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 ...
Religious collegia were formed by fraternities of priests, sanctioned by the Roman government, and provided a number of religious functions in Rome. These included the overseeing of ritual sacrifices, the practice of augury, the keeping of scriptures, the arranging of festivals, and the maintaining of specific religious cults. [12]
He states such "funerary meals" were practised among most families of the city of Rome. Therefore, he explains, Christians, in their everyday life, regularly went down into the catacombs of Rome, not to hold assemblies or the Eucharist, but "to hold memorial meals with dead members of their families, just like their pagan neighbors". [ 9 ]
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 funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. [1] Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect the dead, from interment, to various monuments, prayers, and rituals undertaken in their honour.
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.
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.