for him to eat his victim along with the animals killed during the hunt, without any thought of burying the dead. This is exactly what happened among the Scythians and Masagets, according to Herodotus. The same thing is presented to us by the modern life of some savages who, being at the stage of development of primitive man, look at the deceased as directly as at the corpse of a killed or fallen animal, and dispose of it as an object of everyday consumption. The artificial view of the people of the school converged with this crudely material view of primitive man. So the cynics put burial into nothing, and the judgment of Diogenes is remarkable in this regard. Friends asked him how he would like to be buried? To this he replied: “Throw my corpse somewhere on the field!” - “What? means, to be devoured by birds and beasts? “No,” the philosopher answered with irony, “put a stick near me, with which I will drive them away.” “But you can’t take it up,” asked the slow-witted friends. “If I don’t feel anything, I don’t care whoever uses my corpse, whether I rot in the ground or decompose on its surface.” Some of the Christian apologists expressed the same rational view of the attitude towards the body of the deceased and said that the process of destruction equally concerns the corpse, no matter how it is hidden and no matter how the person dies. The dualism of Christian ascetics also leaned towards the same view: Anthony the Great, Ephraim the Syrian and others, who considered the body to be the source and stimulus of evil and considered the task and crown of perfection in the renunciation of man from the drives and bonds of bodily nature. As soon as nature itself or, in their opinion, the mercy of God broke this dangerous union through death, to show respect to the body - this destroyed prison of the soul - would be unfair and unworthy. However, the direct, immediate feeling of a person easily prevailed over these views - and this is the reason why, at the very earliest dawn of human life, the beginnings of a well-known cult of the dead were already laid; The first religious rites joined this cult and the first ideas about the soul and the afterlife began with it. A historian of ritual, a historian of religion, an art historian, in a word, a researcher of primitive culture, will find here the earliest material for judging the first inclinations of the aesthetic and religious development of mankind. At first, when man was not yet familiar with the highest moral impulses, his concerns about preserving a dead body stemmed from a natural disgust for a corpse, which was considered unclean in itself and the touch of which should be accompanied by purification. This primary, so to speak, hygienic-material view was shared to a certain extent by the Jews and Egyptians. 315 Those who went even further along the path of development easily found many other higher motives for caring about the burial of their relative or fellow villager, and under the influence of a sense of humanity, this natural concern rose to the level of a moral duty, a sacred duty in relation to every person, no matter what kind and nationality he was. We know that this thought was, to a greater or lesser extent, common to all peoples of the ancient world. The Egyptians, Persians, and Hindus, in their mythology and their burial structures, left us traces of their widely developed funeral cult. At this stage of moral development stood the ancient Greeks, in whom we find a completely meaningful concept of this duty and characteristic examples of subtle moral relations towards the deceased. Of all the peoples of the ancient world, the Greeks, as is known, were especially distinguished by their developed sense of humanity, aesthetic taste and brilliant intelligentsia. Their everyday relationships already bore the sharp imprint of a rational civilization; their poetic view of nature and the phenomena of human life kept them away from the narrow materialism of the prudent Romans. Therefore, their religion early takes to heart the concern for the mortal remains of man and, in its own sense, creates a cult of the dead. Among the Greeks, for the first time, this cult received a moral and religious basis and was first connected with the idea of ​​man as an individual, and with respect for him as a dear being. Homer already called burial γέρας θανόντων - (honor given to the dead), an expression of respect for the dead, and Euripides - δίκην, a duty of justice. And Socrates, speaking about the war of the Thebans with the Argonauts, puts the following words into the mouth of their king Adrastus: “The burial of the dead is an ancient custom and a universal right that is shared by all peoples. It did not come from the human mind, but was inspired by the divine mind.” Greek mythology recognizes Pluto, one of the great gods, as the father and inventor of burial. But mythology is nothing more than a poetic representation of this or that fact in the popular understanding; it is a kind of fabulous epic in which poetic instinct represents in images the distant destinies of the past, barely preserved in popular memory. Under the name of Pluto, the Greek, therefore, personified and idolized the first idea of ​​this cult, poetically reproducing the moment of civilization when this idea was first realized and found its representative in one person or a number of individuals. And so the grateful feeling of the Greek settled Pluto among the gods and separated for him the region of the underworld, where, according to the Greek belief, the souls of the dead descended and where they continued their afterlife existence. The Greek worldview thus went beyond the earthly fate of man, it continued it beyond the grave and created a number of mythological pictures in which the characters on the one hand are the souls of the dead, and on the other, with Pluto at the head, Charon, Minos and other persons who make up the judges and rulers of this dark kingdom. But these half-dead shadows, transported by the will of fate to the region of the underworld with its motionless, unusual and cold environment, feel too close to the environment they just left; they would like to return to their former world if the hundred-eyed Argus and the many-headed Cerberus did not interfere with their revival for their former life. Let us recall the words of Odysseus, who would rather be the last worker - a plowman in the kingdom of the living, than the first honored guest in the kingdom of the dead, in order to judge the attraction that the souls of the dead showed towards ordinary life with its fussy and restless activity. Let us recall the poetic myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, who was tormented by the desire to return to the arms of her lover and begin her former way of life, and we will understand that the gloomy Hades and Elysium were for the Greek too poor a substitute for the joys of real life and its usual order. And so the souls of the dead are not indifferent to their bodies; they feel restless until these latter are buried, and until the living have fulfilled the sacred duty of burial towards them. In the form of shadows, according to the Greek, they rush around their earthly home, as if not wanting to part with their former connections, to renounce their former circle of attachments. On the other hand, the Greek felt that his connections with the dead were not over: he buried his relative in his own house, in the place of his former life, and believed that the very spirit of the deceased was invisibly present with the soulless corpse. This spirit becomes an object of veneration for him and is included in the household patron gods, for whom the Greek creates a special cult. He turns to them in moments of family joys and hardships, he invites them to participate in his family events, as members of the house, although they have already left the domestic stage, but they lively sympathize with what is happening in the place of their former activities. In order to fulfill his duty in relation to the deceased, he forgot malice and revenge, natural inequality and showed this respect to the corpse, and considered desecration of it the greatest crime, which could not go in vain and avoid deserved punishment from the gods. To further highlight the criminality of this type of action, Greek mythology linked the failure to fulfill the duty of burying the deceased with his afterlife fate. According to the Greek, the souls of the dead could not reach the Champs Elysees until their bodies were buried. Homer reproduces for us the ancient Hellenic view when he makes the shadow of Elpenor turn to Odysseus with the following words: “I adjure you by your offspring, your wife and the father who raised you, I beg you in the name of Telemachus, whom you left in your home, not to leave me unburied, so that divine punishment does not befall you.” The Greeks did not know a more terrible curse than to die unburied (άταφος) and of all types of death they considered death at sea to be the most terrible, because corpses swallowed up by the waves were left without burial. 316 With this thought, those sailing on the sea, when they were in danger of being wrecked, tied expensive things to their bodies, whatever they had, in case his corpse was washed ashore by the waves. The first person to find this corpse was obliged to immediately bury it, and as a reward for this service could use the precious things found with the corpse. But even if there was no such reward, Greek laws strictly demanded that everyone fulfill the funeral duty in relation to the deceased. Anyone who refused this was not allowed to worship, was separated from society and was considered unclean until he accepted certain religious consecrations. The legislator provided for such casuistic cases as the following: if a traveler accidentally found a dead body on the road, and meanwhile extreme necessity forced him to continue the journey without stopping, then he had to at least throw three handfuls of earth on the corpse and thereby fulfill the duty of burial. Later, this feeling of attachment to the deceased was complicated among the Greeks by family, national and blood motives. Friends and relatives of the deceased were not satisfied with simply performing the burial. They forced the deceased to seek his final refuge closer to his native land, in the vicinity of his home. The following epitaph is imbued with this feeling: “I lie far from Italy and the place of my homeland, this distance for me is worse than death itself.” Sophocles introduces us to the same circle of ideas when he depicts the scene of Electra’s separation from her brother Orestes and puts into her mouth the following speech: “As I see you off from this dear home, I wonder if it would not be better for you to give up your life here before you go to a foreign land, where perhaps a lonely grave awaits you, far from your relatives and friends.” But nothing speaks volumes about the Greeks' respect for burial rights than the laws regarding slaves and soldiers who died on the battlefield. It is known that the ancient world was not humane in its relations with slaves, just as it was little picky about the means of exterminating enemies. Both the slave and the enemy were equally powerless individuals, according to the concept of the ancients. The demands of leniency and humanity were not applied to both, and all kinds of injustice and deprivation were allowed. But even for these powerless individuals, the right of burial was recognized as a sacred law, and only in a moment of extreme irritation or in order to imagine all the horror, all the tragedy of a military pogrom, did the Greek allow himself to deprive the graves of his killed enemies and dream with gloating of how their corpses would be given over to be torn to pieces by wild animals and birds. But only the worst enemies of the Greeks indulged in this desecration, on whom the full weight of the enemy’s punishment fell; in fact, even in wartime, they highly respected the right of burial and showed respect to those killed during the battle. How furious Achilles was against his old rival Hector, with what brutal torture he took out his anger on his victim when she fell into his hands! But this did not prevent him and his associates from respecting the request of the elderly father Hector when he came to the Greek camp asking for the return of his son’s corpse for burial. Let us finally recall that remarkable scene in the Iliad, when, after hot battles under the walls of Troy, the hostile parties concluded a truce and, by the light of torches, forgetting the recent enmity, picked up the dead from the battlefield, burned them, buried them in graves, built a hill over them and performed the usual religious ceremonies. With this view of the matter, it is clear that among the Greeks and then the Romans, deprivation of burial was considered the greatest punishment, and it was subjected to persons who were completely rejected in the eyes of society, alien to all rights, and who had lost their very human dignity. Dooming notorious criminals to this shameful fate, this sentence was mostly combined with some kind of public punishment, after which the corpse of the criminal remained at the place of execution, becoming prey for birds and animals. That is why execution by hanging and crucifixion was so terrible, because it left the criminal in this shameful position until the corpse rotted and collapsed. That is why stoning was also terrible, which was also followed by the homeless state of a corpse, deprived of the rest of the grave. Hector, in whom tender feelings often drowned out military heroism, did not find a single threat stronger than this shame. In order to attract the faint-hearted and timid of his fellow citizens to participate in the battle, he had to touch their most painful and tender place and say: “Whoever I see running away from the battlefield, far from our ships, will be immediately killed, and his corpse will be torn to pieces by dogs before the walls of our city, far from his native grave, where the bones of his brothers, sisters and relatives rest.” That is why the Greeks and Romans did not bury traitors to the fatherland, tyrants convicted of robbing churches and generally committing sacrilege, publicly insulting the gods and their images, as well as suicides. 317 Tearing out corpses from graves was the most shameful, although not uncommon, method of punishment used in ancient times over persons already buried. Disturbing the bones of the dead and in the grave was decided upon only in cases of extreme indignation and revenge. The famous dictator Sulla ordered the bones of Marius to be dug up and thrown into the river, but, as if realizing that he had committed such a terrible insult to the memory of a person, before his death he ordered those close to him to burn themselves, fearing that the same story as with the bones of Marius would not happen to him someday. Periander, the tyrant of Corinth (628–584 BC), fearing the same fate, which is not uncommon for tyrants after their death, decided to destroy many victims in order to save himself from this inevitable shame. According to the story of Diogenes of Laortes, he decided on the following measure for this purpose: he ordered two young men to go out onto the road at midnight and kill the first traveler they came across and bury it secretly from everyone; against these two he sent four more, to whom he gave orders to do the same with the remaining two; he sent new ones against these four, increasing the number of killers; In conclusion, the tyrant himself appeared among other travelers, was also killed, and his grave was not recognized among many others. Of course, one cannot vouch for the authenticity of this story, but it shows that the fear of being deprived of burial and disturbed in the grave exceeded the very fear of death and caused those who feared this fate to make the most desperate decisions. Roman legislation, for its part, expressed this respect for the inviolability of the grave, imposing severe punishments on those who, out of self-interest or for other reasons, dared to rob graves and dig up corpses. The latter crime was tried according to criminal laws and subjected the perpetrators to death or exile under mitigating circumstances. Christianity placed the veneration of the dead on a more solid and broader basis, purifying and freeing the ancient idea of ​​burial as a necessary duty in relation to the dead, from the mythological shell, from the crude form of popular understanding. If the ancient Greek clothed the idea of ​​​​the connection between soul and body in a mythological picture and forced the shadow of Patroclus or Elpenor to pray for the burial of his body, Christianity, discarding this symbolic shell, directly expressed the idea of ​​​​the need to respect the body as an organ of the immortal soul, and in some respects it was right in calling the Greek idea empty and fabulous. For the soul, in its detachment from the body, it was all the same no matter how they treated the shell it had abandoned. This idea was expressed very clearly by Blessed Augustine in refutation of the mythical ideas of the Greeks. “What a strange thing! - he said, - the soul needs to fulfill its duty in relation to its body, as if it were taking something from here to the next world! It’s even stranger when they consider deprivation of burial as an insult to the soul.” Chrysostom calls the custom of burial a universal law, obligatory for the Greek and Scythian, and therefore widespread everywhere (Cfr. Const. Apost. VI, 30). In the same way, the idea of ​​resurrection neither gained nor lost in the least from whatever form the body that could be resurrected was left on earth, because resurrection is the work of omnipotence, which does not care, no matter how the body is resolved into its elements, no matter how it is preserved. This consideration was a common thought in apology, as soon as it considered the question of the matter of the body from a Christian point of view and in relation to the resurrection. “Every body,” says Minucius Felix, “either dries up into dust, or evaporates with moisture, or crumbles into dust and, disappearing into the air, is lost to sight, but the preservation of these elements is the work of God.” Having quoted the words of the poet: coelo tegitur, qui non habet urnam, Augustine continues: “Even less should Christians be attacked for not burying dead bodies, because one day there will follow, according to the promise, the restoration of flesh and members, not only buried in the earth, but also preserved in any other way in the great bosom of nature.” That is why Christians laughed loudly at the pagans, who horribly mutilated the bodies of Christians, threw them into the river, and broke them into small pieces in order to destroy the hopes of Christians for the resurrection in this way. Christians laughed at this naive logic of the pagans, but, nevertheless, they were far from indifferent to the dead remains of their brothers and spared no effort to give them a decent burial. In the midst of persecution, when it was most natural for everyone to think about their own safety, we see the extraordinary zeal of Christians for the preservation of the dead, combined with danger to life. But it is clear that Christians showed special zeal for preserving the bodies of martyrs, because these were the first sufferers for the faith, fighters for Christian beliefs, of whom the entire community was proud, and whose memory was especially dear and sacred. Christians valued every object left after them as a shrine and a treasure. The more valuable and important for them were the remains of the martyr, which served as living evidence of their faith, strength and bore traces of the suffering they endured. But Christians buried not only their fellow believers; they extended concern for burial to people of alien faith, to their very enemies and persecutors. Why? According to a feeling of compassion and love for humanity, according to the motives of humanity and respect for man, whatever his origin, in a word - according to those motives that Tertullian and Lactantius call humanitas and benignitas, and other Christian writers use other synonymous expressions. This moral attitude towards the deceased was further strengthened by the idea of ​​the immortality of the soul and the future resurrection of the body. This idea conveyed the value of a lifeless corpse as the seed of a future living body, and removed the thought of the uncleanness of the corpse. Based on this consideration, the Apostolic Constitutions refute the idea of ​​defilement by touching a corpse and instruct Christians to beware of these Jewish and Hellenic ideas. Given the similarity of the internal foundations of the funeral cult of Christians with the same relationships from the classical world, it is clear that the practice itself, the funeral rites themselves should have been and were among Christians in many ways similar to the same aspect of the matter in pre-Christian life. Let's start with the practice of the Greco-Roman world at the bedside of the dying. When someone fell ill with a serious and dangerous illness, the ancients used to place a knot of myrtle and laurel tree at the door of the house where the sick person lay. The first, according to the ancients, had the power to remove evil geniuses and prevent them from harming the sick, and the second wanted to appease Apollo, who especially loved the laurel tree in memory of Daphne, who turned into the latter from his persecution. The ancients thought that the accidental death of men occurs by the will of Apollo, and that women are abducted by death by order of Diana. When Ulysses met the shadow of his mother in the kingdom of Hades, he turned to her with the following questions: “Tell me, or better yet, tell me, what kind of death has fate subjected you to? Did a long illness bring you to the grave, or did Diana kill you with her well-aimed arrows?” Ulysses, being away from home, did not know how his mother died, and therefore asked her shadow about it. To explain this belief, it should be noted that the ancients personified Apollo as the sun, and Diana as the moon. And since from ancient times these luminaries were credited with a great influence on the life and death of people, the final fate of mortals was transferred to their representatives. All the