Various modes of burial in Rome.—Inhumation and cremation.—Gradual predominance of the latter.—Columbaria.—Inscription describing the organization of one of these, on the Via Latina.—The extent of the pagan cemeteries outside of Rome, and the number of graves they contained.—Curiosities of the epitaphs.—The excavations in the garden of La
Farnesina.—The Roman house discovered there.—The tomb of Sulpicius Platorinus.—Its interesting contents.—The "divine crows."—The cemetery in the Villa Pamfili.—Tombs on the Via Triumphalis.—That of Helius, the shoemaker.—The tombs of the Via
Salaria.—That of the Licinii Calpurnii.—The unhappy history of this family.—The tomb of the precocious boy.—Improvvisatori of later times.—The tomb of Lucilia Polla and her
brother.—Its history.—The Valle della Caffarella.—Its associations with Herodes Atticus.—His fortune and its origin.—His monuments to his wife.—The remarkable discovery of the corpse of a young woman, in 1485.—Various contemporary accounts of it.—Its ultimate fate.—Discovery of a similar nature in 1889.
Inhumation seems to have been more common than cremation in prehistoric Rome; hence, certain families, to give material evidence of their ancient lineage, would never submit to cremation. Such were the Cornelii Scipiones, whose sarcophagi were discovered during the last century in the Vigna Sassi. Sulla is the first Cornelius whose body was burned; but this he ordered done to avoid retaliation, that is to say, for fear of its being treated as he had treated the corpse of Marius. Both systems are mentioned in the law of the twelve tables: hominem mortuum in urbe ne sepelito254 neve urito, a statement which shows that each had an equal number of partisans, at the time of the promulgation of the law.
This theory is confirmed by discoveries in the prehistoric cemeteries of the Viminal and Esquiline hills, which contain coffins as well as cineraria, or ash-urns. The discoveries have been published only in a fragmentary way, so that we cannot yet follow their development stage by stage, and determine at what periods and within what limits the influence of more civilized neighbors was felt by the primitive dwellers upon the Seven Hills. One thing is certain; the race that first colonized the Campagna was buried in trunks of trees, hollowed inside and cut to measure, as is the custom among some Indian tribes of the present day. In March, 1889, the engineers who were attending to the drainage of the Lago di Castiglione—the ancient
Regillus—discovered a trunk of quercus robur, sawn lengthways into two halves, with a human skeleton inside, and fragments of objects in amber and ivory lying by it. The coffin, roughly cut and shaped, was buried at a depth of fourteen feet, in a trench a trifle longer and larger than itself, and the space between the coffin and the sides of the trench was filled with archaic pottery, of the type found in our own Roman necropolis of the Via dello Statuto. There were also specimens of imported pottery, and a bronze cup. The tomb and its contents are now exhibited in the Villa di Papa Giulio, outside the Porta del Popolo.
When Rome was founded, this semi-barbaric fashion of burial was by no means forgotten or abandoned by its inhabitants. We have not yet discovered coffins actually dug out of a tree, but we have found rude imitations of them in clay. These belong to the interval of time between the foundation of the city and the fortifications of Servius255 Tullius, having been found at the considerable depth of forty-two feet below the embankment of the Servian wall, in the Vigna Spithoever. They are now exhibited in the Capitoline Museum (Palazzo dei Conservatori), together with the skeletons, pottery, and bronze suppellex they contained.
Nearly every type of tomb known in Etruria, Magna Græcia, and the prehistoric Italic stations has a
representative in the old cemeteries of the Viminal and the Esquiline. There are caves hewn out of the natural rock, with the entrance sealed by a block of the same material; in these are skeletons lying on the funeral beds on either side of the cave, or even on the floor between them, with the feet turned towards the door, and Italo-Greek pottery, together with objects in bronze, amber, and gold. There are also artificial caves, formed by horizontal courses of stones which project one beyond another, from both sides, till they meet at the top. Then there are bodies protected by a circle of uncut stones; others lying at the bottom of wells, and finally regular sarcophagi in the shape of square huts, and cineraria like those described on page 29 of my "Ancient Rome."
Comparing these data we reach the conclusion that inhumation was abandoned, with a few exceptions, towards the end of the fifth century of Rome, to be resumed only towards the middle of the second century after Christ, under the influence of Eastern doctrines and customs. For the student of Roman archæology these facts have not merely a speculative interest; a knowledge of them is necessary for the chronological
classification of the material found in cemeteries and represented so abundantly in public and private collections.
The acceptance of cremation as a national, exclusive system brought as a consequence the institution of the
ustrina,256 the sacred enclosures in which pyres were built to convert the corpses into ashes. Several
specimens of ustrina have been found near the city, and one of them is still to be seen in good preservation. It is built in the shape of a military camp, on the right of the Appian Way, five and a half miles from the gate. When Fabretti first saw it in 1699, it was intact, save a breach or gap on the north side. He describes it as a rectangle three hundred and forty feet long, and two hundred feet wide, enclosed by a wall thirteen feet high. Its masonry is irregular both in the shape and size of the blocks of stone, and may well be assigned to the fifth century of Rome, when the necessity for popular ustrina was first felt. When Nibby and Gell visited the spot in 1822 they found that the noble owner of the farm had just destroyed the western side and a portion of the eastern, to build with their materials a maceria, or dry wall.
