3 ms·

What Happened at an Ancient Roman Funeral?

• ggm 3y ago
  It would be helpful to be told mortuary statistics of the period to understand what percentage of the populous could even consider funerary games, or a multi day rite. I'm going with "very few" I mean a senate of a few hundred, a thousand knights, one dies every month? More? I tend to think one a month would be excessive, but perhaps a small cohort at a game had paid toward it for their memento mori or even a dozen of them, each saying it was "their" funeral games? Even small towns had a venue for games, but could you book it at short notice or was the bidding open to buy a days (or an hours?) Games as your turn? Was it rude not to go? Did you cater? Renting out professional mourners means running a booking system, time management. Leave Stichus's funeral at lunchtime, get Gallus done before sundown, wash, then hang around for the night specials... could you do two a day let alone three? This is more what kinds of things happened at an upper class to patrician funeral. Down on the suburba, I bet it was women keening in the home, a swift out, bury or burn and back. If you had wax effigies, you were going there. If you weren't on the cursus honarium or a knight, or very very rich, I don't think you were. Ex slaves got rich, so this was money as well as birthright stuff.
  • b112 3y ago
    This is what is so different now, data. Info. It bet it is fairly rare, for us to have docs surviving for a slave funeral. Or for an 'average joe' furneral. Who would bother to write that? Keep that? Yet now, we have too much data. Still, just the movies/video/TV has at least some representation of what an average person might do during a funeral.
• visarga 3y ago
  Professional mourning (praeficae) still exist today, not just in ancient Rome, and still have the same lowered social status.
• HayBale 3y ago
  [dead]