Roman funerary practices

Rome's laws of inheritance determined who paid for, arranged and led funerals; usually the paterfamilias as main beneficiary, but if he was also the deceased, then his heir must take responsibility. Failing that, someone could be nominated to the task of leading the ceremonies, but the cost still fell to the heir or heirs; or as Cicero put it, the responsibility went with the money. If the deceased was a married woman, the cost should be paid by her husband, or from her dowry if she had been emancipated from her father.[8] A slave who died as a loyal member of a familia might receive a decent funeral, housing in the familia mausoleum, tomb or columbaria (shared "dovecote" style mausoleum) and commemoration in an inscription;[9] A freedman or woman might be buried and commemorated at the expense of their patron.[10] All others could apply to join officially recognised burial societies, which guaranteed a decent burial, or at least a memorial, as long as due subscriptions were kept up-to-date [11][12][13] Some persons and professions, such as gladiators, butchers and executioners were permanently polluted and dishonoured by their professional association with blood and death, and belonged to a social category known as infames, allowed a very restricted set of citizens' rights. They had their own burial clubs and segregated cemeteries, with funerals and memorials for their members.[14]

Families were under no customary or religious duty to give funeral or burial rites to infants, and were dissuaded from offering them cremation rites or cemetery burial unless the infant had cut its first teeth. Until it had been named by its father on its dies lustricus (name-day), 8 or 9 days after birth, an infant or new-born who died remained ritually pure; its death polluted no-one, and its spirit could not become a malevolent, earthbound shade.[15] It therefore needed no funeral rites, and could be buried within the pomerium if under 4 days old. Plutarch held that until a child no longer fed through its umbilical cord, it was "more like a plant than an animal", and that while sadness at its lost potential was entirely natural, mourning should be restrained.[16] The death rate among newborns and young children was very high – around 1 in 4 births, or at worst, up to 50% mortality before age 5; dietary deficiencies hindered growth and immunity among the poor, whether slave or free. Unwanted newborns were sometimes deliberately killed if patently "unfit to live". Others, perhaps of doubtful paternity or born, unwanted, to impoverished or enslaved parents, might be exposed "for the gods to take care of".[17][18] Nevertheless, some infants who died during or soon after birth were lovingly commemorated; in at least one such burial, the infant was accompanied to their afterlife with a coin to pay the ferryman. Grave goods in infant burials could include toys, pets, food and images of protective childhood or birth deities, to guard the child's soul on its journey.[19][20]

The state intervened in several public and private aspects of burial and funeral practice; sumptuary laws were used to restrain expenditure and conspicuous display of wealth, privilege and excess at funeral feasts. "Excessive" mourning was officially frowned on, as was the use of dressed timbers (timbers "finished with the axe") for the funeral pyre. Cicero describes the provision of a funeral and rites as a "natural duty", consistent with universal notions of human care and decency.[21] Some individuals might nevertheless attempt to lawfully escape the burden and expense of a funeral obligation, through the courts, or unlawfully avoid even the most basic disposal costs for a relative or slave, and simply dump the body. Bodel (2000) calculates that around 1500 abandoned and unwanted corpses, not counting victims of epidemics, had to be removed from the streets of Rome every year.[22]

Undertakers supplied a broad range of services, considered demeaning or ritually unclean to most citizens.[23] Fragments of an undertaker's monopoly contract (c. 100 – 50 BC) with the town of Puteoli show that the undertaker also doubled as the town executioner. He and his 32 permanent staff lived outside the municipal boundary, and could only enter the town to carry out their trades; the public were charged for this at a given rate-per-mile, plus hire or purchase of necessary equipment and services. Funerals of decurions took precedence, followed by funerals of the young. Certain services had to be provided without additional payment, in a timely manner, and in a specific order of priority. For example, any slave's corpse left on the street must be removed "within two hours of daylight", without mourning or funeral rites, and the slave's owner must pay a 60 sestertii fine to the municipality. The corpses of suicides by hanging, being particularly offensive to the gods, must be removed within the hour of discovery, again without mourning or funeral rites. Not every city had such professionals on its public payroll; but many did, and it is assumed that the arrangements in Puteoli broadly reflected those in Rome.[24][25] The profession of undertaker was simultaneously "purifying and inherently sordid"; a necessary and ignoble trade, whose practitioners profited from blood and death. For contractors, it was almost certainly very profitable.[26]

