Here, in truth, was the centre of the peculiar religious expressiveness, of the sanctity, of the entire scene.

That "any person may, at his own election, constitute the place which belongs to him a religious place, by the carrying of his dead into it":--had been a maxim of old Roman law, which it was reserved for the early Christian societies, like that established here by the piety of a wealthy Roman matron, to realise in all its consequences.

Yet this was certainly unlike any cemetery Marius had ever before seen; most obviously in this, that these people had returned to the older fashion of disposing of [99] their dead by burial instead of burning.

Originally a family sepulchre, it was growing to a vast necropolis, a whole township of the deceased, by means of some free expansion of the family interest beyond its amplest natural limits.

That air of venerable beauty which characterised the house and its precincts above, was maintained also here.