The Ancient Appian Way and the Catacombs

Some good friends called me and invited me out for a Sunday walk along the Via Appia Antica - the Ancient Appian Way. Well! I could hardly say "No" to such a great opportunity!

The Via Appia was first built in 312 BC by Roman Censor Appio Claudius and eventually connected Rome with the southern port of Brindisium, the modern Brindisi, nearly 550 km away. The road still exists and is still composed of the original Roman road stones in many places; several we walked on a couple of kilometers' worth on our hike. The Via Appia Antica is lined with old Roman structures; tombs, temples and a circus, too.

The most famous tomb is probably the Tomb of Cecilia Metella, a large round "wedding cake" of a tomb that centuries after it was first built was converted into a Renaiassance-era fort. Nearby is the Circus of Maxentius, which if memory serves was the stand-in for the Circus Maximus in the Charlton Heston movie "Ben Hur."

We walked several kilometers of the Way and in fact ended up all the way at the current end; just this side of the GRA and relatively near Ciampino Airport (we could see the airplanes taking off a few kilometers to our left-front).

The Appia Antica also provides access to the more well-known Christian catacombs along it and Via delle Sette Chiese. We decided to visit one of these catacombs after our much-deserved lunch at Ristorante Cecilia Metella. We chose the Catacomb of Domatilla since a) it was close b) it was on the right side of the street and c) Laura had visited it when she was a schoolgirl (which of course was not so very long ago, cara!).

Unfortunately, photos are not allowed in the catacombs and I respected that this time. It's not that I have reformed my law-breaking ways, rather I was with two locals and I didn't want to embarrass them or get them in trouble and besides, it's pretty dang obvious which one in the group of 12 is firing off a flash in the dark, don't you think? It's one thing to sneak in, fire off two shots in Basilica di Francesco di Assisi and post it on the website; it's another to be in a catacomb tomb vault, basically blind everyone with my solar powered flash unit and then face the wrath of a Catholic priest, and a German one at that in this case.

:-)

The catacombs were used in the earliest days of Christianity. Christians were no different than other Rome residents; they had to bury their dead outside the city walls just like everyone else. The early Christians in general did not cremate their dead, as the pagans did; they preferred burial. And so they needed land to do this but land was quite expensive in and around Rome, as you can well imagine.

As a result, catacombs were developed. Usually a Christian was able to acquire a small plot of land outside the city walls, either because an upperclass person converted and then donated the plot or through outright purchase. From this small plot a catacomb would start. The owners and other members of the Christian community would start digging and create passageways, tombs, steps, airshafts and other constructions as necesary. Some of these catacombs were used for 200 years or more; eventually tunneling under acres of land and consisting of kilometers of tunnels and passageways. Eventually in many cases churches honoring particular martyrs and saints were built on the entrances to the catacombs.

The Hollywood movie myth that catacombs were secret and were used as secret meeting places to plot the assassination of Emperors is just that; a myth. The catacombs were well known by Christian and pagan alike and in general were respected as places of honor and importance by everyone.

Catacomb tombs - called "loculi" - were often simply holes dug into the walls of the corridors and other times were arranged into arcosoli, which are mausoleum-like rooms. Most tombs were plain, with only a small personal object or a very simple marker denoting who was buried there. The arcosoli, though, could be very elaborate, with frescoes and sculptures. They were decorated with paleo-Christian symbols such as anchors (which were upside down crosses), fish, lighthouses and other symbols. Also at times pagan imagery was appropriated when necessary; Hercules linked to Sampson, for example, or depictions of the seasons as characters. Oftentimes the images protrayed had symbolic meaning that has changed over the centuries and require diligent interpretation today.

Eventually, in the 7th and 8th centuries, the catacombs were stripped of their artifacts and many of the bodies of important saints, popes and martyrs were removed and reburied in the churches that were being built at breakneck pace in the city. Further, people were no longer in need of catacomb burial. This situation eliminated the reason the faithful went to the catacombs; the saints were now in the churches and burial could happen in cemetaries and in the churches themselves. And thus over time the entryway locations and the remaining contents of the many catacombs around Rome were lost and forgotten. It was only in the very late 16th/very early 17th century that Antonio Bosio rediscovered some 30 of the long-lost catacombs, with continual discoveries until the 1960s(!).

As I noted above, we visited the catacomb of Domatilla, which is one of the most extensive catacombs in the city. Named for a Christian niece of Domitian (who ruled in the late first century AD and ironically was a Christian persecutor of highest order) named Flavia Domitilla, it started as several small Christian cemetaries on land that originally belonged to her and was given to her freedmen. In the late 4th century a small basilica was built here and named for the martyrs Nereus and Achilleus and whose bodies were buried there. Down the road 100 meters or so from the catacomb of Domatilla is the catacomb of St Callixtus, which is the oldest official cemetary in Rome and was the burial place of 9 third century popes.

The catacombs are quite interesting. There are no bones or skeletons in any of them; the remains are either long-decomposed or removed. The red ochre-colored dust in the loculi is all that remains of the bodies that lay here for centuries, with just a small toy or personal object marking their tombs and proclaiming their now-long-past existence.

Here are the photos.