TOMBS

BEFORE commencing our description of the tombs which line the way as the visitor approaches from Naples, and seem to prepare him for that funereal silence which reigns in the long-lost city. the more remarkable for its contrast with the gay and festive style of decoration which still characterizes the remains which surround him, it is our intention, as we have done in other instances, to give some general information upon the subject which we are about to treat in detail, for the benefit of those among our readers to whom the forms of Roman burial and the expressions of Roman sorrow are unfamiliar.

Great, absurdly great among the uneducated, as is the importance attached to a due performance of the rites of burial in the present day, it is as nothing compared to the interest which was felt on this subject by the Romans; and not by them only, but by other nations of antiquity, with whose manners we have nothing to do here. The Romans indeed had a good reason for this anxiety, for they believed, in common with the Greeks, that if the body remained unentombed, the soul wandered for a hundred years on the hither side of the Styx, alone and desponding, unable to gain admission to its final resting place, whether among the happy or the miserable. If, therefore, any person perished at sea, or otherwise under such circumstances that his body could not be found, a cenotaph, or empty tomb, was erected by his surviving friends, which served as well for his passport over the Stygian ferry as if his body had been burnt or committed to the earth with due ceremonies. Hence it became a religious duty, not rashly to be neglected, to scatter earth over any unburied body which men chanced to see, for even so Slight a sepulchre as this was held sufficient to appease the scruples of the infernal gods. The reader, if there be any readers of Latin to whom these superstitions are unfamiliar, may refer to the sixth book of the neid, line 325, and to a remarkable ode of Horace, the 28th of the first book, which turns entirely upon this subject. Burial, therefore, matter of considerable importance.

When death approached, the nearest relative hung over the dying person, endeavouring to inhale his last breath, in a fond belief that the anima, the living principle, departed at that moment, and by that passage from the body. Hence the phrases, animam in primo ore tenere, spiritum excipere, and the like. It is curious to observe bow an established form of expression holds its ground. Here are we, after the lapse of eighteen hundred years, still talking of receiving a dying friend's last breath, as if we really meant what we ray. After death the body was washed and anointed by persons called pollinctores; then laid out on a bier, the feet to the door, to typify its approaching departure, dressed in the best attire which it had formerly owned. The bier was often decked with leaves and flowers, a simple and touching tribute of affection, which is of the heart, and speaks to it, and therefore has maintained its ground in every age and region, unaffected by the constant changes in customs merely arbitrary and conventional.

In the early ages of Rome the rites of burial and burning seem to have been alike in use. Afterwards the former seems (for the matter is not very clear) to have prevailed, until towards the close of the seventh century of the city, after the death of Sylla, who is said to have been the first of the patrician Cornelii who was burnt. Thenceforward corpses were almost universally consumed by fire until the establishment of Christianity, when the old fashion was brought up again, burning being violently opposed by the fathers of the church, probably on account of its intimate connection with Pagan associations and superstitions. Seven days, we are told, elapsed between death and the funeral; on the eighth the corpse was committed to the flames; on the ninth the ashes were deposited in the sepulchre. This probably refers only to the funerals of the great, where much splendour and extent of preparation was required, and especially those public funerals (funera indictiva) to which the whole people were bidden by voice of crier, the ceremony being often closed by theatrical and gladiatorial exhibitions, and a sumptuous banquet. But we have no intention to narrate the pomp which accompanied the princely nobles of Rome to the tomb : it is enough for our purpose to explain the usages of private life, to which the Street of Tombs owes its origin and its interest.

In the older times funerals were celebrated at night because the rites of religion were celebrated by day; and it was pollution for the ministers, or for anything connected with worship of the deities of the upper world, even to see, much more to touch, anything connected with death. From this nightly solemnization many of the words connected with this subject are derived. Those who bore the bier were called originally Vesperones, thence Vespillones, from Vespera, evening; and the very term funds is derived by grammarians, a funalibus, from the rope torches coated with wax or tallow which continued to be used long after the necessity for using them ceased. This practice, now far more than two thousand years old, is still retained in the Roman Church, with many other ceremonies borrowed from heathen rites. St. Chrysostom assures us that it, is not of modern revival, and gives a beautiful reason for its being retained. Tell me," he says, " what mean those brilliant lamps ? Do we not go forth with the dead on their way rejoicing, as with men who have fought their fight?"

