Note 41 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Execrantur rogos, et damnant ignium sepulturas.—Minuc. Felix, Octav., ii, 451. Tertullian declared it to be a symbol of the fires of hell. Possibly, also, the expense and publicity inseparable from the practice of cremation made it a matter of necessity for the early Christians to adopt the less costly and more private mode of subterranean interment. Merivale, indeed, asserts that the early Roman Christians burned their dead, (vi, 444,) and adduces in support of this strange theory only the pagan dedication D. M., found on some Christian tombs. As will be shown, (Book III, i,) these letters were part of a common epigraphic formula, and give no warrant for this startling statement.