Commemorating_the_Dead__Texts_and_Artifacts_in_Context__Studies_of_Roman__Jewish_and_Christian_Burials.pdf

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Commemorating the Dead

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Commemoratingthe Dead

Texts and Artifacts in Context

Studies of Roman, Jewish, andChristian Burials

Edited by

Laurie Brink, O.P. and Deborah Green

with an Introduction by

Richard Saller

Walter de Gruyter · Berlin · New York

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Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines,of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

ISBN 978-3-11-020054-6

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

© Copyright 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 10785 BerlinAll rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may bereproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo-copy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from

the publisher.

Printed in GermanyCover design: Martin Zech, Bremen

Cover photos: Laurie Brink, O.P., and Margaret M. MitchellTypesetting: Dörlemann Satz GmbH & Co. KG, Lemförde

Printing and binding: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen

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To Robert M. Grant, Professor Emeritus of New Testament and EarlyChristian Literature, the University of Chicago, whose lifelongcommitment to investigating the origins of early Christianity withinthe cultural, historical, and social context of ancient Rome inspiredthis project.

In memorial to Estelle Shohet Brettman, l ü z, the founder of theInternational Catacomb Society, who desired to preserve anddocument the Roman catacombs in order to illustrate the commoninfluences on Jewish and Christian iconography. May this publicationforward her legacy.

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Preface vii

Laurie Brink, O.P., and Deborah Green

Preface

Our fascination with the artifacts of the ancient world began when weworked on the archaeological dig at Caesarea Maritima, Israel. As twotext-based doctoral students of Judaism and early Christianity, our ex-perience of uncovering and analyzing material remains provided a viewinto the ancient world that had produced our texts, a view that readingalone could not fully provide. The richness of the conversations amongIsraeli and American archaeologists, ancient historians, and textualscholars further fueled our recognition that fostering dialogues acrossthe divide of academic disciplines would benefit not only our own aca-demic work but the work of all who participated, helping to lower thewall of academic territorialism. More than thirty years ago, Churchhistorian, Robert M. Grant, acknowledged the chasm between the re-search efforts of classicists and those of scholars of Christianity:

The early history of Christianity is Roman history, and I should claim thatRoman history itself needs the collaboration of those who try to relate theChristian movement to the whole life of the Empire, not explaining everythingChristian in Roman terms or everything Roman in Christian terms but trying tounderstand identities, similarities, and differences.1

Our own attendance at conferences and participation in interdisci-plinary courses further confirmed our recognition that research aboutthe ancient world would benefit from cross-disciplinary work in whichscholars of various academic fields investigated, analyzed, and inter-preted texts and artifacts in context. Similar work by Eric Meyers andJames Strange in the areas of Judaism and Christianity in the Galileelaid the foundation for a more expansive project that would includecomparisons of the two religions with Roman religions and cultural

1 R. M. Grant, “Introduction: Christian and Roman History,” in The Catacombsand the Colosseum: The Roman Empire as the Setting of Primitive Christianity(ed. Stephen Benko and John J. O’Rourke; Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1971), 24.

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dispositions.2 However, we also recognized the need to confine thetopics of study in order to accomplish meaningful comparisons.

One arena in which historians, archaeologists, and scholars of Ju-daism and early Christianity may share equal footing is investigationsof Imperial period burials. The distinctions and similarities amongRoman, Jewish, and Christian burials can provide evidence of socialnetworks, family life, and, perhaps, religious sensibilities. Is the Romandevelopment from columbaria to catacombs the result of evolvingreligious identities or simply a matter of a change in burial fashions?Did Christians practice inhumation in imitation of the Jews or wasthis an expression of an early Christian theology of resurrection?What Greco-Roman funerary images were taken over and “baptized”as Christian ones? Do the material remains from Jewish burials evi-dence an adherence to ancient customs, new beliefs about an afterlife,or adaptation of rituals from surrounding cultures? Investigating theemergence of a Christian or Jewish material culture that may be dis-tinct from general Roman practices requires that the material culturebe viewed, whenever possible, in situ, through multiple disciplinarylenses and in light of ancient texts. Scholars of Roman history and clas-sics (John Bodel, Richard Saller, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill), archaeo-logy (Susan Stevens, Amy Hirschfeld), history of Judaism (DeborahGreen), Christian history (Robin M. Jensen) and the New Testament(David Balch, Laurie Brink, O.P., Margaret Mitchell, Carolyn Osiek,R.S.C.J.) were invited to participate in what we affectionately called“The Grateful Dead Project.” The project comprised three stages:

x Two weeks of field research in Rome and Tunisia (June 2004).x The Shohet Conference on Roman, Jewish, and Christian Burials,

held at The Divinity School of the University of Chicago (May2005).

x This publication of articles resulting from the project.

Commemorating the Dead: Texts and Artifacts in Context is an attemptto build bridges across the divide of disciplines simply by creating a con-

2 Eric M. Meyers and James F. Strange, Archaeology, the Rabbis, and Early Chris-tianity (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981). Also see the interdisciplinary work of Caro-lyn Osiek and David Balch, Families in the New Testament World: Householdsand House Churches (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1997) and DanielSchowalter and Steven Friesen, Urban Religion in Roman Corinth: Interdisciplin-ary Approaches (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005).

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versation wherein we learn from each other. Though certainly not thefirst of such attempts, the project did incorporate several unique fea-tures. First, the discussion extended beyond the institutional boundariesof the University of Chicago where we had first met as doctoral students.It included faculty and doctoral students from the British School atRome, Brite Divinity School, Brown University, Catholic TheologicalUnion, Northwestern University, the University of Maryland, the Uni-versity of Michigan, the University of Chicago, the University of Or-egon, Randolph College, and Vanderbilt University.

Second, in addition to creating a community of colleagues, wewanted to pave the way for future collaborative efforts among the nextgeneration of scholars. To that end, we asked doctoral students incomplementary fields to respond to the faculty papers at the ShohetConference. We are grateful to the respondents: Terri Bednarz,R.S.M., Brandon Cline, Fanny Dolanksy, Joel Dries, Joan Downs,Patricia Duncan, Annal Frenz, Annette Huizenga, Lee M. Jefferson,Meira Kensky, Young-Ho Park, Brad Peper, Matthew Perry, TrevorThompson, Janet Spittler, Jennifer Stabler, Karen Stern, JamesWeaver, and Ann Marie Yasin. Their comments and insights helpedshape the final version of the articles that appear in this volume.

This project also extended beyond the library, the office, and theconference hall. We secured and sustained a three-year commitmentfrom respected scholars because we promised them an opportunity todo fieldwork – together. As a team, we were able to stand in front ofthe impressive funerary monument of Flavius Secundus in Kasserine,Tunisia, with its one-hundred-and-ten-line inscription and read it – insitu. Together, we explored the dark, damp tunnels of the Roman cata-combs, noting the similarities between Roman and Jewish iconographyand pondering the emergence of Christian symbols. We visited tinymuseums in Lamta, Salakta, and El Jem, Tunisia – and castle-size onesin Rome and Baia. We waited patiently for custodians to secure accessto treasures seldom viewed by the public at large. And, when eveningcame, we shared food and drink, in lively discussion, debate, and happyconversation about the experiences of the day. We did all of this withscholars who share an interest in the ancient world but who view thatworld through different disciplinary and methodological lenses. It hasbeen our immense pleasure to be a part of this adventure, and we hopeit has been fun and valuable for them as well.

This project received the first grant from the Shohet Scholars Programto be awarded by the International Catacomb Society (ICS) of Boston.

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The generous financial support of ICS combined with the encourage-ment of its executive director, Amy Hirschfeld, are chiefly responsible forthe project’s success. In addition, we want to thank Amy for the countlessdigital images she took during the field research. These are available forviewing on the ICS website (www.catacombsociety.org/archive.html).

No project of this size and duration is the inspiration of one person.Laurie traveled to Rome and Pompeii with David Balch, J. PatoutBurns, Robin Jensen, and Carolyn Osiek in August 2000, and realizedthe value of viewing the material remains in situ with a team ofscholars. Similarly, the interdisciplinary conference on the family inearly Christianity facilitated by Carolyn Osiek and David Balch atBrite Divinity School in 2000 presented a model for our Shohet Con-ference. The introduction Robin Jensen provided to the InternationalCatacomb Society initiated a relationship that has provided financialsupport and encouragement. The scholars who participated each con-tributed their expertise at various points in the project. Andrew Wal-lace-Hadrill and the British School at Rome provided a hospitablehome during our time in Rome. Andrew, along with John Bodel, RobinJensen, and Susan Stevens served as guides at various sites throughoutthe two-week research trip. “Unofficial” fellow travelers Patout Burnsand Tanya Luhrmann offered insights from their respective academicfields that enriched the conversations throughout.

We would also like to acknowledge the support of Richard Rosen-garten, Dean of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, whooffered invaluable advice in the planning stages of the project as didthe former Dean of Students Winnifred Fallers Sullivan and Admin-istrator Sandra Peppers. The Divinity School and the Marty Centerfor the Advanced Study of Religion assisted in the promotion andhosting of the Shohet Conference. The University of Oregon suppliedextra funds for Deborah to travel to Israel to view burial sites and meetwith Israeli scholars.

Patrick Alexander, formerly with Walter de Gruyter, has been a sup-porter of the project from its initial proposal in 2003. The editors andcontributors are thankful for his editorial insights. Dr. Sabine Vogt,Editor for the Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies of Walterde Gruyter guided our project to publication, for which we are, indeed,grateful.

Personally, we would like to thank our families, friends, and col-leagues for their support throughout the preparation of this publi-cation. Special thanks to Deborah’s husband, Reuben Zahler, and

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their son, Joshua Zahler, for their love and patience, and to Laurie’s re-ligious community, the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa, WI., and, inparticular, Betsy Pawlicki, O.P., for their continual encouragement andunderstanding, especially at the initial stages of the project.

Commemorating the Dead has been based on the belief that conver-sation among scholars who share similar interests in the ancient world,but who differ in their disciplinary approaches, has the potential tobear much scholarly fruit. May this book be the first of many harvests.

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Table of Contents xiii

Table of Contents

Laurie Brink, O.P. (Catholic Theological Union)and Deborah Green (University of Oregon)Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Richard Saller (Stanford University)Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Archaeology and Artifacts

Amy K. Hirschfeld (International Catacomb Society)Chapter 1. An Overview of the Intellectual History ofCatacomb Archaeology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (The British School at Rome)Chapter 2. Housing the Dead: The Tomb as House inRoman Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Susan T. Stevens (Randolph College)Chapter 3. Commemorating the Dead in the CommunalCemeteries of Carthage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Ritual and Religious Rites

Robin M. Jensen (Vanderbilt University Divinity School)Chapter 4. Dining with the Dead: From the Mensa to theAltar in Christian Late Antiquity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Deborah Green (University of Oregon)Chapter 5. Sweet Spices in the Tomb: An Initial Studyon the Use of Perfume in Jewish Burials . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

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Patronal Relations and Changes in Burial Practices

John Bodel (Brown University)Chapter 6. From Columbaria to Catacombs: CollectiveBurial in Pagan and Christian Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177

Carolyn Osiek (Brite Divinity School)Chapter 7. Roman and Christian Burial Practicesand the Patronage of Women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

Envisioning Context and Meaning

David Balch (Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary)Chapter 8. From Endymion in Roman Domus to Jonahin Christian Catacombs: From Houses of the Living to Housesfor the Dead. Iconography and Religion in Transition . . . . . 273

Margaret M. Mitchell (University of Chicago)Chapter 9. Looking for Abericus: Reimagining Contextsof Interpretation of the “Earliest Christian Inscription” . . . . 303

Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341Index of Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379

Introduction 1

Richard Saller

Introduction

The death of a family member, friend, or dependent was a far morecommon experience in the lives of Romans than for us today.1 Conse-quently, it is to be expected that commemoration of the dead wouldfigure more prominently in our textual and material records from theRoman world than in comparable records today. And yet, burials andthe associated artifacts from the Roman world are disproportionatelyoverrepresented in the material record and therefore command the at-tention of Roman historians and archaeologists, ever hungry for moreevidence. John Bodel estimates that we know of only 1 % or so of theburials from the city of Rome from 25 B.C.E. to 325 C.E. (Chapter 6).That is a soberingly small fraction, and yet it is a much more sub-stantial material attestation of a facet of ordinary life in Rome thansurvives for any other aspect of sociocultural life. Hence, the dispro-portionate attention of archaeologists and historians to funerary arti-facts is understandable and warranted.2

This volume brings together a set of excellent chapters on disparatetopics related to burial. The unifying rationale for the collection andthe preceding conferences is that our understanding of burial practices,and the societies that gave rise to them, will be deepened and enrichedby bringing together the material record of archaeologists and the textsof historians from both the classical Roman and the Christian fields ofstudy. This involves crossing the divides among four traditional aca-demic specialties. The chronological span covers a millennium fromthe middle Republic (third–second centuries B.C.E.) to the seventh

1 The mortality rate in developed countries today is under 15 per 1,000, in contrastto the Roman mortality rate of nearly 40 per 1,000 per year.

2 As an illustration of my point, all of the efforts by demographic and family his-torians to derive useful generalizations about the Roman life course from epi-taphs would be unnecessary if census records for the living survived from thewhole empire.

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century C.E., and the geographical span runs from Rome to North Af-rica to Palestine. My introduction seeks to sketch briefly a broad frame-work for the chapters and to draw attention to some thematic andmethodological threads running through the diverse contributions.

