Here an inscription on a young woman's grave mourns her early death: "I lift up my hands against the God who took me away at the age of twenty, though I had done no harm." A father thus grieves for the loss of his child: "The fates judged ill when they robbed me of you." Father and mother often write themselves down as most wretched, most unhappy ("miserrimi-infelicissimi"). Sometimes they use these sad and cheerless terms of their dead children. Mothers now and again describe themselves as "left to tears and groans," or as "condemned to perpetual darkness and daily sad lamentation." Parents lament their dead child thus: "Our hope was in our boy; now all is ashes and mourning." Frequently these mourn for their dead children as follows: "They have died without having deserved it." Another parent bewails the child's death in these terms: "Neither talent, nor amiability, nor loving winning ways, have been of any avail to prolong the child's days; in spite of all this, he has become the foul prey of the cruel Pluto."
On very many indeed of pagan tombs undoubtedly there is evidence of much love and deep affection for the departed, but there is no gleam of hope of reunion or of happiness in another life; indeed, as a rule, there is no other life hinted at. If any venture to look beyond the grave—which is rarely the case—all beyond the grave is dark and sad and melancholy.
The following words put into the mouth of a dead girl well voice this general feeling: "Here I lie, unhappy girl, in darkness." "Traveller, curse me not as you pass," moans another inscription, "for I am in darkness and cannot answer."
III
The wonderful change in popular feeling as shown in the Christian epitaphs when contrasted with the pagan epitaphs of the same period is indeed startling! What we read in the Roman City of the Dead tells us something of the spirit which dwelt in these companies of believers in the Name. This something is sufficient to account for the new life led by so many, for the superhuman courage displayed by the army of