A likely headquarters for the City of Rome's primary official undertaker (or several such, given the size of the city, and its growth) is the Esquiline Hill. Up to the end of the Republic an area just outside the Esquiline Gate was used as a dump for the bodies of executed criminals and crucified slaves, the former often condemned to suffer a final indignity of being "dragged with the hook" for disposal by birds and beasts, and the latter usually being left to rot on their crosses. A temple in Libitina's grove on the Esquiline was dedicated to Venus Libitina as a patron goddess of funerals and undertakers, "hardly later than 300 BC."[27] Libitina herself appears to have had no independent cult, shrine or worshipers; her name is the likely source for the usual title of undertakers Libitinarii, but it also appears to have been euphemistic for virtually all that pertained to undertakers and funerals, including biers ("couches of Libitina") and death itself. The area was notoriously mephitic and malodorous, but was covered over with soil and turned into a public garden during the reign of Augustus; at more or less the same time, cremations were banned to a distance of 2 miles from the walls. Cicero thought this had to do with minimising the risk of fires. Various structures built from around this time, including extramural tumulus-like mausolea, and very large columbaria with built-in mass-crematoria, have been suggested as attempts to serve the burial needs of the very poor. [28] A fee payable for death registration at the offices of the Esquilline undertakers - a sort of "death tax" - was used to fund the states' contribution to several festivals, including the Parentalia and sacred games such as the Ludi Apollinares and Ludi Plebeii.[29]

The more-or-less immediate removal and disposal recommended for slave corpses is in signal contrast to elite funerals, wherein the body of the deceased could remain in their family home for several days after death, while their funeral was arranged. If the deceased was socially prominent, the death was announced by a herald, in the forum or other part of the city centre. Doors were closed, as a sign of mourning, and cypress branches arranged at the entrance to the house; a warning to all, especially the pontifices, that from this time until the end of the funeral, those who entered risked pollution.[30] The family ceased their daily routines for the duration of the full mourning period. They should not wash or otherwise care for their own person and could not offer sacrifice to any deity.[31]

When a person died at home, family members and intimate friends gathered around the death bed. In accordance with a belief that equated the soul with the breath, the closest relative sealed the passing of spirit from the body with a last kiss, and closed the eyes. The relatives began lamentations, the women scratching their faces until they bled,[32] and calling on the deceased by name throughout the funeral ceremony. The family was assisted by an undertaker and his staff, who were allowed to touch and handle the corpse, being permanently ritually unclean by virtue of their profession (see Infamia). The male relatives did not touch the body; it was placed on the ground, washed and anointed by female relatives, then placed on a funerary bier. The placing of the body on the ground is a doublet of birth ritual, when the infant was placed on the bare earth.[33]

Mourners were expected to wear the dress appropriate to the occasion, and to their station; an elite male citizen might wear a toga pulla (a "dark" toga, reserved for funerals).[34][35] If the deceased was a male citizen, he was dressed in his toga; if he had attained a magistracy, he wore the toga appropriate to that rank; and if he had earned a wreath in life, he wore one in death.[36] Wreaths also are found in burials of initiates into mystery religions.[37] After the body was prepared, it lay in state in the atrium of the family home (domus), with the feet pointed toward the door, for up to seven days.[38] Other circumstances pertained to those who lived, as most urban Romans did, in apartment buildings (insulae) or to the rural settings where the vast majority of Romans lived and died; but little is known of them. Elite practices are better documented, though likely often retrospective, idealised, speculative and antiquarian, or poetic. Cicero writes that for most commoners, the time between death and disposal was about 24 hours. This would have allowed virtually no time for lying in or other long-drawn ceremony.[39]

Although embalming was unusual and regarded as mainly an Egyptian practice, it is mentioned in Latin literature, with several instances documented by archaeology in Rome and throughout the Empire, as far afield as Gaul. Toynbee speculates that a number of these could have been the work of Egyptian priests of Isis and Serapis, in service of clients, converts or just people who liked the idea of this form of preservation.[40] Since elite funerals required complex and time-consuming arrangements, the body had to be preserved in the meantime, whether it was destined for burial or cremation.[41] The emperor Nero promoted his dead wife Poppaea as a goddess of the Roman state, with divine honours at state expense but broke with imperial tradition and convention by having her embalmed and entombed after the Egyptian manner, rather than cremated.[42]

"Charon's obol" was a coin placed in or on the mouth of the deceased.[43] The custom is recorded in literary sources and attested by archaeology, and sometimes occurs in contexts that suggest it may have been imported to Rome as were the mystery religions that promised initiates salvation or special passage in the afterlife. The custom was explained by the myth of Charon, the ferryman who conveyed the souls of the newly dead across the water — a lake, river, or swamp — that separated the world of the living from the underworld. The coin was rationalized as his payment; the satirist Lucian remarks that in order to avoid death, one should simply not pay the fee. In Apuleius's tale of "Cupid and Psyche" in his Metamorphoses, framed by Lucius's quest for salvation ending with initiation into the mysteries of Isis, Psyche ("Soul") carries two coins in her journey to the underworld, the second to enable her return or symbolic rebirth. Evidence of "Charon's obol" appears throughout the Western Roman Empire well into the Christian era, but at no time and place was it practiced consistently and by all.

