The thousands of funerary inscriptions from the city of Rome published in CIL VI are a rich source of demographic data but are also the subject of serious debate regarding the epigraphic habit of the Romans. Do the inscriptions represent a cross-section of Roman society or are they largely the creation of the lower classes? Fixing the milieu from which the inscriptions come is difficult, because the exact status of more than 50 % of the commemorating population is unstated. The (...) first section of the paper lays out the criteria according to which individuals, both those of certain status and those of uncertain status, may be classified as freeborn, freed or servile. The second section tabulates the results and argues that the practice of commemoration by modest titulus was overwhelmingly a phenomenon of the milieu of the freed. Since this is not a self-perpetuating population, the prevalence of freedmen in the tituli shows it was among those families in transition from slavery to liberty that titular commemoration was most common. The freed drew attention to their own freedom, and even more proudly advertised the freeborn status of their children. (shrink)

The commemorative forms of the Romans are marked by the ubiquity of two contrasting presentational modes: one essentially mimetic, rooted in the representational power of artistic forms, the other abstract and figurative, dependent on the presentation of cues for the summoning of absent yet necessary images. The mimetic mode was thoroughly conventional, and thus posed few problems of interpretation; the figurative knew no such orthodoxy and required a different and distinctive form of attention. At the tomb, epigraphic and sculptural forms, (...) each in its characteristic manner, addressed an audience habituated by tradition to respond to both of these modes, to grasp their differences, and to rise to the challenge implicit in the very fact of their contrast. (shrink)

This paper considers a set of passages from classical Latin literature of the first century BC and first century AD that indicate awareness of the particular transformations undergone by a human body during the process of open-air cremation. Evidence for the extent of cremation throughout the Roman West is reviewed, as are indications that mourners frequently remained near the pyre throughout the lengthy transformation of the corpse into bone-remnants and ash. In addition, archaeological, ethnographic, and forensic evidence documenting the step-by-step (...) changes undergone by the burning body is introduced. Against this backdrop, numerous passages from authors such as Horace, Vergil, Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid, Seneca, Lucan, Statius, and Suetonius take on new significance. Although authors occasionally cite crematory details as such, they more frequently make use of such details in non-crematory contexts in order to achieve a variety of literary and aesthetic goals, including economy of description, reflection on the circulation of substance, and clarification of the process of ekpyrosis, or cosmic conflagration. For these writers considered as a group cremation serves as an indicator of both the abject nature of the human condition and of its potential sublimity. The calculated displacement of key aspects of the crematory process onto non-crematory events and practices mirrors and extends the liminality associated with crematory rites. (shrink)

This article offers a detailed analysis of the penalties imposed on Cn. Calpurnius Piso pater in AD 20 after he had been posthumously convicted of maiestas . Piso was accused of leaving his province without permission and then returning to try to retake it after the death of Germanicus in AD 19. He was also believed by many to be implicated in the death of Germanicus. The details of his case have been revealed by a new inscription from Spain, the (...) Senatus Consultum de Cn. Pisone patre, which was first published in 1996. Part of this long and well-preserved inscription records the post-mortem sanctions against memory imposed by the senate and Tiberius on Piso after his suicide. The verdicts for his family members and accomplices are also included. The decree was posted on bronze in the major cities of the Empire and in the winter quarters of all the legions. The article argues for the following conclusions. The decree should be taken at face value and its punishments considered harsh for a member of the Roman office-holding élite. It was widely published throughout the Empire after there had been extravagant mourning for Germanicus. Consequently, it seems that post-mortem disgrace did not necessarily involve the family as a whole. Indeed, sanctions against memory appear to be consciously designed to preserve the Roman élite family, its assets, and social position by removing its erring member. Such sanctions reveal both a tension and an accommodation between remembering and forgetting, between the family and the community, between history and memory. (shrink)