dead, according to the ancients, were under the rule of the gods of Hades. To ensure a favorable fate for those passing into this area, the ancients considered it necessary to cut off a piece of hair from the head of the deceased and dedicated it to Pluto, the main god of Hades. In Euripides, death is represented with a scythe, with which she is ready, first of all, to cut off a lock of hair from Alceste, doomed by the will of the gods to die as a replacement for her husband. The gods, favoring mortals, themselves send their geniuses for this operation in order to speed up and facilitate the moment of death of the persons they protect. Here is what Virgil says about Dido in one of the songs of the Aeneid: “Almighty Juno, taking pity on Dido’s long illness and difficult end of life, sends Iris from Olympus, who frees her suffering soul and breaks the connection between the members of the body. Proserpina, who had been supportive before, now in a fit of anger, hesitates to remove a lock of hair from her head. And so Iris, cutting through the air with her purple wings, descends from the sky and stops above Dido’s head. “I perform this sacred duty on you,” she says, “and release you from your body.” Having said this, she cuts off part of her hair with her right hand, and then the warmth of her body instantly disappears and life is released into the air.” This poetic legend shows us in what close connection the ancients placed the final fate of man with the participation of guardian geniuses who separated the soul from the body. When the approach of death became certain, the ancients used to offer prayers to Mercury, which, according to the Greco-Roman view, accompanied souls to the kingdom of Pluto and on whom it depended to make this path prosperous or unhappy. These prayers or vows, whether they were addressed to Mercury or to any other of the gods, were called εύχαί έξιτήριοι, i.e. prayers for departure, and originated from the custom of the ancients to pray before setting off on a journey. This transition from this life to another, called both in church and classical language έξοδος, exit, departure, has become synonymous with the concept of death, θάνατος. At the very moment of death, those close to him waved handkerchiefs through the air around the dying man’s bed in order to drive away evil demons from his bedside and dispel the air ghosts that crowded around the dying man and disturbed his dying peace. With these precautions they thought to protect the soul of the deceased from the furies, who guarded it as their new victim. Free from their machinations, she could safely reach the Champs Elysees, where the souls of the dead resided, and happily avoid the fatal turn to the left when entering the kingdom of Pluto. Everyone had to pass by this terrible place, where, in the words of Virgil, “the road branches into two directions: one to the right, leading to the dwelling of the great god or Pluto - this is the path to Elysium; the other to the left is the path of sinners. Minos, Rhadamanthus and other judges of the underworld, each in his own area, were waiting there for the newly arrived shadow.” But we will not follow this fate of the soul in its new underground world; this would lead us very far into the realm of Greco-Roman mythology, and therefore we will return to the bed of the deceased. The first action of those closest to the deceased was to close his eyes. Agamemnon, who died far from his fatherland and his wife Clytemnestra, bitterly complained to Odysseus in the kingdom of Pluto that he died without being mourned by anyone, and that there was not even a wife who would close his eyes and mouth in death. This was a requirement of good looks and external decency, common to all peoples, and especially to the aesthetically developed Greeks. After all, the open and motionlessly fixed eye of a dead man is capable of producing the most difficult impression. While the spark of life burns in a person, his eyes constitute one of the conditions of beauty and serve as an expression of his soul. But as soon as the spark of life goes out, all that remains is one motionless, dull gaze, without meaning or expression. 318 The requirement of appearance in the pose itself was the concern of a well-bred Greek and did not leave him even at the very moment of death. Euripides says about Polyxena that even when she was dying, she was preoccupied with the thought of dying in a decent position and tried to close her body from prying eyes, obeying a sense of chastity and decency. And Emperor Augustus, dying, even asked for a mirror and, looking into it, ordered to straighten the hair on his head and looked with concern at his haggard cheeks. The same motivation for external neatness explains the custom of washing the deceased. How strictly this ritual was performed by the Greeks and Romans can be seen from the example of Socrates, who before drinking poison took a bath so that after death he would not bother women with this work. The washed body was covered with ointments and oils or aromatic substances, judging by the means and condition of the deceased. Embalming the dead in Egypt was one of the types of this operation and was aimed at preserving the corpse intact for as long as possible. In ancient times, among the Greeks, the corpse was wrapped in a large sheet from head to toe, then they put white wide clothes on it and buried it in this form. This is what Homer says about the burial of Patroclus. In preparation for burial, the ancient Greeks used to decorate the heads of the dead with wreaths of fresh flowers, laurel and myrtle branches - a ritual that was also retained in Christian funeral practice, as can be seen from the ornaments on Christian monuments in the catacombs. Durand, in his Rationale divinorum officiorum, says that it is customary to crown the dead with laurels or ivy, plants that do not wither for a long time, depicting the hope of resurrection. Our corollas constitute a continuation, or rather a replacement, of the same custom. When the body of the deceased was prepared in this way, it was placed in the room closest to the entrance, with its feet towards the door, and left in this position for several days, until the time when the actual burial was scheduled. During all this time, the body of the deceased was the subject of the most careful care; it was carefully protected from insects and from the influence of air; they took care that it remained intact and inviolable. Just before being buried in the ground, a coin was placed in the deceased’s mouth, which was intended as payment to Charon for transporting the soul of the deceased across the waters of the Styx. This price, which extended to three obols, was apparently normal and often found an illusion in the epigrams of comic poets about the corruption of judges and officials. In addition to this transportation fee, they also placed a special cake made of honey and flour in the hand of the deceased to tame Cerberus, who guarded the entrance to the kingdom of Pluto. Virgil mentions this in the next scene of Aeneas’s adventures off the coast of Styx. Aeneas needs to leave the underworld, but at the very exit from the cave lies the terrible three-headed Cerberus, announcing the surroundings of the cave with his loud barking. Seeing this dangerous guard, Aeneas throws him a cake, the hungry dog, grabbing the prey, begins to devour it at once with its triple mouth and stretches out on the ground throughout the entire length of the cave. Then Aeneas takes the exit, having put the attentive guard to sleep, and hastily goes to the shore of the magical Styx. As long as the deceased remained in the house, his name was loudly pronounced from time to time, and this ceremony constituted the so-called conclamatio. The reason for conclamationis is indicated by Pliny in the following words: “Since one can be mistaken about the presence of a vital spirit in the body of those who have died, they use a cry to the deceased in order to bring him to life the sooner if the deceased is in lethargy, or to quickly destroy the last weak sparks of vital force if they remained.” While the body remained in the house, it was customary to place conventional signs at the entrance or on the roof, reminding everyone of the presence of the deceased in it. This was done so that those who wished could unmistakably enter the house to say goodbye to the deceased. Such signs were cypress and pine branches, which in these cases were placed at the doors of the house. Roman symbolism associated the shapes and natural properties of these trees with the idea of ​​a dead man and used them as a symbol of a lifeless, dry and cold corpse. Others hung their hair at the entrance as a sign that the house was in mourning and inconsolable grief. It is known that tearing the hair on the head was a very common practice during funeral rites. The presence of these signs was so characteristic that the chorus in one play by Euripides directly refuses to believe in the death of Alceste, without seeing the external signs of this incident at the entrance to the house where the deceased lay. The day of the burial was usually appointed in advance; For noble and wealthy people, special heralds announced such a ceremony, and in this case the burial was called public (funera publica). Poor and humble people, of course, did not use this privilege and were content with secret funerals (funera tacita). Those under the age of majority were also deprived of public burial; their funeral was called funera acerta. Neither in Greek nor in Roman practice was the day of the funeral strictly defined. In important cases, this period lasted from 6–7 days to nine. Achilles' body, according to Homer in the Odyssey, remained unburied for 17 days. The very setting of the funeral procession did not contain ceremonies that stood out sharply from those now in use. The corpse was carried to the very place of burial on a stretcher, accompanied by close relatives and acquaintances and among the inevitable crowd of curious people; at the same time they played horns and flutes, and sometimes actors were invited to perform various kinds of mimic scenes along the way. Their choice did not always correspond to the ceremony itself and was sometimes playful and comic in nature. A special phenomenon, however, not unknown in later funeral rites, were the so-called praeficae, or hired mourners, who walked at the head of the mass of weeping women and, by their example, set the tone for the entire assembly. This profession was in great use especially among the Romans of later times and gave those who practiced it a large income. The mourners had ready mournful songs appropriate for the occasion, which they repeated throughout the entire route of the cortege, accompanying their lamentations with sobs and loud crying, reminiscent of a wild howl, as one Roman humorist notes. These bribed tears, arousing the indignation of prudent people of that time and the ridicule of satirists, however, pleased the vain relatives of the deceased and aroused competition on the part of women. Men and women cut off their hair and threw it on the bier of the deceased. They extended this ritual of deep sadness to animals, namely: they cut the manes of horses and the wool of sheep. This is how the situation appears in Homer; this is how it should have been, if you imagine how close his domestic animals were to a man of lower culture, how he considered these latter to be participants in his joys and sorrows and saw in them a necessary part of his household and, as it were, members of his household life. The spontaneity and liveliness of feeling among peoples at a lower level of education gave way to the most eccentric and free expressions during funeral rites. They tore their hair and clothes, sobbed loudly, and all this was accompanied by the most violent body movements. Women often scratched their faces and cheeks with their nails until they bled, and pounded their chests. At the funerals of noble persons, slaves, gladiators and captives were deliberately assigned to this task. Before the fire on which the deceased was burned, they were obliged to wound themselves with knives and pierce the skin with sharp instruments in order to actually shed their blood on the grave of the deceased. To put an end to these indecent antics and keep those crying within the limits of moderation, Roman laws directly prohibited women from scratching their cheeks until they bled, but, as can be seen from later practice, they had little success in this. How did Christianity react to this custom? It looked, especially in the first times, not as gloomily and hopelessly at death as in subsequent times, when the fear of hellish torment, which found support in the ideas of many fathers, obscured the bright picture of the afterlife. The early Christians with joy, with bright hope, escorted the bodies of the martyrs to the grave and wanted to suffer the same fate themselves. This desire, even if it was not carried out, was already the makings of a brighter view of death than the usual view of the Greeks and Romans. Do not grieve for the dead, like the pagans who have no hope of resurrection - this apostolic rule was not only a doctrine in the early Christian world, but was also fulfilled in practice. The feeling of faith and hope was restrained by the need to cry for the dead, and where, against the will, grief asked to come out, it did not appear in such eccentric forms, as we noted above. The church fathers were not dry rigorists; they understood that crying at the loss of a dear being is a natural need, on which the very peace of the heart depends. Therefore, crying in their eyes is infirmitatis et naturae dolor, and they considered it unnecessary to prohibit it within the limits of moderation. But their indignation knew no bounds when they had to witness extreme, eccentric expressions of regret for the deceased. Here they burst out with a series of denunciations and threats. How early this deviation towards pagan morals began, as the fathers call the custom of indulging in immoderate grief for the dead, is difficult to say; but that it took place in the middle of the third century is witnessed by Cyprian. In his treatise on mortality, he shows that in his time the discrepancy between Christian views and Christian practice on this subject made itself felt very clearly. Some of the people close to the dead began to put on mourning clothes when seeing off the dead. Cyprian notes in this regard that this should not be done, that this is the custom of the pagans, who can easily reproach Christians for the weakness of their faith, and that the persons for whom their admirers mourn are clothed in white clothes in heaven. He points out that Christians have their own special logic, their own special world of ideas. And in the middle of the 5th century, seeing off the body of the martyr Maxim, Christian virgins, forming a choir of singers near his tomb, held back their tears and did not give them free rein, so as not to reveal doubts about the glory and bliss of the deceased. But few did this; this was an exception in the field of Christian morals of that time, and scenes of the opposite nature were repeated more often than the real example of Christian virgins found imitation. For this purpose, let us listen to the witnesses of the customs of that time and use their vivid pictures to characterize this aspect of funeral customs. “Among many other evils, a special disease has entered the church, characteristic mainly of women,” says Chrysostom. -What are they doing? They boastfully flaunt their grief and tears, beat themselves in the chest until they bleed, tear out their hair, scratch their cheeks, not out of grief, but sometimes just for show; while others carry their shamelessness to the point that they bare their chests and shoulders in a fit of frenzy in the middle of the street. What are you doing, woman? You shamelessly expose yourself among the crowd when there are men around you; you tear out your hair, your eyes wander, you spin and howl wildly. Will the pagans laugh at us? Will they say that our belief in the resurrection is a mere fiction? They will say: there is no resurrection, Christian dogma is an invention and a lie.” “I notice,” says another Christian writer of the 6th century, Ambrose, “that women often scream loudly and in full view of everyone, as if afraid that their grief would not go unnoticed; they dress up in a special mourning dress, as if it has the ability to feel grief; they smear their disheveled head with mud and even (the height of indecency!) tear their clothes, unbutton them and expose the nakedness of their bodies. They seem to be trading in shame and have lost its value. And now the daring eyes are aroused to sweet glances, to love for these naked members, which would never have happened if modesty had restrained these impulses of despair, turning into shamelessness. Oh, if only these black clothes covered not only the body, but also the soul, otherwise shamelessness, arrogance and boasting so often break through the sad clothes!” We do not cite other evidence of the same kind: and this is enough to see to what wide extent the expression of Christian condolences for the dead sometimes reached between the Christians of the 4th and 5th centuries. II. Burial places among the ancients in connection with the form of burial Burial places among the ancients in connection with the form of burial. Catacombs as burial places for the first Christians; their origin; method of burial among ancient Christians. Construction of catacombs as burial places. The nature of the ornamentation of the catacombs in connection with the ornamentation of tombstones and burial places of the ancients. Christian views on death according to the oldest material monuments; modification of these views in later times. Ideas about the death of ancient and later Christians according to written monuments. It remains to consider how the ancients buried their dead, how the very act of burial was performed among them. Concern for the burial of the dead among all nations was combined with concern for the construction of graves for them. Classical archeology presents us with three main forms of this type of monument. The oldest and most common of them is the burial mound (tumulus). In the time of Homer, it was the custom of the Greeks to raise a mound over a corpse, and over the graves of kings and especially important persons they built such high mounds that are hyperbolically compared to mountains. 319 Under this mound or hill, an empty space lined with stone or simply fenced off with wooden beams was left in the form of a large room, in the middle of which stood a wooden coffin or stone sarcophagus, where the deceased was placed. In order to get acquainted, at least in the most general terms, with the situation and funeral rites of the “kurgan” period, I will make a summary of these rites based on excavations carried out in various areas of Western Europe, as well as in the southern and central zone of Russia. The burial mound method was widespread in a very wide area of ​​the European continent, and it was used both by its ancient inhabitants, who lived several centuries before Christ, and by those who already belonged to the cultural period of history. We can name some of these tribes, now for the most part extinct, but in most cases their origin and historical fate constitute a terrain incognitam for scientists and are accessible only to the extent that it is possible to know from the remains of their life preserved in their graves. Representatives of the Kurgan time already stood at a fairly high level of civilization: they went through the Stone Age period, when people did not yet know metal tools and did not know how to process metals - many things not only bronze, but also iron were found in these graves; and the era of iron production began within the memory of history, and many ancient tribes still belong to the so-called bronze period, when they knew the processing of copper, the preparation of bronze, but were still little familiar with the art of forging iron. Kurgan excavations have shown that among the peoples who left these graves, both methods of burial were used indifferently: both burning and burial of the corpse in its entirety, and that, therefore, these forms of burial practice cannot be separated by a decisive line, but existed together for a long time, until, finally, burning of corpses gave way to the current method of burial. We would call the latter Christian if some data obtained through excavations did not contradict this; Thus, crosses and pendants with Christian images were sometimes found with the burned bodies, and this shows that the tribes that used corpse burning were already familiar with Christianity. The next form of grave monuments took church buildings as a model and was distinguished by its monumental character in the proper sense. These were very tall and generally large stone structures, often consisting of two floors: the lower one, which lay somewhat deeper than the surface of the earth, and the upper one, which rose like a tower or house building and communicated with the lower one, usually through a staircase. Entering a Roman tomb, you find in the middle of it a more or less spacious quadrangular or round hall, often painted with paintings by the best classical masters. Its walls are cut in several rows with symmetrically located recesses, often arched niches. Urns or vases, marble, stone, tiled, were placed in these recesses, containing bones and ashes from the burnt corpse. Often in these niches two urns were placed side by side with the ashes of a husband and wife or other persons connected during their lifetime by especially close relationships. Sometimes the urns stood open in niches, sometimes they were embedded in the walls of the tomb, so that only their upper part, covered with a lid, remained visible. The middle chamber sometimes led to smaller side rooms with the same structure and purpose as it; sometimes it was only surrounded by a narrow corridor, along the walls of which niches with urns and epitaphs above them were visible everywhere. The third and final group of classical graves are the underground graves, or grottoes. The oldest of them are carved into rocks and adapted to preserve corpses in one piece. From this brief overview of burial structures, it is clear