Fragment of a relief from a sarcophagus depicting stages of the deceased's life: religious initiation, military service, and wedding (mid-2nd century AD)

The eulogy (laudatio funebris) was a formal oration or panegyric in praise of the dead. It was one of two forms of discourse at a Roman funeral, the other being the chant (nenia).[46] The practice is associated with noble families, and the conventions for words spoken at an ordinary person's funeral go unrecorded. While oratory was practiced in Rome only by men, an elite woman might also be honored with a eulogy.

For socially prominent individuals, the funeral procession stopped at the forum for the public delivery of the eulogy from the Rostra.[47] Thus a well-delivered funeral oration could be a way for a young politician to publicize himself.[48] Aunt Julia's Eulogy (Laudatio Juliae Amitae), a speech made by the young Julius Caesar in honor of his aunt, the widow of Gaius Marius, helped launch his political career as a populist.[49]

The epitaph of the deceased in effect was a digest of the eulogy made visible and permanent,[50] and might include the career (cursus honorum) of a man who had held public offices. In commemorating past deeds, the eulogy was a precursor to Roman historiography.

Once the funeral procession had arrived at the place of burial or cremation, a portable altar was set up and sacrifice was made in the presence of the deceased. This usually meant the offer of a sow to Ceres, Rome's principal grain, harvest and field goddess. She was a doorwarden between the realms of the upperworld and the underworld, the living and the dead; the shade of the deceased could not pass into the underworld or afterlife without her consent. The victim was consecrated by sprinkling with mola salsa, a sacred mixture of salt and grain or flour, then stunned or killed with an axe or hammer, turned on its back and gutted. The guts (exta) were placed in an earthenware pot.[52]

The exta were the divine portion, preferred by the gods. Ritual errors were presumed to cause divine dissatisfaction, expressed by the poor condition of the exta, especially the liver, in which case the sacrifice or the rites must be repeated correctly. If all seemed satisfactory, the sacrificial victim was cut up, and distributed. A small portion of flesh for the deceased was cremated on a spit with the body or, if a burial, placed alongside it. The exta were placed in an earthenware pot and burned on the portable altar. The deceased had now transitioned to the underworld. They could no longer share meals with the living, nor with their former domestic gods (the Lares and Penates), only with what was appropriate for the collective spirits of the dead, the Manes.[53] The living used "fire and water" to cleanse themselves of the pollution incurred by their contact with the dead, and left the deceased in their new "home" (the tomb).

As far as Cicero was concerned, a burial was not religious and a grave was not a grave unless a sow had been sacrificed.[54] But a still higher status funeral might sacrifice a more costly domestic animal, such as an ox, or several victims of different kinds; and while animal sacrifice was preferred, those who could not afford it could offer a libation of wine, and grain or other foodstuffs, less potent than animal sacrifice but Ovid says that Ceres is content with little, as long as the offering is pure [55]

The so-called Togatus Barberini in the Capitoline Museums may represent a senator holding two ancestral funerary portraits; these have been claimed in some modern commentaries as examples of the imagines described by some Latin sources

Like their Etruscan neighbours, the Romans held a deepseated notion that the individual soul survived death, and went to great lengths to help the dead feel comfortable, and "at home" in the tomb. Several quite different beliefs and customs seem to have been held. Many epitaphs and sculptural representations suggest that the deceased rested "in the bosom of a kindly Mother Earth". While individual souls were thought to merge into an undifferentiated collective of underworld deities (dii inferii) known as Manes gods, the provision of grave goods implies that at least some personal qualities, appetites and preferences were believed to survive along with the soul, and resided in or with the body or ashes in the grave. Grave goods could include fine quality clothing, personal ornaments, perfumes, food and drink, and blood, which the deceased presumably needed, or enjoyed. Lamps were ubiquitous.[56] In some burials, grave goods appear to have been ritualistically "killed", being deliberately damaged before burial. In others, damaged goods may have been used as a matter of economy. Some graves contain one or more large nails, possibly to help "fix" the shade of the dead in the grave, and prevent their haunting of the living.[57]

In Roman Britain, many burial and cremation sites of infants who had teethed and died contained small jet bear carvings, lunulae and phallic symbols, beads, bells, coins, and pottery beakers.[58] In the Graeco-Roman world, the bear was an animal of Artemis, whose roles included the protection of childbirth, nursing, and infant girls.[59] In Brescia, Italy, bear figurines appear to have functioned as guides and companions for in the afterlife. The lunula, and the phallus with a horn invoked protection from evil and misfortune. Beads found in burial sites were made out of various materials and often used for medicinal purposes in the realm of the living. Pliny claims in his Historia Naturalis that jet can cure toothaches and other ailments.[60] Bells, epecially tintinabulli helped to drive away evil and avert the evil eye.[61] Bells were also set into the mortar of the Roman Catacombs as a protective device over children's tombs. This was especially common in the fourth century.[62]