Narratives and Themes

More than one of the following chapters has a title with the phrase “ …from … to …,” implying a developmental narrative. The reader shouldunderstand that these are not pieces of a single narrative, but multiplenarratives for different locations and classes. For the cities of Romeand Pompeii, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (Chapter 2) examines housetombs from the middle Republic, the late Republic-Early Empire, andthe High Empire. Like Roman houses with their dual function of in-ward-looking familial space and outward-looking assertion of statusto the public, house-tombs had a dual function that shifted in empha-sis through the three periods from inward-looking in the third–secondcenturies B.C.E. to outward-looking at the turn of the era and back toinward-looking in the mid-second century C.E.

Other types of burials from the same region and centuries are ana-lyzed in an entirely different narrative in Bodel’s account of the rise ofcolumbaria at the end of the Republic and the transition to catacombstwo centuries later. The reason for the entirely different narratives liesin the fact that Bodel’s study is based on larger collective burial groupsof more modest economic strata on average than Wallace-Hadrill’s.Columbaria were first built as a way to accommodate the ashes of slavefamiliae of aristocratic Romans in structures separate from the aristo-crats’ own monumental graves. The columbarium form then spread toserve modest Romans more broadly. Bodel points out that columbariacame to be associated with collegia, which provided the infrastructurefor the “autonomous self-regulation” needed to organize and maintaina “condominium” of burials over time on a scale larger than the family.In the late second and third centuries C.E. the spatial arrangement ofextended groups of burials shifted from the columbarium to the cata-comb. The same period also saw the spread of Christianity and the shiftfrom cremation to inhumation, but Bodel stresses that these were threeseparate developments and not causally related. Indeed, as DeborahGreen notes in Chapter 5, Jewish burials in Rome went through a com-parable shift from family (or “familial” burials) to catacombs, and did

Introduction 3

so earlier than in the Christian community. The fact that catacombs arestrongly associated in the modern mind with the early Christians to theneglect of Jewish catacombs is a result, as Amy Hirschfeld shows inChapter One, of the charged implications that Christian catacombshave had in modern religious debates.

Susan Stevens’s analysis of five late antique cemeteries around Car-thage (Chapter 3) takes us to the period after the establishment ofChristianity and beyond the collapse of Roman rule. None of theseburial grounds extended the use of a classical Roman cemetery. Stevenscontrasts the spatial arrangements of the two wealthier cemeteries withthe other three: whereas the latter graves were largely anonymous andspatially difficult to visit, the former were laid out in a hierarchy ofprivilege and in a fashion to accommodate visits from the living (forpurposes described in Robin Jensen’s contribution in Chapter 4).

Alongside the spatial development of Roman burials went a socio-political development described in the chapters of Jensen and CarolynOsiek (Chapter 7). In the classical era, burial and the rites associatedwith it were largely a private matter, based in part on Roman law,especially the law of property. Tombs and columbaria were privateproperty allocated to members of the familia and other dependents bythe property owner. As Osiek points out, a proper burial space was oneof the favors (beneficia) in the arsenal of a Roman patron, and thatpatron could be a female property owner, just as well as a male. Theprovision of burial spaces for early church members by propertiedwomen, Osiek suggests, explains why some of the major catacombs inRome bear the names of women (Domitilla, Priscilla, and Commo-dilla). This patronage gave women status and influence in the earlychurch that gradually came to be monopolized by ecclesiastical auth-orities in the third and fourth centuries.

The theme of assertion of Episcopal authority also motivatesJensen’s account of the transformation of funerary banquets in thethird and fourth centuries in North Africa. With textual and archaeo-logical evidence, Jensen documents the practice of meals (mensae) inthe graveyards to maintain the links between the living and their de-ceased loved ones. This pre-Christian practice was so entrenched thatit continued among Christians through the fourth century, despite theefforts of church authorities to suppress it and the accompanyingdrunken excesses. Bishops sought to change the rites to bring themunder the control of the church in the form of celebration of the Eu-charist.

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The funerary mensa is one of several examples in this volume of theearly Christian community drawing on the classical cultural repertoireand transforming it. As another illustration, David Balch in Chapter 8traces the transformation of the artistic representation of Endymioninto Jonah, who became the most common figure by far in early Chris-tian art found in funerary and other contexts. Endymion, representedas a handsome, nude youth, might seem to be a less than obviouschoice, but Balch makes the case for the aesthetic and spiritual reasonsto settle on his figure. And the Christians were not the only ones toadopt Endymion, Balch notes, because he “was a figure who would ab-sorb many projected meanings.”

Margaret Mitchell’s essay (Chapter 9) on Abercius’s epitaph ex-plores with great subtlety the possibilities of the multiplicity of mean-ings in an era of cultural change around 200 C.E. Abercius’s monument,now in the Vatican Museum, is one of those very rare extant inscrip-tions to be accompanied by a later literary text explaining its origin.One would have thought that the text, the Vita Abercii, would clarifythe meaning of the epitaph, in which Abercius speaks to the passerby/reader in the first person, but Mitchell shows that the Vita attempts todelimit the meaning of the inscribed lines and thus to obscure the sig-nificant intentional ambiguities that allowed the earliest Christianreaders to understand the meaning quite differently from non-Chris-tian passersby. Mitchell’s argument raises major methodological is-sues in the interpretation of other monuments, to which I will return.

Methodological Issues

The interactions among the participants in the volume during the tourof the sites and at the conference heightened everyone’s awareness of themethodological complexities of bringing textual and material evidencetogether in a historical argument. The extensive survival of funerarytexts and artifacts makes it especially tempting to use evidence fromburials to deduce something important about the society, culture, andeconomy of living Romans. But one might argue that the texts and arti-facts from burial sites are evidence only for burial self-representation,and that it is unwarranted to draw inferences about living society.3 Such

3 Suzanne Dixon, Reading Roman Women: Sources, Genres, and Real Life (Lon-don: Duckworth, 2001) has argued this position forcefully.

Introduction 5

skepticism strikes me as a salutary contribution to the scholarly de-bate, but can be overstated. Every sort of evidence from every contextrequires sophisticated methodological care to avoid naïve inferences.The essays in this volume display the requisite sophistication as theyexplore various aspects of the symbols and rituals that connected theliving to the dead.

I would suggest several broad methodological points about thatconnection. First, both the funerary texts and the visual imagery ofburial offer idealized representations of roles and relationships in liv-ing society (Bodel). Whether it be the epithet attached to the deceased(e.g., “most chaste wife”) or the architectural motifs on the outsideand inside of the tomb (as described in Wallace-Hadrill’s chapter), theidealizations had their roots in the world of the living and can provideevidence for characteristic features and values of that world.

In addition, there is the obvious point that the dead could not burythemselves: burials in all their ritual and material aspects were thecreations of living social entities – whether they be familial (Wallace-Hadrill) or patronal relationships (Osiek) or collegia (Bodel) or Chris-tian communities (Osiek and Jensen). Furthermore, several of thefollowing chapters show vividly how the cultural practices and motifsassociated with death drew on those of the living. Most obviously,Endymion was taken from the dining rooms of the living and trans-formed into Jonah for the burial sites of the Christians (Balch). Thesanctity of burials was protected by the living through a legal frame-work of private property enforced by the living state apparatus (Osiek).Indeed, burial is one of the great collective action problems for so-cieties, because the deceased cannot themselves perform the rites orprotect the inviolability of their tombs and monuments in perpetuity,nor can their individual families. When state authority broke down,the tombs were vulnerable to being plundered (Stevens, Hirschfeld). Insum, the living were linked to the dead by systems of meaning, of rit-uals and social practices, and of law.

A second methodological point – indeed, the basis for the wholeenterprise embodied in the volume – is the importance of context, em-phasized explicitly by Mitchell. Her essay on the epitaph of Aberciusshows that the more we know about a text or artifact, the more intri-cate the issues of context become. Even the particular form of displayof this famous inscription in the Vatican Museum turns out to dependon modern religious ideology and has demonstrably affected scholarlyinterpretations of the text. The implication of Mitchell’s fundamental

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point might be thought a reason for despair, since historians rarelyknow the full story of how a particular text or artifact came to existand then to survive to the present. The despair seems pointless, sincehistorians and archaeologists always work on incomplete informationabout context. Rather, Mitchell shows the constructive path forwardby reminding the reader that we need to reckon with the limits of ourknowledge.

A third, related methodological principle is the importance of cul-tural context for understanding burial practices. In the absence of cul-tural knowledge, there is a temptation to offer utilitarian explanationsfor artifacts and texts based on our own modern experience. In hercontribution on perfume vials found in Jewish burials, Green arguesconvincingly against using a facile utilitarian approach. Despite thesuperficial plausibility of the idea that the perfume was intended tocover up the stench of the corpse, she shows that this explanation can-not account for all the material evidence. It is more likely that the per-fume should be understood in the same way as the other personal ar-tifacts found of sentimental value with the deceased.

My fourth methodological point is that the context for any givenartifact or text was not static. Mitchell notes that the reader’s responseto the epitaph of Abercius may have changed over time as the surround-ing graveyard changed to become a more definitively Christian context.Not only did the necropolis develop over time, but so also did many ofthe tombs. We need to imagine the house tombs, the columbaria, andthe catacombs as works in progress, rather than the finished productleft to posterity. And if the finished house-tomb or columbarium orcatacomb was the result of a series of decisions over time, we often donot know which member of the family or community made each deci-sion. Osiek shows how it is possible to draw on what is genericallyknown about the social relations of patronage to sketch the develop-ment from private graveyards above ground to the underground cata-combs controlled by the church. Often we cannot be more precise thanthese generic explanations.

A fifth and related point is the risk of simplifying context by sharplyseparating ethnic and religious groups and reifying them with the his-torian’s hindsight. The ancient realities were more fluid. Green makesthe point that it is a mistake to think in terms of a unified category of“Jewish,” because it fails to take into account changes over time. As aresult, she is very careful to specify the period and place she is stu-dying. Bodel argues that the “Christian” catacombs are unlikely to

Introduction 7

have been filled only by Christians, because that identification wouldimply that, of the 150,000 or so Roman burials about which somethingis known, an improbably high proportion would be Christian.

A final methodological point is that the relevant context includesthe history of scholarship on ancient burial leading to our current cat-egories and understandings. Hirschfeld’s essay on the history of cata-comb archaeology shows that not only does the past influence thepresent but also the present influences the treatment of the past. Someof the most famous figures associated with the excavation of the cata-combs were driven more by the religious disputes of their era than bytheir time spent in excavation of the catacombs. Bodel demonstratesthat some of the categories at the base of modern scholarship, such as“columbarium” and “catacomb,” are not ancient categories but mod-ern constructs. And Mitchell describes how two interpretive circles, theVita Abercii and the modern Vatican Museum, have framed the inter-pretation of Abercius’s funerary inscription.

In sum, the methodological complexities require the crossing of dis-ciplinary boundaries and chronological specialties to a degree beyondthe capacity of most individual scholars. As a result, the cross-disciplin-ary discussions that inform the contributions to this volume are vital.The other participants and I are most grateful to the InternationalCatacomb Society and Laurie Brink for making them possible.

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Archaeology and Artifacts

History of Catacomb Archaeology 11

Amy K. Hirschfeld

Chapter 1

An Overview of the Intellectual Historyof Catacomb Archaeology

The past is essential – and inescapable. Without it wewould lack any identity, nothing would be familiar, andthe present would make no sense. Yet the past is also aweighty burden that cripples innovation and foreclosesthe future. How do we recognize and cope with thisheritage, which at the same time sustains and constrainsus? What benefits does it provide, what costs does itexact?1

David Lowenthal

Introduction

Archaeology, in the broadest sense of the study of the past throughthe material culture produced by peoples of the past, involves manydisciplines (such as natural sciences, anthropology, history, religiousstudies, and art history) and many disciplines rely, in part, on archaeo-logical evidence. Context is essential in archaeological research – notonly the context of the past and its material remains as they are exca-vated but also the context of each present in which research has been

1 David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1985). I am grateful to Laurie Brink for inviting me to participatein this project and to the International Catacomb Society for supporting myparticipation. I am also grateful to Carolyn Osiek for helpful comments on anearlier version of this paper. Sections of this paper are based on “Exploration ofthe Catacombs” in Vaults of Memory: The Roman Jewish Catacombs and TheirContext in the Ancient Mediterranean World, Estelle S. Brettman, Amy K. Hirsch-feld, and Florence Z. Wolsky. Forthcoming.

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conducted. For sites such as the Roman catacombs2 that have, for themost part, been continuously known instead of newly excavated or dis-covered, new information and insight is often gained from new ap-proaches and from “excavating” the archives of previous study.

Traditional questions such as “How does the past influence the pres-ent?” and “How has the present grown out of the past?” are increas-ingly being reversed as scholars in many disciplines have become moreself-reflexive. The complimentary questions being asked are “Howdoes the present influence the past?” and “How is the interpretation ofthe past affected, restricted, or prescribed by present social, political,and religious conditions?” Such questions can be productively exam-ined from the perspective of the various “presents” in which the Romancatacombs have been studied.

The study of the Roman catacombs has been an important part of along-standing tradition of religious inquiry. The catacombs are some-what unusual as a subject of archaeological study in their almost inex-tricable relationship to a living religion that has primarily been in con-trol of their study and guardianship.

The manner in which the catacombs have previously been studied andpresented to academic audiences (in scholarly publications) and gen-eral audiences (in popular writing, tourist sites, and museum displays)forms an essential component of the evidence many later scholars haverelied upon in their interpretations of the catacombs. The authors ofmuch of the past academic and popular writing about the catacombsviewed them as sites of connection to a venerated religious past thatcould be used to legitimize the religious present. Many ancient Chris-tians wanted to be buried in the catacombs near the graves of saintsand martyrs to be close to the sacred, and this same desire likely moti-vated many later researchers to study these sites.

