Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In Rome's earliest history, both inhumation and cremation were in common use among all classes. Around the mid-Republic inhumation was almost exclusively replaced by cremation, with some notable exceptions, and remained the most common funerary practice until the middle of the Empire, when it was almost entirely replaced by inhumation.
A typical epitaph on a Roman funerary altar opens with a dedication to the manes, or the spirit of the dead, and closes with a word of praise for the honoree. [15] These epitaphs, along with the pictorial attributes of the altars, allow historians to discern much important information about ancient Roman funerary practices and monuments ...
In the burial practices of ancient Rome and Roman funerary art, marble and limestone sarcophagi elaborately carved in relief were characteristic of elite inhumation burials from the 2nd to the 4th centuries AD. [2] At least 10,000 Roman sarcophagi have survived, with fragments possibly representing as many as 20,000. [3]
A bustuarius (plural: bustuarii) was a kind of gladiator in Ancient Rome, who fought about the funeral pyre (Latin: bustum) of the deceased at a Roman funeral. [1] [2] [3] Bustuarii were considered of even lower status than other gladiators whose fights were exhibited in public gladiatorial games. [4]
Roman funerary art includes many portraits such as married couple funerary reliefs, which were most often made for wealthy freedmen rather than the patrician elite. Portrait sculpture from the Republican era tends to be somewhat more modest, realistic, and natural compared to early Imperial works.
Funerary art may serve many cultural functions. It can play a role in burial rites, serve as an article for use by the dead in the afterlife, and celebrate the life and accomplishments of the dead, whether as part of kinship-centred practices of ancestor veneration or as a publicly directed dynastic display. It can also function as a reminder ...
In ancient Roman funerals, an ustrinum (plural ustrina) was the site of a cremation funeral pyre whose ashes were removed for interment elsewhere. The ancient Greek equivalent was a καύστρα (kaustra). Ustrina could be used many times.
While this last interpretation appears irreconcilable with the previous, it may be reminiscent of burial practices in water which are attested in many parts of the world among primitive peoples. [6] Dionysius of Halicarnassus [7] also explains the ritual in terms of human sacrifice, saying that Tiberinus was the recipient of these regular ...