Tomb of the Cornelii Scipios, in use from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD

Although inhumation was practiced regularly in archaic Rome, cremation was the most common burial practice in the Mid- to Late Republic and the Empire into the 1st and 2nd centuries. During that time, crematory images appear in Latin poetry on the theme of the dead and mourning. In one of the best-known classical Latin poems of mourning, Catullus writes of his long journey to attend to the funeral rites of his brother, who died abroad, and expresses his grief at addressing only silent ash.[63] When Propertius describes his dead lover Cynthia visiting him in a dream, the revenant's dress is scorched down the side and the fire of the pyre has corroded the familiar ring she wears.[64]

Patrician members of the gens Cornelia seem to have resisted this change and continued inhumating their dead until the first century BC. In 79 BC, the dictator Sulla was the first patrician Cornelius to be cremated, perhaps because he feared his body would be defaced by his former enemies.[65] Toynbee describes the change from burial to cremation as generally starting, excepting a few noble families, by 400 BC. Bodel (2008) places the main transition as the 1st to 2nd century AD.[66]

In the late 1st century AD, cremation was such a commonplace that Tacitus could refer to it as Romanus mos ("the Roman Way").[67] According to Plutarch, king Numa Pompilius had forbidden cremation; so perhaps in at least partial obedience to this prohibition, and perhaps on the understanding that "a part implies the whole", a complete finger was sometimes cut from the corpse before cremation and buried separately, unburnt, to complete the household's purification, return the deceased to mother Earth and make the grave inviolable. The practice, known as os resectum ("cut-off bone") is attested by literary sources (Cicero, de legibus, 2.55; Varro, lingua Latina, 5.23; Pauly Festus 135 L.[7][68][69]

Over time, starting around the reign of Hadrian, inhumation once again became the norm. Eventually, cremation remained a feature of imperial deification funerals, and very few others. The reasons for this shift are not well understood. Some evidence points to Christianity, mystery religions, or influence by the wealthier class in the Roman empire. In terms of sheer practicality, digging and then filling a hole in the ground required far less skilled manpower than did the construction of a pyre, and incurred little expense other than hire or rent of cemetery space.[70]

Individual cremations would have been more costly and time-consuming than inhumations, or mass cremations. Wood for fires was expensive; a well built funeral pyre took time and skill to construct, and consumed a great deal of dry timber. The pyre was built in a shallow pit. Once alight, the pyre must be tended for many hours to ensure that the body was completely consumed; the unplanned cremations of Pompey and Caligula proved to be signal failures, as their bodies remained part-burnt for want of sufficient fuel or skill.

Once the body had been consumed by the fire, the ashes would be sprinkled with wine, placed in an urn and buried either in or next to that spot (in which case the funeral place was a bustum) or taken elsewhere, in which case the cremation place was known as ustrina.[71] The smoke of the burning could be sweetened with aromatic herbs, leaves and libations; the elite could use incense.[72][73] The family had a private meal (silicernium) at the graveside, then returned home.[74]

On the ninth day after the person died, the funeral feast and rites called the novendialis or novemdialis were held.[75] Another sacrifice was often made, to the Manes of the deceased (or possibly, the family Penates), and the entire body of the victim was burned on the ground, not shared with the living. A libation to the Manes was poured onto the grave.[76] This concluded the period of full mourning.[77] Mourning dress was put aside, open house was declared and a feast was given.[78]

Roman and Greek literature offers dramatic accounts of games to honour or propitiate the spirits of the dead.[80] Very similar episodes are depicted on the walls of elite tombs in Etruria, and Campania; some appear to show combats to the death. The first such ludi funebres in Rome were given in 264 BC, during the war against Carthage; three pairs of gladiators fought to the death at the pyre of Brutus Pera, in what was described as a munus (pl. munera), a duty owed to an ancestor by his descendants – in this case, his son, Decimus Junius Brutus Scaeva. A feast was provided for friends and family. Thereafter, similar gladiatora munera became a core event at elite Roman funeral games. In the late Republic, a munus held for the funeral of the ex-consul and Pontifex Maximus Publius Licinius in 183 BC involved 120 gladiators fighting over 3 days, public distribution of meat (visceratio data) and the crowding of the forum with dining couches and tents as venue for the feast.[81]