Throughout the history of their study, the catacombs have often notbeen studied objectively in their own right but instead been used as asource of evidence to support established ideas (especially of religioushistory). Many of the main figures in the history of catacomb explora-

2 Throughout this paper when I use the term “catacombs,” I am referring to theChristian catacombs of Rome. I also mention the Roman Jewish catacombs butwill identify them explicitly as Jewish. I do not address the question of the accu-racy of the identification of entire catacombs as “Christian” or “Jewish,” but fol-low the traditional identifications based on the presence of iconographic andepigraphic indicators.


tion did not pursue their research for the sake of objective science butrather for the sake of material documentation of already-known relig-ious “facts.” In the following paper, I give an overview of some of themain figures and historical trends in the study of the catacombs to pro-vide some context for research involving the catacombs.

The Catacombs from the Sixth Centurythrough the Middle Ages

The catacombs ceased to be actively used for burials in the fourththrough sixth centuries C.E., having been gradually replaced by above-ground cemeteries. Even after active burial in the catacombs ceased,the catacombs continued to be regularly visited. Many of the cata-combs were converted into martyrs’ shrines in the fourth and fifthcenturies, and aboveground sanctuaries and cemeterial basilicas, some-times linked to the catacombs by tunnels, were built for the venerationof the martyrs. Notably, Pope Damasus (366–384) enlarged and decor-ated sections of the catacombs that contained martyrs’ tombs, forexample, the Crypt of the Popes in the catacomb of S. Callisto.

The maintenance and renovation of these sacred areas by papalauthorities continued until at least the eighth century, and they at-tracted both Roman Christians and pilgrims who visited the cata-combs for prayer and devotion. After the last repairs to the catacombsand martyrial shrines made by Popes Hadrian and Leo III at the endof the eighth century and beginning of the ninth century, there wasan extensive removal of relics of the saints from their shrines andburial places in the catacombs, which were all outside the city walls, tochurches within the city walls. This large-scale removal may have beenprompted by the presence of foreign invaders or could have resultedfrom gradual changes in ecclesiastical policy to allow the transpor-tation of relics.3 Eventually, the catacombs were abandoned, with theexception of a few galleries in certain catacombs that continued to bevisited, primarily those located below martyrial churches.4 Itinerari,

3 See Irina Taïssa Oryshkevich, “The History of the Roman Catacombs from theAge of Constantine to the Renaissance” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia Univer-sity, 2003).

4 Especially the catacomb of S. Sebastiano, which became a center for the venera-tion of Peter and Paul by the end of the third century, as evidenced by pilgrims’


written as guides for pilgrims, especially during the seventh and eighthcenturies, and the Liber Pontificalis,5 begun in the late fifth–early sixthcentury, were consulted by later explorers attempting to discover andidentify the catacombs.

The common conception that the catacombs were entirely forgottenafter the translation of relics to churches in the eight and ninth cen-turies until their supposed “rediscovery” in the sixteenth century issomewhat misleading. In addition to the few catacombs located belowmartyrial churches that were continuously visited, the Mirabilia urbisRomae, a popular guidebook for Rome begun in the twelfth centuryand enjoying popularity for several centuries, included several cata-combs in most of its editions,6 and numerous visitors in the fourteenthand fifteenth centuries, including Renaissance humanists such as Pet-rarch, wrote about their visits to the catacombs.7 However, there wasnot much interest in the careful exploration, study, and recording ofthe catacombs until the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Bythat time, the locations and even the names of some of the catacombslikely had, in fact, been forgotten.

Latin and Greek graffiti invoking the two apostles, which can still be seen today.Other catacombs that continued to be visited because of their connection to activechurches were S. Lorenzo, S. Pancrazio, S. Agnese, and S. Valentino. VincenzoFiocchi Nicolai, Fabrizio Bisconti, and Danilo Mazzoleni, The Christian Cata-combs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner,1999), 9.

5 The “Book of the Popes” is a biographical history of the popes from St. Peterthrough the fifteenth century and includes information on their burial places. Asa work written and compiled by many different individuals over a long period,its historical reliability has always been somewhat questionable. The reliabilityof the itinerari is also uncertain. Nonetheless, they were frequently used assources of topographical information by later scholars.

6 For example, the catacombs of Commodilla, S. Callisto, Praetestato, Priscilla,and Domitilla, among others. Francis Morgan Nichols, ed. and trans., The Mar-vels of Rome: Mirabilia Urbis Romae (2d ed.; New York: Italica Press, 1986).

7 Oryshkevich, “History of the Roman Catacombs,” 67–73, 102–7. See this entiredissertation for evidence that the catacombs were never “forgotten.” For a dis-cussion of the later history of the Christian catacombs, see J. Osborne, “TheRoman Catacombs in the Middle Ages,” Papers of the British School at Rome 53(1985): 278–328.


The Catacombs in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are characterized by systematicexploration and study of the catacombs, the use of the evidence fromthe catacombs for contemporary religious purposes, and the creationof popular literature focused on the catacombs.

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the renewed interest in andknowledge of the catacombs made them an important destination formany travelers to Rome who followed guidebooks such as the Mirabiliaurbis Romae and who wrote about their impressions of the catacombs,although some of their descriptions seem to be copied from the guide-books. The belief in purification and remission of sins in the presenceof martyrs’ relics accounts for much of the appeal of the catacombs forvisitors. Stories of getting lost in the catacombs and having a spiritualreawakening become a common literary theme in the following cen-turies.8

Some of the most notorious visitors to the catacombs in the latefifteenth century did not leave a written record of their visits to the cata-combs, except in the graffiti they marked on the walls of the catacombs.The Accademia Romana degli antiquari, led by the flamboyant Pompo-nio Leto (1428–1498), wished to broaden their knowledge of classicalantiquity. This unconventional group referred to themselves as unanimesperscrutatores antiquitatis (investigators of antiquity). They visited thecatacombs of S. Callisto, Ss. Pietro and Marcellino, Praetestato, andPriscilla.9 Pope Paul II considered their actions heretical, and membersof the Accademia were prosecuted as pagans conspiring against thepope. Leto and other members of the Accademia were imprisoned inthe Castel Sant’Angelo for almost a year, but evidence against themcould not be procured. Interestingly, the graffiti they left in the cata-comb of S. Callisto, which would have provided the evidence the auth-orities needed but was not inscribed until after their imprisonment,

8 Robert W. Gaston, “British Travellers and Scholars in the Roman Catacombs,”Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 46 (1983): 147.

9 Pasquale Testini, Le catacombe e gli antichi cimiteri cristiani in Roma (Bologna:Cappelli Editore, 1966), 15–16; see also Ludwig Hertling and Engelbert Kirsch-baum, The Roman Catacombs and Their Martyrs (Milwaukee: Bruce PublishingCo., 1956). Hertling and Kirschbaum disparagingly refer to the AccademiaRomana as “half-pagan humanists [with] no interest in Christian antiquities”(p. 3).


was not known until the nineteenth century, when it was discovered byGiovanni Battista de Rossi.10

Religiously oriented investigation of the catacombs during thisperiod began with Onofrius Panvinius (1529–1568), an Augustinianmonk who conducted a well-organized, methodical study of Christiancemeteries of the ancient world.11 Panvinius is credited with beginninga trend of scientific Christian archaeology and was renowned as a greatchurch historian and archaeologist. He focused on the cemeteries ofRome and researched the then-available historical, ecclesiastical, andepigraphic resources. Panvinius was the first person to classify ancientChristian inscriptions, and his work indicates that he was aware ofregions of 43 catacombs. He is not known to have explored them, how-ever. Although Panvinius is known as an archaeologist, his work wasalmost entirely based on a survey of literary rather than material evi-dence, an approach followed by many other later scholars who arenevertheless also known for conducting “scientific” archaeology.

St. Philip Neri (1515–1595) founded the Cenacolo Filippino, or Con-gregation of the Oratory, in his quest to promote the Counter-Reforma-tion movement of the Roman Catholic Church, restore early Christianreligious practices, and trace a history of Church events. He was knownfor spending long hours in the catacombs meditating and frequentlypreached to his followers on visits to the catacomb of S. Sebastiano.Neri’s devotional focus on the martyrs of the catacombs and their mess-age of suffering and redemption set the stage for the intense interest inthe exploration of the catacombs by Antonio Bosio and others in thesixteenth century and also set the devotional tone that would character-ize much catacomb study. Neri appointed his closest follower, CesareBaronius, to continue his work.

Cardinal Cesare Baronius (1538–1607), who succeeded Philip Nerias leader of the Oratory, is credited with inaugurating the scientificstudy of Church history, much as Panvinius was credited with doingfor Christian archaeology. By the second half of the sixteenth century,renewed interest in the archaeology of early Christianity was beingsupported by efforts on the part of both Catholics and Protestants

10 The graffiti included the phrases regnante pomponio pontifice maximo (when Pom-ponio reigned as Pontifex Maximus) and romanarum puparum delitiae (delights ofRoman girls). Oryshkevich, “History of the Roman Catacombs,” 219–23.

11 De ritu sepeliendi mortuos apud veteres christianos, et eorundem coemeteriis liber(Cologne, 1568).


to trace early Church history. Protestant interests led to the productionof the Magdeburg Centuries (1559–1574), a history that criticizedthe Roman Catholic Church. Baronius’s monumental work Annalesecclesiastici (1598–1607) was written as a response to the MagdeburgCenturies and made extensive use of previously ignored collections ofRoman manuscripts. This publication earned Baronius the title“Father of Ecclesiastical History,” and he gained a reputation for thor-ough, penetrating research. Baronius’s quest for accuracy, as well asthe regard for the catacombs instilled in him by Neri, led him to thecatacombs as a frequent subject of study. His research was almost ex-clusively text-based and served the Roman Catholic Church and theCounter-Reformation.

In 1578 an intact Christian catacomb containing frescoes, sarcop-hagi, and inscriptions was discovered on the Via Salaria Nuova. Pre-viously known catacombs had been stripped of relics and artifacts anddid not contain as extensive or detailed frescoes as the newly discoveredcatacomb contained. The discovery captured the imagination of thepublic and scholars alike who visited the catacomb in great numbers.This catacomb, strikingly painted with Old and New Testament scenes,seemed to many a city buried beneath Rome and gave rise to the termRoma sotterranea.12 The discovery is heralded by later scholars as theevent that marked the “rediscovery” of the catacombs and the “birth”of Christian archaeology.

12 The catacomb on the Via Salaria Nuova was incorrectly identified as the cata-comb of Priscilla by Baronius and as the Ostriano cemetery by Alfonso Chaconand later by Bosio. Soon after its discovery, the catacomb was buried by a land-slide, precipitated by the continued extraction of pozzolana (a volcanic rock).Antonio Bosio, who was only three years old at the time of the initial discovery,was later frustrated by his inability to visit the catacomb and claimed that thediggers who were trapped in the collapse received just retribution. James Steven-son, The Catacombs: Life and Death in Early Christianity (Nashville: T. Nelson,1985), 51. The cemetery was rediscovered in 1921 by Enrico Josi and again mis-takenly identified, this time as the catacomb of the Giordani. The catacomb wasrecently identified as a private cemetery and is now called the AnonymousCemetery of the Via Anapo. Philippe Pergola, Le catacombe romane: storia etopografia (Rome: Carocci editore, 1998), 125–30; Fabrizio Mancinelli, Cata-combs and Basilicas: The Early Christians in Rome (Florence: Scala, 1981),45–46. Various identifications of this catacomb have persisted, even in recentworks, e.g., W. H. C. Frend, The Archaeology of Early Christianity (Minneapolis,Minn.: Fortress Press, 1996); Stevenson, The Catacombs; and Gaston, “BritishTravellers,” 144–65.


This “rediscovery of the catacombs” was presented as almost provi-dential for the Roman Church, which now had a well-known, popularexample in the catacomb frescoes of the early Christian use of images.The Council of Trent in 1563, just fifteen years earlier, had confirmedthe value of the visual image, and the evidence from the catacombsoften took center stage in Reformation debates about sacred imagery.The idea of a providential “rediscovery” and its impact was likelypopularized by later scholars, especially de Rossi, who identifiedMay 31, 1578, as the “birth date of Christian archaeology.” The firstmention of the archaeological evidence from the catacombs in treatisesdealing with images is in Baronius’s Annales ecclesiastici (1598–1607),twenty years after the discovery of the catacomb on the Via SalariaNuova.13

Among those who kept alive the newly awakened interest in cata-combs were the Spanish Dominican Alfonso Chacon (1540–1599),known as Ciacconio, and the Flemish laymen Philip van Winghe(d. 1592)14 and Jean L’Heureux, known as Macarius. This “nobletriumvirate”15 documented the catacomb on the Via Salaria Nuovaas well as the catacombs of Priscilla, Ss. Pietro and Marcellino, S. Val-entino, and S. Callisto, which was recorded at this time as CoemeteriumZephyrini. As scholars with antiquarian interests, their work focusedon early Christian burial practices in a comparative perspective.

Although Chacon’s annotated interpretations were not very accu-rate and often amusing in their misinformation, much of his work wasincorporated in Bosio’s later work. His copyists frequently employedthe artistic vernacular of the day, making entertaining images thatwere not particularly conducive to serious study.16 Chacon’s colleaguePhilip van Winghe, aware of the deficiencies in his friend’s work, repro-duced and revised the material more accurately. Unfortunately, vanWinghe died prematurely in 1592 without having completed his work,which was not preserved in its entirety.

13 Gaston, “British Travellers,” 145, n. 4. See also Oryshkevich, “History of theRoman Catacombs.”

14 See Cornelis Schuddeboom, Philips van Winghe (1560–1592) en het ontstaan vande Christelijke archeologie (Haren: Geldermalsen Publications, 1996).