The ustrina which were connected with the Mausoleum of Augustus and the ara of the Antonines have already been described in chapter iv. Another institution, that of columbaria, or ossaria, as they would more properly be called, owes its origin to the same cause. Columbaria are a specialty of Rome and the Campagna, and are found nowhere else, not even in the colonies or settlements originating directly from the city. They begin to appear some twenty years before Christ, under the rule of Augustus and the premiership of Mæcenas. Inasmuch as the Campus Esquilinus, which, up to their time, had been used for the burial of artisans, laborers, servants, slaves, and freedmen, was suppressed in consequence of the sanitary reforms described by
Horace,[121] and was buried under an embankment of pure earth, and converted into a public park; as, moreover, the disappearance of the said cemetery was followed closely257 by the appearance of columbaria, I believe one fact to be a consequence of the other, and both to be part of the same hygienic reform. No cleaner, healthier, or more respectable substitute for the old puticoli could have been contrived by those enlightened statesmen. Any one, no matter how low in social position, could secure a decent place of rest for a paltry sum of money. The following inscription, still to be seen in the columbarium discovered in 1838, in the Villa Pamfili,—
has been interpreted by Hülsen to mean that Paciæcus Isargyros had sold to Pinaria Murtinis a place for one
as. Tombstones often mention transactions of this kind, and state the cost of purchase for one or more loculi,
or for the whole tomb. Friedländer, in a Königsberg Programm for October, 1881,[122] has collected thirty-eight documents concerning the cost of tombs; they vary from a minimum of two hundred sestertii ($8.25) to a maximum of one hundred and ninety-two thousand ($8,000).
There were three kinds of columbaria: first, those built by one man or one family either for their own private use, or for their servants and freedmen; second, those built by one or more individuals for speculation, in which any one could secure a place by purchase; third, those built by a company for the personal use of shareholders and contributors.
As a good specimen of the columbaria of the second kind we can cite one built on the Via Latina, by a company258 of thirty-six shareholders. It was discovered in 1599, not far from the gate, and its records were scattered all over the city. As a proof of the negligence with which excavations were conducted in former times, we may state that, the same place having been searched again in 1854 by a man named Luigi Arduini, other inscriptions of great value were discovered, from which we learn how these burial companies were organized and operated. The first document, a marble inscription above the door of the crypt, states that in the year 6 b. c. thirty-six citizens formed a company for the building of a columbarium, each subscribing for an
equal number of shares, and that they selected two of the stockholders to act as administrators. Their names are Marcus Æmilius, and Marcus Fabius Felix, and their official title is curatores ædificii xxxvi. sociorum. They collected the contributions, bought the land, built the columbarium, approved and paid the contractors' bills, and having thus fulfilled their duty convened a general meeting for September 30. Their report was approved, and a deed was drawn up and duly signed by all present, declaring that the administrators had discharged their duty according to the statute. They then proceeded to the distribution of the loculi in equal lots, the loculi representing, as it were, the dividend of the company. The tomb contained one hundred and eighty loculi for cinerary urns, and each of the shareholders was consequently entitled to five. The
distribution, however, was not so easy a matter as the number would make it appear. We know that it was made by drawing lots, per sortitionem ollarum, and we know also that in some cases the shareholders, as a remuneration to their chairmen, administrators, and auditors of accounts, voted them exemption from the rule, by giving them the right of selecting their loculi without drawing (sine sorte). Evidently some places259 were more desirable than others, and if we remember how columbaria are built, it is not difficult to see which loculi must have been most in demand.