Attitudes to gladiator munera varied; they were very popular, and thus politically useful. But they were also thought luxurious, self-indulgent and contrary to Roman morality – Publius Sempronius Sophus divorced his wife because she had attended a munus without his knowledge.[82] Sulla showed his usual political acumen during his stint as praetor, when he broke his own sumptuary laws to honour his dead wife, Metella, with an exceptionally lavish gladiator munus.[83] The host (editor) of a munus stood to gain votes in his political career, for even a promise of funeral games. The gladiators themselves could be admired for their courage, and despised for the bloodiness of their profession, which sometimes approximated that of excecutioner. The insulting term bustuarius ("tomb-man") was sometimes used for the lower class of gladiator, who might thus be perceived as provider of fodder for the spirits of the dead.[84] Julius Caesar broke any strict link between funerals and munera when he dedicated his ludi of 65 BC, with its 320 pairs of gladiators, to his father, who had been dead for 20 years.[85]

In the Imperial era, the state took over the organisation and subsidy of the most lavish munera, incorporating them into the existing, long-standing roster of public, state-sponsored events (ludi).[86] Any originally religious elements in munera tended to be subsumed by their entertainment value. In the mid-to-late Empire, Christian spectators who commented on the gladiator games thought them a particularly savage and perverse form of human sacrifice.

In February, the last month of the original Roman calendar when March 1 was New Year's Day, the dead were honored at a nine-day festival called the Parentalia, followed by the Feralia on February 21, when the potentially malign spirits of the dead were propitiated. During the Parentalia, families gathered at cemeteries to offer meals to the ancestors, and then shared wine and cakes among themselves (compare veneration of the dead in other cultures). Other events, such as the Rosalia (festival of Roses), the Violaria (a festival of Attis) but especially the dies natalis (birthday) of the deceased featured tombside dining. The Parentalia, being an official festival, would have entailed a simultaneous mass movement of families, making their various ways to the extramural cemeteries where their deceased had been laid to rest; just as importantly, they could be seen doing so by other families; behaviour at these festivals followed a fine line between ostentatious self-display and unaffected (sometimes drunken) joie de vivre. "House tombs" for wealthy, prominent though perhaps not elite families were constructed with a low-walled exterior precinct and a decorated room for banqueting, complete with shelving, cooking facilities and stone-built banqueting couches or with space for couches to be brought in. The participants in the tombside banquets could see their neighbours, and in turn, be seen; guests could be invited to the proceedings.[87]

A slab mounted near the tomb's entrance listed its past and present incumbents, and who was entitled to be imurred there in the future. This monumental function was of particular relevance to freedmen, who might not currently qualify for citizenship but could expect their children to do so at some time in the future. They had no lineage or familia of their own (or none recognised in law); but took on the name of the owner who had freed them. With each family death, a burial, name and epitaph would be added to those already on the tomb frontage, thus providing the beginnings of a personal and family history to be read by any passer-by, transforming the deceased from "polluted body to sanctified ancestor". Each tombside banquet reiterated and reinforced the message. Most tomb owners commissioned extravagant architectural and decorative features to solicit attention and admiration, and made provision in their wills for the cost of family banquets and festivals. Families had space within and outside to dine comfortably together, perhaps with the deceased as host, and be seen doing so by their friends, alies and rivals.[88]

Epitaphs are one of the major classes of inscriptions. An epitaph usually noted the person's day of birth and lifespan.[51] Information varies, but collectively they offer information on family relationships, political offices,[89] and Roman values, in choosing what aspects of the deceased's life to praise. In a funeral culture that sought to perpetuate remembrance of the dead beyond the power of individual memory, epitaphs and markers counted for a lot.

Philosophical beliefs may also be in evidence. The epitaphs of Epicureans often expressed some form of the sentiment non fui, fui, non sum, non desidero, "I did not exist, I have existed, I do not exist, I feel no desire,"[90] or non fui, non sum, non curo, "I did not exist, I do not exist, I'm not concerned about it."[91]

For those families who could not afford a durable inscription, the passage of time would have brought considerable anxiety, as such grave markers as they could provide gradually eroded, shifted or were displaced, with the grave's exact location, and the identity of the deceased, lost as the cemetery gradually filled.[92] Most Roman slaves were servi rustici, used for agricultural labour, with few (if any) opportunities to buy their freedom with money or the promise of future favours. Almost all would have been enslaved for the whole of their lives, "and it is thought that they practically never appear in the epigraphic (or any other) record."[93]

Molded mask of a girl with funerary inscription from Roman Gaul

Mummy portrait of a girl wearing a gold wreath, from Roman Egypt

Noble Roman families often displayed a series of "images" (sing. imago, pl. imagines) in the atrium of their family home. [97] There is some uncertainty about whether these "images" were funeral masks, busts, or both together. The "images" could be arranged in a family tree, with a title (titulus) summarizing the individual's offices held (honores) and accomplishments (res gestae),[98] a practice that might be facilitated by hanging masks.[99] In any case, portrait busts of family members in stone or bronze were displayed in the home as well.[100]