15 Giovanni Battista de Rossi, La Roma sotterranea cristiani descritta ed illustrate(Rome, 1864), vol. I, 14.

16 See Anthony Grafton, ed., Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and RenaissanceCulture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).


L’Heureux authored an important study of the monuments but itwas not published until 1856 by the eminent Christian archaeologistand Jesuit scholar Father Raffaele Garrucci (1812–1885),17 and thuswas not an important influence on contemporary study.

Antonio Bosio

Antonio Bosio (1575–1629) is regarded as the “Columbus of RomaSotterranea” – the first person to extensively explore the catacombsthemselves as opposed to previous scholars who explored texts forcatacomb references. He was enthusiastically devoted to the study ofthe catacombs and investigated them tirelessly, although he did not ac-tually conduct excavations or explore obstructed passages.

Bosio’s extensive explorations enabled him to amass a wealth of newinformation and earned him the tribute of numerous later scholars.Despite Bosio’s extensive investigations, he was able to identify onlya very few Christian monuments by name and trace their history be-cause of the lack of adequate topographical evidence.

Although Bosio is considered by many to be the first to approachthe study the catacombs “scientifically,” his main concern was for thespiritual value of the monuments he was investigating and this concernis apparent in his work. He considered the catacombs to be tangibleevidence of the early Church of the martyrs and of Rome’s status assuccessor to the early Church.

Bosio, as well as many scholars who followed him and emulatedhis example, considered textual sources almost exclusively in the inter-pretation of archaeological material, and curious omissions in hiswork indicate that he recorded only material that served his devotionalpurpose and affirmed the descent of the current Roman CatholicChurch from the early Church of the martyrs. He did not record all ofthe paintings or sculptural fragments he surely saw. For example, heneglected to describe or copy in detail the famed frescoes and stuccoesof the orans figures, the Virgin with child and prophet, and the GoodShepherd in the catacomb of Priscilla, although he and his illustrator

17 Hagioglypta sive picturae et sculpturae sacrae antiquiores praesertim quae Romaereperiuntur explicatae a Joanne L’Heureux (Macario), edited by Raffaele Gar-rucci (Lutetiae Parisorum: J. A. Toulouse, 1856).


“Toccafondo” clearly saw them, as evidenced by their autographssprawled over the frescoes in the catacomb.

Bosio had not completed his monumental work Roma sotterranea atthe time of his death in 1629. In 1634, Roma sotterranea was published,after having been edited, emended, and cut by Giovanni Severani.18

Because Bosio’s original manuscripts were preserved, the nature of theedits to the published version can be determined. A section that Bosiointended to include but that Severani cut clearly focused on Bosio’s in-tent to document the early Church as a means to justify contemporarypractice.19 Severani also seems to have omitted or simplified sectionsthat Bosio, in his zeal of completeness, had included but would likelyhave provided ammunition for Protestant polemicists.20 The Italianedition of Roma Sotterranea edited by Severani was not widely known.A Latin edition prepared by Paolo Aringhi and published in 1651 waswidely disseminated throughout Europe. Aringhi made numerouschanges to the work infusing it with a distinctly polemicist Counter-Reformation tone and anti-Jewish sentiment that were not consistentwith Bosio’s original.

Bosio’s work had a great influence on later scholars, and he was par-ticularly admired by Giovanni Battista de Rossi, who is perhaps themost well known of all scholars who have studied the catacombs.

Giovanni Battista de Rossi

The nineteenth century was witness to a veritable explosion of interestin the catacombs, both for the purposes of “scientific” study and forcurrent religious debates being carried out in academic and popularliterature.

Giovanni Battista de Rossi (1822–1894) is renowned as the fatherof modern scientific Christian archaeology. De Rossi was appointedby his friend and teacher the Jesuit scholar Father Giuseppe Marchi

18 The frontispiece is imprinted with the date 1632, the date that printing was initi-ated.

19 Simon Ditchfield, “Text Before Trowel: Antonio Bosio’s Roma SotterraneaRevisited,” in The Church Retrospective (ed. R. N. Swanson; Studies in ChurchHistory 33; Woodbridge, Suffolk, U.K., Ecclesiastical History Society, 1997),353.

20 Ibid., 356.


(1795–1860) to create a corpus of Christian monuments. This projectentailed the systematic cataloging of Christian epigraphy, a projectthat de Rossi envisioned would, for the first time, partially reconcile itwith topographical criteria.

De Rossi contributed to more than two hundred publications, manyof which have had a lasting influence on catacomb scholarship andare still consulted today. In collaboration with his brother Michele,a mathematician and geologist, de Rossi documented a detailed topo-graphical study of the Roman catacombs published in three volumesentitled La Roma sotterranea cristiana (1864–1877), a name he likelyselected in tribute to Bosio. De Rossi inspired and provided the proto-type for further topographical study with the publication of his Bullet-tino di Archeologia Cristiana, which documented the fruits of his manyyears of laborious research and was published in a simultaneous Frenchedition, which contributed to the internationalization of catacombstudies at this time.

De Rossi figured largely in the establishment of the Pontifical Com-mission of Sacred Archaeology on January 6, 1852, by Pope Pius IX,who supported and favored de Rossi. The commission institutedstrong measures to control exploration of the Christian cemeteries andto end violations of the catacombs, and sponsored continued studyand excavation by de Rossi and others.

De Rossi’s extraordinary popularity in Rome and among inter-national scholars, his extensive publications, and his labors in the ser-vice of Christian archaeology stimulated great interest in the subject.He befriended, mentored, and inspired the work of many, includingJ. Spencer Northcote and W. P. Brownlow, who first made de Rossi’sRoma sotterranea available in English.21

De Rossi’s protégé Orazio Marucchi popularized archaeology in thelater nineteenth century with his prolific writing on the catacombs,22

and another distinguished follower of de Rossi, Mariano Armellini

21 J. Spencer Northcote and W. P. Brownlow, Roma Sotterranea or Some Account ofthe Roman Catacombs, Especially of the Cemetery of San Callisto, Complied fromthe Works of Commendatore de Rossi with the Consent of the Author (London:Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1869).

22 Orazio Marucchi, Le catacombe romane secondo gli ultimi studi e le piu recentiscoperte: compendio della Roma Sotterranea con molte piante parziali dei cimiterie riproduzioni di monumenti. (Rome: Desclee, Lefebvre, 1903); Le catacomberomane. Opera postuma. Preface and biography by Enrico Josi (Rome, 1933).


(1852–1896), made notable contributions.23 In 1903 Josef Wilpert(1857–1944), also a student and successor of de Rossi, published acomprehensive documentation of the paintings and sarcophagi of thecatacombs. In spite of some limitations, his work long served as a basicresearch tool.24

The Nineteen-Century Early Christian Novel

In addition to being the focus of intense scholarly attention in Italy andabroad during the nineteenth century, the catacombs were also thefocus of popular interest and made appearances in much popular re-ligious literature of the period, especially in Victorian England. Relig-ious authors used the wealth of archaeological information obtainedfrom the prolific discoveries and research of the nineteenth century forpolemical purposes. They viewed the Early Church of the catacombsas a legitimizing predecessor to their own doctrines and practices.25

The catacombs easily captured the attention of a Victorian publicfascinated with death and pleasurable terror, and several religiousnovels based on the early Christians of the catacombs and the cata-comb martyrs became extremely popular. The authors of these novels,almost all clergymen themselves, were intentional participants in seri-ous current theological debates, and at the same time, they appealed togeneral readers with detailed, sensationalized descriptions of deathand torture. These novels address religious and social issues of greatimportance at a time when there existed a major rift in the EnglishCatholic church between those who favored the Roman Catholic tradi-tion and ritual and those who supported Liberal Catholicism. Thenovels are also examples of the vehemence of religious polemic and the

23 Mariano Armellini, Gli antichi cimiteri cristiani di Roma e d’Italia (Rome: Tipo-grafia Poliglotta, 1893).

24 Josef Wilpert, Die Malereien der Katakomben Roms (Freiburg im Breisgau: Her-dersche Verlagshandlung, 1903). See Reiner Sörries, “De Rossi, Wilpert und diechristliche Archäologie um 1888” and “Die Malereien der Katakomben Roms(1886–1903)” in Josef Wilpert: Ein Leben im Dienste der christlichen Archäologie,1857–1944 (Würzburg: Bergstadtverlag Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn, 1998), 27–34,35–55.

25 Wendel W. Meyer, “The Phial of Blood Controversy and the Decline of the Lib-eral Catholic Movement,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46, no. 1 (1995):76–77.


“blatant rhetorical strategies by which paper opponents were demol-ished”26 that characterize most of the popular religious press of thisperiod.

The three most important and popular novels in this category areHypatia, or New Foes With an Old Face (1852–1853), by CharlesKingsley; Fabiola, or The Church of the Catacombs (1854), by NicholasWiseman; and Callista: A Tale of the Third Century, by John HenryNewman (1855). These three novels are similar in their use of a histori-cal setting of martyrdom and the Early Church and their distinctlypolemical, propagandist tone.27

Charles Kingsley28 used a different approach than most of the auth-ors of Early Christian novels. He used the example of history in hisnovel not to recall a venerable past but rather as a negative example ofthe corruption of the past to compel his readers to find their own jus-tifications for their faith in the present instead of looking to the past.His heroine, Hypatia, is murdered after her acceptance of Christin fifth-century Alexandria (when Christianity was already the statereligion). Kingsley used the death of Hypatia to question the value theRoman Catholic Church placed on the patristic past, which Kingsleybelieved to be corrupt.29

Nicholas Wiseman claimed that the nineteenth-century RomanChurch was consistent with the Church of the catacombs.30 Fabiolawas published in the series the Catholic Popular Library, which may

26 David J. DeLaura, Review of Gains and Losses: Novels of Faith and Doubt in Vic-torian England, by Robert Lee Wolfe, Nineteenth-Century Fiction 33, no. 2(1978): 251–55.

27 Leon B. Litvack, “Callista, Martyrdom, and the Early Christian Novel in theVictorian Age,” Nineteen-Century Contexts 17, no. 2 (1993): 164.

28 When Kingsley wrote Hypatia, he was the Rector of Eversley Church and wascommitted to social reform and the Christian Socialist movement. He laterbecame Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge (1859–1869), wasappointed chaplain to Queen Victoria in 1859, became the private tutor to thefuture Edward VII in 1861, and was appointed the canon of Westminster Abbeyin 1873.

29 Litvack, “Callista,” 164–65. It has been suggested that the murder of the histori-cal Hypatia of Alexandria, a mathametician and Platonic philosopher, may havebeen a political assassination as much as it was the work of a Christian mob act-ing against a well-known pagan. Maria Dzielska, Hypatia of Alexandria (Cam-bridge: Harvard University Press, 1995). Kingsley’s fictionalization of Hypatia’slast-minute conversion has no known historical basis.

30 At this time, it was commonly believed that the catacombs were monuments ofthe first century, an idea that has since been disproven.


have been originated for the purpose of refuting Kingsley’s version ofthe early Church.31 Wiseman wrote Fabiola to respond to Kingsley’snegative portrayal of the early church in Hypatia and also to promoteEnglish Roman Catholicism. Wiseman had been made the Archbishopof Westminster in 1850 when the Roman Catholic hierarchy was re-stored in England. In the novel, Fabiola, a pagan in Rome, converts toChristianity after witnessing martyrdoms, which Wiseman describes ingruesome detail. Wiseman’s novel enjoyed immense popularity, prob-ably due in large part to the graphic, sensationalized descriptions ofthe martyrdoms, and went through numerous editions, translationsinto other languages, and even an adaptation for the stage, The Youth-ful Martyrs of Rome by Frederick Oakeley.32

John Henry Newman believed that the sufferings of the martyrswere emblematic of the trials that all Christians must undergo to gainsalvation, and some of the themes in Callista probably represented hisown painful struggle in converting from Anglicanism.33 Newman wroteCallista (at Wiseman’s request and published anonymously in theCatholic Popular Library) in what seems to be almost direct responseto Kingsley’s Hypatia.34 Newman details Callista’s spiritual struggleleading to her conversion and her eventual martyrdom. Callista alsoenjoyed great popularity and also was adapted for the stage in TheConvert Martyr by Frederick Husenbeth.35

31 Charlotte E. Crawford, “Newman’s Callista and the Catholic Popular Library,”Modern Language Review 45 (1950): 219, cited in Susann Dorman, “Hypatiaand Callista: The Initial Skirmish between Kingsley and Newman,” Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 34. no. 2 (1979): 173–93.

32 Litvack, “Callista” 165–67.33 Ibid., 162–63. Newman was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1825, and he was

a well-known scholar at Oxford. His conversion to Roman Catholicism in 1845was shocking because he had been the central figure the Tractarian Movement(or Oxford Movement, 1833–1845), which sought to affirm the High Church ofEngland as the middle ground between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.He was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1847, and in 1879 he was made a cardinalby Pope Leo XIII.

34 See Dorman, “Hypatia and Callista”, for a comprehensive comparison of Hy-patia and Callista.

35 Litvack, “Callista” 167–70.


Nineteenth-Century Popular Religious Press

In addition to writing extraordinarily successful Early Christian novels,Newman and Wiseman played important roles in the popular religiouspress of the period. The Roman catacombs were the subject of manypopular articles published between 1848 and the mid-1860s in TheRambler, a publication of the Liberal Catholic Movement (and of whichNewman was briefly the editor in 1859); the Edinburgh Review; and theDublin Review, founded by Wiseman.36 The debate between the Ultra-montanes, who advocated traditional Roman devotions, centralized ec-clesiastical authority, and veneration of saintly relics, and the LiberalCatholics, who advocated intellectual freedom and saw scholarly andscientific inquiry as independent of religious oversight, reached a heightin the “Phial of Blood Controversy,”37 which was largely carried out inthe pages of The Rambler and in which the principles of scientific in-quiry were tested against the authority of the Church.

