a grotto, or subterraneous place for the burial of the dead.

Some derive the word catacomb from the place where ships are laid up, which the modern Latins and Greeks call cumbe. Others say, that cata was used for ad, and catacumbas for adumbras; accordingly, Dadin says, they anciently wrote cataumbas. Others fetch the word Catacombs from the Greek κατά, and κομβός, a hollow, cavity, or the like.

Anciently the word catacomb was only understood of the tombs of St Peter and St Paul; and M. Challetain observes, that among the more knowing of the people of Rome, the word catacomb is never applied to the subterraneous burying-places hereafter mentioned, but only to a chapel in St Sebastian, one of the seven stations churches; where the ancient Roman calendars say the body of St Peter was deposited, under the conflagration of Titus and Bassus, in 258.

CATACOMBS OF ITALY; a vast assemblage of subterraneous sepulchres about Rome, chiefly at about three miles from that city in the Via Appia; supposed to be the sepulchres of the martyrs; and which are visited accordingly out of devotion, and relics thence taken and dispersed throughout the catholic countries, after having been first baptized by the pope under the name of some saint. These catacombs are said by many to be caves or cells wherein the primitive Christians hid and assembled themselves together, and where they interred such among them as were martyred. Each catacomb is three feet broad, and eight or ten high; running in form of an alley or gallery, and communicating with others: in many places they extend within a league of Rome. There is no masonry or vaulting therein, but each supports itself: the two sides, which we may look on as the parietes or walls, were the places where the dead were deposited; which were laid lengthwise, three or four rows over one another, in the same catacomb, parallel to the alley. They were commonly closed with large thick tiles, and sometimes pieces of marble, cemented in a manner imitable by the moderns. Sometimes, though very rarely, the name of the deceased is found on the tile; frequently a palm is seen, painted or engraved, or the cipher XP, which is commonly read pro Christo. The opinion held by many Protestant authors is, that the catacombs are heathen sepulchres, and the same with the puticuli mentioned by Festus Pompeius; maintaining, that whereas it was the practice of the ancient Romans to burn their dead, the custom was, to avoid expense, to throw the bodies of their slaves to rot in holes of the ground; and that the Roman Christians, observing, at length, the great veneration paid to relics, resolved to have a stock of their own: entering therefore the catacombs, they added what ciphers and inscriptions they pleased; and then shut them up again, to be opened on a favourable occasion. Those in the secret, add they, dying or removing, the contrivance was forgot, till chance opened them at last. But this opinion has even less of probability than the former. Mr Moure, in the Philosophical Transactions, supposes the catacombs to have been originally the common sepulchres of the first Romans, and dug in consequence of these two opinions, viz. That shades hate the light; and that they love to hover about the places where the bodies are laid.

Though the catacombs of Rome have made the greatest noise of any in the world, there are such belonging to many other cities. Those of Naples, according to bishop Burnet, are much more noble and spacious than the catacombs of Rome. Catacombs Catacombs have also been discovered at Syracuse, and Catanea in Sicily, and in the island of Malta. The Roman catacombs take particular names from the churches in their neighbourhood, and seem to divide the circumference of the city without the walls between them, extending their galleries every where under, and a vast way from it; so that all the ground under Rome, and for many miles about it, some say 20, is hollow. The largest, and those commonly shown to strangers, are the catacombs of San Sebastiano, those of Saint Agnese, and the others in the fields a little off Saint Agnese. Women are only allowed to go into the catacombs in the church-yard of the Vatican on Whitmonday-Monday, under pain of excommunication. There are men kept constantly at work in the catacombs. As soon as these labourers discover a grave with any of the supposed marks of a saint upon it, intimation is given to the cardinal Comerlingo, who immediately sends men of reputation to the place, where finding the palm, the monogram, the coloured glass, &c., the remains of the body are taken up with great respect, and translated to Rome. After the labourers have examined a gallery, they stop up the entry that leads to it; so that most of them remain thus closed up; only a few being left open to keep up the trade of showing them to strangers. This they say is done to prevent people from losing themselves in these subterranean labyrinths, which indeed has often happened; but more probably to deprive the public of the means of knowing whither and how far the catacombs are carried.

The method of preserving the dead in catacombs seems to have been common to a number of the ancient nations. The catacombs of Egypt are still extant about nine leagues from the city of Grand Cairo, and two miles from the city of Zaccara. They extend from thence to the pyramids of Pharaoh, which are about eight miles distant. They lie in a field covered with a fine running sand, of a yellowish colour. The country is dry and hilly; the entrance of the tomb is choked up with sand; there are many open, but more that are still concealed.

The bodies found in catacombs, especially those of Egypt, are called mummies; and as their flesh was formerly reckoned an efficacious medicine, they were much sought after. In this work the labourers were often obliged to clear away the sand for weeks together, without finding what they wanted. Upon coming to a little square opening of about 18 feet in depth, they descend into it by holes for the feet, placed at proper intervals; and there they are sure of finding a mummy. These caves, or wells as they call them there, are hollowed out of a white free-stone, which is found in all this country a few feet below the covering of sand. When one gets to the bottom of these, which are sometimes 40 feet below the surface, there are several square openings on each side into passages of 10 or 15 feet wide; and these lead to chambers of 15 or 20 feet square. These are all hewn out in the rock; and in each of the catacombs are to be found several of these apartments communicating with one another. They extend a great way underground, so as to be under the city of Memphis, and in a manner to undermine its environs. In some of the chambers the walls are adorned with figures and hieroglyphics; in others the mummies are found in tombs, round the apartment hollowed out in the rock.

The Egyptians seem to have excelled in the art of embalming and preserving their dead bodies; as the mummies found in the Egyptian catacombs are in a better state than the bodies found either in the Italian catacombs or those of any other part of the world. See Embalming and Mummy.

Laying up the bodies in caves, is certainly the original way of disposing of the dead; and appears to have been propagated by the Phoenicians throughout the countries to which they sent colonies: the interring as we now do in the open air or in temples was first introduced by the Christians. When an ancient hero died or was killed in a foreign expedition, as his body was liable to corruption, and for that reason unfit to be transported entire, they fell on the expedient of burning, in order to bring home the ashes, to oblige the manes to follow; that so his country might not be destitute of the benefit of his tutelage. It was thus burning seems to have had its original; and by degrees it became common to all who could bear the expenses of it, and took place of the ancient burying; thus catacombs became diffused among the Romans, after they had borrowed the manner of burning from the Greeks, and then none but slaves were laid in the ground. See Burial, &c.