Funeral masks were most likely made of wax and possibly molded as death masks directly from the deceased. They were worn in the funeral procession either by actors who were professional mourners, or by appropriate members of the family. Practice may have varied by period or by family, since sources give no consistent account.[101]

The display of ancestral images in aristocratic houses of the Republic and the public funerals are described by Pliny, Natural History 35, 4–11.[102]

Since references to "images" often fail to distinguish between commemorative portrait busts, extant examples of which are abundant, or funeral masks made of more perishable materials, none can be identified with certainty as having survived. The veristic tradition of funerary likenesses, however, contributed to the development of realistic Roman portraiture. In Roman Egypt, the Fayum mummy portraits reflect traditions of Egyptian and Roman funerary portraiture and the techniques of Hellenistic painting.

Example of Imbrex and tegula flanges that were used as roofing in graves.

In Rome, burial places were "always limited and frequently contested."[103] Legislation forbidding almost all burials within the ritual boundaries of cities led to the development of necropolises alongside extramural roads, veritable "cities of the dead", with their own main and access roads, water supplies and prime development sites where the rich could erect grand monuments or mausolea. Amenities for visitors included rooms for family dining, kitchens and kitchen gardens. Plots could be rented or bought, with or without ready-made tombs, with those nearest the roadway generally offering the easiest access and greatest visibility. The great cemetery of Isola Sacra and the tombs that line both sides of the Via Appia Antica offer notable examples of roadside cemeteries[104]

Cemeteries, tombs and their dead were protected by religious and civil laws. Disturbance of a burial, through whatever means or reason, was thought to cause pain and discomfort to the dead.[105] A place used for burial was a locus religiosus; it belonged to the gods because a body had been buried there. Any place not belonging to the gods was profane, and could be used for any non-religious purpose; but the discovery of any previously unknown interment on profane (public or private) land created an immediate encumbrance to its further use; it now belonged to the gods as a logus religiosus, and could not be sold or otherwise disposed unless the pontifs agreed to revoke its status and remove the body or bones.[106] Most disputes over burials and graves were settled by the citizens involved, in civil courts, under advice from the pontiffs;[107] But Cicero records a major pontifical decision that graves in publicly owned land were not lawful, which paved the way for a mass exhumation just outside Rome's Colline Gate, and the land's eventual use as a public garden.

As cities and towns expanded beyond their original legal and ritual boundaries, formerly intramural cemeteries had to be redefined as "outside the city" with deeds and markers, or their burials moved, releasing much-needed land for public or private use. Some developers seem to have simply removed or ignored burial markers. Burial plots could be divided, subdivided and sold on, in parts or as a whole, or let out to help cover the cost; "guest burials" were sometimes explicitly forbidden, for fear that they set a precedent of habitual usage in claiming rights to the tomb.[108] Profits could be made from sacred land (containing graves or other loci religiosi), through donations or the sale of produce, such as flowers grown in a tomb's garden, but in theory (and in law) any resulting profit should be used only to improve that land or its facilities; for example, an improvement to the water supply for the walled gardens surrounding the tombs.[109]

Disturbance or damage to human remains, tombs and memorials carried substantial penalties – in some provinces it was a capital offence – but detection and punishment or compensation rather depended on whose remains, tombs, memorials were involved. Memorial stones have been found incorporated into houses, used to create monuments to completely unrelated persons, and reused in official buildings.In Puteoli, a fine of 20,000 sestercii was payable for damage to the tomb of a particular decurion (a local, junior magistrate).[110] Some burial places list the family names of those entitled to be placed there; some also list particular persons not entitled to be there, presumably in consequence of some family squabble or severance. There is also evidence of severe near-contemporary encroachments, theft of stones and unrepaired damage to tombs, grave markers and epitaphs. Tombs could be lawfully moved, after exemption by the pontifices, or decay along with the remains within.[111] In Pompeii, a legible memorial stone was discovered face-down, reshaped to make seating for a public latrine [112]

Mausoleum of Augustus.