Graves of the martyrs in the catacombs were officially identified byglass or ceramic containers of blood affixed to the plaster outside ofthe graves per a decree of 1668 issued by a commission appointed byClement IX. A question emerged in the mid-nineteenth century aboutwhether these containers held the actual blood of the martyr, collectedat the time of the martyrdom, or instead contained eucharistic wine, aswas commonly found in such containers in ordinary graves. The sug-gestion that the containers supposed to identify the graves of the mar-tyrs held only eucharistic wine called into question the authenticity ofthe relics of the martyrs and sparked a vicious debate.

In 1860, Richards Simpson, then editor of The Rambler, suggestedthat the question could be answered by a microscopic investigation of

36 See Joseph Altholz, The Liberal Catholic Movement in England: The Ramblerand Its Contributors, 1848–1864 (London: Burns & Oates, 1962); id., The Reli-gious Press in Britain, 1760–1900 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1989),99–102. Mary Heimann, Catholic Devotion in Victorian England (Oxford andNew York: Oxford University Press, 1995) suggests that the most vocal propon-ents on each side of the debate between the Ultramontanes and Liberal Catho-lics likely viewed the debate in a larger context than that of England alone andwere either foreign or outsiders in some other way.

37 I am grateful to The Rev. Wendel W. Meyer, Ph.D., for providing me with an off-print of his article “The Phial of Blood Controversy and the Decline of the Lib-eral Catholic Movement,” which first introduced me to this fascinating debateand on which this discussion relies.


the contents of the containers. Although this type of testing would notbe given a second thought today, at the time, it was a daring suggestionthat seemed to many people like “an attempt to test the Church’s auth-ority by chemical analysis.”38 A chemical analysis of the contents ofsixty of these containers from the catacombs was eventually published.All of the contents were found to be neither blood nor wine but insteadiron rust deposits that had effloresced from the glass.39 In the con-tinued debate that followed, many of the parties, which now includedeven de Rossi in Rome, were hesitant to overtly question the Church’sauthority in the name of scientific inquiry.40 In 1863, despite the scien-tific evidence to the contrary, the 1668 decree was reaffirmed by theRoman Catholic Church and signaled in many ways the downfall ofLiberal Catholicism in nineteenth-century England and the inabilityof scientific evidence to stand up to the power of the Church.

Replicas of the Catacombsat the Turn of the Twentieth Century

The extraordinary popular interest in the catacombs during the nine-teenth century makes it likely that knowledge of the catacombs waswidespread both outside of Italy and outside of the academic world.This widespread popular interest is likely responsible in part for twointeresting cases in which replicas of the Roman catacombs were pro-duced at the turn of the twentieth century with the cooperation of thePontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology.41

In Valkenburg, The Netherlands, exact replicas of sections of thecatacombs of Priscilla, Domitilla, and S. Sebastiano were created in

38 Ibid., 86.39 Today, scholars commonly agree that the containers held perfume. Ibid., 89, 93.40 J. S. Northcote, an former Anglican priest and convert to the Church of Rome

who is well known for compiling and publishing the English version of de Rossi’sRoma Sotterranea, wrote a popular series of articles on the Roman catacombsfor The Rambler in 1848–1849 and was initially a strong supporter of the publi-cation. He later joined the opponents of The Rambler when the editors could not“appreciate the dilemma that Northcote felt so keenly, the need to balance thesearch for truth with concern for the beliefs of the faithful.” Ibid., 87–88.

41 These instances of replication of the Roman catacombs in Valkenburg and in Re-iman’s murals are the subject of a larger research project I am currently under-taking.


abandoned limestone quarries. The creators of these replicas sought toevoke the religious experience of the Roman catacombs and had finan-cial purposes as well in creating a tourist attraction and providingwork for the unemployed. They went to much effort, in cooperationwith Roman researchers, to make their replicas as exact as possible.Orazzio Marucchi, de Rossi’s protégé, was present at the opening ofthe Valkenburg catacombs in July 1910. The Valkenburg catacombs re-main a popular tourist attraction to this day.42

Ivan Tsvetaev (1847–1913),43 founder of the Pushkin Museum, com-missioned artist Fyodor Reiman in the last decade of the nineteenthcentury to make exact copies of paintings in the Christian catacombsfor the founding collections of Pushkin State Museum of Fine Artsand possibly for a never-published atlas of early Christian frescoes.44

Reiman spent 12 years in the catacombs making his watercolor copiesof the paintings and nearly lost his eyesight in the process. Interest-ingly, Reiman’s watercolors were never exhibited until 2000, when theexhibit “Under the Vaults of the Roman Catacombs” was shown at thePushkin Museum in honor of the Papal Jubilee.45

42 Joep Didden, “The Catacombs of Valkenburg in Limburg,” SOK-Mededelin-gen 26 (1996). See also the website of the Valkenburg catacombs, http://www.katakomben.nl/.

43 Tsvetaev was the son of a priest and himself studied in the seminary at Vladimir.He was a professor of antiquities and the Latin language in Moscow Universityand is considered the first Russian specialist in Latin epigraphy. Tsvetaevfounded the Pushkin Museum (which opened in 1912 as the Moscow Museumof Fine Arts and was originally part of Moscow University) on the model of theCabinet of Fine Arts and Antiquities of the Moscow University, which con-tained scientifically precise casts and copies of ancient sculpture and art for edu-cational purposes. “Museum History,” The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts,1998, http://www.museum.ru/gmii/defengl.htm, viewed 20 March 2005.

44 Reiman’s watercolors were not published, and I found mention of the factthat they were commissioned for an atlas of Christian frescoes only in the Bol-lettino di informazione of the Italian Embassy in Russia, 28 February 2000,http://www.ambrusital.mid.ru/AnbRusItal/it/bull8.htm#14, viewed 18 July2001.

45 Unfortunately, no catalog of this exhibition was published. Personal correspon-dence, M. Axenenko and T. Vorobjeva, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art,March 7, 2001.


The Study of the Jewish Catacombs

I discuss the Roman Jewish catacombs separately rather than incor-porate them into the previous discussion primarily to point out somedifferences in how they have been studied and because they have beentreated separately in many ways by researchers, even up to the presentday. There are only six known Jewish catacombs in Rome, and onlyone of those (the Monteverde catacomb) was known prior to the mid-nineteenth century. The Jewish catacombs are not well known outsideof academia, and certainly never enjoyed the immense popular interestthat the Christian catacombs did in the nineteenth century. Althoughthe fact that there are so many fewer Jewish catacombs than Christiancatacombs accounts in part for a seeming lack of attention to the Jew-ish catacombs, the fact that their investigation did not bear as heavilyon modern Judaism as the Christian catacombs did on modern RomanCatholicism likely accounts for many of the differences in how theyhave been studied, perceived, and presented.

There is no known documentation of pilgrimages to the Jewish cata-combs after active burials cease,46 and they certainly did not enjoy thecontinued maintenance and refurbishing that the Christian catacombsdid before the removal of the relics to city churches.

Before the first discovery of a Jewish catacomb (that of Monteverdein 1602), Jewish epigraphy was recorded in the sixteenth centuryby van Winghe, Chacon, and Claude Menestrier.47 This epigraphy was

46 However, the Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela seems to indicate that there was anawareness of the Monteverde catacomb in the twelfth century. Benjamin ofTudela was a rabbi from Spain who undertook extensive travels to southernEurope and Palestine in 1165–1173. He noted the existence of a “cave in a hill onthe bank of the Tiber” in which the ten Jewish martyrs were buried. This obser-vation could indicate that in 1166 Roman Jews knew of an ancient Jewish under-ground cemetery in this location. Marcus Nathan Adler, trans., The Itinerary ofBenjamin of Tudela (London: Henry Frowde, 1907). Caution must be taken inviewing this itinerary (or any others) as historical “fact” as it is replete with mir-acle stories, legends, and embellishments. However, it is descended from a longtradition of rabbinic writing, an important feature of which is the affirmation orvalidation of the present by association with significant events of antiquity.Leonard Victor Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of CulturalInteraction in the Roman Diaspora (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 3–5.

47 Cod. Vat. Lat. 10545, fol. 150, cited in H. J. Leon, “The Jewish Catacombs andInscriptions of Rome: An Account of Their Discovery and Subsequent History,”Hebrew Union College Annual 5 (1928): 299–314


probably found above ground and is no longer extant. Almost a cen-tury later, in 1685, Jacob Spon published the Miscellanea eruditae anti-quitatis, which included three Jewish epitaphs from ancient Rome, twoof which were those originally recorded by de Winghe.

Bosio initially discovered the Monteverde catacomb in 1602, buthe did not document it extensively, likely because it did not provideevidence consistent with his devotional purpose. In the few pageshe does devote to a description of the catacomb, he states that heincludes a description of a Jewish cemetery in a work on sacred cem-eteries “so that it will be known that our cemeteries have never beenprofaned nor contaminated by the bodies of either Hebrews or Gen-tiles.”48

After Bosio’s discovery of the Monteverde catacomb, few effortswere later made to locate this first and only recorded Roman Jewishcatacomb. It was not until the first half of the eighteenth century thatinterest in Monteverde was reawakened, when Giuseppe Bianchiniclaimed to have entered the necropolis with the archaeologist CardinalDomenico Passionei.49 Subsequently, Gaetano Migliore, probablyafter the mid-eighteenth century, visited the catacomb but was forcedto withdraw because of continuous rock slides. In an amusing, candidaccount, he divulges that in spite of the imminent danger, he exploredthe catacomb in order to ingratiate himself with scholars.50

For nearly the next one hundred years, interest in the Monteverdecatacomb diminished to the point that even its location was unknown.In 1843, Father Giuseppe Marchi (one of de Rossi’s mentors) tried tolocate the entrance to Monteverde, but his efforts proved fruitless. In1879, the well-known Christian archaeologist Mariano Armellini de-clared that he had found the entrance to Monteverde but that it wasblocked with soil, which had to be removed. Nikolaus Müller, who waslater to become the principal investigator of Monteverde, failed tolocate this burial ground in 1884 and again in 1888. M. Seymour deRicci, a French archaeologist, also tried and failed in his efforts to lo-cate Monteverde in 1900 and 1904.51

48 Quoted in Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome, 10.49 Leon, “Jewish Catacombs,” 303, believes Passionei did not visit Monteverde and

instead copied Bosio’s description and illustrations.50 Cod. Vat. Lat. 9143, fol. 127, quoted in H. J. Leon, Jews of Ancient Rome (Phil-

adelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1960).51 Leon, “Jewish Catacombs,” 306–307. In his New Tales of Old Rome (Boston:

Houghton Mifflin, 1901), Rodolfo Lanciani failed to distinguish this burial spot


In the last half of the nineteenth century, in addition to investigatingChristian cemeteries, the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeol-ogy also supported the exploration of Jewish catacombs. These effortswere probably influenced by Marchi and his encouragement of thesearch to rediscover Monteverde. Marchi’s interest in Jewish cata-combs was based in the desire to better understand early Christianityrather than to understand the Jewish community of ancient Rome.52

A second Jewish cemetery, the Vigna Randanini, was discovered in avineyard in 1857.53 Excavations were made by the owner, GiuseppeRandanini, and later by his son, Ignazio Randanini. Raffaele Garrucci(1812–1885) explored and published a more detailed description ofVigna Randanini54 than did his predecessor E. Herzog.55 Almost three-quarters of a century later, Father Jean Baptiste Frey explored thiscatacomb.56

from a Christian cemetery because of the absence of ritual symbols on the frag-ments found in the earth and the presence of so many identified catacombshoneycombing the area.

52 Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome, 32. Rutgers suggests that Marchi be-lieved the Christian catacombs were based on the Jewish catacombs and saw this“as an illustration of the typically Christian view that Jesus had come not to ab-rogate the Law, but rather to perfect it. … [T]he architects of the Christain cata-combs brought to perfection a mode of burial that had remained imperfectamong the people who had invented it.”

53 Orazio Marucchi, Breve guida del cimitero giudaico di Vigna Randanini (Rome,1884) dates the discovery of the catacomb to 1857 but Leon, “Jewish Cata-combs,” 309, gives the date May 1, 1859, for the discovery as does Jean BaptisteFrey, Corpus inscriptionum judiacarum (Vatican City, 1936–1952), 53. Marucchigives 1859 as the date of the first excavations, likely referring to Garrucci’s workrather than the informal explorations of the owners after discovering the cata-comb in 1857. Visconti mentions in his 1861 article on the excavations of theVigna Randanini that the Jewish hypogeum had been “discovered in these lastyears.” “Scavi di Vigna Randanini,” Bulletino dell’instituto de corrispondenzaarcheologica (1861): 16. David Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe. Vol-ume 2, The City of Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 173,follows Marucchi’s dates of 1857 for the discovery and 1859 for the excavation.

54 Cimitero degli antichi Ebrei scoperto recentemente in Vigna Randanini (Rome,1862); Dissertazioni archeologiche di vario argomento (Rome, 1864–1865).

55 “Le catacombe degli Ebrei in Vigna Rondanini [sic],” Bulletino dell’instituto decorrispondenza archeologica 1861: 91–104.

