Biblical Archaeology Review - January-February 2018

22 January/February 2018

CLASSICAL CORNER

de Rossi at the end of the 19th century,
and portions of the catacombs were used
as an air-raid shelter by local people dur-
ing World War II. The convent’s founda-
tions likely hindered exploration of the
area directly underneath it, and it would
take a broken water line 18 centuries
later for the mass burial that pre-dates
the catacombs themselves to be discov-
ered in their midst.
The answer to the mystery of how
and why these burials came to be here
is likely found in the history of the
property itself. Prior to the Constantin-
ian age, this area was the location of the
barracks of the equites singulares Augusti,
a private corps of mounted Imperial
bodyguards. The skeletal remains do not
display any of the obvious bone trauma
consistent with a massacre. The most
likely explanation for such a large num-
ber of simultaneous fatalities is an epi-
demic sweeping through the city at the
end of the second/ beginning of the third
century.^2 Given the close quarters of the

soldiers and their families, such an event

would have been particularly devastating

in the barracks.

Christians were given the use of the

ground underneath the equites’ garrison

around the mid-third century by the

emperor Gallieneus, a conciliatory ges-

ture from the emperor in order to pla-

cate a community that had been savagely

persecuted under the reign of his father,

Emperor Valerian. When the Christians

began to construct the catacombs, the

chambers containing the earlier burials

were simply incorporated into the grow-

ing complex. Several decades later, fol-

lowing the end of the civil war between

Constantine and Maxentius, the equites

singulares Augusti were disbanded by

an irate Emperor Constantine follow-

ing his victory over Maxentius at the

Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 C.E.;

the unfortunate equites had backed the

wrong emperor. The property was then

given by Constantine to his mother,

Helena. It is here that she constructed

her own final resting place. To access

the catacombs today, one walks by the

ruins of what was once her magnificent

mausoleum.

Today, the savvy visitor to Rome can

access this extraordinary site. A sinkhole

in the basement of a convent opened a

subterranean door to an archaeological

mystery, the investigation of which led to

a concerted effort by the Pontifical Com-

mission to undertake extensive exca-

vations and repairs of the catacombs.

After several years of painstaking and

beautifully executed restoration work,

the catacombs of Saints Peter and Mar-

cellinus boast some of the most skillfully

rendered and restored frescoes of any

of the city’s subterranean burial sites.

Particularly noteworthy are its many fine

depictions of the concept of refrigerium,

a custom borrowed by the Christians

from the Greek and Roman tradition of

holding funerary banquets in honor of

the deceased. In the Christian ethos of

this era, this custom came to be closely

tied to the sacrament of the Eucharist,

and banqueting scenes from the context

of the Roman catacombs are among the

earliest known images in the canon of

Christian art. What began as a plumbing

headache for the dismayed sisters of the

Istituto Sacra Famiglia turned out to be a

serendipitous catalyst for the opening of

one of Rome’s most enigmatic sites.^3

Sarah K. Yeomans is the

Director of Educational

Programs at the Biblical

Archaeology Society. She is

currently pursuing her doc-

torate at the University of

Southern California and specializes in the

Imperial period of the Roman Empire

with a particular emphasis on religions

and ancient science. She is also a faculty

member in the Department of Religious

Studies at West Virginia University.

(^1)  Grave goods buried with several of the indi-
viduals indicate that these individuals were
almost certainly not Christians.
(^2)  Philippe Blanchard et al., “A Mass Grave
from the Catacomb of Saints Peter and Mar-
cellinus in Rome, Second–Third Century A.D.,”
Antiquity 81 (2007), pp. 989–998.
(^3)  The catacombs of Saints Peter and
Marcellinus are open to the public. More
information is available on their website:
http://www.santimarcellinoepietro.it.
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