A likely majority of Romans (Hopkins, 1981, calculates 80-90%) spent their entire lives in rural poverty, working on farms and villa estates as tenants, free labourers or slaves. Absentee landowners used the income from their farms to support town houses, military and political careers, and a lifestyle of cultured leisure. While some affected to despise money, farming was represented as an entirely appropriate, intrinsically noble occupation for retirement.[113] By the 2nd century BC, aristocratic villas with monumental tombs had become a part of the rural landscape, surrounded by the humbler tombs of commoner-tenants and bailiffs. Far from the main roads between towns and cities, the graves of free or enslaved field-workers dotted the fields, or occupied the middle areas of settlements on poor ground not worth the planting or grazing. In his capacity as a land surveyor, Siculus Flaccus found that the grave markers at the edge of estates were easily mistaken for boundary markers (cippi). Many of the elite chose retirement and burial among their ancestors at the farm and villa, from where they could keep a critical but benevolent eye on their descendants. The entire villa complex became a monument to the achievement of its founder; its heirs might not be permitted, under the terms of their inheritance, to sell the property as a whole, or piecemeal and were at least morally obliged to keep it in the family name. For this reason, some villas were passed to freedmen (who took the name of whoever had freed them). Whoever inherited or bought a property automatically acquired its graves, monuments and resident or household deities, including its dii Manes and Lares, who were closely associated - at least in popular opinion - with ancestor cult. In cases where the villa had to be sold, it was not unusual for the contract to include the former owner's rights of access, in order to continue their ancestral and commemorative rites.[114]

Funerals were costly affairs, even where the rites could be tailored down to meet a low income. A ceremony that would have been recognised as acceptable to the Roman elite might represent several times the annual income of the average citizen, and an impossibility to the very poor, who might depend on an unpredictable day-wage, unable to afford or maintain a burial-club subscription. Some were doubtless unlawfully dumped by their relatives, or by the aediles or rather, by their assistants.[115]

Some modern scholars have assumed that the bodies of the poorest, whether slave or free, could be consigned to the same dishonourable places as executed criminals deemed obnoxious to the state (noxii), who are presumed to have been disposed of in pits (puticuli, s.puticulus) outside the town or city boundary, at best, or at worst dumped into sewers or rivers. For the truly impoverished, and during times of exceptionally high mortality such as famine or epidemic, mass-burials or mass-cremations with minimal or no rites might have been the only realistic option, and as much as the authorities and undertakers could cope with. It is extremely doubtful that any could have chosen such a fate.[115]

The least costly form of individual inhumation was the simple pit-grave, which could barely cover the remains, or enclose them with tile or stone slabs.[116] They were almost universal, in various forms, throughout the Republic and Empire, especially where there was little of no pressure for burial space. Orientation of the grave was generally east–west, with the head to the east.[117] Flanged tiles (or tegulae) were sometimes used to create a box-like "coffin". In some, a funnel or tube projected from the interior, and was used to offer libations during ceremonies honouring the dead. Grave goods were often deposited along with the body; a pillow of tufa or wood might be provided for the comfort of the deceased. Amphorae with crudely inscribed names or brief epitaphs were sometimes sunk into the centre of the grave, as markers and in some cases as feeding tubes. Roofed pit graves known as Alla cappuccina ("like a Capuchin monk's hood)" were common throughout Rome and its provinces, from the Roman Republic to Late Empire and beyond. Construction was cheap and versatile. The corpse was usually laid in a shallow pit, or directly on the ground, or within a wooden coffin. The whole was enclosed using large, flanged roof tiles, leaning together to form an apex or gable, protecting the body beneath.[116] This structure was then reinforced with either curved tiles (or imbrices), or stones and mortar. Pit graves were commonly used for single bodies; adults, children and infants, the last being inhumed, rather than cremated, even when the use of cremation was at its height.[118]

Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus, 4th century AD, an early example of Christian art.

The smallest "house tombs" were rectilinear, box-like structures with a plain roof and entrance. Some were just a little larger than the body within. Their structure afforded opportunities for decoration, including small wall-paintings, reliefs and mosaic walls and floors; extra floors could be added at need, above or below ground-level, to contain additional cremation urns, or inhumation burials. In some cases, mosaic floors within house tombs were carefully removed, an additional corpse interred, then the mosaic repaired and the whole resealed, with a "feeding tube" set into the mosaic to provide for the new interrment.[119] The larger "house tombs" had a broad doorway, but also a lobby and several large rooms within. One chamber was used to host the dead's family memorial ceremony and feast. Other chambers housed anything thought necessary for the deceased and their family, including family portraits and other valued possessions, along with any paraphernalia required for memorial ceremonies.[120]

Wealthy, prominent families built large, sometimes enormous, mausoleums. The Castel Sant'Angelo by the Vatican, originally the mausoleum of Hadrian, is the best preserved, as it was converted to a fortress.[121] The family Tomb of the Scipios was in an aristocratic cemetery, and in use from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD. A grand mausoleum might include bedrooms and kitchens for family visits, which would include feasts. Where space allowed, walled gardens were created around tombs, for family use during festivals. Some had small cottages built to house permanent gardeners and caretakers, employed to maintain the tomb complex, prevent thefts (especially of food and drink left there for the deceased) and evict any indigent homeless. Theft of food and possessions from tombs and graveyards denied the dead their due rights and support.[120] The bodies of the deceased were usually inhumed within sarcophagi, but some mausolea include cremation urns. Some late examples combine Christian and traditional "pagan" styles of burial.