that in the ancient world there were two main methods of burial: burning and burying the corpse (crematio et inhumatio). The Greeks and Romans of the historical period were in the habit of burning the bodies of the dead; but this form of burial was not the original: in ancient times, the Greeks and Romans interred bodies and buried them in the proper sense, just as was the custom of the ancient Persians, Egyptians and Jews. Cicero, in his treatise on the laws, says that in ancient times all nations adhered to this rule, and it remained in full force until Hercules, to whom Greece owed a new form of burial. There is no doubt that burying bodies is the simplest form and is more convenient for execution than burning bodies, which requires skill and great preparation, and therefore naturally it was used by simple and unsophisticated peoples. And among the Greeks, as recent excavations have shown, burning bodies did not completely replace burying - both of these forms continued to exist together, and the latter, i.e. preservation of the body in its entirety was used for the burial of persons, especially noble ones. Schliemann, in his much-discovered excavations of Troy and Mycenae, discovered several sarcophagi with perfectly preserved corpses, covered in gold clothing and wearing gold masks. But, on the other hand, the name of Hercules, to whom legend attributes the introduction of the custom of burning the bodies of the dead, shows that the latter method also entered into Greek practice very early, in heroic times. In the Iliad this form appears to have come into general use. The religious beliefs of the Greeks probably had an influence on the adoption of this form preferably before burying. The ancients attributed cleansing powers to fire. A body without a soul is just a corpse and, moreover, with signs of decomposition, and therefore it was something unclean in their eyes. This uncleanness was destroyed as soon as the corpse was exposed to fire. Based on this idea, Euripides expresses about Clytemnestra: “her body was purified by fire” when he speaks of the burning of her corpse. Whatever idea the ancients had about the spirit, this idea still existed, and by putting the body on fire, they thought it would be easier for the spirit associated with the body to emerge from its earthly shell along with the fire and smoke rising to the sky. Phoenix burns itself at the stake, parting with life, according to the meaning of the poetic legend, which has found such extensive application in the Christian world. Indian ascetics very often chose this type of death for themselves and resorted to it in moments of dissatisfaction with life and longing for heaven. The corpse was burned at the stake. He was placed at the very top of the fire, sometimes along with a stretcher; they laid the corpse on its back with its eyes open, facing the sky, as Pliny says, describing the custom of the Romans of his time. Among the ancient Greeks, the burning ceremony was very dramatic and presented a rather complex scene. According to the Iliad, Patroclus' pyre was one hundred feet high. Many sheep and black oxen were killed before him, with the fat of which Achilles anointed the corpse of Patroclus from head to toe. Killed animals were laid out around him on a fire; They immediately placed vessels with honey and oil, and to top it all off, they laid twelve captured Trojans, whom Achilles had personally killed, on the fire. The ancients considered it a good omen if a corpse quickly caught fire and turned to ashes without any remaining muscular parts. That is why Achilles consumed such a large amount of fat when he prepared his friend’s body for burning. Along with the mortal remains, the Greeks loved to burn his clothes, weapons, in a word, everything that was valuable from the things that belonged to the household of the deceased. The closest relatives or friends of the deceased lit the fire. Achilles, having set fire to the fire of Patroclus and seeing that the fire was spreading weakly, turned with a prayer to Boreas and Zephyr to join their help and fan the fire. Riders rode around the blazing fire three times with loud exclamations that shook the air and to the sound of music. Into this. At the same time, the relatives and friends of the deceased, in view of the blazing fire, made libations to Bacchus, called on the shadow of the deceased and performed a funeral service for him. The ashes were carefully collected along with the bones. In the most ancient times, among the Greeks and Romans, the dead were buried in the city itself or in the village where someone lived; but later this custom was abandoned, and only privileged persons who became famous for some great merit retained this right. At a time when there were no legal prohibitions on this matter, it was customary to bury the owner or members of the family in the very house that occupied them. The Thebans even had a law by which the owner of the house, during construction, was obliged to allocate a special place for the burial of himself and his relatives. Over time, when the increase in population and the spread of sound concepts made the ancient custom inconvenient, burying anyone within the walls of the city was strictly prohibited, and places were reserved for cemeteries outside it. In the laws of the 12 tables, the oldest legal document of the Romans, there is already the following decree: ne quis in ubre sepeliretur neve uretur, which was then repeated in its main features by the Roman emperors. Only Lycurgus, it seems, left the ancient custom in full force in pedagogical forms. In order to accustom his young citizens to contempt for death and fearlessness, he ordered the burial to be carried out publicly and the dead to be buried in the city itself between the dwellings of its citizens. The places allocated outside the city for cemeteries were either public or private property, located in the fields and gardens of certain individuals. The Romans especially loved to set up their cemeteries near major roads. Rich people even deliberately bought roadside plots and erected monuments on them. The idea that guided the Romans in choosing this place for the graves is explained by Varro as follows: these graves were supposed to remind those passing by that the dead were once alive, and the living would sooner or later suffer the same fate. Bearing in mind this topography of the cemeteries of his time, Chrysostom said: “Every city, every fortified area has graves in front of the entrance; these graves both in front of the gates and at the beginning of public fields - in a word, catch the eye of everyone who would like to enter the boundaries of the inhabited city.” As if counting on the attention of those passing by one or another necropolis, the ancients made inscriptions on monuments, the content of which directly addressed travelers, for example, Aspice, viator, etc. Thus, around large cities, especially Rome with its large population, vast necropolises soon formed with magnificent crypts belonging to wealthy families. The Romans were very partial to the issue of burial and tried to decorate the graves of their ancestors as solemnly as possible. They deliberately acquired land for this purpose in more prominent places, built tombs on them, and assigned these plots to themselves as family property. No outsider had the right to encroach on this property or interfere with the ashes of an important patrician family with the ashes of a plebeian or a person belonging to another family tree. How jealously the Romans guarded this property can be seen, among other things, from the epitaphs on the gravestones: “Racilia Eutychia,” reads one of them, “erected this monument to Racilius Telephorus, husband and patron, her son and their free male and female descendants. And if someone wanted to initiate a claim to this monument after my death and take it away from my family, he would be subject to such and such a penalty.” This is how hereditary and family graves were formed, the rights to which were precisely defined in Roman legislation, along with a detailed designation of who from the owner’s surname had the right to this grave and who did not. Initially, the owners were very busy with the issue of admitting one or another of their relatives to use the grave and usually, in order to avoid lawsuits and claims on their part, indicated exactly who could consider themselves their heir, for example, Sibi et coujugi et liberis et libertis et libertabus eorum fecit, that is, the grave was provided for the use of all the descendant descendants of the owner; or, for example, Hic monumentum haeredes non sequitur, that is, the grave was the property of a famous person, and none of the heirs had a right to it. For poor people who did not have land ownership, there were common graves or sepulchra communia. The government set aside special places outside the city where everyone, without distinction of rank or condition, could place their dead, as in a common grave. These graves were called puticoli. They were located not far from the city outpost, near the Esquilian Gate, as Varro says, and were deep ditches and holes dug at the public expense for this purpose. The corpses of slaves and the poor, as well as political criminals, were thrown here indiscriminately, often without covering them with earth, but leaving the corpses in plain sight. A remarkable contrast between the luxurious burial crypts of the noble Romans, with their urns and excellent decoration, and between these abandoned pits, where the wretched population of the eternal city were destined to find their last refuge, as if as a reward for their tireless work and suffering life under the yoke of the rich upper class! The sight of these graves at one time aroused the sad feeling of one of the Roman poets, who in his satire devoted several lines to reflect on “this wretched shelter of the unfortunate Roman people.” But neither this satire, nor the very sight of these sad graves changed the situation, and the poor people for a long time shared their grave fate with the corpses of animals thrown out of the city, until Christianity brought them out of this humiliating situation. Now we should talk about where and how the first believers buried their dead. The answer to these questions naturally turns our attention to the so-called catacombs, their origin and structure. Christian tombs should be classified as the third type of burial structures of the classical world; their form does not exclusively belong to Christianity and was not originally developed by it. Catacombs, as is now known, are located in many places: the most extensive are near Rome and Naples, then in some areas of Asia and Africa. We will pay attention to them this time only because they have found a particularly extensive application to Christian burial and represent, in general and in particular, an original system of cemeteries, which differs quite significantly from the forms that we indicated above. The question of the origin of the Roman catacombs itself has long been considered controversial in archeology, dividing researchers into two camps. Some argued for the pre-Christian origin of these dungeons and thought to see in them traces of ancient quarries or underground communication routes of even greater antiquity; others attributed the origin of the galleries with rooms in question exclusively to the work of Christians and assigned them a funerary purpose. Of course, the final solution to this question lies outside of general theoretical considerations and could only be given by actually studying this kind of underground cemeteries at their very location. That is why the results of the work carried out in the catacombs by the late Rossi are especially important for illuminating the dark sides of this issue. He resolved this issue in the sense that the catacombs were dug by Christians themselves for the burial of their brothers in faith. Christians looked at the body of the deceased with respect and recognized burial as a moral duty. They abhorred with horror the pagan custom of throwing the corpses of poor people into common pits. Christians were even forbidden to place one dead person on top of another and it was required that each dead person have his own special place where he would lie alone awaiting the resurrection. The Roman clergy, sending messages to the Carthaginian clergy during the Decian persecution, reminded him that there is no higher duty than to bury martyrs and other Christians. Ambrose of Milan even admitted that for the burial of believers, if necessary, church vessels could be refilled and sold. From this respect of Christians for the funeral duty, Rossi derived incentives for Christians to carry out the gigantic work that was required of them in digging catacombs at such a huge and still unmeasured distance. But are the catacombs truly the work of Christians? Who gave a small, downtrodden and persecuted society the right and means to dig dungeons of enormous proportions at the very gates of Rome? Ordinary references to the unanimity of Christians and their energy, to which defenders of the Christian origin of the catacombs resort, are too insufficient to explain the fact of the emergence of the latter, which required not only moral, but also enormous material efforts. In view of these difficulties, they found it best to initially mistake the catacombs for ancient Roman quarries, from which building material was once extracted and which were subsequently used by Christians. The existence of these quarries is not a hypothesis, but a historical fact. Cicero reports the murder in his time of a man in these areae, arenaria. Since these places were completely empty, and people who wanted to take refuge could find refuge in them, they were most convenient for Christians to perform their divine services and bury the dead. Christians could quickly and easily learn from their first coreligionists, who, belonging to the poor and lower class of Roman society, were themselves, in all likelihood, workers in these underground mines. They could be the leaders in this labyrinth of underground passages, where someone unfamiliar with their plan could easily get lost. This opinion, so plausible at first glance, was accepted by the majority and only in relatively recent times found a refutation in the scientific works of Rossi, which is followed by the newest exponents of our question. Rossi, having compared the shape of the quarries with the structure of the Christian catacombs, found that significant difference between them: the catacombs are distinguished by greater straightness in the direction and narrowness of the passages themselves, which made it impossible to extract stone and sand from them, while the quarries are much wider, more regular and perfectly adapted to the conditions of this industry. It was further noted that the soil in which the catacombs were dug represents a layer unsuitable for buildings due to the properties of the material contained in it. Another question, the solution of which is closely connected with the history of the origin of the catacombs, is the following: was the method of burial used in them an independent invention of Christians or was it known before them? In response to this, it must be said that of the forms of burial structures we examined, the most monumental already came close to the conditions of burial that we encountered in the catacombs. The same underground chambers, only in a smaller size, and the same placement of corpses in the niches of these burial rooms and galleries. Especially close examples for the catacomb burial system were the eastern countries: Judea, Syria, Phenicia, where burial was carried out in exactly this way and where the remains of underground galleries with rooms for preserving the dead in them still survive. Excavations carried out in Crimea also provided material for studying this burial system. So, for example, in caves carved into the rocks near Inkerman, niches or a number of them were made in the form of shelves or beds, on which the dead were generally placed. Eastern cults also existed in Rome and could easily remain within the boundaries of the world empire due to the close relations of Rome with the east and other countries of the then cultural world. All these peoples brought their beliefs and habits with them to Rome. They were allowed to pray and bury the dead in their own way. Religious and ritual syncretism, which emerged as a result of the meeting of ancient beliefs with new teachings around the time of the emergence and initial spread of Christianity, could give the form of burial we are considering a historical basis and ensure its continued existence. Little by little, pagan Rome began to lean towards a new cult, at least from the half of the second century, from the time of the Antonines, the custom of burning the bodies of the dead began to noticeably fall out of use, and the pagans more and more often began to arrange, like the eastern peoples, underground graves (Macrobius). Around this time, lively underground work took place in the vicinity of Rome, and catacombs with their burial practices appeared one after another. Each sect tried to carve out a special place for itself, to seclude itself in its own cemetery. The resulting huge necropolis should naturally have had an impact on national, religious and everyday characteristics, which gave each group of graves in this cemetery a more or less typical character. Christian catacombs can be recognized by two features. They are more extensive than all the others. No denomination has such huge galleries, nor such a multitude of graves in them, as Christians! No one, apparently, was as aware of the need to group and unite after death as they were. Then the recesses or niches where the bodies of the dead were placed in Christian dungeons were covered with a board of marble, stone, or tile, which was tightly inserted into the hole of the loculus and covered with cement along the edges. The religious and ritual syncretism that prevailed in Rome around the time of Christianity thus provides a starting point for solving the problem of the origin of the catacombs, while the factual side of it - the question of the ways and means of carrying out such a huge plan as the construction of the catacombs - still remains poorly understood. In fact, with what means did Christians carry out their underground work, and how could the Roman government look indifferent to this work when it so jealously followed the first movements of the new religious circle and tried to cause difficulties for it everywhere? But let us remember that we said above about the high respect in which the matter of burial was enjoyed by the Greeks and Romans, how they created a whole cult of the dead and protected the inviolability of graves with the strictest government and religious control. It is known that Roman legislation considered the burial places themselves sacred and the inalienable property of the persons in whose charge they were (nulla vi movere ac delere posset). 