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Forword
Tomb raiders and treasure hunters
The Mediterranean in Antiquity – a short review
Life in Classical times
Burial customs simplified
Coffins and sarcophagi in many shapes and sizes
Life after death
Burying the dead
The Roman way of death
Houses for the dead
Remembering the dead
Cultural crossroads – the Roman provinces of Syria and Judaea 
A Roman Province
Decapolis and Palmyra – cosmopolitain cities of the East
The Jews
The first Christians
Martyrs and relics
Forgeries

Selected sources
People, places and events
Mythology
Glossary

THE ROMAN WAY OF DEATH

At the time of the Emperor Augustus (27 BC-14 AD), Rome had and 800 000 – 1 000 000 inhabitants. Of these, around 30 000 people died every year, an average of over 80 deaths a day. When there were epidemics, the daily death toll may have risen to the thousands. By 300 AD, there were probably several million burials in the outskirts of Rome alone. And Rome was only one of many cities in the Empire. There must have been tens of millions of graves throughout the Mediterranean region.

We know very little about how poorer Romans regarded death or how they were buried.  Most of the information we have about Roman burial customs pertains to the city’s more prosperous citizens.

THE LAST KISS – PREPARING THE BODY

The family gathered by the death-bed and the nearest relative gave the last kiss, or rather caught the last breath of the deceased. The eyes were then closed and the family began their lamentations and called out the deceased’s name. The body was washed, anointed and sometimes garlanded with a wreath. A coin might be placed in the deceased’s mouth, as the fare for the ferryman.

The deceased was then laid out on a bed in the central hall of the house (atrium), with the feet towards the entrance. A pine or cypress branch was fixed over the entrance door to indicate that a death had occurred. To show their bereavement, the family members rubbed ashes on their faces and wore dark mourning clothes.

The funeral procession was made up of the family and, depending on their wealth, of servants, professional mourners and musicians with flutes and horns. Although funerals did not usually take place at night, torches and candles played an important part in the ceremony, and were probably used as “magic” to ward off evil. At the burial site, gravediggers prepared the tomb and a funeral service was held in honour of the deceased.

The funeral of a famous or important Roman was often a major public event. The historian Polybius gives us an account: “Whenever one of their illustrious men dies, in the course of his funeral, the body with all its paraphernalia is carried into the forum to the Rostra, as a raised platform there is called, and sometimes is propped upright upon it so as to be conspicuous, or, more rarely, is laid upon it. Then with all the people standing round, his son, if he has left one of full age and he is there, or, failing him, one of his relations, mounts the Rostra, and delivers a speech concerning the virtues of the deceased, and the successful exploits performed by him in his lifetime“ (Histories 6, 53). We even hear that actors, dressed up in the deceased’s cloths and wearing masks with his facial features, would mimic the dead person, sometimes in a comic or mocking way.

EARTH AND FIRE - INHUMATION AND CREMATION

The Romans practiced both inhumation (burying of the body) and cremation (burning the body). Cremation was almost exclusively used between the 2nd century BC and the beginning of the 2nd century AD. After that, inhumation became increasingly popular, replacing cremation completely by Christian times.

In cremations, the body was burnt on a special platform for the pyre, or at the actual site of the grave. The family gathered the bones and ashes of the dead and placed them in a funerary urn.  The urn was then placed on a shelf in the tomb chamber or in a grave dug into the earth. During the burial rites, offerings were made to the dead. Usually people were cremated as quickly as possible, as the warm climate caused rapid decomposition. In some cases, however, it could take days to prepare the ceremony.

The technical definition of being dead was not as scientific as it is today, and it occasionally happened that people woke up before the fires were lit. Pliny (NH 7.173) tells a story about a certain Acilius Ariolas, who had been considered dead for some days when he was woken by the heat of the pyre. Unfortunately his family had returned to their home, and the slave who was left to watch the fire was not able to extinguish it on his own.

The most common type of grave house was the columbarium, where cinerary urns were placed in small alcoves on shelves, similar to those inside a dovecote, hence the name. The columbaria held the urns of a group of people; for example a family and their relatives, or a family’s slaves. Sometimes they were owned by a collegium, an association that provided for the funeral and burial place of its members. The columbaria sometimes had cooking facilities and dining couches, for the feasts that were regularly held there during the year. These tombs often had their own ustrinum, the place for the pyre.