56 “Nouvelles inscriptions inédites de la catacombe juive de la via Appia,” Rivistadi archeologia cristiana 10 (1933): 27–50. Frey’s monumental Corpus inscriptio-num judiacarum was long considered the authoritative reference on the Jewishcatacomb inscriptions. Harry Leon updated and corrected the Jewish catacomb


The next unexpected discovery of a Jewish catacomb, that of the ViaLabicana, now called Via Casilina, was made in late 1882 by OrazioMarucchi, who was just commencing his notable career. Aware that hehad come upon an ancient Jewish cemetery because of the presence ofa menorah, Marucchi apprized his mentor, de Rossi, of his discovery.After viewing the site, de Rossi realized the importance of the dis-covery and urged Marucchi to publish a report on this catacomb.57

The investigation of the Jewish cemetery of Via Labicana/Casilinawas supported by the Pontifical Commission, as were the investi-gations of the small catacombs of the Vigna Cimarra and the ViaAppia Pignatelli (which at that time was mistakenly considered to beJewish), discovered by quarriers on the property of the Prince of Tor-lonia near the Cafarella58 and explored by Nikolaus Müller. Müllerwent on to become the major explorer of Jewish catacombs in Italy,and at the behest of the Commission investigated the Monteverdecatacomb, which had been exposed by a landslide in the early years ofthe twentieth century.

Because Müller considered the exploration of Monteverde to be ofthe utmost urgency, as did the Pontifical Commission, he conducteda series of excavations with the permission of the proprietors of theestate in 1904–1905 and in the spring and autumn of 1906. The 1906excavations were funded by the Berlin Society for the Advancement ofKnowledge of Judaism. Müller had to abandon excavations in 1909,and his death in 1912 prevented him from completing his publicationof this catacomb and compiling a complete description of the artifactsretrieved during his explorations.

Müller had given Marucchi his incomplete Italian manuscript in1912 before his death so that Marucchi could record it in the Acts ofthe Papal Academy. He had left his other records and German manu-script to his brothers, his legal heirs, who turned the material over toa scholarly committee at the New Testament Seminars, at the Royal

inscriptions from Frey’s corpus (and followed Frey’s numbering of the inscrip-tions) in the Jews of Ancient Rome, and more recently, David Noy’s JewishInscriptions of Western Europe has become a standard reference for Jewish cata-comb inscriptions, updating and correcting previous work as well as supplyingdetailed bibliography for each inscription.

57 Orazio Marucchi, “Di un nuova cimitero giudaico scoperto sulla via Labicana,”Dissertazioni della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, ser. 2, t. 2(1884): 497–532.

58 Frey, CIJ, 50.


University of Berlin. The Berlin Society for the Advancement of Knowl-edge of Judaism, at the committee’s request, commissioned NikosBees, Müller’s assistant, to complete and publish Müller’s Germanmanuscript.59 Marucchi published Müller’s Italian manuscript in 1915,adhering exactly to the original.60

Toward the end of 1913, a new section of Monteverde was revealed bychance. Baron Rodolfo Kanzler, Secretary of the Commission of SacredArcheology, later wrote the official report61 on the investigation of thisregion by inspectors Enrico Josi and Giorgio Schneider Graziosi.Josi and Schneider Graziosi were requested by the Pontifical Commis-sion of Sacred Archaeology, in agreement with the Rome Superintend-ency of Monuments, to remove all of the artifacts because this newsection of the catacomb was in such imminent danger of collapse.

One of the final important dates in the history of Monteverde was1919, significant for the investigation of the last remaining section byRoberto Paribeni.62 The 24 inscriptions retrieved from this explorationraised the total number actually discovered in the Monteverde cata-comb over the years to over 200.63 This is the largest number ofdefinitely Jewish inscriptions retrieved from any Roman catacomb. OnOctober 14, 1928, a devastating collapse occurred, destroying the cata-comb completely for all practical purposes. The area is now coveredwith apartment buildings.

In 1918 a Jewish catacomb was accidentally disclosed by laborersstrengthening the foundations of the stables on the grounds of the VillaTorlonia on the Via Nomentana. De Rossi had predicted in 1865such a discovery when he commented on the fact that if the aggerwith synagogue nearby mentioned in the Publius Corfidius Signinus

59 Nikolaus Müller and Nikos Bees, Die Inschriften der jüdischen Katakombe amMonteverde (Leipzig: O. Harrasowitz, 1919).

60 “Il cimitero degli antichi Ebrei posto sulla Via Portuense,” Dissertazioni dellaPontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, ser. II, 12 (1915): 205–318. Maruc-chi added to the end of Müller’s publication a note and an appendix of photos ofinscriptions (which had been sent by Müller without instructions about wherethey should be included).

61 “Scoperta di una nouva regione del cimitero giudaico della Via Portuense.”Nuovo bullettino di archeologia cristiana 21 (1915): 152–157.

62 “Via Portuense. Inscrizioni del cimitero giudaico di Monteverde,” Notizie degliscavi di Antichità 46 (1919): 60–70.

63 Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, 2: 1–172, includes 202 inscriptions and 56 fragmentswith letters or symbols. Leon, Jews, 74, recorded 206 inscriptions.


inscription64 was the well-known Esquiline agger (as generally agreedupon by scholars), a search should be made for Jewish cemeteries onthe Via Tiburtina or Via Nomentana. True to de Rossi’s prescience,more than fifty years later Jewish catacombs were discovered under theVilla Torlonia on the Via Nomentana. In 1919 the Prince of Torlonia,65

who was also a senator, financed excavations under the technical direc-tion of engineer Agostino Valente, assisted by the Roman Soprinten-denza of excavations, represented by Roberto Paribeni. Several yearslater, Hermann W. Beyer and Hans Lietzmann explored these burialgrounds more fully and recorded in greater detail their findings.66

Many of the artifacts from the excavations of the Jewish catacombssponsored by the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archeology wereremoved and placed in the Sala Giudaica, a specially designed room inthe Museo Cristiano Lateranense.67 The documentation of an ex-hibition of the material in the Sala Giudaica concluded with the obser-vation that “all the scholars would be grateful to the Prefecture of theApostolic Palaces and to the administration of the museums for havingadded this very important epigraphic group to the notable ChristianLateran collection, an appropriate location because of the close rela-tionships between the Jewish monuments and those of primitive Chris-tianity.”68 This statement could be said to characterize much of theway that the Jewish catacombs have historically been studied – theyhave been primarily studied from the perspective of their relationshipto early Christianity and not in their own right. The exploration of theRoman Jewish catacombs has often been closely tied to the efforts of

64 Frey, CIJ, inscription 531, 391; De Rossi, Bullettino di archeologia cristiana 3,no. 12 (1865): 95. This non-Jewish Latin epitaph is dedicated to Publius Cor-fidius Signinus, who sold fruits in a stall near the proseucha (synagogue) next tothe agger. This epitaph attests to the fact that a synagogue existed at that lo-cation and could have been that of the Siburesians (residents of the Subura), atleast four members of which were buried in the Torlonia catacombs, the closestburial grounds for this congregation.

65 The history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Roman archaeology appearsto be closely interwoven with the Princes of Torlonia, particularly the exca-vations involving the burial finds of the Jews of ancient Rome.

66 Hermann W. Beyer and Hans Lietzmann, Die jüdische Katacombe der Villa Tor-lonia in Rom, Jüdische Denkmäler, vol. 1 (Berlin: W. de Gruyter and Co., 1930).

67 The Christian Museum was founded in 1854 by Pius IX in the Lateran Palaceand was moved in 1963 to the Vatican Museum as the Museo Pio Cristiano.

68 Giorgio Schneider-Graziosi, “La nuova sala giudaica nel Museo Lateranense,”Nuovo bullettino di archeologia christiana 21 (1915): 56.


the individuals who owned the land under which the catacombs werefound (e.g., the Randaninis69 and the Prince of Torlonia), a situationquite different from the Christian catacombs, which are often associ-ated with martyrial churches and owned by the Church rather than byany individual.

The Catacombs in the Twentieth Century

In 1929, the excavation and preservation of the catacombs of Romeand Italy were officially entrusted to the Vatican in accordance withArticle 33 of the Concordat, one of the three sections of the LateranPacts of 1929 dealing with the Roman Catholic Church’s ecclesiasticalrelations with the Italian state. According to the Concordat, all of thecatacombs of Rome and Italy were directly administered by the Pon-tifical Commission of Sacred Archeology.

In addition to extensive work on the Christian catacombs during thetwentieth century, the Pontifical Commission, restored and system-atized the Jewish catacomb of Randanini and cleared and thoroughlyexplored the catacombs under the Villa Torlonia.

The discovery in 1955–1956 of a small pagan-Christian catacomb onthe Via Latina was a complete surprise because its existence had neverbeen documented, probably because it was privately owned and didnot contain venerated tombs.70 The fact that the discovery of the ViaLatina catacomb was so unexpected because it had not been docu-mented is an indication of how heavily researchers relied on texts, tothe virtual exclusion of all other methods, for the exploration of thecatacombs.

On February 18, 1984, a revision of the Concordat was signed thatcalled for the administration of the extant Jewish catacombs to behanded over to the Italian government. This marks the first official,formal separation of the study of the Christian and Jewish catacombsand has had significant effects on the continued maintenance andstudy of the Jewish catacombs, in particular.

69 Even today, the maintenance and limited accessibility to the Randanini cata-comb is made possible by the dedication and generosity of the Del Gallo family,current owners of the land over the Randanini catacomb.

70 Antonio Ferrua, La pitture della nuova catacomba di via Latina (Vatican City:Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology, 1960).


The Present Study and Maintenance of the Catacombs

The Christian catacombs continue to be studied and maintained by thePontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology and are an importantdestination for tourists and pilgrims visiting Rome. In a speech tothe Pontifical Commission on 7 June 1996, Pope John Paul II indicatedthe significance of the Christian catacombs as destinations for modernpilgrims, in particular those visiting Rome for the Papal Jubilee in 2000:“By visiting these monuments, one comes into contact with the evocativetraces of early Christianity and one can, so to speak, tangibly sense thefaith that motivated those ancient Christian communities. … Visitorswill be able to feel the atmosphere of the first conversions to the Gos-pel. … the catacombs should be a necessary destination for Holy Yearpilgrims. … Thank you [members of the Pontifical Commission ofSacred Archaeology] for your efforts and for the professional contribu-tion you are making to evangelization with your activities.”71 In anotherspeech at a plenary assembly of the Pontifical Commission on 16 January1998, the pope stated: “your attention is appropriately focused on thepastoral benefits of these famous monuments of Christian antiquity [thecatacombs]. … In the silence of the catacombs, the pilgrim of the Year2000 can rediscover or revive his religious identity on a sort of spiritualjourney that, by starting from the first testimonies of the faith, bringshim to the reasons for the new evangelization and to its demands.”72

Could this implicit mandate of the Pontifical Commission, theorganization that grants permission for access to direct study of theChristian catacombs and is responsible for their presentation to thepublic, be a potential obstruction to certain types of research thatmight be perceived as contrary to the aims of the Church? A modernscholar can productively consider, especially in light of the history ofcatacomb studies, whether any tension might exist between pastoralappreciation of the catacombs and scholarly research.

The Jewish catacombs remain under the administration of the Italianstate, which has recently undertaken a highly controversial program of

71 L’Osservatore Romano, weekly edition in English, 19 June 1996, p. 7 quoted in“The Pope’s Speeches Concerning the Catacombs,” The Christian Catacombs ofRome website, http://www.catacombe.roma.it/en/discorso.html.

72 From L’Osservatore Romano, quoted in “The Pope’s Speeches Concerning theCatacombs,” The Christian Catacombs of Rome website, http://www.catacombe.roma.it/en/discorso.html.


privatization of Italian cultural heritage, in which culturally significantsites have been sold to international investment firms and privateinvestors to generate funds to reduce Italy’s budget deficit or financepublic works.73 What effect might privatization have on the Jewishcatacombs, which have received limited attention since they have beenin the hands of the Italian state since the revision of the Concordatin 1984? A recent restoration project for the Villa Torlonia, which in-cluded the construction of an underground parking lot near the villa,did not include any consideration of the Jewish catacombs locatedunder the villa. Only after the Jewish Community in Rome publiclydenounced the government in a newspaper article and negotiated “onbehalf of the catacombs” was money allocated to the study of the cata-combs and the plans for the underground parking lot abandoned.74

The International Council on Museums and Sites recently reportedon the risk to cultural heritage when some “sites are not given the samepriority as other examples of archaeological heritage, because they aremanifestations of particular historical periods or cultures. … Thisarises as a potential threat when one cultural group does not recognizea segment of the archaeological heritage as relating to their current so-ciety’s cultural tradition. As a result, alternative periods are givengreater priority for research and conservation as they are deemed to beimportant to the dominant society’s cultural identity.”75 Italy is cited inthis report as one of the countries where this risk is present.

The recent reporting of radiocarbon dates from the Torlonia cata-comb76 indicates that there is still much new data to be obtained fromthe study of the catacombs and is an interesting modern example of the

73 Privatization has sparked heated political and social debate among politicians,scholars, and the general public. See Salvatore Settis, Italia S.P.A. (Turin: Einaudi,2002) and Roland Benedikter, “Privatisation of Italian Cultural Heritage,” In-ternational Journal of Heritage Studies 10, no. 2 (2004): 369–89.

74 Jessica Dello Russo, “500 Million Italian Lire to Finance Jewish CatacombStudy,” 3 February 2001, http://www.catacombsociety.org/nfr_2-3-2000.html.

75 Heritage at Risk, ICOMOS World Report 2001/2002 on Monuments and Sites inDanger (Munich: K. G. Saur Verlag, 2001). Online. http://www.international.icomos.org/risk/2001/icahm2001.htm, viewed 4 May 2005.