320 Due to this strict guarantee of the inviolability of graves, owners of land plots usually erected monuments on the border areas of their properties and thereby protected them from encroachment on them by their neighbors. On the other hand, due to the same inviolability and holiness of burial places, Roman laws strictly forbade placing tombs and digging graves closer than 60 pounds. from the housing or outbuildings of the neighboring owner, because the proximity of the grave, as a sacred place, served as an obstacle to the ordinary everyday use of the area adjacent to the grave. This attitude of public opinion in Rome and Roman laws towards cemeteries was the best way to ensure the safety and integrity of Christian tombs. Therefore, one should not imagine the Roman catacombs as a completely secret matter, known only to Christians, and the burial rooms themselves should not be considered a place of refuge, inaccessible to the discernment of the Roman government. For the latter, the work of Christians in the catacombs and the arrangement of places for the dead in them were far from a secret. Roman law, which respected the rights of cemeteries in all societies of other faiths, could not refuse this protection or leniency to Christian graves. They will point to persecution, when the right of burial was so openly violated by the Roman government, when the pagans deliberately chopped and mutilated the bodies of Christians, throwing them into pits, just to deprive them of burial. But, firstly, these were exceptional situations. Here an angry mob acted without regard for rights. This riot against a dead Christian was the reverse side of a matter whose front side still showed signs of respect for him. The persecution of Christians, it should be noted, was not constant and widespread: in one place they raged for a certain time, but in another they did not exist. At this time, Christians were free from attacks by the crowd. On the other hand, we see that the Roman government, under Nero and Domitian, persecuting Christians, did not touch their graves and thereby differentiated its attitude towards the living and the dead. This prudent attitude continued until the middle of the 3rd century, when we first learn about the edict of Emperor Valerian, which prohibited Christian meetings in the catacombs, and the catacombs themselves were recognized as places of illegal refuge for Christians. But until then, Christians enjoyed freedom in the matter of burial and could even arrange open tombs for the burial of their dead. And this is a completely erroneous view, unfortunately, however, shared by many, as if the three-century era before Constantine the Great was at times of unbridled violence against Christians, and as if during all this time they had no legal protection, no civil rights and stood outside the protection of the laws. It is strange to imagine that in fact a significant part of the state population, growing more and more, stood as a completely isolated, secluded community, a kind of state within a state. No, according to even one of the apologists, Christians were closely included in the society of that time, engaged in crafts on a par with other members of the state who remained in paganism, and led a lifestyle that brought them closer in appearance to the rest of the population. Christians were tolerant. If this relationship was violated more or less sensitively during critical periods of persecution, it nevertheless returned when the persecution passed, and the matter took on its previous form. It is known that from the 2nd–3rd centuries, rich Romans and Roman women began to convert to Christianity. It does not appear that the Roman government deprived all these persons of their former social position or imposed confiscation on their property every time. The monuments they erected for the burial of themselves and their relatives, as well as the images of men and women in the catacombs in rich and elegant costume, show that all these persons continued to own significant funds. In all likelihood, these individuals also took the initiative in constructing the catacombs. They were the first to clear the ground for this gigantic enterprise and laid the foundation for cemeteries, which later grew into a whole underground city of the dead. This could be the case. Members of a patrician family or simply persons with good fortune, upon converting to Christianity, wanted to arrange burial crypts for themselves, as was the custom among their pagan contemporaries. The feeling of religious isolation encouraged them, of course, to look for a burial shelter for themselves, if possible, separately from the pagans. In Rome there was a custom for those who wanted to build a tomb to designate in advance who he intended to allow to be buried with him. Usually, the father of the family was buried with his house, and if he was noble, he allowed his clients and freedmen here. The tomb was his property, which he disposed of at his discretion. Christians could easily take advantage of this right. The more prominent and wealthy of them could purchase a certain plot of land, build a tomb or crypt on it, and then, gradually expanding it and including fellow believers in their tomb, lay the foundation for a whole cemetery, which was concentrated around the main tomb. This could be the historical beginning of the catacombs, which at first were the property of private, more or less rich and noble individuals. Pious wives, the first and, moreover, the most zealous followers of the new teaching, such as Domitilla, Lucina and others, and rich Christians from the Romans, for example, Praetextatus, Traso, with whose names the tombs in the catacombs are known, were precisely the owners of both known territories and the tombs built on them. Under such conditions, Christians had no particular reason to hide their graves and fear the invasion of this treasured area by the pagan Romans. Rossi, carrying out excavations near Rome, in the area where, in his opinion, the graves of the Flavian family, famous in the history of the church, should have been located, opened the entrance to one of the most ancient Christian tombs, namely the tomb of Domitilla. This discovery largely changed the previous opinion about the catacombs. The entrance to the tomb was a simple classical portico from the best era of art. On the pediment you can see the place of the missing inscription. The door leads into an antechamber or vestibule, decorated with sumptuous paintings representing rural scenes and groups of animals and plants. Then follows the main burial hall: on its sides there are smaller burial chambers. This part stood above the surface of the ground, rising several fathoms, as is observed in the grave monuments of the Romans. 321 The general appearance and location of this crypt were so vividly imbued with the spirit of antiquity and resembled so many things from its monumental area that it was difficult at first to recognize the Christian origin of this monument. But Rossi's experienced eye soon noted a group of signs that allowed him to undoubtedly classify this monument as a Christian burial structure. If the paintings on the walls of this tomb vividly resembled the frescoes of the flourishing era of Roman art, it was impossible not to notice among them symbolic figures from the circle of iconographic subjects of the catacomb Christian cycle; such, for example, are the images of Daniel in the lion's den and the prophet Jonah under the tabernacle, Christian subjects, which at the same time presented the artist's brushes with a lot of freedom and conditions for analogy with similar subjects of pre-Christian art... This last circumstance, we mean the close resemblance of this grave to the Roman ones, was one of the conditions that ensured Christians the inviolability of their graves and a government guarantee for their grave structures. There was nothing particularly outstanding in the very methods of Christian burial. The grave fate of a noble pagan and a wealthy Christian differed little in appearance and thereby introduced a reconciling element into the first relations of pagans with Christians. The tomb of Domitilla is a perfect imitation of Roman tombs. It is known that Christians erected chapels - martyria - over the ashes of the dead, especially martyrs. The latter were nothing more than a repetition of classical models - a kind of hall that the Romans arranged on the graves of their loved ones and in which they performed their funeral ceremonies. At first these martyria or cellae were of very modest size, but then, from the time of Constantine, they were enlarged, converted into churches and given the basilical form so common for church buildings of that time. The new view on the origin of the Roman catacombs, developed by Rossi and his successors, took an important step forward towards the study of this issue and shed light on many aspects of the ancient history of the church. If the written monuments of this era present us with one picture of a bloody massacre in which Christians played the role of unrequited and pitiful victims of government intolerance and popular fanaticism, then the material ones significantly weaken the power of this bleak view and give reason to conclude about some legal rights that Christians enjoyed in this era of persecution. With a new formulation of the question of the origin of the catacombs, such minor, but insoluble from the point of view of the previous theory, perplexities as: where did Christians put the earth that was dug out in the catacombs; where did they get the necessary tools for this work; how they carried the bodies of their dead into the catacombs, when the Romans were watching them everywhere. Let's now talk about the structure of the catacombs (in relation to the needs of burial). They now represent an extensive network of underground corridors, every now and then intersecting, going in different directions. Initially, they consisted of small plots, which were owned by one or another of the Christians, and within which underground work was first carried out. When in a plot that belonged to a well-known owner, all the places were already occupied by graves, then need forced the second, third, etc., to be built above the first or under the first row of galleries. and connect them to each other using a ladder. When this means turned out to be insufficient, they probably began to expand and furrow the underground space in all sorts of directions, and the plan of the catacombs gradually took on the appearance of a modern labyrinth or a very intricately arranged network of underground passages. In it one can notice a kind of central points, or spacious tombs, to which a larger or smaller number of galleries adjoin. These tombs with their adjacent corridors, in all likelihood, correspond to land plots acquired by private owners and which originally constituted separate topographical units from which the catacombs were later formed. The walls of the galleries in several rows are covered with oblong quadrangular recesses (loci, loculi), into which the bodies of the dead were placed. Their hole was forced by one or another slab on which the epitaph was inscribed. Along the length of the gallery, here and there, large openings or doors are punched, which open the entrance to adjacent rooms, known as cubiculums. The name cubiculum was used by the Romans to designate rooms designated as bedrooms. The cubes in the catacombs are burial crypts, most of which were family property. And to this day, inscriptions have been preserved inside them, which contain the names of the owners of one or another crypt, for example, cubiculum Domitiani, cubiculum Gaudentii argentarii and others. In these crypts, often very spacious, entire families and relatives of the person who owned the crypt were buried. There are cubicules in which there are up to 70 or more locules of different sizes, located in 10 or more rows. Persons who did not have the means to purchase such large and special premises, and who did not need them, acquired small places for two or three people. For this purpose, they entered into relations with grave diggers (fossores, κοπιαται), who prepared grave niches for those who wanted them in a common cemetery. Among the inscriptions you can find quite a few that say that a famous person prepared a grave for himself, his father or mother, a husband for his wife, a father for his children. Judging by the number of places that one or another customer was counting on, the graves or loculi themselves were called bisomi (double), trisomi, etc., for example, Valerius Rogatianus se vivo fecit bisomum sibi et conjugi suae, in pace. The main accessory of most cubicules is the monumentum arcuatum. This was the name given to a larger depression, compared to loculi, carved into the wall of the cubicula, often directly opposite the entrance to it, and often containing the relics of a martyr or confessor. This niche also had a classic name: arcosolium - a tomb under an arch, carved or arched into the wall. The arcosolium with the remains of the martyr served as the center of the cubeculum, next to which the loculi with ordinary, ordinary dead were placed. Proximity to the arcosolium was desirable and considered honorable; to be placed ante, supra, retro sanctos was an object of greatest concern for Christians and ensured, as it were, the most certain achievement of a blessed future. Moving from the structure of the catacombs to their ornamentation, 322 one is involuntarily struck by one particular feature that is strikingly striking to everyone when they see the paintings covering these underground crypts. The choice of subjects and the general nature of the decoration of the catacombs reveal the bright, calming worldview that permeated the first Christians, who took refuge in these dungeons from their persecutors and buried their fellow believers here. In general, it must be admitted that the ancient world loved to paint pictures of life and happiness on its coffins and cemeteries, to surround its graves with memories of the ordinary joys of local life and its everyday environment. With their ornamentation, ancient crypts excite precisely this idea. Comparing pictorial subjects on ancient grave monuments with the same subjects in catacomb art, in particular on Christian sarcophagi, one comes to the conclusion about a close genetic connection between Christian and classical art, primarily from the technical side, and then one sees a remarkable similarity in the very choice of subjects there and here. The Romans loved to decorate the tombs of their ancestors with the most intricate and luxurious paintings. The hall in the burial crypt of the Nazonov or Spitsion family contained a rich collection of antiques. The best craftsmen decorated the walls of these crypts with their artistic works; sculptures often depicted figures of classical heroes and remarkable scenes from mythology. The elegance of forms and grace in the design removes any thought that you are in the dwelling of the dead; on the contrary, the whole situation breathes the charm of real life, it seems deliberately designed to introduce the idea of ​​life into this kingdom of the dead in the richest and most attractive forms and drown out the thought of death with the power of these living and graceful impressions. What a motley picture, for example, is spread out before the viewer on the ceiling of the Nazonov tomb, but with all its motleyness and diversity, imbued with one meaning and marked by one character! Orpheus, holding a lyre in his hands, gathers groups of wild animals around him, taming them with the sounds of his music. Oedipus explaining the riddle of the Sphinx; Proserpine abducted by Pluto; Andromache, taken out of Pluto's kingdom by Theseus; Pegasus, naiads, dolphins, fairies - all this is artistically depicted and intertwined with symmetrically arranged garlands of flowers, patterns spread out in the most picturesque outlines. Next to these mythological subjects are depicted pictures from rural and domestic life; here you see a grazing herd with a shepherd playing a pipe, here you see figures of various domestic animals in whimsical combinations with images of objects from the kingdom of flora and fauna. The decorative side of Christian monuments in the catacombs is also imbued with the same character. True, we will not meet here naked classical types, we will not find mythological scenes such as the abduction of Proserpina or the love affairs of Apollo, in a word, paintings with too bright a coloring of paganism, but a general look at the decoration of the catacomb crypts can convince everyone that between the described cycle of images in the tomb of the Nazons and the paintings of Christian crypts there is, as it were, a living family connection, and that the general impression taken from both homogeneous. The choice of subjects, both here and there, is determined by one common thought - to unfold before the eyes of the living in the kingdom of the dead bright and soothing pictures of life, happiness and joys. To explain the origin of this kind of subjects in Christian monuments by mere mechanical copying, the lack of development of a cycle for Christian ideas, the strength of ancient influences on the artists who decorated the walls and the inside of Christian cubicles, will, in any case, be one-sided and incomplete, if one does not take into account the deeper internal foundations that gave rise to such a convergence of the very ideas about death, for which the artistic decorations of graves here and there served as an illustration. Let us enter into the spirit of these ideas, as far as possible on the basis of the data presented by classical and Christian art, and, first of all, let us dwell on resolving the question: under what symbolic form and in what features was death depicted? In 1769, Lessing wrote an essay on this subject. In his witty and critical experience, the German esthetician refuted Winckelmann's opinion that ancient artists depicted death in the form of a skeleton or bony mummy. He tried to prove that in all works of ancient art and literature, the idea of ​​death as a double of sleep prevails. The poetic language of the ancient world seemed to smooth out the harsh meaning that sounded in the expression: “to die” - mori, θνήσκειν, and tried to soften it with softer and gentler words and more welcoming images. So, abiit (Virginius apius plenus annis) - departed - is used instead of: “died”. In Homer, the concept of death is replaced by a synonymous expression: κάμνειν - to be tired, to become tired, so that the deceased, in the literal meaning of this language, will mean: “tired, tired.” As we see, the image is taken from ordinary phenomena of life, from a state of decline and weakening of vitality. Even more often, a parallel is drawn between death and sleep. Death is a longer sleep; This is that strong, iron sleep, as the poet puts it, from which it is so difficult to awaken, and which is the result of exhaustion of physical strength. Catullus expresses himself in this spirit when he makes one lover speak to his beloved after death: “How soon the bright light of day has set for us and the long night has come, in which we are destined to rest in a long sleep.” This figurative poetic language found its corresponding form in the representation of ancient art, which depicted death in the form of a winged genius with an overturned and extinguished torch. The burning torch represents the symbol of day, light; an extinguished torch is the emblem of the night. Just as during the day active and waking life goes on with its worries, so with the onset of night comes the time of rest, and with the onset of sleep, the cessation of everyday activities. This is the general meaning of the ancient emblem. If she expressed well the idea of ​​sleep and the calm of the night, then it was only necessary to expand its meaning, and she could conveniently express the idea of ​​death. The attributes of this figure of death further complement the picture of the ancient concept: the genius is depicted as winged, this feature hints at the speed and surprise of the transition from life to death - an idea that Cicero quite clearly illustrates when he says: “Does a calm old age await me, or will death envelop me with its black wings”? In the left hand of the genius is a wreath. This is a wreath of the dead. The Greeks and Romans, as we already know, wrapped wreaths around the head of their dead, friends threw wreaths on the bier that contained the corpse; they strewn the very fire on which the deceased was burned with flowers and garlands. The grave was decorated with greenery and flowers. The butterfly under the wreath was an accessory in the ancient symbolism of death. Who doesn’t know that, according to the ancients, the butterfly was a symbol of the soul, detached from the body, and that in its metamorphoses the ancients saw the path of the soul’s aspiration to heaven? This is how this idea is presented in one of Plato’s conversations. We find a similar image of death on one of the lamps, of which so many were found in the burial crypts of the Romans. The night is depicted in the form of a young woman, shrouded in a misty wide veil, with which she entwines two winged geniuses, of which one, black, represents death, and the other, white and transparent, serves as a symbol of sleep. This comparison of two such dissimilar states under one general form shows how closely the ancients brought sleep and death together in their concepts and what a close parallel they drew between them (aeternale Somnium, in Agro Somnii). 323 Christianity, for its part, provided all the conditions for the support and development of this ancient idea. Christianity, in its view of death, stands, of course, immeasurably higher than the Greco-Roman; it looks at this act even brighter and purer than the religion of the classical world did. There, this concept was not the lot of the masses, but rather was the property of the most developed part of the Greco-Roman world, representatives, so to speak, of its intelligentsia. Few, except for heroes and a few people from among the philosophers of that time, could look fearlessly into the eyes of death, while Christianity brilliantly achieved this in the person of its first followers. They went to death with joy, with words of prayer and praise. Ignatius the God-Bearer with ecstatic impatience seeks death for Christ, and the crowd of martyrs in the Colosseum, tormented by beasts, follows in his footsteps. In the church language of the early Christian era, the days of martyrdom were called dies natales - birthdays for new life. This body of data leaves no doubt that the leading Christians looked at death with a clear gaze and, because of this view, surrounded the tombs of their fellow believers with images of the most gratifying and soothing nature. For the same reason, they could sympathize with the very cycle of those images that decorated the funerary monuments of the Greeks and Romans. That is why among the monuments of Christian art of the first centuries there is not a single one that would represent death from its menacing and terrifying side, in the guise of a skeleton armed with a scythe and a clock. An exception to this rule is represented by Gnostic specimens of gems, where death is represented in this terrifying skeletal form. Two lions are driving a chariot at full gallop, on which death in the form of a skeleton holds the reins in one hand and a whip in the other. In front of the driver's skeleton stands another skeleton, and a third lies under the chariot. An incomprehensible inscription with Kabbalistic signs, half mixed with Greek letters, covers the obverse of this gem. Probably the main figure represents death in the form of a conqueror and king of the dead, who rushes in a solemn chariot into the kingdom of the living, bringing death and destruction everywhere. If we get past this mysterious gem, we will find on the ancient monuments of Christian art, representing the final fate of man, a combination of symbols of a completely opposite nature, elevating thought to joyful and soothing ideas. A wreath, a Phoenix or a pelican, a palm tree, a ship rushing towards the pier - these are more common symbolic forms for Christian ideas about the afterlife of man. If they say that these symbols are not synonymous with death, but images of life and resurrection, symbols of hope, then this remark will be completely fair and will reveal to us the idea that the ancient Christians depicted not death, but life, not struggle, but victory, not fear, but hope and joy. Therefore, we do not find pictures of martyrdom in the catacombs, which, of course, could not do without an impression of a stunning nature, but instead of pictures of the torment itself, we see symbols of the exploits of the martyrs, their rewards for suffering. But, while agreeing with ancient art in the general idea of ​​depicting death, Christian artists did not adopt its symbol in the form of a winged genius with an overturned and extinguished lamp. On sarcophagi, in paintings decorating the walls and ceilings of underground Rome, and finally, in ancient miniatures, this symbol is found relatively rarely. Why did this symbolic form remain outside Christian use? The basis for this lay in the very idea of ​​this symbol, in its inconsistency with the Christian idea, which went further than the ancient one. The genius of death with an overturned and extinguished lamp was too gloomy to be a symbol of the bright Christian idea of ​​​​death; it contained within itself a bleak thought about the latter, as an eternal night, where there is no light, but only dark uncertainty (Perpetua nox mortis aperta via