catacombs bear to the perfect confidence of the early Christians in the continuance of life beyond the grave. To the faithful dead—to the believers in Jesus Christ—there was no break caused by death, for them life went on as it had done aforetime; conscious life went on after death, only under different and happier conditions.
To appreciate the striking change in the conception of death—the most important event in the life of man on earth—it will be interesting to glance at the testimony supplied in the same period by pagan epitaphs. A very brief examination will suffice to show what an impassable gulf separated the Christian from the pagan conception.
What at once catches our attention in any study of pagan epitaphs is the complete want of any hope beyond the grave. All the elaborate pagan pictures of the future life popularized in Greek circles by the Homeric poems, and in Latin society by the exquisite verses of Vergil, when brought face to face with the stern reality of the tomb are simply blotted out—are treated as purely fables.
Death, in these pagan epitaphs, the true expressions of popular pagan belief in the first three centuries of the Christian era, is ever viewed as an enemy; is described as an everlasting sleep, and the grave is represented as the last eternal home.
It has been well said that this melancholy idea was conveyed in the quiet sadness of that one word "Vale," or in the more impassioned repetition of it, "Vale, Vale dulcissima—semper in perpetuo vale." Farewell, farewell, sweetest one—for ever farewell. Now and again a favourite pagan formula was summed up in two words—"fuisti; vale."
Some of the pagan epitaphs are playfully sarcastic, as: "Ah, weary traveller, however far you may walk, you must come here at last." Some even make a mock at death, bidding others enjoy themselves while they live. "Live for the present hour, drink and play, for you are sure of nothing, only what you eat and drink is really yours." "Fortune makes many promises but keeps none of them; live then for the present hour, since nothing else is really yours." Some epitaphs are bitter: "I lived as I like, but I don't know why I died." "Here it is, so it is, nothing else could be."
