The usual colour adopted by women for mourning, under the Roman Empire, was a peculiar blue-black serge, and an absolutely black veil. As with us, occasionally, the wearing of mourning brought forth some sharp remarks from the satirical poets. Thus, Macrobius tells us, in his Saturnalia, that Croesus on one occasion went to the Senate wearing the deepest mourning for the largest lamprey in his tank, which had died.
Women were not allowed to remarry within the year of their husband's death. Imperial permission, however, might smooth this difficulty.
AMONG the early Christians the sincerest respect for the memory of their dead was paid; for most of them, in the first centuries of the Church, were either martyrs or near connections of such as had suffered for the faith. The Catacombs are covered with inscriptions recording the deaths of martyrs; and many of these memorials are exceedingly pathetic, testifying to the fortitude with which the first Christians endured any manner of torture rather than deny the new faith which had been imparted to them by Divine revelation. The remains of the martyrs, however mangled they might be, were gathered together with the greatest reverence, and their blood placed in little phials of glass, which were considered relics of a most precious nature. The Catacombs, which served the first Christians as churches as well as places of burial, are called after the most distinguished martyrs who were buried therein. In that of St. Calixtus, for instance--where that early and martyred Pope was interred--about two centuries ago was found the body of Saint Cecilia, "the sweet patroness of music." With such precaution had her remains been transported to their place of interment, that Bernini, the most eminent sculptor of the 17th Century, was able to take a cast of them, which he subsequently worked into a lovely statue, representing the saint in the graceful and modest attitude in which it is said her body was found after the lapse of a thousand years. This exquisite work of art is to be seen in the church which bears Saint Cecilia's name, in the Trastevere; and a fine replica of it is in the chapel of St. Cecilia, in the Oratory, Brompton.
[Illustration: FIG. 8.--_Divine Service in the Catacombs of St. Calixtus_, A.D. 50.]