est). Avoiding darkness, Christianity strives for light; his symbol of death could be a lamp burning and standing upright, and not overturned and extinguished. Unfortunately, Christian art did not last long at this height of vision; from the 4th–5th centuries it begins to make a sharp turn towards symbolism of the opposite property, and this transition little by little becomes law. The symbol of death in the form of a skeleton is coming into more and more use and is replacing previous symbols. The end of martyrdom, the strict morality of ascetics, the exhaustion of the flesh, the fear of hellish torment - these are the new conditions that changed the original Christian worldview. And as soon as this turn took place, it was already in the order of things to introduce a gloomy flavor into the artistic depiction of death itself. Biblical analogies helped in the formation of this type. They recalled Ezekiel’s vision of a field strewn with bones, then the collection of these bones into one composition - and now the ground was ready to justify a new symbol of death in the form of a skeleton. In this symbol, the terrifying side of death appeared in all its nakedness, and the spirit of the time, disposed to look at death with a prevailing gloomy mood, the skeleton was perfectly to the taste and began to decorate the grave monuments of Christians. But in these same graves the bodies of the martyrs were buried, in which they suffered, became saints, and became an object of veneration. They were looking for these remains; they were kept under altars and worked miracles. The bones and skeleton thus received high significance in the minds of Christians, became in some way a symbol of immortality, and became a means of reconciliation; At the same time, the gloomy image of a lifeless skeleton was weakened somewhat. This type of installation was also influenced by the image of the crucifixion. The latter is not visible on the monuments of early Christian art, because it, as a symbol of shameful punishment, could paralyze fresh Christian feeling and contradicted the calm worldview and aesthetic tact of Christian artists. Over time, the cross, as a symbol of Christ’s victory, began to gradually enter the field of Christian art with attributes that clarified its symbolic meaning, and finally, in the 5th–6th centuries, images of not only the cross, but also the crucifixion appeared. In the latter, the problem of reproducing a dead body had already been solved by Christian art. Along with the type of the Crucified, the image of a human skeleton also received the right of citizenship. At the foot of the cross is the skull of Adam with the shin bones - the emblem of death defeated by the cross of Christ. The Middle Ages, both in the East and in the West, were the era of the predominance of this terrible symbol of death, and the imagination of artists resorted to the darkest colors, to the most monstrous combinations in order to present death as terrible as possible and to strike the viewer’s feelings with it as strongly as possible. In Byzantium, this gloomy idea is perfectly consistent with the dry and emaciated figures of ascetics, which determined the character of Byzantine icon painting. In the West, until the 14th century, as Otte says, death was depicted under various symbolic figures of a clearer and more aesthetic nature than a skeleton or naked skull and crossbones. For this purpose, they used the image of a gardener who pulls out unusable grass and cuts down dry trees one after another. In the 14th century, a terrible thunderstorm, called the Black Death, swept over Germany and took with it many victims. Under the influence of the panic caused by this devastation, a dramatic poem appeared: “The Dance of Death” with illustrations for it by Holbein. It consists of a series of separate episodes, each of which features a dancing death, an ugly skeleton with a scythe and sickle or with some musical instrument: a violin, bagpipes, pipe. With an ironic smile, which is so plastically outlined by the figure of a dead, bony head, and with a mocking movement, she either invites or forcibly drags into the dance persons of different classes, from the pope to the shepherd and the beggar, from the decrepit old man to the newborn child. Earlier artists depicted the dance of death very naively, imagining a whole round dance of dancing skeletons, linked hand in hand with their victims. Later painters divided the dance into separate episodes and gave the depiction of death more whimsical and witty combinations. How great the aesthetic bad taste was in Germany at that time can already be seen from the fact that there were amateur performers for this drama, and even more spectators. It is not surprising, therefore, if illustrations of this drama and its figures deeply entered the field of art and occupied a very prominent place in a number of iconographic subjects with which Western artists so loved to decorate the portals and interior of their churches. The extent to which the aesthetic tact of ancient art was lost in these caricatured figures of death and how one-sided and gloomy the Christian consciousness and the idea of ​​the final fate of man, destroyed by death, was now, can be seen from the positions in which death is presented here. The artists in the Dance of Death interpreted the unfortunate man in the most ruthless way. This, by the way, is how the blind beggar is represented in the Basel Dance of the Dead: he leans on a stick; he is led by a dog tied to a string, which the poor man holds on to. Death snatches the stick from his hands and uses scissors to cut the guiding rope; in front of him is a deep hole, which he approaches. There is just as little reassurance and fairness in the image of a hardworking plowman cultivating his small and meager field: death leads along the furrow of his oxen harnessed to a plow. The gloomy coloring of this picture is only slightly balanced by the thought of retribution that death brings with it for human vulgarities and for gross violations of human rights, which, apparently, were so included in the morals of Holbein’s contemporary society. Speaking about artistic monuments of this kind, one cannot help but recall Albrecht Durer’s “Horse of Death”. An elderly knight, fully armed and with a raised visor, rides through the forest on a horse. A cliff rises from behind the forest, on top of which buildings are visible. The knight is accompanied by two terrible characters that only the darkest imagination can imagine: death and the devil. It should be noted that these two concepts have become almost inseparable since the idea of ​​death received an exceptionally gloomy connotation in works of medieval art. Death walks next to the knight, holding an hourglass in his hands; behind him is a devil with an animal snout and horns - an extremely unartistically executed type. This thought about the persistent accompaniment of death to a person at every step of his life has a gloomy element in it, and even if it were not personified in such monstrous images as here, even then it would be clear what a bleak idea lies at its basis. This gloomy symbolism of death, originating from the field strewn with the dead bones of Ezekiel's vision, and supported by the ascetic direction of the age, found extensive application in Byzantine art. For this purpose, it is sufficient to read the last chapter of the guide to iconography by Dionysius Furnoagrafiot, which is perfectly suited to the depiction of death according to the popular and book understanding of ancient Russia (in the apocryphal play: “The Debate between the Belly and Death”). This symbolism, Byzantine in origin, is close to the paintings of Holbein and Albrecht Durer: “and suddenly death came to him, having a terrible image, having a human appearance and a formidable appearance. It was terrible to look at her. And she carried with her many swords and scythes, forged on people, and knives, and saws, and gouges, and sickles, and razors, and she also carried members of the human body, cut off, and many other unknown things with which she carries out her machinations over man.” In the works of our popular prints, just as in miniatures and illustrations of various kinds of lives and moral tales, this image of death was fully reproduced and received that living, stable type with which it still lives in the popular understanding and in the ideas of religious-ascetic literature. The monumental history of Christian ideas about death finds justification in written monuments, in the very history of church burial practices and in its general structure. During the first three or four centuries, we have only small information about how burial was performed, what rituals were used, what and how Christians sang when escorting the dead to the grave. As far as can be judged from fragmentary information on this matter, the setting and meaning of this rite excluded the gloomy mood that permeates the subsequent burial in its presentation that has reached us. The early Christian burial received its meaning and its form from living memories of death and from ideas about the afterlife fate of martyrs, and therefore it was more a joyful than a sad rite, edifying for the living, and served as an expression of respect for the dead. From the Apostolic Decrees we learn that believers saw off their dead with the singing of psalms and with burning lamps in their hands, serving as a symbol of joy (VI, 30) - a custom that is especially remarkable because Christians buried their dead during the day and not at night, as can be seen from the decree of Emperor Julian, who forbade Christians from burying during the day in order to hide this unpleasant ceremony from prying eyes. “They,” says Dionysius of Alexandria about Christians, “took in their hands and embraced the bodies of the saints, closed their eyes, closed their lips, carried them on their shoulders, touched them, washed them, dressed them and accompanied them in a crowded procession.” Christians, we said, sang psalms at the farewell of the dead. “See off the departed (κεκοιμημένων) with singing, if they died faithful in the Lord, for the death of his saints is honorable before the Lord,” or, as it is said in another place: “turn, my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has prospered you,” or, as it is also said: “the memory of the righteous with praise, and the righteous souls in the hand of God" (Constit. Apostol. VI, 30). The choice of these psalms is of great importance for our purpose, because it serves as an expression of the internal disposition of the mourners, since there is reason to think that it was precisely this type of psalms and songs that were sung. The interpreter of these feelings is Chrysostom. He says exactly what psalms Christians sang at this time, and establishes on their basis the true point of view for the Christian idea of ​​​​death and burial. “Tell me,” he asks, “what do the burning lamps mean? Don't we see off the dead as ascetics? What do the chants mean? Don’t we glorify God, don’t we thank Him that He finally crowned the one who had departed, freed him from his labors and accepted him to Himself? Think that you are singing at this time,” he continues, “turn, my soul, to your peace, for the Lord is good to you,” and again: “I will fear no evil, for you are with me,” and again: “You are my refuge from sorrow, holding me.” What do these songs contain if not praise and thanksgiving to God for the fact that He crowned, delivered from the labors of the deceased and, having driven away fear, united the departed with Himself.” This spirit is largely imbued with the presentation of the burial order in the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Summarizing the particular features of his image in one essay, we can present them in the following form: he who is approaching the end of his exploits is filled with holy joy - these words depict the Christian’s personal attitude towards his final fate. Next, the relatives of the deceased please him as a victorious person who has reached the desired end, and ask that they too be granted the same fate - an expression of the first immediate feeling with which those close to the deceased greet his death. “Having taken the deceased, they bring him to the priest, as if to receive sacred crowns, and he receives the deceased with joy, and offers a prayer of thanksgiving to God for him. Then passages containing the doctrine of the resurrection are read from the Gospel and supplemented by the singing of psalms of the same content. The primate recalls the names of the departed saints, to which he adds a prayer for the newly departed; 324 then he pours oil on the deceased, gives him a kiss and commits him to the earth.” The totality of these rituals gives an idea of ​​the bright and soothing views and feelings that guided Christians in their relations with the deceased. But what is the practice of the later church? A phenomenon, if not completely opposite, then at least of a different nature, in which one can notice only weak remnants of ancient Christian ideas. Its main tone, its main motive are configured significantly differently. The compilation of the current funeral sequence dates back to the 8th–9th centuries and in the main parts belongs to the pen of I. Damascene and Theophanes the Inscribed. This latter belongs to the canon, and the first - the funeral troparia, immediately following the canon. In the canon for burial, especially in the so-called prayers of departure, it seems that all the frightening features of death were deliberately reduced, and all attention was focused on imagining the situation of the dying person as dark and terrible as possible. This view, which in the field of art corresponds both in time and in character to the depiction of death in the form of a skeleton with a scythe and a dial, counting down the prescribed number of minutes for its victim, this view has found its corresponding expression in our subsequent burial. “I cry and sob when I think about death and see beauty, created in the image of God, lying in the tomb, ugly, inglorious, without form,” or: “I remembered the prophet crying: I am earth and ashes; I looked into the coffin, I see the bones of a naked man and I say to myself: who is the king or the warrior, who is the rich man or the poor man, the righteous or the sinner” - this is the main tone of the long lamentable song that is heard in our funeral service and echoes in the soul of everyone with the gloomy sounds of regret, grief, and, perhaps, despair. Only memories of martyrs, in contrast to these sad songs, serve as an echo of ancient Christian practice. These songs stand at the head of each song of the canon, as a tribute to later church lyrics to the memory of the cult of martyrs. We understand the historical path by which these songs in honor of the martyrs entered and remained part of the present succession, but the initially joyful motive of these songs has already been significantly weakened and is disharmonious with the sad picture of death, painted right there in the darkest colors. Bitter are the words that come from the lips of a dying person: “I am leaving you, leaving and leaving all my friends; I don’t know where I’m going and what will happen to me”; this language is too unlike the last words of hope and faith that permeated the consciousness of the dying first-born members of the Christian church; and the depiction of the appearance of the deceased, which later compilers of funeral songs are so fond of dwelling on, this effort to bring before the eyes of the living the appearance of a corpse disfigured by death, just as much as it contradicts the traditions of ancient Christian art, it is just as capable of arousing a heavy, joyless impression in those present. The practical-religious goals that guided church hymnographers in this case, and the general nature of their contemporary views on the state of the deceased, serve to justify their gloomy presentation, but they have no basis for themselves in early Christian practice and represent, we repeat, a phenomenon alien to the free, bright and aesthetically high convictions of the first church. Based on the bright idea of ​​​​the ancient Christians about death, it becomes completely understandable why ancient cemeteries were called tombs and soothing and grateful memories of Christians were associated with them: they were so brightly illuminated by the thought of martyrs, so filled with their remains that they became sacred, holy places and attracted visitors to them, like churches and altars. This is precisely the character of the Roman catacombs. III. About Christian funeral epigraphy About Christian funeral epigraphy. Epigraphy as a branch of archeology; the importance of studying it. Signs for identifying the oldest tombstone inscriptions in the catacombs. They differ in time of origin, method of execution and spelling. Epitaph style. Formulas and expressions borrowed from Greco-Roman terminology. Gradual development of Christian style and distinctive features of Christian inscriptions. In connection with the catacombs, as places of Christian burial, it is worth studying Christian epigraphy, which has now been developed so much that, in connection with paleography, it constitutes an independent branch of archeology and a very important linguistic aid in the study of ancient monuments of Christian art and history. We touch upon this subject directly after the study of Christian burials and catacomb inventory precisely because most of the Christian inscriptions, and the most interesting for the researcher, belong to the catacombs and were preserved on sarcophagi in various areas of the Christian world. One may at first doubt the interest of studying this branch of archeology and recognize it, perhaps, as an idle amusement of scientific curiosity, work that does not bring real benefit to historical knowledge; but this may seem only at first glance: in fact, archeology is dead without epigraphic language. Inscriptions inscribed on stones or graves of the most ancient era constitute the best commentary on their purpose, and if archaeological discoveries were often made thanks to some random find, then there is no doubt that most of not only finds, but also monumental works received scientific significance only thanks to the epigraphic language, which clarified the historical and everyday phenomena that caused them and remained completely inaccessible to understanding when studying one bare material monument. Among the multitude of graves and the still greater variety of various objects of art scattered here and there within the Christian world, the attention of the researcher would have to be scattered and lost if it had not found support for itself in the chronological and historical data represented by epigraphy. The abundant population of Roman caves with all their grave furnishings did not immediately and simultaneously fill the catacombs; Several centuries passed before this colossal necropolis became populated with its silent inhabitants. If this mass of monuments remained without their own dialect, then it would be difficult to draw chronological lines between them and separate the oldest from the latest and vice versa. Christian epigraphy, thus, provides an important aid for this matter and sheds bright light on the chronological relationships of certain objects of antiquity. But there is another aspect from which epigraphy can provide a researcher with an important service and reveal a lot of new and interesting things from a historical perspective. We mean the service that the language of Christian inscriptions provides in resolving the issue of the life and beliefs of Christians of the most ancient era, about the mutual relations between Christianity and paganism in their historical contact. Comparison of the Christian epigraphic language with the language of classical antiquity provides very important and rich material for conclusions about the fate of the most Christian concepts, about their development in genetic dependence on the corresponding ideas of the Greco-Roman world, about their subjective understanding in different eras of Christian society. But among other branches of archaeological knowledge, epigraphy is the youngest and only two and a half centuries ago received scientific treatment and aroused the sympathy of lovers of antiquity. This painstaking and, at first glance, little rewarding work, naturally repelled scientific curiosity, and only after a long time, when other branches of archeology had received due development, when the study of the classical world and its monuments had made major strides, works on epigraphy and the first collections of church inscriptions appeared. Solid foundations for the systematic substantiation of this department of antiquities were laid by the famous Bosio, who holds the honor of, if not the discovery, then at least the first scientific study of the catacombs in architectural, artistic and epigraphic terms. We owe him a relatively small collection of inscriptions, which were supplemented, explained and furnished with historical and archaeological comments by his successors, who were in more favorable conditions for the development of this matter. Subsequently, Giovani-Battista de Rossi worked on collecting and editing the most ancient inscriptions of Rome. He took up this work in 1844, on behalf of Mark, one of the most active collectors of antiquities. “Christian inscriptions from all possible ancient monuments of Christian art” - this is the extensive task of the work undertaken by Rossi in the field of epigraphy. Its first volume (Inscriptiones Christianae urbis Romae saeculo septimo antiquiores), containing only gravestone inscriptions with clearly marked chronological features of the first six centuries, contains about 1400 (1374) inscriptions - a figure that significantly exceeds the Christian epigraphic material collected before it. This volume is important, among other things, as the key to understanding Christian paleography and epigraphy. In it, the author prefaces the introduction or Prolegomena, in which, in addition to general considerations, he sets out various chronological information and identifies signs by which one can recognize the time of origin of this or that inscription (paleographic samples of funerary writing are attached). He deciphered and explained each of the inscriptions, especially the most difficult ones. Some of Rossi's explanations have the appearance of a learned commentary and are especially important for the study of ancient chronology, both ancient and especially Christian. One has only to compare other inscriptions with the epigraphic samples of Russia, precisely designated chronologically, in order to be able to classify these latter as one or another chronological series. 