DOMUS AETERNA. - The absence of burial, the violation or destruction of the tomb, were regarded by the ancients as the worst injuries that could befall the deceased. Hence almost all the living took care to construct tombs capable of defying time, and openly proclaimed this, as though to ward off adverse events and human outrages. In this sense the frequent formulas in funerary epigraphy are to be understood: d. ae., domus aeternalis, sedes aeterna, tumulus aeternae domus.
The expression d. ae. is not foreign to Christian epigraphy and derives conceptually from two passages of the Old Testament (Eccle., 12, 5: « Ibit homo in domum aeternitatis suae»; Pr. 48, 12: « Sepulchra eorum domus illorum in aeternum »). Greek epigraphy very frequently offers the formula αἰώνιος οἶκος in both pagan and Christian epitaphs. Christian inscriptions of this kind are very numerous in Africa, and St Augustine disapproves of the formula because of its excessively materialistic sense. In the Christian «creed», however, the pagan expression acquires a higher meaning:
the tomb is the safeguard of the body until the day of the resurrection.