The corpse being placed upon a litter (letica) or bier (sandapila), the former being used by the wealthy, the latter by the poor, was carried out (efferebatur) preceded by instrumental musicians (siticines), and female singers (proeficae), who chanted the dirge (nenia).These hired attendants, whose noisy sorrow was as genuine as the dumb grief of our mutes, were succeeded, if the deceased were noble, or distinguished by personal exploits, by numerous couches containing the family effigies of his ancestors, each by itself, that the length of his lineage might be the more conspicuous; by the images of such nations as he had conquered, such cities as lie had taken; by the spoils which he had won; by the ensigns of the magistracies which he had filled; but if the fasces were among them these were borne reversed. Then came the slaves whom he had emancipated (and often with a view to this post-mortem magnificence, a master emancipated great numbers of them), wearing hats in token of their manumission. Behind the corpse came the nearest relations, profuse in the display of grief as far as it can be shown by weeping, howling, beating the breasts and cheeks, and tearing the hair, which was laid, as a last tribute of affection, on the breast of the deceased, to be consumed with him. To shave the head was also a sign of mourning. It is a curious inversion of the ordinary customs of life, that the sons of the deceased mourned with the head covered, the daughters with it bare.

With this attendance the body was borne to the place of burial, being usually carried through the Forum, where, if the deceased had been a person of any eminence, a funeral oration was spoken from the rostra in his honour. The place of burial was without the city, in almost every instance. By the twelve tables it was enacted that no one should be burnt or buried within the city; and as this wholesome law fell into disuse, it was from time to time revived and enforced. The reasons for its establishment were twofold, religious and civil. To the former bead belongs the reason, already assigned for a different observance, that the very sight of things connected with death brought pollution on things consecrated to the gods of the upper world. So far was this carried that the priest of Jupiter (Flamen Dialis) might not even enter any place where there was a tomb, or so much as hear the funeral pipes : nay, his wife, the Flaminica, might not wear shoes made of the hide of an ox which had died a natural death, because all things which had died spontaneously were of ill omen. Besides, it was an ill omen to any one to come upon a tomb unawares. Another reason was that the public convenience might not be interrupted by private rites, since no tombs could be removed without sacrilege when once established, unless by the state, upon sufficient cause. The civil reasons are to be sought in the unwholesome some exhalations of large burying-grounds, and the danger of fire from burning funeral piles in the neighbourhood of houses. It is not meant, however, that there were no tombs within the city. Some appear to have been included by the gradual extension of the walls; others were established in those intervals when the law of the twelve tables fell, as we have said, into desuetude; nor does it appear that these were destroyed, nor their contents removed. Thus both the Claudian and the Cincian clans had sepulchres in Rome, the former under the Capitol.

If the family were of sufficient consequence to have a patrimonial tomb the deceased was laid in it : if he had none such, and was wealthy, he usually constructed a tomb upon his property during life, or bought a piece of ground for the purpose. If possible the tomb was always placed near a road. Hence the usual form of inscription, Siste, Viator (Stay, Traveller), continually used in churches by those small wits who thought that nothing could be good English which was not half Latin, and forgot that in our country the traveller must have stayed already to visit the sexton, before he can possibly do so in compliance with the advice of the monument. For the poor there were public burial-grounds, called puticuli, a puteis, from the trenches ready dug to receive bodies. Such was the ground at the Esquiline gate, which Augustus gave Maecenas for his gardens. Public tombs were also granted by the state to eminent men; an honour in early times conferred on few. These grants were usually made in the Campus Martins, where no one could legally be buried without a decree of the senate in his favour. It appears from the inscriptions found in the Street of Tombs at Pompeii, that much, if not the whole of the ground on which those tombs are built, was public property, the property of the corporation, as we should now say; and that the sites of many, perhaps of all, were either purchased, or granted by the decurions, or municipal senate, in gratitude for obligations received.

Sometimes the body was burnt at the place where it was to be entombed, which, when the pile and sepulchre were thus joined, was called bustum; sometimes the sepulchre was at a distance front the place of burning, which was then called ustrina. The words bustum and sepulchrum, therefore, though often loosely used as synonymous, are not in fact so, the latter being involved in, but by no means comprehending the former. The pile was ordered to be built of rough wood, unpolished by the axe. Pitch was added to quicken the flames, and cypress, the aromatic scent of which was useful to overpower the stench of the burning body. The funeral piles of great men were of immense size, and splendidly adorned; and all classes appear to have indulged their vanity in this respect to the utmost of their means, so that a small and unattended pyre is mentioned as the mark of an insignificant or friendless person. The body was placed on it in the litter or bier; the nearest relation present then opened the eyes, which it had been the duty of the same person to close immediately after death, and set fire to the wood with averted face, in testimony that be performed that office not of goodwill, but of necessity. As the combustion proceeded, various offerings were cast into the flames. The manes were believed to love blood : animals, therefore, especially those which they had loved while alive, were killed and thrown upon the pile, as horses, dogs, and doves, besides the beasts commonly used in sacrifice, as sheep and oxen. Human beings, especially prisoners of war, were sometimes put to death, though not in the later times of the republic.