325 The first question with which it is natural to begin the study of Christian epigraphy concerns the chronology or time of origin of this or that inscription. In this regard, Christian gravestones fall into two large classes: the first - with clearly designated chronological features, the second - without them. The chronology of Christian monuments of ancient times follows the method of calculating time that was used in the then Greco-Roman world, and only sporadically in some cases monuments with Christian chronological data are found. According to Rossi's observations, the Christian era, i.e. calculation of time from AD is not found on monuments earlier than the 7th century. On the contrary, in each locality Christians followed the very era that was in use there. The Romans of the pre-Christian era calculated chronology from the founding of Rome (ab urbe condita), 753 BC, and then the years were designated by the names of the consuls who ruled in Rome. Here is the usual formula for these inscriptions: Valeria Severa vixit annos triginta, recessit nonis juliis, Julio et Eusebio consulibus. 326 Here we present all the words completely and in compliance with grammatical rules, but in the original some words are written abbreviated, as was customary to write then, and others are completely incorrect, such as vicit instead of vixit. 327 This designation of time by the names of the consuls gives correct indications of the time of origin of this or that inscription, because the Romans had records of consuls in complete chronological order, and these records had an official meaning under the name Fasti consulares. The succession of consuls runs uninterrupted through five and a half centuries of the Christian era and ends with Basilius Junior, who held office in 541. After it, the formula was used to indicate time: post consulatum (Basilii Junioris) anno primo, secundo, decimo 328, etc. This formula was used for 46 years post consulatum and stopped in 587 AD (chronology by indiction, which we encounter on monuments from the middle of the 5th century, was introduced in Rome from 517–522). Traces of Christian chronology, as already noted, are found only occasionally and are lost in the mass of chronological dates developed by civil practice. The Christian era did not receive citizenship rights, remained outside of general use, was incomprehensible, and appeared in exceptional cases. From the 4th–5th centuries in Rome they began to designate chronology by the names of the local bishops, and this was a perfect analogy with the designation of chronology by consuls, but it should be noted that three or four gravestones with such chronological dates were found, and even those are strongly doubted (Kraus, 479). Much more of them are preserved in inscriptions on the walls of church buildings, and here chronologia episcoporum 329 prevails over others. They usually wrote it like this: salvo episcopo, or temporibus sancti episcopi, or simply: sub Damaso episcopo. 330 Several Egyptian monuments use the chronology άπό μαρτύρων. When denoting the divisions of the month, the following expressions were used: calends, ides and nones, and the days of the week were designated in Roman: dies Jovis, dies Lunae, dies Martis, dies Mercurii, Veneris, Saturni, dies Solis. In the inscription of 404, the Christian name for Sunday appears for the first time: dies Dominica. When determining the time of origin of inscriptions without clearly designated chronological features, paleographic data, borrowed from the features of writing, the shape or character of the letters, as well as from the properties of the formula and decorations accompanying the inscription, serve as indicators. In addition, several common features were noticed that distinguish the monuments of a certain century, a certain era. Without going into these paleographic details, we note the following: very few inscriptions from the pre-Constantinian era have reached us, which would accurately indicate the time of origin of the monument; but most of these inscriptions already belong to the 4th, 5th and subsequent centuries. How can we explain this circumstance when we know that in the catacombs a certain percentage of graves belong to this period, and at the same time inscriptions from the first to third centuries have been preserved? In the Rossi collection, the oldest grave inscription belongs to the consulate of Vespasian and, therefore, dates back to the year 71. From the second century we have two inscriptions precisely marked with the names of the consuls, from the third - about 25, the number in its complexity is very insignificant, especially in comparison with the inscriptions from the 4th-5th centuries. De Blunt and Rossi offered several considerations to explain this gap. They are of the opinion that the Christians of the most ancient era either completely left the graves of their fellow believers without inscriptions, or used very brief inscriptions, indicating only the name of the deceased, the day and hour of his death, with some brief benevolence. This laconicism really constitutes a distinctive feature of Christian epitaphs of pre-Constantinian times and is confirmed by epigraphic data. Christians limited themselves to writing the name of the buried person, rarely indicating the day and month of his death, and even less often writing the name of the consul. But they included the names of the dead in diptychs, from which it was always convenient to find out about the day of death of this or that person, and this was so important in early Christian practice for a timely meeting on the anniversary of their death, anniversaria celebratione. This feature of the epigraphic style gives, if not an exact, then at least an approximate indication of the time of origin of curious Christian inscriptions and brings them under two broad categories or headings. The inscriptions in the brief edition belong to the most ancient period in the history of Christianity, roughly speaking, the eras of the first three centuries. Inscriptions with more detailed content also have a later origin. Regarding the first, it should be noted that they are accompanied by brief benevolence or acclamationes, which express the personal attitude of the living towards the deceased. The following are used most often: Vivas in Deo, in pace, cum sanctis. Where the time of death and burial, tempus depositionis, is indicated, praises of the deceased are sometimes added, but the praises are very modest, simple, brief, in accordance with the style of primitive epitaphs. On the contrary, in the inscriptions of later times, traces of rhetoric and verbosity in the presentation are noticeable. Not to mention the exact determination of the time of death and age of the buried person, we notice in them a desire to highlight his merits and express them in a hyperbolic tone, for example, mirae sapientiae 331 and so on. The laconic acclamatio: in pace, in Domino, 332 is also extended by additions: hic jacet, hic positus in pace, hic quiescit 333 (IV and V centuries). One can trace step by step, with Rossi's work at hand, how the lapidary style of Christian monuments gradually became more complex and developed in this direction, reflecting the artificial, I would say, idle, rhetorical direction of later Christian grave epigraphy. In the epitaphs of the 5th–6th centuries, entire tirades are read, composed of rhymed epigrams, set out according to all the rules of rhetoric and, perhaps, written to order, for example, Hic requiescit in pace turtura, dulcis (dear) Petronii conjux, Deo serviens unice (like no one), fidei amica, castis moribus ornata, communis fidelibus amicis, familiae grata, natorum nutrix, unquam amara (always kind) marito, quae vixit. This is already reminiscent of golden philistine inscriptions... Finally, an important service for determining the chronology of Christian inscriptions is provided by the nature of the names recorded in them. The older the inscriptions, the more names they contain, borrowed from Roman practice, and, conversely, the later they are, the fewer of them. From observing the content of Christian epitaphs, it turns out that in the first three centuries names and nicknames, borrowed from the world of ancient gods and heroes, predominated; such are, for example, Ammonius, Aphrodisius, Bacchus, Αρτεμησια, Diogenes, Φοίβος. Adjacent to them are the same nomina gentilitia, taken from objects of the animal and plant kingdoms. Christian names are found very rarely and sporadically during this period; in their content they express religious ideas or are taken from Hebrew, for example, Abraham, Benedictus, Daniel, Ελπιζα, Σωζομενη, Θεόδουλος. According to ancient onomatology, there are double names, for example, Muscula quae et Galatea, Asellus qui et Martinianus. Previously, this duality was explained in this way: one of the names is pagan, and the other Christian, but, more likely, we have here a combination of a civil name with an everyday nickname. Ancient inscriptions connect the name of the deceased with some commendable epithet or honorary trait. At first, Christians used these epithets very carefully, and their inscriptions were laconic. But then, from the 3rd–4th centuries, the accumulation of these laudatory predicates begins, and a whole mass of such laudatory epithets appears, of which we note the following: benemerens (very frequent); bonus; bonae memoriae; dulcis; dulcissimus; famulus Dei; 334 άκακος; θεοσεβής. 335 One Gallic inscription about the presbyter Valeria says: qui fuit ad Dei officium paratus; humanitas in eo satis laudanda; amicus omnibus. 336 This should also include the letters: v. s, s. f. at the end of epitaphs, which means: vir clarissimus; clarissima femina. 337 It is noteworthy that there is no name in the inscriptions: “martyr”, “martyr”, “confessor”, despite the fact that there were undoubtedly a large number of them among the catacomb dead. The number of ancient Christian inscriptions that would mention slaves, servi, is extremely insignificant: they can be counted up to 30, in the same way as with the mention of freedmen. Some explain this gap from the fact that the first Christians belonged to the lower class and did not have slaves; others - that in general Christians were not in the habit of noting the social status of persons, especially such an ugly one as this. But neither one nor the other explanation is actually confirmed. The direct conclusion from this is that in general the number of slaves among Christians was very small, and therefore their names appear so rarely in inscriptions. In contrast to servus and δουλος, the name δουλος Θεου, δουλος χρηστιανος, which equalizes everyone, is sometimes found here. However, in the tomb of Priscilla one can read an inscription, from which it is clear that one rich couple, Secundus et Rufina, set seven slaves free at the death of their daughter. For judging the position of slaves in ancient Christian society, the so-called bullae or metal tablets that were tied around the necks of fugitive and unreliable slaves, and in which it was written who this slave was and where he should be returned after escaping, are very remarkable. Here is an example of such an inscription on one metal tablet: tene me, quia fugi, et revoca me Victori acolitho a dominico Clementis. 338 From this epitaph, therefore, it turns out that the owner of the slave was a certain Akoluf Victor at the church of St. Clement, probably in Rome. That churches and monasteries also kept slaves, like the ancient sanctuaries, is an indisputable fact. From the inscriptions that talk about slaves, let us cite as an example the following: hic situs Notatus servus fidelissimus. Let's now talk about the material, material side of the monuments of the ancient Christian lapidary style. The monuments we are now talking about mostly belong to tombstones and consist of inscriptions (tituli, epitaphia) on the walls and loculi of the catacombs, on Christian and pagan sarcophagi. The material on which these inscriptions are made is mostly stone, but sometimes baked clay is found, and even more rarely - ivory and also lead boards. Most of the inscriptions are made with deep cut (graffito) and some of them are painted. These last written inscriptions are made in red lead or sometimes ink, or, very rarely, inked in gold. In addition to these materials, coal was also used in catacomb epigraphy. For example, the name Severa is inscribed with charcoal on one marble board; but more often it was used in tile and clay work. Coal, apparently, was a graphic medium in the hands of the poor people, mainly Roman servants and merchants. When the remains of ancient rooms were discovered in Pompeii, it was noticed that black human rooms were often covered with inscriptions made in charcoal. Just as now in cemeteries there are inscriptions made crudely and in the most primitive way, so on the loculi of the catacombs. Poor people put the name of the deceased, drew some kind of sign or exclamation, but few such inscriptions survived, not because their percentage was so insignificant, but because the inscriptions made in this way, due to their fragility, easily succumbed to the influence of time, were weathered and wiped off from careless handling. Most researchers are of the opinion that the properties of graphic material on Christian monuments depended on the conditions of the external situation of Christians: marble boards with sculptural decorations were used in times of calm, and tiled ones - in times of persecution, when Christians had neither the material resources nor the time to prepare the best material for tombs. But this is hardly a correct assumption. It is much more natural to look for the basis for this difference in the inequality of the material condition of the very members of the early Christian community. Noble and wealthy people from Roman society, who retained their love for the elegant furnishings of life even after the transition to Christianity, had the opportunity to use marble tablets with elegant carved inscriptions, while others were content with modest loculi and inscriptions made with cinnabar, charcoal, or the first sharp tool they came across. A curious type is represented by stones with double epitaphs: on the front side of the board it reads Christian, and on the back - pagan. For example, Mabillon provided a sample of the following inscription: on one side of the stone: Diis manibus, Bitoni Salario, qui vixit annos XXXVI (triginta sex). 339 Biton, to whose memory this inscription is dedicated, was a gladiator famous in Rome, who died under the Emperor Caracalla in an unequal struggle with three rivals and for this was awarded burial at the state expense and a special epitaph. Its content is illustrated by a sculpture of a horseman with a spear in his hand. On the same stone, only on the reverse side, another inscription can be read: at the beginning of it is a cross; then follows: Hic in somno pacis requiescit Maxentius, qui vixit in hoc saeculo... annos... menses... recessit... 340 How to explain the appearance of stones in the catacombs with Christian-pagan inscriptions? Having taken them from the Romans, Christians transferred them to their inscriptions without destroying the old pagan ones. In one of the ancient Chersonese basilicas, a marble slab with a relief image was found embedded in the wall, near the doors from the vestibule to the church. Its plot is borrowed from ancient life and resembles the bas-reliefs with which the ancients loved to decorate the walls of sarcophagi and tomb slabs in general. It is a man in a classic suit who is presented here; he holds a wreath in his hand and is ready to put it on the head of a woman standing near him. At the bottom of this bas-relief, in rough and irregular handwriting, there is an inscription carved: Κύριε, βοηθι τον ικον τδτον αμήν - “Lord, help this house. Amen". The inscription is of Christian origin, as indicated by the crosses carved in its spaces and in the upper part of the slab. How did the latter get into the Christian church? At first it belonged to some Chersonese family and served as a gravestone; Then, when its owners adopted Christianity, they donated it for the construction of the church. In order to make this slab convenient for such use and to smooth out the harsh imprint of paganism that lay on it, they added the above inscription to it and covered the slab itself in several places with images of the cross. In a similar way, slabs with double inscriptions, like the Bitonova slab, could have entered the catacombs. As for the spelling of Christian epitaphs, it should be noted that it is distinguished by various kinds of irregularities, which become all the more noticeable because they are repeated at every step and seem to turn into a general rule. This feature of the epigraphic language is, of course, due to the shortcomings of technology and the illiteracy of the craftsmen involved in this matter. Therefore, in the catacombs there are often inscriptions made by a completely inept hand. But sometimes the solicisms of gravestone inscriptions depended not on the illiteracy of the scribe, but on the use of provincialisms or local dialects. The Latin of the Roman provinces was not classical; it had its own dialects here, passed into the vernacular and was used mainly by people of the lower classes. Christianity had many followers from these classes both in Rome and in the Roman provinces, and therefore grave Latin is replete with provincialisms, the use of some consonants and vowels instead of others. 341 As for the use of the Greek alphabet in the catacomb inscriptions, this circumstance has its basis in the mores of the then Roman society and constitutes an imitation of the Greek style. In the last times of the republic, the fashion for Greek was widespread among the Romans: Greek morals and the Greek language were considered a sign of a higher civilization, as in the 18th century, and French morals and language played the same role in our country. Many of the noble Romans spoke in no other way than peppering their speech with Greek words and phrases. 342 “Your mother and father,” says Juvenal, addressing a Roman lady who followed this custom, “were natural Romans, and you keep repeating: ζωή and ψιχή, as if you were a native of Athens and Argos.” Due to this custom, έν ειρήν η replaced in pace, 343 and instead of writing the epitaph in Latin letters, they began to depict its text in Greek letters, while observing the peculiarities of the Greek pronunciation and spelling (φηκι instead of feci). There was another reason for this spelling: it served as a sign of the Greek origin of the deceased. At that time, representatives of all nations from all over the world flocked to the capital of the world empire, and among them a significant percentage were Greeks. 344 Let us now turn to the style of Christian epitaphs and see in what relation they stand to Roman epitaphs? The general form followed by most Roman epitaphs is as follows: so and so erected this monument to such and such a person (with the addition of well-known epithets) or to several persons. The last number of years of their life is precisely indicated by the number of the year, month and day. This is sometimes accompanied by remarks about who and under what conditions can be the owner of this grave, and some conventional signs and symbols. Christian tombstone inscriptions have the same general appearance, and this would be completely in the order of things, if at the same time in Christian inscriptions there were no terms and remarks that have a specially pagan meaning and were transferred to Christian monuments by a too illegible or naive hand. The first and most serious borrowing of this kind was the use in Christian inscriptions of the letters: D. M. S., which should be read: Diis manibus sacrum, i.e. dedicated to the mana gods. 345 How could this classical phrase get into the field of Christian epigraphy, when it has its undoubted basis in the ideas of classical mythology and acquired the right of citizenship in the epigraphic language of Roman monuments? In view of the difficulties presented by this fact, some wanted to recognize all inscriptions with these inconvenient and seductive letters as pagan; but this was a completely uncritical decision and contradicted the clear signs of Christian origin in the epitaph itself. Others came up with a special reading of these letters and instead of: Dis manibus 346 they read: Deo magno or maximo, 347 which seemed more consistent with the Christian worldview. To justify this reading, they referred, among other things, to pagan inscriptions, where the letters D and M actually had such a meaning. But here there was a stretch. The fact is that the letters D and M in this latter meaning rarely stood without adding the name of one or another deity: Jovis, Mithrae, to which the epithet actually referred: Deus maximus. Moreover, this reading could only take place in cases where the inscriptions indicate only the initial letters: D. M., but there are also epitaphs where it is directly read: Dis manibus. The failure of these and similar interpretations led researchers to a new assumption, which has now become dominant. This formula, they say, has an undoubted pagan Roman origin and stands in a certain relation to the cult of geniuses; patrons of souls in the underworld; but on Christian monuments this inscription has already lost its living mythological character and turned into a meaningless phrase, into one mechanical formula, repeated out of skill. The fact is that the Romans, with a great demand for gravestones with decent epitaphs, had a special workshop of craftsmen who dealt with this matter. Due to well-known religious ideas, they established and passed on according to tradition, without change, a well-known formula for epitaphs, beginning with the words: Dis manibus. At first, this formula had the meaning that the monument was dedicated to the patron gods of the soul of the deceased, and therefore they wrote: Dis manibus Albani, Corneliae, Juliae. 