BISOMUS. – With locus understood, it means a burial for two corpses and is terminology proper to the Roman cemeteries. Like the similar terms trisomus and quadrisomus, it properly refers to the deep niches made horizontally in the vertical walls of the underground galleries, whereas the broad pits dug into the ground, with multiple places separated by marble slabs, were more properly called biscandens and terscandens. This terminology was also applied to the large sarcophagi and to the pits of the arcosolia. Its hybrid Greco-Latin character reveals its origin and popular usage; exceedingly rare and non-Christian in use is the unambiguously Greek form disomus. V. TOMBA.
BIBL.: G. B. De Rossi, Roma sotterranea, III, Rome 1877, pp. 412 and 416; H. Leclercq, s. V. in DACL, II, col. 910 ff. Antonio Ferrua