76 First reported in L. V. Rutgers, A. F. M. de Jong, and K. van der Borg, “Radio-carbon Dates from the Jewish Catacombs of Rome,” Radiocarbon 44, no. 2(2002): 541–547 and brought to a wide audience after being published in Nature(L. V. Rutgers, A. F. M. de Jong, K. van der Borg, and Imogen Poole, “JewishInspiration of Christian Catacombs,” Nature 436 [21 July 2005]: 339) and sub-sequently being reported by international media outlets.


intersection between scholarly study and the popular press. The radio-carbon dates for the Torlonia catacomb indicate that it was in use inthe second century C.E., at least a hundred years before the earliestChristian catacombs. The authors of the study suggest that this couldindicate that Jewish catacombs influenced the development of theChristian catacombs, contrary to the common belief that burial incatacombs was begun as a Christian practice. They caution that nofinal determination can be made without radiocarbon dating fromthe Christian catacombs. When this story was picked up by the inter-national media after being reported in Nature, the headlines andrelated stories could give readers a range of different impressions. Forexample, in the article “Catacombs Had Jewish Origin, Not Chris-tian,”77 under the heading “Bursting Bubbles?” the author reports thatthe Italian media were “disconcerted” by the study, and that Rome’sdaily Il Messaggero wrote that “the last myth on the catacombs hasfallen. … the Christians did not even invent them.”

In “Catacomb Find Boosts Early Christian-Jewish Ties, StudySays,”78 the author presents the findings of the study in terms of thepossibility of Jewish influence on Christian catacombs and gives somedetail on the historical lack of attention to the Jewish catacombs inscholarship. He quotes a classical archaeologist as saying that the Jewswere “treated extremely badly” in seventeen-century Catholic Romewhen catacomb studies were first intensifying and “since the 17th cen-tury, it’s been traditional that catacomb archaeology is done bymembers of the Catholic Church and nobody else.”

In the article, “Did Christains Copy Jewish Catacombs?”79 theauthor clearly mentions the study’s recommendation that radiocarbontests must be conducted for the Christian catacombs before any defi-nite conclusions can be drawn and concludes with the statement “Re-gardless of whether another catacomb is found to be older … the largerpoint is that Jews and Christians co-existed peacefully for centuriesand clearly influenced each other’s culture.”

77 Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News, 26 July 2005, http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/ancient/AncientRepublish_1422611.htm, viewed 31 March 2006.

78 James Owen, National Geographic News, 20 July 2005, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/07/0720_050720_christianity.html, viewed 31 March2006.

79 Michael Schirber, LiveScience, 20 July 2005, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8644832, viewed 31 March 2006.


Conclusion

To return to the opening quote from David Lowenthal, “How do werecognize and cope with this heritage, which at the same time sustainsand constrains us? What benefits does it provide, what costs does itexact?” The study of the Christian catacombs has been for the mostpart a text-based, devotional enterprise, from which the Jewish cata-combs have been excluded or to which they have been subordinated.Periods of intense interest in the catacombs can often be attributedmore to religious polemics than to objective scholarship. How doesthis intellectual history continue to influence the study of the cata-combs today? Although scholars often cannot comprehensively reviewthe historical and intellectual context of every piece of past scholarshipthat they consult, reflection on the history of a field such as catacombstudies and the place of current research in that historical trajectorycan only serve to deepen and broaden scholarly inquiry.

Housing the Dead 39

Andrew Wallace-Hadrill

Chapter 2

Housing the Dead:The Tomb as House in Roman Italy

Domus ista, domus!

That the tomb was a house for the dead was a topos, a commonplaceof imperial Latin literature. So Statius, poet of Domitian’s court,composed a suitable lament for the death of Priscilla, wife of themighty imperial freedmen Abascantus (Silvae 5.1).1 By leaving thecomposition for a suitable interval, he was able to comment on hertomb. Its massive marble construction would defy the erosion of time.The statues of goddesses that graced it would not shame the divinitiesthemselves. The household servants (famuli ) and the usual crowd of at-tendants are present for the obsequies, and for the regular rituals ofcelebratory meals.

… domus ista, domus! quis triste sepulcrum/dixerit?… It is a house, a true house. Who could call it a sad sepulchre? (237f.)

Statius does not comment on the form; in fact, a classic circular mau-soleum, if the traditional identification is right with a monument onthe Via Appia by Domine Quo Vadis.2 It is not the shape of the tomb,so much as its activity which provokes his outburst: the crowd of atten-

1 I am grateful to all my fellow participants for stimulation and discussion, andin particular to my discussants, Brandon Cline and Young-Ho Park. I also owean especial debt to Regina Gee and Robert Coates-Stephens for sharing withme their own knowledge of Roman burials. For help with sourcing illustrations,I am indebted to Adam Gutteridge, Dr. Greta Stefani (Soprintendenza Arche-ologica di Pompei), Prof. Henner von Hesberg, Dr. Sylvia Diebner (German Ar-chaeological Institute, Rome), and Prof. Filippo Coarelli.

2 See A. La Regina, ed., Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae: suburbium, vol. 1(Rome: Quasar, 2001), s.v. “Appia Via,” 101 with fig.83.

40 Andrew Wallace-Hadrill

dants, servants, and others, not to speak of the dignified company ofthe goddesses, mean that Priscilla is not left sadly on her own, but con-tinues in death as in life to be in good company.

Another freedman, this time fictional, Trimalchio, is famous for hisreflections on how to house the dead in proper style.

Are you going to build my tomb as I instructed? I do want you to be sure to putmy puppy at the feet of my statue, and wreaths, and unguents – and all Petraites’best fights. Your kind act will give me life after death. The dimensions now: ahundred feet of street front, two hundred of depth – for I want every kind of fruitaround my ashes, and a generous vineyard. Because it really is nonsense for aperson to have a nice house when he’s alive and not to worry about the one inwhich he’s got to live for rather longer. So the most important thing is a notice‘this monument does not descend to the heir’ … (Petronius Satyricon 71,6–8,trans. Purcell)3

Petronius’s masterly parody scores off so many familiar features ofearly imperial burials, and above all, those of the freedman.4 Again, wecannot be quite sure of the form of the tomb. The standard formula forthe dimensions (so many feet in fronte, so many in agro) refers of courseto the entire plot, with its ample provision for vines and flowers as inmany cepotaphia. But it sounds less like the form archaeologists call a“house-tomb,” and more like the freemen burials of the period outsidethe Herculaneum gate of Pompeii, with a larger enclosure around amonumental altar. Specifically, the tomb of Naevoleia Tyche and Mu-natius Faustus, Augustalis and paganus, honoured by the Council witha bisellium (Fig. 2.1), seems to fit Trimalchio’s prescription,

be sure to have ships in full sail on the … of my monument, and me sitting on aplatform in full official dress with five gold rings dishing out cash to the peoplefrom a bag …5

3 Nicholas Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb” in Römische Gräberstraßen. Selbstdarstel-lung – Status – Standard. (eds. Henner von Hesberg and Paul Zanker; Munich:Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: in Kommission bei derC. H. Beck’schen Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1987), 25.

4 The passage is discussed in detail by J. Whitehead, “The ‘Cena Trimalchionis’and Biographical Narration in Roman Middle-Class Art,” in Narrative andEvent in Ancient Art (ed. P. J. Holliday; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1993), 299–325. On freedmen burials, P. Zanker, “Grabreliefs römischer Frei-gelassener,” Jahrbuch d.deutschen archäologischen Instituts 90 (1975): 267–315.On Trimalchio, G. Rowe, “Trimalchio’s World,” Scripta classica israelica 20(2001): 225–45.

5 For the parallel, see V. Kockel, Die Grabbauten vor dem Herkulaner Tor in Pom-peji (Mainz: P. v. Zabern, 1983), 105f.

Housing the Dead 41

2.1. Tomb of Naevoleia Tycheand Munatius Faustusat Herculaneum gate of Pompeii:(a) general view of side, withship in sail; (b) inscriptionon façade, with scene ofliberation distribution (Soprin-tendenza Archeologica diPompeii. Used with permission.)

a

b


Again, what makes the tomb a house is not so much shape as the ex-tension of the activities of lifetime, the commercial success, the popu-lar benefactions, and the garden which ensured that the family couldhave regular festivals to celebrate around the tomb, the Parentalia,the Rosalia, and the Violaria that are specified in so many inscrip-tions.6 People, not walls, make a house as well as a city.

The tomb-as-house metaphor continued to flourish throughout theempire, as the numerous passages cited by the Thesaurus Linguae Lati-nae show (TLL IV, 1979 s.v. “domus” 1B2c), and into late antiquity. TheCodex Theodosianus shows the deep concerns about the destructionof tombs of the successors of Constantine (who of course destroyedtombs to build his basilica for St. Peter), and the language of housesstrangely interweaves their protests. So Constantius II, from Milan in356 or 357:

Those who violate the habitations of the shades, the homes, so to speak, of thedead, appear to perpetrate a two-fold crime. For they both despoil the burieddead by the destruction of their tombs, and they contaminate the living by theuse of this material in living (Codex Theodosianus 9.17.4).

So not only are tombs like homes, they specifically risk contaminationby confusion with the homes of the living.

We learn that some men too eager for gain destroy tombs, and transfer the build-ing material to their own homes (Codex Theodosianus 9.17.3, Constantius,356 C.E.).

The trouble of course is that tombs are so close to houses that theelements are in part interchangeable, a point reinforced by Julian:

Some men even take away from the tombs ornaments for their dining rooms andporticoes (Codex Theodosianus 9.17.5).

The very fact that tombs were places for dining rendered them the moresuitable for despoliation for the benefit of the houses of the living.

Funerary epigraphy itself bears out the persistence in Latin epitaphsof the house/tomb analogy. Richmond Lattimore gathered a selectionof the passages, noting the frequency of the expression aeterna domus.7

6 See in general J. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World (Ithaca, N.Y.:Cornell University Press, 1971; repr., Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press,1996), 61–4; K. Hopkins, Death and Renewal. Sociological Studies in Roman His-tory 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 233.

7 R. Lattimore, Themes in Greek and Roman Epitaphs (Urbana, IL: University ofIllinois Press, 1962), 165ff.

Housing the Dead 43

The expression is ambiguous since sometimes it refers to the Greekconcept of Hades as the eternal house of the dead, but often too thereference to the tomb is explicit:

haec domus aeterna est, hic sum situs, hic ero semperHere is my eternal home, here I lie, here shall I be for ever.8

And again, the conscious interplay of the houses of the living and thedead is to the fore:

aedes aedificat dives, sapiens monumentum;hospitium est illud corporis, hic domus est.The rich man builds a house, the wise man a monument;the first is a lodging for the body, the second a home.9

By the familiar paradox, the domus is degraded to the status of a tem-porary lodging house, while the funerary monument becomes the truehome, the domus.

As Lattimore interestingly comments, the tomb/house figure seemsto be a great deal more common in Latin epitaphs than Greek; in-deed, the Greek passages are “late,” meaning from Greek areas underRoman rule, and “often look very much like translations.”10 Severalscholars have recently pursued the house/tomb analogy, includingKeith Hopkins, Nicholas Purcell, Richard Saller, and Valerie Hope.11

In particular, John Patterson’s interesting chapter on “Living andDying in the City of Rome” looks in parallel at the houses and thetombs of rich and poor, and ends by concluding with the observationthat the link goes back to the Villanovan hut-urns of the beginning ofthe first millennium.12 A visit to a modern Italian cemetery like theCampo Verano in Rome, with its characteristic house-like family

8 Lattimore, Themes, 168 = Carmina Latina Epigraphica (ed. F. Buecheler; Leipzig:Teubner, 1895–97), 434.15, Pisaurum.

9 Lattimore, Themes, 168 = Carmina Latina Epigraphica (ed. F. Buecheler; Leipzig:Teubner, 1895–97), 1488.1–2, Rome.

10 Lattimore, Themes, 165.11 K. Hopkins, Death and Renewal, 201–56; Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb”; R. P.

Saller, Patriarchy, Property and Death in the Roman Family (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1994), 95–101; V. M. Hope, “A Roof Over the Dead:Communal Tombs and Family Structure” in Domestic Space in the Roman World:Pompeii and Beyond (eds. R. Laurence and A. Wallace-Hadrill (Portsmouth,R.I.: JRA, 1997), 69–88.

12 J. R. Patterson, “Living and Dying in the City of Rome: Houses and Tombs” inAncient Rome: The Archaeology of the Eternal City (eds. Hazel Dodge and JonCoulson; Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology, 2000), 259–89.


tombs, in stark contrast to the separate gravestones of the Acattolicocemetery reserved for non-Catholic foreigners, but above all northernEuropean and American Protestants, might lead one to think that hereis one of those great cultural continuities. Is it somehow specificallyItalian to link burial to house and family?

But to leap from a Villanovan hut-urn to the Campo Verano seemsto me altogether too risky a project. If there is some degree of persis-tence of the tomb/house analogy even through the ancient Romanperiod, the apparent continuity masks some fairly fundamental shifts.Where does the analogy actually get us, or where did it get them? Meta-phors are slippery, shifting things, which refuse to be pinned down atthe moment you most need to push them. The Romans evidently en-joyed playing with the analogy, and so do modern scholars talkingabout the Romans, but it is one thing to use the comparison as a rhe-torical trope or figure, another as an argument or hypothesis. Signifi-cantly, the majority of scholars mentioned above draw attention to thehouse-tomb link almost as an aside. Only Richard Saller, who has someinvestment in the potential of extracting information about the struc-ture of the Roman family from tombs and their inscriptions, comesclose to incorporating it in his argument (and even he is admirably cau-tious); as Valerie Hope suggested, tombs seem to tell us more about therole of the freemen and servile household in the family than about thenuclear family.