348 But then this original mythological meaning began to fall, and the expression: Dis manibus remained out of logical agreement with one or another name, they write: Dis manibus, period; then it follows: such and such a person erected a monument to such and such a person... The monument is already dedicated to this or that deceased person, and not Dis manibus. Christians needed to have gravestones for their cemeteries; they turned to Roman craftsmen to buy them, and they, according to their old habit, began the inscriptions on them either with the letters D. M. or with the full words: Diis manibus. That indeed the routine of the masters of this business adhered tightly to Formula D. M., this can be considered very probable, and Marini reported one interesting inscription, which served as a sign above the workshop of the monumental master and read: “D. M. You can come here for the preparation of grave inscriptions and all kinds of marble products.” Finally, the strength of the conclusion that can and should be drawn from this typical formula is greatly weakened by statistics. If you believe Rossi, out of the total number of Roman inscriptions now available, D. M. appears only 35–40 times, and this constitutes a very small percentage of 1300 inscriptions, whereas in the mass of Roman pagan epitaphs these letters constituted an undoubtedly larger percentage (95%). Previous collectors of inscriptions counted many more such epitaphs; Rossi considers quite a few of them to be pagan. But what is especially remarkable is that these letters (D.M.), inexplicable from a Christian point of view, are found on monuments of late times, when Christian dogmatic terminology began to be clearly developed, and the difference between Christianity and paganism became clear. After such a large borrowing from the field of pagan terminology, we will no longer find anything strange if we encounter in Christian epitaphs a repetition of the general technical form of this kind of inscriptions on Roman monuments. So Christians acquired the name for their coffins: locus, loculus, and therefore they said: locum sibi fecit, locum se vivo fecit. 349 These expressions became common to Christians and pagans. Some formulas of the ancient Christian epigraphic style were formed completely mechanically through the assimilation of ancient phraseology and repetition of the language commonly used in the Greco-Roman world. These formulas were sanctified by daily use and, by their very use, became current, lost their pagan meaning and turned into a proverb. Tertullian says that in his time Christians every now and then in everyday conversation used the phrases: me Hercule, me dius Fidius and others, concluding the deity with Hercules, but they used it out of ignorance and completely mechanically. Even in public life, for example, in titulary, pagan terms were retained: divus, aeternus... Just like that, similar phrases slipped into tombstone inscriptions. Some formulas, having lost their pagan character in ordinary everyday use, began to express Christian concepts. Wanting, for example, to express the idea of ​​the future bliss of the deceased, the compiler of the inscription used the expression: “his soul flew to Olympus” - a completely ancient term, but its meaning is Christian. For Deacon Ursinian, his wife erected a monument on which it was written “that the ashes of her husband are not afraid of the horrors of Tartarus.” Again, the language is classical, but its idea is Christian, and the error is not in the meaning, but in the use of an unfortunate term. Even more unfortunate from this point of view, but also not guilty in terms of its internal meaning, should be considered the use of the expression “Mount Tenar” on one inscription; it was located in Laconia and, according to the beliefs of the ancients, had a hole that led into the underground kingdom. This also includes the invocation of Lachesa, one of the parks who controlled the fate of human life, on a Christian sarcophagus, issued from the pen of some Christian. Four or five centuries have passed since the epigraphic style of Christian inscriptions began to be formed, and they continue to turn from time to time to classical memories, as if there were no Christian forms more convenient for expression than the classical ones just mentioned. Next to, for example, with regret about the death, the following addition is read in one inscription of the 5th century: “Here lies Marina, who lived honestly and blamelessly in this world and went to the Lord for thirty-seven years, paying off her debt on December 24. She loved God. – Do not destroy my grave and do not show me the light of day; if you show me the light, then may God shed the light of wrath on you.” This is followed by a monogram and the word ίκθύς. The first half of this inscription is made in a Christian spirit, and the last bears traces of memories from pagan practice. 350 In general, it should be noted that the Christian epigraphic style at first coincided with the formula of pagan epitaphs, but then little by little it developed and, abandoning the usual techniques of classical epitaphs, acquired a unique imprint. In the first period, before Constantine the Great, this language remained undeveloped. The grave inscriptions are executed in an ancient style and betray their Christian character with only a few exclamations or the absence of typical pagan signs. Then the epitaphs begin to be supplemented with a Christian monogram; in the subsequent period of development, this abandonment of the lapidary language becomes even more noticeable: indications of the family origin of the deceased become less frequent, and only sometimes are the names of the parents who arranged the family grave or tombstone for their son read. The beginning of the epitaph opens with the expression: Hic jacet, Hic pausat, Hic quiescit, 351 with the addition in pace. This direction, then developing even further, is expressed in such features that indicate the breakdown of the deceased with the connections of this world and his desire for heaven. The pagan mourns his dead, who go somewhere, into an unknown region of darkness, into the kingdom of shadows. There is a joyful feeling running through Christian inscriptions. The difference between pagan and Christian moods makes itself felt strongly in the so-called acclamationes. On the grave of dear persons, the Roman wrote: Sit titi terra levis, ossa tua bene quiescant, avevale, di tibi benefaciant, 352 χαίρε, συδραμοι, δωη σοι οσιρις το ψυχρον ύδωρ. In Christian inscriptions, although one hears the same universal motif, the same ewig menschliches, it is expressed in special typical forms of expression and stands in connection with the beliefs of Christians, with their dogma and church language. For example, Deus tibi refrigeret. 353 Actually, refrigerium, from frigus - cold, frost, - a cool place; the idea is common with the formula about the cold water of Osiris and originates from the idea of ​​the ancients about the underground kingdom, where the shadows of the dead descend, and which is called tartarus - a place of cold and eternal numbness. But in other exclamations the Christian motif is heard more strongly, for example, vivas inter sanctos, vivas in Deo, 354 δ Θεός αναπαύσει την ψυχην εν σκηραις αγίων. The Roman entrusts the soul of the deceased to the protection of the underground gods and, turning to these geniuses, says: peto vos, manes sanctissimae, commendatum habeatis (take under your protection) meum conjugem et velitis huic indulgentissimi esse horis nocturnis ut eum videam, - I ask you, sacred manes, to have my husband under your protection, and that You, merciful ones, allowed me to see him at night. Otherwise, of course, the following Christian epitaph sounds: μνηστητικ – ε της καμησεως τό δουλβ σό, dominus, nequando adumbretur (will be darkened) spiritus. Often in Roman epitaphs, the deceased addresses the survivors with some kind of benevolence or request, and since Roman cemeteries were located at the crossroads of roads leading to the city, these addresses also fell to the lot of passers-by who walked along these necropolises on the way to the city. Valete, viatores, salvete (hello travelers, I greet you); bene sit filiabus meis (may they be happy); or: I’m telling you, passer-by, stop and tell me: sit tibi terra levis. 355 Christians used this classic phrase literally in ancient times, and later modified it in accordance with their concepts. The profound change that Christianity brought about in the morals and views of mankind was reflected in ideas about the afterlife, and these, in turn, found expression in epitaphs. The ancient Roman treated death with stoic indifference, or at least tried to put himself in this point of view, and therefore said, pointing to his grave: Haec domus aeterna est, hie sum situs, hie ero semper. 356 Sometimes, in the struggle with doubts about the afterlife, he remained in thought on the threshold of life and death and carried this thought with him to the grave, putting on it the following inscription: Quo vadam, nescio, invitus morior, valete posteri. 357 Or, finally, he consoles himself with the thought that life was lived with complete pleasure, the search for him was crowned with success; death, cutting off the thread of life, does its job at that moment when a tired and broken body seems to naturally ask for rest. Vixi quemadmodum volui, quare mortuus sum nescio. 358 Or, for example, the following inscription belonging to some woman and a widow at that: “D. M. Who knows me, live, matrons and mothers of families. I lived and didn’t believe in anything except life; I doomed myself to mother-nurse Venus; She caught whomever she could with love and cunning. After the death of her husband she was not a widow; I ask: do not persecute me with hatred. Stop, passer-by, and be careful not to step on me, who has already been trampled on for so long.” In contrast to these sensual expressions, in Christian epitaphs we are inspired by a sense of sedateness, modesty and devotion to a higher will, which controls the fate of people. Such, for example, is the following inscription: a Deo datae dignae et meritae virgini et quiesce hie in pace jubente Christo suo. 359 This is how the expression appeared: sic vol. Deus disguised in the letters: S. V. D. In one inscription of the 4th century we read: Hoc tibi Quintilla dictavit versus amatrix, quae post mortem tuam volui me ferro necari, sed Domini praecepta timens casta me in future promitti. In view of the similarity, especially at the beginning, of the Christian epigraphic language with the classical one, one involuntarily asks the question: is it possible to indicate several characteristic features by which one could undoubtedly distinguish the works of Christian funerary epigraphy from pagan ones? Is there a special terminology that would draw the line between them? In the first place among the features of Christian grave epigraphy should be given the expression, or, better to say, exclamation, warmed by Christian feeling, Christian beliefs: in pace or, in Greek, εν ειρήν η, in the world. The expression: pax and ειρήνη were widely used in the phraseology and practice of the ancient church. Clement of Alexandria says that the Christians of his time, when meeting each other, greeted each other with the words: ειρήνη σοι, pax tecum. From ordinary everyday use, this greeting then passed into church language and began to be used as an expression of unity with the church. Pacem dare, in the meaning of Tertullian and Cyprian, meant to accept someone into church communion, to recognize him as belonging to the members of the community and to enter into all relations with such a person as a fellow believer and ally. With such extensive use of the word: pax ειρήνη, in pace requiescit 360 or abdormivit 361 it meant that the deceased remained until the end of his life in union with the church and rested in peace with it. As an exclamation form, as an address, it expressed the desire for peace, or, what is the same as bliss, for the dead on the part of the living. The expression in pace often stands out of any connection with the general design of the epitaph, like a motto with which a certain meaning, a certain idea is connected, just as the expression: Dis manibus often stands on ancient monuments without a logical connection with the whole epitaph. This grammatically incorrect combination of the expression in pace is the best confirmation of its deeply important meaning in the style of Christian epitaphs. Translating this expression into the symbolic language of painting, ancient Christians often depicted on gravestones next to this formula the figure of a dove with an olive branch, as a symbol of peace. Another term that can be pointed to as a distinctive feature of a Christian epitaph are the expressions: depositio (Greek κατάθεσις) and depositus. The Romans, speaking about burial, mostly used the expressions: situs, positus - laid, while Christians preferred the expression depositus. This word in the legal language of the Romans meant giving a thing for safekeeping on bail with the right to return it to the owner after a certain period or upon fulfillment of certain conditions. It is clear from this what idea Christians wanted to express when they used this term in the sense of burial. They wanted to point out the future resurrection of the body, which is consigned to the earth only for a short time and must be taken from here after the appointed period. These are the two main characteristic terms of the Christian funerary style. Let us add to this a few more exclamations and terms borrowed from the dogmatic language of Christians and indicating their religious and cult ideas. Let's note the more remarkable ones. In some inscriptions, a living belief in immortality makes itself felt, for example, vivas in pace, laetaris in pace. The following epithet expresses this idea even more clearly: hic requiescit Laurentia, quae credidit resurrectionem. 362 In connection with this idea, the epigraphic language presents several expressions about the happy fate that those buried enjoy in the afterlife. There are direct expressions that indicate paradise and bliss, for example, accepit requiem in Deo, received peace in God, vivas in gloria Dei, scimus te in Christo, 363 or even more clearly: in domo aeterno Dei. 364 As for the teaching about our relationship to the saints, then on this score there are several very early epitaphs, composed in the sense of the teaching about the calling of saints. These latter are represented as having passed on to another life, and the dying, in turn, pass to them. In one epitaph the future location is called locus sanctorum, in others: inter sanctos, inter innocentes. 365 On the other hand, their friends and relatives also turn to the dead with a request that they pray for them and not abandon their patronage. Here is a sample of these exclamations: vivas in Deo et roga! ora pro parentibus tuis, petas pro nobis Felix! 366 Έρωτα υπέρ ημών, ask about us, remember your son Lectorius, and others. But regarding these and similar formulas, it should be noted that they mostly belong to a rather ancient era and the most ancient of them are alien to the specific features of Christianity, presenting them only sporadically. There is another characteristic formula, often found in tomb epigraphy and representing the original application of the technical language of the Romans. This is an exclamation most often addressed to the living in the following laconic form: pie, zeses - drink, live! It is often found on Greco-Roman monuments. But there the use of this formula had a completely epicurean meaning and served as an expression of that carefree, undisturbed pleasure to which the participants of feasts and orgies indulged. 367 Among Christians, the formula: πίνε, ζεσες is read on the bottoms of cups and glasses found in tombs, on the walls of graves and on other objects and, of course, had a different meaning than in classical phraseology. Some of the objects decorated with this inscription were served at agapes or public tables, during wedding and funeral dinners. The expression πίνε on them meant an invitation to participate in these meals, and the word vivas - the desire for happiness, bliss. Some of the archaeologists also expressed the idea that the word πίνε on the cups indicated the act of communion, and that these cups themselves were nothing more than chalices or calices, from which believers received the Eucharist. The following, for example, Greek inscription belongs to this category of mysterious formulas: pie, zezes εν αγαθοις. But the word αγαθόν in the language of the disciplinae arcani of the Greek fathers meant the very act of communion and the highest good that is achieved through this mysterious communication with Christ. Finally, among the secondary accessory features of Christian epigraphy are the symbolic images decorating tombstones. These signs are very numerous, but of them we will name only a few more typical ones, namely: the monograms of the name of Christ, the cross, the letters α and ω, the Lamb, the dove and the fish. It must be admitted that monograms of the name of Christ are one of the most common images in the tombstone symbolism of Christians. It possesses to a much greater and clearer extent those characteristic features which we have pointed out in explaining the meaning of the term in pace in the composition of Christian epitaphs. This sign in Christian usage shares the same fate as the term: Dis manibus on Greco-Roman monuments, although it is not as common as the latter. They wanted to write the name of Christ in abbreviation and for this they limited themselves to depicting the first two letters of his name. In this form the monogram of the name of Christ was obtained. Its special meaning and significance also lay in the fact that the monogram served at the same time as an image of a cross. But this monogram, as one of the undoubted signs of the Christian epigraphic style, cannot have any claim to early Christian antiquity and has been in use since the time of Constantine, who placed it on a military banner or labarum. Before 312, the monogram of Christ, according to Rossi, is found only sporadically. Without extending this remark to other objects of Christian art besides epigraphy, we only note that Clement of Alexandria, listing the symbolic figures used to decorate Christian rings, does not mention the monogram. With such a relatively late origin of the monogrammatic sign, it becomes a matter of pretentious scholarship to object that this sign was borrowed by Christians from pagans. The fact is that several coins of ancient Syrian and Roman were found, where a figure was minted that looked like a monogram or a combination of the letters chi and rho. But numismatics very naturally separated the monogram of Christ from this mysterious figure and recognized the question itself as a matter of idle curiosity - especially since this figure occurs only four or five times, and then completely in isolation. Of the symbols, in the proper sense, fish is an important sign of Christian epigraphy. The mystical interpretation of this sign, based on its phonetic meaning, made the image of a fish the most common symbol of Christ. It is quite often found in conjunction with a monogram and serves as its illustration. The importance of this symbol in relation to Christian epigraphy lies in the fact that this symbol is of very ancient origin and stands outside any connection with the pictorial illustration of Roman monuments. The two or three Roman pagan inscriptions in which this symbol appears constitute too insignificant a percentage to draw even the weakest and most strained rapprochement between it and the language of classical epitaphs. This symbol, almost more often than any other, forms the decoration of Christian grave inscriptions, is used in various combinations and has an extensive literature. Professor Pieper in his “Mythology and Symbolism of Christian Art,” having gone through most of the symbolic images on the monuments of ancient Christian art and pointing out pagan motifs in their formation, did not touch upon our symbol due to the impossibility of finding a suitable parallel for it in classical art. The analogies in the present case were too weak, and the Christian meaning of this symbol too bright to be obscured by any witty or skeptical arguments. Becker, in his monograph: “The Image of Jesus Christ under the Image of a Fish,” carefully collected ancient Christian inscriptions with this symbol and explained its significance for epigraphic language in connection with the very idea that underlay this symbol and constituted the confession of faith in Jesus Christ as the God-man. Without repeating these considerations, partly expressed by us in readings on Christian artistic symbolism, we will limit ourselves here to the observation that two very remarkable inscriptions belong to the cycle of the symbol, namely, fish, both in their original form, and in the typicality of their language, and in the nature of the dogmatic teaching contained in them. In southern France, near Lyon, the French archaeologist de Blunt discovered in 1839 pieces of a broken tomb slab with an ancient Greek inscription. The inscription turned out to be quite damaged in many places and it took a lot of work to decipher it. Near Lyon, which was very prosperous in the time of Augustus both commercially and politically, Greek colonies were early formed, attracted here, among other things, by commercial enterprises. Probably one of these Greek settlers, already a Christian, belongs to this inscription dating back to the 4th or 5th century. Here is its literal text: “O divine race of heavenly fish (ιχθύς), accept with a heart full of reverence the immortal source of life among mortals.” With this figurative language, the compiler of the inscription sets out the concept of baptism. But here is an untranslatable play on words, the whole force of which lies in the symbolic meaning of the fish in relation to Christ and in the representation of a Christian, purified in baptism through Christ, again under the symbol of a fish (that is why Tertullian calls Christians pisciculi - small fish in relation to Christ, Who is called: piscis and ιχθύς). The inscription