desired to be laid in the immediate neighbourhood of the hallowed place. This was no doubt the original reason for the formation of the Cemetery "ad Catacombas," the name of the little district in which the temporary tomb of the two apostles was situated.
The catacomb in question was eventually named after Sebastian, a brave confessor in the persecution of Diocletian, circa A.D. 289-303. This Sebastian was tribune in the first cohort and commanded a company of the Prætorians, which was stationed on guard on the Palatine. He died for his faith under circumstances of a peculiar dramatic interest, being pierced with arrows and cruelly scourged. His body, so runs the probably true story, was taken out of the common sewer, into which it was ignominiously thrown, by a Christian matron named Lucina, who reverently interred it in the Cemetery "ad Catacombas" in the neighbourhood of the sacred Platonia chamber.
The remains of S. Sebastian were removed in the seventeenth century by Cardinal Borghesi from the crypt in which they were originally deposited and reinterred in the modern chapel which was erected over the ancient sanctuary. During the Middle Ages, when owing to the raids of the barbarians and consequent translation of the more celebrated martyrs to churches within the city, the eventful story of the catacombs was forgotten, this cemetery, owing to its connection with the two great apostles, was ever a hallowed sanctuary, and was visited by an unbroken stream of pilgrim visitors, and after the rediscovery of the City of the Dead in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, gave the name of its now famous district "ad Catacombas" to the various subterranean cemeteries which from time to time since then have been discovered.
The corridors with their graves in this famous cemetery have not yet been fully excavated.
The Cemetery of S. Callistus.—The great group of catacombs generally known under the title "S. Callistus" is situated on the right of the Via Appia, about a quarter of a mile nearer Rome than the Cemetery of S. Sebastian ("ad Catacombas") just described; the usual entrance being about