PURIFICATION AND FEAST

The Romans considered death to be unclean. When a family member died the whole household had to undergo a purification ritual with water and fire. On the day of the burial a funeral feast took place. It marked the beginning of a longer purification period usually lasting until the ninth day after death. At this time the mourning family and their close friends held another feast at the tomb to honour the deceased. In an account by the writer Petronius, the stone-mason Habinnas describes a cena novendialis to his friend Trimalchio:

“Already drunk and wearing several wreaths, his (Habinnas)  forehead smeared with perfume which ran down into his eyes, he advanced with his hands upon his wife's shoulders,…(Trimalchio) asked him….., how he had been entertained. "We had everything except yourself, for my heart and soul were here, but it was fine, it was, by Hercules.  Scissa was giving a Novendial feast for her slave, whom she freed on his death-bed, …, but everything went off well, even if we did have to pour half our wine on the bones of the late lamented."  (Satyricon 10, 65)

The urn of the deceased slave must have stood among the mourners, who toasted him and then offered him part of their wine by pouring it over his ashes. Habinnas then goes on to give a detailed account of the sumptuous food they were served, evidence that feasts were held at the tomb.

 GRIEF

The sorrow and grief people feel when they loose someone dear to them has been the same throughout time. When reading written accounts and grave inscriptions, we can easily identify with those in mourning.

Two Roman writers Romans Catullus and Juvenal, known for their sharp tongues and pens, evoke our sympathy when torn apart by sorrow at the death of their loved ones. We sympathise with Catullus on the loss of his brother, and with Martial, who has lost his daughter:

“Today we give to the earth the body of my little girl,
my little darling; no more will she swirl
 around the house in her own strange, impenetrable games
or pout, or kick, or scream, or whine our name
in that annoying tone we tried to cure her of before
and now would give anything to hear once more.
She'll find whatever it is one finds when this bright life ends –
eternal silence or the souls of friends.
For what it's worth, we'll bow our heads and try what prayer can do
lie lightly, earth -- she stepped so lightly on you.”

The Roman poet Ovid expresses his mixed emotions of sorrow and anger at his girlfriend Corinna when she almost dies after inducing an abortion (Ovid Amores 14-15). He worries for her life, while at the same time blaming her for having killed their baby. In an earlier verse of the same poem he describes their mourning of Corinna’s dead parrot, even citing the inscription on the grave stone.

FOOD AND SPIRITS – REMEMBERING THE DEAD

The Greeks and the Romans continued to remember their dead after the funeral. The birthday of the deceased, dies natalis, was a time to visit the grave and celebrate with a feast. Cooking facilities and dining couches, triclinia, have been found at the tombs, or in special houses at the grave sites. Other occasions were more general, public days of remembrance, like our All Saints Day or Memorial Day in the USA.

The Romans believed in various kinds of ghosts, or spirits which were thought to be the “shadows” of people who had died. The most important, the manes and the lemurs, were celebrated with festivals. The manes were generally benevolent, while the lemures were restless and could return to haunt the living.

The Parentalia (13th- 24th of February) was a festival honouring parents and the family. During this festival, sacrifices were made at the tombs to appease the spirits of the ancestors (manes). Libation offerings of water, wine, milk, honey, or perfumes were poured onto the grave, over the ashes in the urns, or even through pipes into the graves. Bread, cakes, grapes, sausages, incense or fruits, were also frequently sacrificed. Lamps too were lit on special occasions. Terrible things happened to those who neglected the parentalia,”The ghost came moaning from their tombs at night and haunted the streets and fields.”  Ovid, Fasti II: February 21

The Lemuria (9th, 11th and 13th of May) was a festival to appease the wandering shadows of the dead, lemures, who returned to their former homes and could become a menace if not properly appeased. The shadows of those who had died young were considered to be the most dangerous. Every pious Roman household took measures to protect the home at midnight on the 9th of May:

“When midnight comes, lending silence to sleep, and all the dogs and hedgerow birds are quiet, he who remembers ancient rites, and fears the gods, rises (no fetters binding his two feet) and makes the sign with thumb and closed fingers, lest an insubstantial shade meets him in the silence. After cleansing his hands in spring water, he turns and first taking some black beans, throws them with averted face: saying, while throwing: ‘With these beans I throw I redeem me and mine.’ He says this nine times without looking back: the shade is thought to gather the beans, and follow behind, unseen. Again he touches water, and sounds the Temesan bronze, and asks the spirit to leave his house. When nine times he’s cried: ‘Ancestral spirit, depart,’ he looks back, and believes the sacred rite’s fulfilled.” (Ovid, Fasti V: May 9)

TOMBS OF THE DEAD

Under Roman law, burials were strictly forbidden within the city limits. These laws were not so much the result of religious beliefs or superstitions, but rather a matter of hygiene. The burning of bodies also took place outside city walls because of the threat posed by fire, and because of the unpleasant odour. Consequently, the outskirts of the cities of Antiquity were dominated by necropolises which extended for considerable distances along the main roads.

In the 3rd century BC the use of family tombs was restricted to aristocratic families. These early tombs, following Etruscan traditions, had plain façades and were only decorated on the inside. The tombs were not spacious, and it is not clear whether the ritual ceremonies took place inside or in front of the tomb. Common people were buried in simple shaft graves or terracotta-sarcophagi in large grave fields.

In the 2nd and 1st century BC, more elaborate tombs came into vogue among the aristocracy, and the focus moved from the whole family to the individual. In these centuries, most people were cremated, and the urns containing their ashes were placed in earthen graves or small cists.

During the reign of Augustus, huge columbaria became the usual type of tomb for urns. Several of these can still be seen, such as those in the catacombs along the Via Appia.

In the course of the 2nd century AD, the practice of holding funerary feasts in the tomb became less common, and there is little evidence of cooking or feasting in the later tombs. This was probably due to the increased importance of the collegia, which provided facilities for memorial feasts. Members could also choose to be buried in the collegium’s own tombs or in the tombs of rich benefactors who placed parts of their own tombs at a collegium’s disposal.

There was also a change in how burial chambers were laid out. Important family members were now placed in the main room of the tomb, while slaves and the less important members of the family were disposed of in the cellar. This may have been a consequence of the change-over from cremation to inhumation in the 2nd century AD. Because full size coffins or sarcophagi required far more space than cinerary urns, the inside of the tombs had to be redesigned.

Around a century later, continued pressure on burial space led to the construction of catacombs. The lack of burial places forced some Romans to move their graveyards underground. Catacombs are usually associated with Christian burials, but Jewish and other early catacomb burials have also been found.

MASS GRAVES FOR THE POOR

Of course, there were some who died poor with no one to pay for their funeral. Corpses were regularly found in the city streets, and the authorities hired people to dispose of the bodies. The bodies were thrown into puticuli, mass graves, which could contain hundreds of corpses, along with animal carcasses and refuse of all kinds.

The archaeologist Rudolfo Lanciani excavated about 75 puticuli in the 1870s and gave an horrific account of his finds:

“The Esquiline cemetery was divided into two sections: one for the artisans who could afford to be buried apart in Columbaria, containing a certain number of cinerary urns; one for the slaves, beggars, prisoners, and others, who were thrown in revolting confusion into common pits or fosses. This latter section covered an area one thousand feet long, and thirty deep, and contained many hundred puticuli or vaults, twelve feet square, thirty deep, of which I have brought to light and examined about seventy-five. In many cases the contents of each vault were reduced to a uniform mass of black, viscid, pestilent, unctuous matter.”

 BEYOND ROME - BURIAL RITES IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Both cremation and inhumation were practised by the peoples of the Mediterranean region throughout much of Antiquity. The cremation rite, the burning of the body and burial of the ashes, was in widespread use among the Italic and Etruscan people throughout much of antiquity. The Villanovan culture of the Early Iron Age (1100 – 700 BC) north of Rome used cremation, while the southern regions, with their Greek population, preferred inhumation.

The Carthagians, the Phoenicians of the Western Mediterranean, used both inhumation and cremation. 

Mummification was the preferred burial rite of rich Egyptians, but most Alexandrians were simply buried. Due to the scarcity of wood, cremation must have been an extremely expensive option in Egypt.

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