continues: “Having revived (immersed) the soul in the inexhaustible streams (ever flowing) of eternal wisdom (Sophia), take the sweet food of the Savior of the saints and, while hungry, eat and drink, holding the fish in your hands. O Ιχθύς, grant me this grace, I thirst for it, my Lord and Savior.” This tirade contains an allegorical doctrine of communion in connection with baptism, again based on the conventional sense of ίχθυς, and gives an indication of the very method of communion in the church of the first times, when the bread of the Eucharist (and wine) was received not from a spoon, but into the hand, and then consumed. The last verses of the inscription contain Pectorius’s request to his father and mother, who were placed in this tomb, to pray for their son, and this request is expressed in the following expressions: “May my mother rest in peace, I beseech You, Light of the dead. Askhandiy, my father, dear to my heart, together with my tender mother and with all my relatives, remember the Lecture Hall at the Ιχθύς evening.” So this inscription immediately sheds light on the doctrine of baptism and communion and speaks of prayers for the dead. Closely related to the epitaph of Pectorius is another grave inscription belonging to Averky, remarkable for the historical and dogmatic instructions it contains. Although its content is borrowed from written sources of Byzantine origin, its meaning and spirit make it possible to classify it as a genuine work based on the original text. This is how it reads: “I, a citizen of the chosen city (i.e. Hierapolis) erected this monument during his lifetime in order to eventually find peace in it (it is remarkable that it is said here about the construction of a tomb or monument during his lifetime - a care that shows both the freedom of the compiler of the inscription and his sufficient means). My name is Averky. I am a disciple of the Holy Shepherd, Who grazes His sheep on the mountains and valleys and has an all-seeing eye. He taught me the word of truth and sent a queen to Rome, dressed in gold clothes and gold shoes.” A remarkable view of Rome as the capital, as the royal city of the entire Christian world, is the view expressed by one of the Eastern pilgrims, who considers the desire to visit Rome to be an inspiration from above. Indeed, during the first three or four centuries, Rome was the center where pilgrims from all over the Christian world flocked, attracted here by the many graves of martyrs and especially by the desire to see and venerate the tombs of the apostles Peter and Paul. So say Jerome in the west and Chrysostom in the east. Averky continues in the spirit of these witnesses. “I saw,” he says, “even on the way there, people wearing gold rings on their hands, I saw the Syrian region, all its cities and between them Nisibis and crossed the Euphrates.” Then follows the transition from the narrative part of the AverKiev inscription to the dogmatic part. “Vera,” the inscription further says, “brought and offered me the fish of life for food, giving me food and drink” (indicating that Averky, both during his travels and at other times in his life, accepted the sacrament of the Eucharist, constantly and deeply believed in the power of this sacrament).” The remarkable lines of the AverKiev inscription take us back to the ancient Roman legal views on the inviolability of graves and indicate the dominance of these views in the Christian world. “I, Averky, ordered these words to be inscribed on a gravestone when I was seventy-two years old. Let everyone who passes by him pray, but let no one dare to put another hill on the one that encloses my bones. And whoever does this will pay a fine of two thousand gold pieces to the Roman treasury and a thousand gold pieces to Hierapolis, my dear fatherland.” The last words of the inscription provide visual confirmation of the idea that not only pagan, but also Christian graves were protected by Roman law. Christian Averky builds a grave monument and threatens those who would dare to encroach on it with a certain fine in favor of the Roman government and his hometown. So, the symbol of the fish is important for characterizing the ancient Christian epigraphic style and constitutes a reliable criterion for the Christian origin of the famous inscription. But what we noticed about this symbol cannot be extended to many other symbols of ancient Christian art, partly due to their close relationship to the same subjects of ancient Roman art, partly due to their comparative rarity and infrequency, if we take into account the significant mass of Christian epitaphs and inscriptions, from the catacombs to the monuments of later church art. Is it not in this sense that Abraham also judged when, buying land from the sons of the Hittites for the burial of his wife Sarah, he expressed the following desire: give me possession of a grave where I could bury my dead on my behalf. The motive for burial, apparently, is a simple desire to remove from one’s face, from one’s sight, an object that arouses an unpleasant sensation by its presence. Ovid, who did not care what kind of death he died, for whom life was very difficult, in one place expresses the following desire: “just so as not to die at sea, otherwise death will be my reward.” It is clear what kind of motives guided the ancient legislators in depriving criminals of the first three classes of this right: patriotic and religious feelings were strongly developed in the ancient world, and anyone who openly insulted this feeling was recognized as completely lost in the eyes of society and deserving of the most severe punishment. But what can we say about suicide - an act that, apparently, was not associated with any of these motives and was based on the right of a person to dispose of himself according to the suggestion of his personal feelings? The solution to the question will depend on an explanation of how the Greco-Roman world understood individual rights and in what connection it placed the latter in relation to the state. If we reveal the theory of state law, as it is set out in the political philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, in their famous treatises on politics and the republic, then we will have to agree that the individual, within the meaning of legislation, completely disappeared in the general structure of state life and in the mechanism of public administration. The subject belonged entirely to the state; he was its passive organ, the labor force needed to achieve certain goals. The absence of this force is the absence of a wheel or any other device in the car. Whoever takes his own life is out of obedience to this all-consuming order of life, he arbitrarily breaks his connection with the social organism and goes against the general order. Aristotle directly says that “those who take their own lives are punished by dishonor from the state, because they have insulted them.” According to the laws of Plato’s Republic, suicides were buried alone, far from common graves, without any rituals; it was impossible to build a burial mound over them, or erect a monument, or make a gravestone inscription. According to Pliny, suicides, by virtue of a law dating back to the time of Tarquinius Priscus, were not only left without burial, but their bodies were nailed to the cross and in this position were left for extermination. That it was precisely this conditional state view, and not some other view, that motivated these strict measures against suicides can be seen from the deviations with which later Roman legislation wanted to limit the force of this strict law. Whoever died from cowardice, from fear of danger, was threatened with public shame; but whoever took his own life, having exhausted his strength in the fight against the enemy and did not want to surrender to him alive, committed a feat of heroism, and his determination was considered a manifestation of civil and military valor. The severity of this rule was further relaxed in the latter days of the republic, when passions and public demoralization dulled the sense of life and instilled indifference to it in the most influential classes of society. While some, like Horace, preached the Epicurean enjoyment of life and practically implemented this rule, others, partly under the influence of satiety with this game of life, and partly out of a desire to counteract this Epicurean tendency, looked upon life as a difficult gift for the one to whom it fell, and taught to be ready at every moment to put an end to this boring story with suicide. This burden of life - taedium vitae - was a disease of that time, from which the Roman citizen sought a way out in violent death. The mores of the time were not slow to influence legal practice. Refined morality replaced the former strict view of suicide - and now the best people of the time, like Cato, for example, carry poison with them so that every minute they have the opportunity to commit suicide, and actually end their life career in this way, when passions, rivalries and unfulfilled hopes left them with one heavy feeling with which they could not live. Seneca praises Demosthenes for the fact that he had enough strength, pursued by the sorrows of life, to lay hands on himself, to prefer death to dishonor and a bitter fate. While approving suicide in principle, Roman legislation nevertheless tried to preserve for the republic the shadow of its past sovereignty; it enters into a deal with this mass of candidates for death, allowing suicide to anyone who informs the Senate about the reasons that prompted him to commit suicide. Having completed this legal formality, everyone had the right to go ad patres, without losing hope of receiving a proper burial and leaving a good reputation among the living (Quintillanus, Declamat. IV: Qui causas voluntariae mortis in senatu non reddideret, insepultus abjiclatur). Thus, yielding to the demands of the time, the ancient law on suicide was gradually weakened. Wed. Euripides' depiction of the death of Hecuba. Closing the eyes was a general custom of antiquity,” and only the Romans allowed themselves to deviate from it when they placed the corpse on the fire for burning and at the same time left the eyes open, as if turned to the sky. So says Pliny. This type of burial structures includes many mounds that have survived to this day in southern Russia near Chersonesos and Kerch and represent ancient Scythian graves. The splitting of these mounds led to some discoveries that are important for getting acquainted with the internal structure of burial crypts of this kind and with many household items found in the interior of these mounds. The era to which the appearance of the catacombs dates back to was obsessed with some kind of funerary mania: both the rich and the poor, and various plebeians by origin - were all busy thinking about the best arrangement of graves for themselves, which, apparently, was so disharmonious with the general indifference to life that dominated Roman society in the last times of the republic. Entire societies were formed whose goal was the burial of their fellow men (coIlegia funeraticia). Uniting together, poor people contributed a certain amount each month so that upon death they would be buried not in common puticoli, but in more decent tombs, where their ashes would remain inviolable and could lie peacefully. Even slaves could belong to these unions. Many ancient graves (columbarium) owe their origin to these unions, which the government itself looked at without fear, and society supported them with its participation and partly with funds. Obviously, she stood in full view of everyone, drawing everyone’s attention to herself. This means that the Romans respected burial rights and tomb property so much that they allowed Christians to build a burial crypt on their land, and by allowing this, they thereby allowed other rights granted by their legislation to the owners of graves, and, above all, the right of the owner to allow persons close to him or heirs to be buried in his crypt. By ornamentation we mean in the broad sense of the word the entire decorative part of Christian monuments, which consisted of various kinds of paintings and sculptures on them. Eternal sleep in the field of dreams (lat. editor's note) The Apostolic Constitutions (VIII, 41) contain the petitions for the deceased, pronounced by the deacon and corresponding to the current funeral litany, and, in addition, the prayer of the priest over the deceased is recorded. Knowledge of epigraphic language and the ability to distinguish genuine inscriptions from fake ones would be very important in that it could protect against historical errors and from deliberate deception on the part of the compilers of false inscriptions. It is known that many of the medieval speculators were engaged in this work. In the Middle Ages, a wide and profitable field for this forgery was provided by the relics of pseudo-saints, which appeared with the most tempting inscriptions in cemeteries and in churches of Catholic monasteries. Of the many examples of this kind, we will select a few. Gregory of Tours in his time (half of the 6th century) complained bitterly about these tricks of the then superstitious people and talks among other things about one great deceiver who assured everyone that he had brought with him from Spain the relics of various saints. Despite the loud inscriptions with which he decorated his arks with relics, the study showed that instead of a shrine, the deceiver carried with him various roots, bones and counterfeit things, reputed to be sacred objects. In the middle of the 9th century, a monastery was founded by Louis the Pious in honor of Clement of Rome. Soon rumors spread that the monastery was storing the relics of his patron, and pilgrims flocked to this shrine in large numbers. When one of the cardinals wanted to check the newly appeared shrine, he was shown the coffin of St. Clement and on it the following inscription: Hic jacet sanctus Clemens Petri discipulus et a Petro papa secundus, qui jussu Trajani fuit in pelago mersus. A remarkable example of such a forgery is the case that happened with the famous historian Baronius and decided his dispute with Cardinal Sanctorius on the issue of Pope Felix. Baronius was against recognizing the latter's martyrdom. During the height of this controversy, in 1582, in the crypt of Cosmas and Damian, near Rome, a marble sarcophagus with the inscription: Corpus s. Felicls et martyris, qui damnavit Constantium. Felix is ​​called a martyr who survived Constantine. Baronius had to yield at the sight of such an obvious document; historical criticism and paleography do not attach any significance to this inscription. The history of epigraphy has preserved several names who elevated the forgery of ancient inscriptions to a craft and used their counterfeit manuscripts for malicious purposes, deceiving others. Valerius Severus lived for thirty years and died on the ninth of July, when Julius and Eusebius were consuls (lat. editor's note) Conquered - instead of - living (lat. editor's note) After the consulate of Vasily the Younger in the first, second, thirteenth year (Latin editor's note) Chronology of bishops (lat. editor's note) The saved bishop either during the time of the holy bishop, or simply: during the time of Bishop Damasus (Latin editor's note) Wonderful wisdom (lat. editor's note) Laconic exclamation: in the world, in the Lord (Latin editor's note) Here he lies, he lies in peace, he rests (Latin editor's note) Honored (very frequent); good; good memory; sweet; Cute; servant of God (lat. editor's note) Harmless, pious (Greek editor's note) He served God; his humanity was commendable; friend of all (lat. editor's note) The most famous man; very famous woman (lat. editor's note) Detain me because I have escaped, and bring me back to Victor, a novice from Clement's estate (lat. Ed.) Biton Salario, who lived thirty-six years, was handed over to the gods (Latin editor's note) Here Maxentius rests in peaceful sleep, having lived in this world... for years and months... (Latin editor's note) When comparing ancient grave inscriptions with Christian epitaphs, it is easy to notice that the same spelling errors are repeated here and there, some letters are mixed in consonance, for example, b and v, ai and e; other letters, especially at the end of words, are completely omitted, for example, t in the third person of verbs, and some letters are added completely arbitrarily. Finally, the diversity with which Greek and Latin fonts are mixed in the inscriptions, the letters of one alphabet with the letters of another in the same inscription is remarkable. Plautus wrote an entire comedy in which he ridiculed this passion for Greek among his contemporaries, and where the characters in the play speak in broken Latin. έν ειρήν η – in the world (Greek); in pace (lat. editor's note) Reading catacomb inscriptions is especially difficult because in writing of this kind no rules of punctuation or division of words are accepted; often the entire inscription is made in one line; Often this or that word is spelled contrary to accepted spelling rules. In some inscriptions, punctuation separates words, in others - syllables, in others - a series of words, and sometimes dots, sometimes crosses and asterisks, and sometimes curly signs in the form of hearts, coins, etc. serve as dividing marks. Note that all these signs are common to Christian epitaphs along with pagan ones. Here is an example of one of these epitaphs: Animae sanctae colendae diis manibus sacrum, i.e. dedicated to the patron gods of this holy and venerable soul. Then it is said that this inscription and the monument itself were built by a certain Cecilia over the ashes of her husband, with whom she expresses a desire to quickly unite with the closest bonds of love in the kingdom of Pluto. What is: Diis manibus and especially this phrase in combination with the following words: animae sanctae colendae, as in a real epitaph? Under the name manes, the Romans represented the dead in a state of detachment from the body. Since these souls, having passed into the kingdom of underground spirits, already received higher significance, the Greeks and Romans deified them under the name dii manes or θεοί καςαχθόνιοι - underground gods. But more often, dii manes were understood as geniuses-patrons of souls who passed into the kingdom of shadows. The phrase, as we see, owes its origin to one of the fundamental ideas of paganism and, when applied to Christian monuments, casts a shadow of suspicion on the very purity of the religious ideas of the early Christian world. Household gods (spirits) are the patrons of the souls of the dead (lat. editor's note) God the Great or Greatest (Lat. Ed.) patron god (spirit) of Albani, Cornelius, Julius (lat. editor's note) A place for yourself, a place to stay (lat. editor's note) Where is the basis for this latest threat? Among the Romans, the right of the grave was considered sacred, and disturbing the ashes of the deceased was considered the greatest insult. But this belief did not save Roman graves from the greed of treasure hunters. As soon as there was the slightest opportunity, they dug up the grave and took out the most valuable things from it. Grave robbing, given the poverty of the Roman people, became something of a craft and caused severe persecution by the government. Private individuals, for their part, tried to distract the robbers from this attempt with threats of terrible curses in their epitaphs. The graves of Christians, especially the wealthy ones, also served as bait for this trade. The spread of this abuse among Christians caused many strong and harsh denunciations from Gregory the Theologian, who outlined his threats to the grave robbers in poetic form, and many of these threats were completely turned into Christian epitaphs. Remaining true to its rule of respecting the bones of the deceased in the grave, the church persecuted violations of this rule even in cases where graves were torn up in order to take the bones of martyrs from them. Some were guided in this matter by pious motives, while others turned it into a trade and openly traded in the bones of martyrs. Theodosius the Great, who cannot in any way be reproached for the ill will of the church, found, however, forced to prohibit this abuse and stop the digging of graves even under this pretext: “no one should transfer bodies from one place to another, no one should disturb the martyr, no one should trade his relics.” Medieval grave inscriptions were especially fond of repeating these threats and often expressed them in especially harsh and strong terms, as was customary on Roman graves. Here he lies, here he rests, here he rests (lat. editor's note) May the earth be smooth, may your bones rest, may the gods bless you (Lat. Ed.) God will cool you down (lat. editor's note) You will live among the saints, you will live in God (Latin editor's note) May the earth rest in peace to you (Lat. Ed.) In this eternal home I am and here I will always be (Latin editor's note) I don’t know where I’m going, I’m dying without desire, goodbye to posterity (Latin editor’s note) I lived the way I wanted, I don’t know why I died (Lat. Ed.) God-given and honored virgin, rest here in peace according to Christ's command (Latin editor's note) Rest in peace (lat. editor's note) Sleep in peace (lat. editor's note) Here lies Lawrence, who believed in the resurrection (Lat. Ed.) Live in the glory of God, you were with Christ (lat. editor's note) In the eternal house of God (lat. editor's note) Among the saints, among the innocents (lat. editor's note) Live in God and pray, pray for your parents, you pray for us Felix! (lat. editor's note) Catullus, Martial, Petronius and other Epicurean poets used this phrase as a call for pleasure in view of all-destroying death. To live - vivere - was synonymous with sensual pleasure for them, to drink - bibere - was one of the means of such complete disposal of the benefits of life. And so on the tombstones, like an echo, like a desire to continue this interrupted thread of pleasure, vivas is heard, and this last well-wishing or parting word from friends is addressed to the new inhabitant of Elysium. Anima dulcis, fruamur nos sine bibe, zezes! (Dear soul, let's have fun without drinking!) - here is one of many examples of this lapidary style. You might be interested in: