(22). Ten miles, almost, round about Rome, under the vineyards and cornfields, are hollow caves, streets, rooms, chappells, finely paynted, &., which is called Rome underground, or the Catacombe, wherein to the poor Christians in the times of persecution fledd to hide themselves, to perform the Christian duties of preaching and prayer and sacraments. And some of these underground streets were for their burials, -- not on the flat, as we bury on the ground, but the corps were at their lenght length immuralld in theca's, or, as it were, in hollow shelves dug into the wall on both sides; and it is a horrid place to go to, and dangerous, for fear of damps, for which we had little bottles of essences and spirits to put to our noses, and tynder purses (as the mode is), with flint, steel, and match, to lighten our torches and candles when they went out. My curiosity held me there about 3 hours at one time in one of these cymeteries; I going down a pair of stayre, and so walked some streets in Rome underground, a second story deep, until we came to water, which made us return. But the best and freest from danger, and easiest to be seen, are those at St. Agnese, out of the Porta St. Agnese, where in half an hour I came to a street that I could tell 10 stories of corps high; and so all along, about 30 or 40 in lenght length. I and other gentlemen with me observed that, though there were divers epitaphs and writings, with Ρo, Χto, Ρo, Xo, with a turtle dove and an olive branch in its beack, and a palm branch, with Po ✝o, yet, I taking all along on the one side, and my companions on the other, we could meete with never an Orate pro anima -- praying for the souls of the dead not being then known, in the primitive times, there being no such thing as purgatory then known in the world, -- that being of a later invention, to bring a vast revenue to the Pope or Camera Apostolica.

From this Rome underground I brought a very fair small ancient lamp, and a small bottle with a long neck -- both of them of a very fine red earth; which, by Dr. Plott, I sent as a present to the cabinet of Oxford Library. One other earthen lamp, and a glass bottle with such a long neck, and a broken one in two pieces, I have in my cabinet. These bottles are called lachrymatorij, or tear-bottles, because the friends and relations of the defunct were in ancient time accustomed at the funeral to carry each of them a lachrymatorio in his hand, to save his tears that he shed for his deceased friend, and then leave those bottles behind them with the immuralld corps. David seemeth to have allusion to this ancient custom when he saith, Psalm 56, 8, "Thou hast put my tears into thy bottle."