BISOMUS. — Understood as *locus*, it signifies a burial place for two corpses and is terminology proper to Roman cemeteries. Like the similar terms *trisomus* and *cimiteri romani*, it properly refers to the deep loculi dug horizontally into the vertical walls of underground galleries, whereas the wide pits excavated in the ground, with multiple places separated by marble slabs, were rather called *biscandens* and *terscandens*. This terminology was also applied to large sarcophagi and to the graves of arcosolia. Its hybrid Greco-Latin character reveals its origin and popular usage; the purely Greek form *disonus* is very rare and not used by Christians. V. TOMBA.
BIBL.: G. B. De Rossi, *Roma sotterranea*, III, Roma 1877, pp. 412 and 416; H. Leclercq, s. V. in DACL, II, cols. 910 ff.