The Writing on the Walls

Beneath the streets of Rome, in the cool darkness of the catacombs, early Christians carved messages on the tombs of their dead. What they wrote tells us everything about what they believed. Pagan Roman tombs from the same era bear inscriptions heavy with finality. One common epitaph reads: "I was not. I was. I am not. I care not." The dead were gone, and that was the end of it.…