The pious devotion of the Romans towards the dead caused them to pay frequent visits to their tombs, especially on anniversaries, when the urns were decorated with flowers, libations were offered, and other ceremonies performed. These inferiæ, or rites, could be celebrated easily if the loculus and the cinerary urn were near the ground, while ladders were required to reach the upper tiers. The same difficulty was
experienced when cinerary urns had to be placed in their niches; and the funeral tablets and memorials containing the name, age, condition, etc., of the deceased, which were either written in ink or charcoal, or else engraved on marble, could not be read if too high above the pavement. For these reasons, and to avoid any suspicion of partiality in the distribution of lots, the shareholders trusted to chance. The crypt discovered in the Via Latina contained five rows of niches of thirty-six each. The rows were called sortes, the niches loci. Now, as each shareholder was entitled to five loci, one on each row, lots were drawn only in regard to the
locus, not to the row. The inscriptions discovered in 1599 and 1854 are therefore all worded with the
formula:—"Of Caius Rabirius Faustus, second tier, twenty-eighth locus;" "Of Caius Julius Æschinus, fourth tier, thirty-fourth locus;" "Of Lucius Scribonius Sosus, first tier, twenty-third locus;"—in all, nine names out of thirty-six. The allotment of Rabirius Faustus is the only one known entirely. He had drawn No. 30 in the first row, No. 28 in the second, No. 6 in the third, No. 8 in the fourth, No. 31 in the fifth. It took at least thirty-one years for the members of the company to gain the full benefit of their investment; the260 last interment mentioned in the tablets having taken place a. d. 25. This late comer is not an obscure man; he is the famous charioteer, or auriga circensis, Scirtus, who began his career a. d. 13, enlisting in the white squadron. In the lapse of thirteen years he won the first prize seven times, the second thirty-nine times, the third forty times, besides other honors minutely specified on his tombstone.[123]
The theory that Roman tombs were built along the high roads in two or three rows only, so that they could all be seen by those passing, has been shown by modern excavations to be unfounded. The space allotted for burial purposes was more extensive than that. Sometimes it extended over the whole stretch of land from one high-road to the next. Such is the case with the spaces between the Via Appia and the Via Latina, the
Labicana and Prænestina, and the Salaria and Nomentana, each of which contains hundreds of acres densely packed with tombs. In the triangle formed by the Via Appia, the Via Latina, and the walls of Aurelian, one thousand five hundred and fifty-nine tombs have been discovered in modern times, not including the family vault of the Scipios.[124] Nine hundred and ninety-four have been found on the Via Labicana, near the Porta Maggiore, in a space sixty yards long by fifty wide. The number of pagan tombstones registered in volume vi. of the "Corpus" is 28,180, exclusive of the additamenta, which will bring the grand total to thirty thousand. As hardly one tombstone out of ten has escaped destruction, we may assume as a certainty that Rome was surrounded by a belt of at least three hundred thousand tombs.
INTERIOR OF A COLUMBARIUM IN THE VIGNA CODINI
The reader may easily imagine what a mass of information261 is to be gathered from this source. In this respect, the perusal of parts II., III., and IV. of the sixth volume of the "Corpus" is more useful to the student than all the handbooks and "Sittengeschichten" in the world; and besides, the reading is not dry and tiresome, as one might suppose. Many epitaphs give an account of the life of the deceased; of his rank in the army, and the campaigns in which he fought; of the name of the man-of-war to which he belonged, if he had served in the navy; of the branch of trade he was engaged in; the address of his place of business; his success in the equestrian or senatorial career, or in the circus or the theatre; his "état civil," his age, place of birth, and so on. Sometimes tombstones display a remarkable eloquence, and even a sense of humor.
Here is an expression of overpowering grief, written on a sarcophagus between the images of a boy and a girl: "O cruel, impious mother that I am: to the memory of my sweetest children. Publilius who lived 13 years 55 days, and Æria Theodora who lived 27 years 12 days. Oh, miserable mother, who hast seen the most cruel end of thy children! If God had been merciful, thou hadst been buried by them." Another woman writes on the urn of her son Marius Exoriens: "The preposterous laws of death have torn him from my arms! As I have the advantage of years, so ought death to have reaped me first."
The following words were dictated by a young widow for the grave of her departed companion: "To the adorable, blessed soul of L. Sempronius Firmus. We knew, we loved each other from childhood: married, an impious hand separated us at once. Oh, infernal Gods, do be kind and merciful to him, and let him appear to me in the silent hours of the night. And also let me share his fate, that we may be reunited dulcius et celerius."
I have left the two adverbs262 in their original form; their exquisite feeling defies translation.
The following sentence is copied from the grave of a freedman: "Erected to the memory of Memmius Clarus by his co-servant Memmius Urbanus. I know that there never was the shade of a disagreement between thee and me: never a cloud passed over our common happiness. I swear to the gods of Heaven and Hell, that we worked faithfully and lovingly together, that we were set free from servitude on the same day and in the same house: nothing would ever have separated us, except this fatal hour."
A remarkable feature of ancient funeral eloquence is found in the imprecations addressed to the passer, to insure the safety of the tomb and its contents:[125]—
"Any one who injures my tomb or steals its ornaments, may he see the death of all his relatives." "Whoever steals the nails from this structure, may he thrust them into his eyes."
A grumbler wrote on a gravestone found in the Vigna Codini:— "Lawyers and the evil-eyed keep away from my tomb."
It is manifestly impossible to make the reader acquainted with all the discoveries in this department of Roman archæology since 1870. The following specimens from the viæ Aurelia, Triumphalis, Salaria, and Appia seem to me to represent fairly well what is of average interest in this class of monuments.
Via Aurelia. Under this head I record the tomb of Platorinus, which was found in 1880 on the banks of the Tiber, near La Farnesina, although, strictly speaking, it263 belongs to a side road running from the Via Aurelia to the Vatican quarters, parallel with the stream. The discovery was made in the following circumstances:—
Ancient house in the Farnesina Gardens.