The roads from cities were lined with smaller mausolea, such as the Tombs of Via Latina, along the Appian Way. The Tomb of Eurysaces the Baker is a famous and originally very ostentatious tomb in a prime spot just outside Rome's Porta Maggiore, erected for a rich freedman baker around 50–20 BC.[122] The tombs at Petra, in the far east of the Empire are cut into cliffs, some with elaborate facades in the "baroque" style of the Imperial period.

Domitilla Catacomb

Cheaper still were the Catacombs of Rome, famously used by Christians, but also by all religions, with some specialization, such as special Jewish sections. These were large systems of narrow tunnels in the soft rock below Rome, where niches were sold to the families of the deceased in a very profitable, if rather smelly, trade. Decoration included paintings, many of which have survived.[123]

In the Christian period, burial near the grave of a famous martyr became desirable, and large funeral halls were opened over such graves, which were often in a catacomb underneath. These contained rows of tombs, but also space for meals for the family, now probably to be seen as agape feasts. Many of the large Roman churches began as funeral halls, which were originally private enterprises; the family of Constantine owned the one over the grave of Saint Agnes of Rome, whose ruins are next to Santa Costanza, originally a Constantinian family mausoleum forming an apse to the hall.[124][125]

The funerary urns in which the ashes of the cremated were placed were gradually overtaken in popularity by the sarcophagus as inhumation became more common. Particularly in the 2nd–4th centuries, these were often decorated with reliefs that became an important vehicle for Late Roman sculpture. The scenes depicted were drawn from mythology, religious beliefs pertaining to the mysteries, allegories, history, or scenes of hunting or feasting. Many sarcophagi depict Nereids, fantastical sea creatures, and other marine imagery that may allude to the location of the Isles of the Blessed across the sea, with a portrait of the deceased on a seashell.[126] The sarcophagus of a child may show tender representations of family life, Cupids, or children playing.

Relief panel from a 3rd-century marble sarcophagus depicting the Four Seasons (Horae) and smaller attendants around a door to the afterlife[127]

Some sarcophagi may have been ordered during the person's life and custom-made to express their beliefs or aesthetics. Most were mass-produced, and if they contained a portrait of the deceased, as many did, with the face of the figure left unfinished until purchase.[128] The carved sarcophagus survived the transition to Christianity, and became the first common location for Christian sculpture, in works like the mid-4th-century Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus.[129]

Standard accounts of Roman mythology describe the soul as immortal[143] and judged at death before a tribunal in the underworld,[144] with those who had done good being sent to the Elysian Fields and those who had done ill sent to Tartarus.[145] It is unclear how ancient such beliefs were, as they seem influenced by Greek mythology and mystery cults.

The mysteries continued under Rome and seem to have promised immortality only for the initiated. Known forms of esoteric religion combined Roman, Egyptian, and Middle Eastern mythology and astrology, describing the progress of its initiates through the regions of the moon, sun, and stars. The uninitiated or virtueless were then left behind, the underworld becoming solely a place of torment. Common depictions of the afterlife of the bless include rest, a celestial banquet, and the vision of God (Deus or Jupiter).[145]

The mainstream of Roman philosophy, such as the Stoics, advocated contemplation and acceptance of the inevitability of death of all mortals. "It is necessary for some to stay and for others to go, all the while rejoicing with those who are with us, yet not grieving for those departing."[146] To grieve bitterly is to fail to perceive and accept the nature of things. Famously, Epictetus encouraged contemplation of one's loved ones as a "jar" or "crystal cup" which might break and be remembered without troubling the spirit, since "you love a mortal, something not your own. It has been given to you for the present, not inseparably nor forever, but like a fig... at a fixed season of the year. If you yearn for it in the winter, you are a fool."[147] There was no real consensus, at least among surviving Roman texts and epitaphs, of what happened to a person after death or the existence of an afterlife. Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia claims that most people are of the opinion that after death one returns to the non-sensing state that occurred before birth but admits, however scornfully, that there are people who believe in the immortality of the soul.[148] Seneca the Younger seems to be less consistent, arguing both sides, indicating that death brings about utter annihilation while also talking about some survival of the spirit after it escapes from the prison of the body.[149] Tacitus at the end of Agricola takes the opposite opinion to Pliny, and claims that the wise believe the spirit does not die with the body, although he may be specifically referring to the pious [150] – which harkens to the mythological idea of Elysium.