To begin to assess the significance of the tomb/house link, we needalso to understand its limits. Scholars can be curiously uncritical aboutthis. In particular, the brick-built “house-tombs” that characterise theVatican necropolis and the Isola Sacra have led to enthusiastic appro-priation of the analogy. Saller well quotes Toynbee and Ward-Perkins’sevocative commentary on the Vatican necropolis:

The Vatican house-tombs, and their counterparts elsewhere, so simple without,so richly decked and colourful within, were surely regarded as places in whichthe dead, in some sense or at some times, resided. Hidden away behind stoutdoors and seen only by members of the owners’ families on anniversaries andfeast-days, when sacrifices, ceremonial meals, and ritual washings took place, allthis luxuriant internal ornament and art must have been designed as much to de-light the dead as to gratify and instruct the survivors.13

13 J. Toynbee, and J. B. Ward-Perkins, The Shrine of St. Peter and the Vatican Ex-cavations (New York: Pantheon Books, 1957) 113f., cited by Saller, Patriarchy, 97.

Housing the Dead 45

Here the ancient trope of the grave as the eternal house of the deadis put to work to explain an apparent paradox, the disproportionateinvestment in the artistic decoration of the invisible inside of the tomb(“behind stout doors”), rather than the visible outside. And yet theexplanation contains its own visible contradiction. The authors are wellaware that the family of the dead regularly penetrate behind those stoutdoors for festival celebrations, and yet it is assumed that the decorationis for the benefit of the dead not the living. Or at least the survivors arebuilding “as much to delight the dead as to gratify” themselves. But themost spectacularly decorated of these house-tombs, that of ValeriusHerma, as the inscriptions tell us, was built by Valerius in his lifetime.Are the survivors building for the dead Herma, or is the living Hermabuilding for the living, and to ensure a continued presence of the sur-vivors at his own tomb?

The tomb/house analogy is partial. Even the house-like appearanceof the façade is misleading.14 We are so used to suburban houses withpitched roofs, that we instantly recognise a house in the formula of arectangular front with door and windows and a pitched roof. But didnot Roman domus roofs pitch inwards to the impluvium? Then, whatsort of a house opens inwards to a single chamber? Sometimes there isprovision for the sloping couches of a triclinium, either inside the tombas in the very interesting examples of the tombs outside the gates ofOstia studied by Boschung,15 or immediately outside as in the tomb, asin the case of the tomb of Verria Zosime at the Isola Sacra. But whilethe triclinium is an evident derivative of, and allusion to, domesticarrangements, there is no attempt to evoke the internal architecturalarrangements of a Roman house. All of which is simply to say that theanalogy is a partial one, and raises the question of its limits and effec-tiveness.

Another set of questions about limits is raised by the very frequencyof house-tombs in these locations. If the house form was effective, whyis it only one among many?16 Look down the streets of tombs of Pom-peii, with their carefree mixture of styles, circular mausolea, altars,

14 I owe this point, and stimulating discussion of the issue, to Regina Gee.15 D. Boschung, “Die republikanischen und frühkauserzeitlichen Nekropolen vor

den Toren Ostias” in Römische Gräberstraßen, 111–124.16 The typology of tombs is surveyed by H. von Hesberg, Monumenta. I sepolcri

romani e la loro architettura (Milan: Longanesi, 1994) 71–230, esp. on houseform 89–92, one of the briefest sections.


miniature temples, exhedrae, columns, enclosures with the semi-carvedheads of columellae, all such splendid diversity, alongside a fewexamples that can reasonably be classified as house-tombs, and one isbound to ask what symbolic or other function was better performed bythe house-tomb that was not also performed by the others? We havealready seen that Trimalchio’s tomb, for all his anxiety to make it a“house for ever,” seems not to have been imagined as a house tomb.

Finally, we may ask whether we are not simply carried away by thepleasure of the rhetorical trope into pushing the analogy further thanit can bear. Take the columbarium, the remarkable pigeon-loft form ofthe late republic and early empire, which in its most dramatic examplesprovided capacity for several hundred urns. Keith Hopkins, whose in-terest is in a crowded city and its forgotten masses, sees in the colum-barium the analogue to the metropolitan insula, with its many floorsand packed tenements.17 Nicholas Purcell by contrast, who observesthat the most important examples were built for the servile householdsand dependants of the high aristocracy, says the analogy is rather withthe domus “with its endless attics and tabernae and ramifications forthe long and short-term stay of the dependents, not the insula.”18 Butclose though Purcell’s image of the domus is to my own, I cannot ad-judicate here between Hopkins and Purcell, for the real architecture ofdomestic space (internal divisions and floors) is simply absent, andeach scholar’s metaphor makes its point, just so far as it can be pushed.

Such questions lead me to suppose that there is room for a morethorough and critical survey of the linkage of house and tomb. Part ofwhat I have to say is that a higher degree of critical distance is in place.But above all I wish to argue that the analogy cannot get us very faruntil it can be incorporated into a hypothesis, and this is what I wouldlike, in however provisional a form, to offer. In doing so I shall leanheavily on what I have already written about the Roman house. I thensuggested that one way in which to understand the underlying dynamicof the Roman house was to see it as a tension between two different di-mensions or “axes.” The house is Janus-like, looking in two directions,outwards and inwards. It looks outwards to the world beyond itsdoors, foris, and to those visitors from outside who penetrate its doors.In looking to the outsiders (strangers, clients, guests, friends, outsidersin varying degrees) it seeks to impress, and makes statements about the

17 Hopkins, Death and Renewal, 214–17.18 Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb,”39.

Housing the Dead 47

status and identity of the insiders. Simultaneously it looks inwards,domi, for it is a space also articulated for the insiders, who have theirown crucial social distinctions: slave and free, men and women, adultsand children. The complexity of reading Roman domestic space, I ar-gued, derives the imperative for the same set of spaces to communicatein both directions at once, inside and outside.19

Similar considerations, I now suggest, are equally valid for the Romantomb. It looks outward, to the passing visitor, the hospes often invokedby the epitaph, the unknown stranger who stands for everybody, sincethe tomb is deliberately placed (or at least in many cases is placed) closeto the major thoroughfares leading into the city. Many tombs, not leastthat of Trimalchio, had their eye primarily to the passerby. Tombsare consequently major public declarations of identity and status, theassumption implicit in the subtitle of Römische Gräberstraßen – Selbst-darstellung-Status-Standard. But they also look inward, to a closedcircle of the family, those who gather with their wine and roses andviolets on the festal days, and gradually, one by one, take their restingplaces within. One of the fundamental functions of funerary rites is thereintegration of the family group, shattered by the brutality of loss.20

The family is not ruptured, but continues: funeral masks, portraitstatues, inscriptions work to maintain the continuity. If Toynbee andWard-Perkins are surprised that the art is inside behind closed doors,their surprise is that this function has taken precedence over the func-tion of declarations of identity and status to the world outside.

This might suggest a simple dichotomy: the exterior aspects of thetomb serve an outwards-looking function, the interior aspects servean inward-looking function. But just as with the house, it is vital toappreciate that the outwards/inwards divide is more complex thanthat. In the case of the house, simplistic distinctions of “public” versus“private” areas are not helpful: the public penetrates the most privaterecesses of the house (the master’s bedroom, or the latrine by thekitchen), and the private penetrates the public (women and childrenare not kept away from the public area of the atrium but share it, and

19 A. Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1994), 8–12.

20 R. W. Chapman, I. Kinnes, K. Randesborg, eds, The Archaeology of Death(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); I. Morris, Death-Ritual andSocial Structure in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1992), 10.


slaves are present at every point). In the case of the tomb, the gaze ofthe passerby may rest on the family united in its festivities, and tosome extent (varying greatly from case to case) the tomb serves pre-cisely as a public representation of the intimate unit of the family. Whois displayed is a critical decision. Trimalchio in a tantrum threatensFortunata to exclude her statue from his tomb; he is confident hewants to display his own superabundant importance, and will commithimself on a puppy to be carved at his feet, but is less certain whetherhe wants to let his wife in on the display (Sat. 74.17). Herein, of course,his gross vulgarity. It is because so many Roman tombs at least to someextent put the family unit on public display that Saller and Shaw couldmake such telling use of their inscriptions.21

My hypothesis, then, proposes that both functions – external andinternal – are simultaneously present in all Roman burials, but thatthe balance and relationship between them can vary substantially, andthat we can detect changing patterns over time. To illustrate the con-cept, I offer one Pompeian example of what might be termed the Trim-alchio syndrome, where the balance seems to be tipped strongly infavour of the external function, and yet the internal function is indeedpresent, despite a certain level of uncertainty. This is the tomb ofVesonius Phileros (Fig. 2.2) in the necropolis outside the Porta Nocera.22

The form of the tomb is of an aedicula, a miniature temple with asimple opening and pediment on a high podium, looking down on thestreet. Within the portico are three statues, two males flanking one fe-male. The titulus identifies the characters: P(ublius) Vesonius Phileros,G(aiae) l(ibertus), Augustalis, his patrona, Vesonia P(ubli) f(ilia), andM(arcus) Ofellius Faustus M(arci) L(ibertus) amicus. Here is indeed astrange family grouping, the freedman and his female patron, and anunrelated man tied only by friendship. The monument belongs to thefamiliar type of one erected in the life of the commemorator/com-memorated, vivos monument(um) fecit sibi et suis. Here is conspicuousself-display; the element of status display is only enhanced by the factthat AVGVSTALIS is added at a subsequent point in a second hand.Vesonius may seem anything but a family man: no wife, no children,not even freedmen generalised as libertis libertabusque posterisque suis.

21 R. P. Saller and B. Shaw, “Tombstones and Roman Family Relations in the Prin-cipate: Civilians, Soldiers and Slaves.” JRS 74 (1984): 124–56.

22 A. D’Ambrosio and S. De Caro, Un impegno per Pompei. Fotopiano e documen-tazione della necropoli di Porta Nocera (Milan, 1983), tomb number 23 OS.

Housing the Dead 49

2.2. Tomb of Vesonius Phileros atPorta Nocera necropolis, Pompeii:(a) statues of Vesonius, Vesonia,and Orfellius; (b) inscription to threecommemorated persons, with laterinscription added below cursingOrfellius (Soprintendenza Archeologicadi Pompeii. Used with permission.)

a

b


And yet his monument constitutes a pseudo-family, displays it, andthen goes on in a second and longer inscription to display the despairat the breakdown of the group so constituted and displayed.23

Hospes paullisper morare si non est molestum (“Stranger, stay a whileif it is not a nuisance, and hear my sad tale”). It is a cautionary tale(quid evitas cognosce). The syntax is faltering, the sentence breathless,the cri-de-coeur rings loud and clear. “This man whom I had hoped tobe my friend! By him accusers were instigated against me and proceed-ings were started. I thank the gods and my own innocence, I am freedof all nuisance. The one of us who lies, him may neither the gods of thehouse nor the gods below receive.”24 The curse upon the false friend iseloquent of the expectations of the tomb. For the very act of includinghis friend in the memorial display constitutes him as a family member.The curse excludes him simultaneously from the gods of the house,di penates, and the gods below, di inferi. The function of the tomb thenis to facilitate that link. The display of those united around the dipenates, the family gods of the living house, projects their unity intothe underworld, the house of the dead. In the end, Vesonius standsstripped to eternity of his pseudo-family, uncertain what to display tothe outside world, to the passing hospes.

But we should not shed a tear for him too hastily. One of the mostimportant features of Pompeian tombs is the survival within them ofindividual headstones, called columellae, which often bear the name ofthe buried (Fig. 2.3). There were no less than 18 such headstones withinVesonius’s tomb. Apart from himself and his patrona, Vesonia, we finda Vesonius Proculus, who died at age 13, a Vesonia Urbana, who livedto 20, and a (H)eliodorus, who lived to 18. At this point we can onlyguess the story. The patrona sounds to have been his partner as well asformer owner. Presumably they are the parents of Vesonius Proculusand Vesonia Urbana. Heliodorus should be one of their slaves, as in alllikelihood are the 13 other unnamed columellae, unless any of themwere freedmen. At least we can be confident Marcus Ofellius was not

23 See now for a much improved reading of the inscription E. Rodrìguez Almeida,Topografia e vita romana: da Augusto a Costantino (Rome: Elenco, 2001), 91–103.

24 Rodrìguez’s text is: Hospes paullisper morare/ si non est molestum et quid evites/cognosce. Amicum hunc quem speraveram mi esse! Ab eo mihi accusato/res sub-iecti et iudicia instaurata. Deis/ gratias ago et meae innocentiae: omni molestialiberatus sum. Qui nostrum mentitur,/ eum nec di penates nec inferi recipiant.’Improved readings are “ab eo” for “[h]abeo,” and “accusatores” for the senseless“accusato res.”

Housing the Dead 51

a

2.3. Columellae within tomb ofVesonius Phileros at PortaNocera necropolis, Pompeii:(a) general view of columellae ininterior of tomb; (b) detail ofcolumella of (H)eliodorus.(Upper photograph by Williamvan Adringa. SoprintendenzaArcheologica di Pompei. Usedwith permission.)

b


among them. The interior of the tomb thus reconstitutes the family sopartially glimpsed on the exterior.25

To explore in detail this two-faced internal/external aspect of thetomb throughout Roman Italy would strain the limits of space andtime of this paper. Instead, I wish to illustrate what seem to be the sub-stantial changes over time of Roman practice by exemplifying threemoments: the first, a mid-Republican moment when Roman materialculture still has palpable links to Etruscan practice, through the tombof the Scipios; the second, a moment of late Republican/early imperialtransition seen through the necropolis of the Porta Nocera at Pompeii;the third, the high imperial tradition of the “house-tombs” of the me-tropolis seen through the tomb of Valerius Herma beneath St. Peter’s.In each case, I shall risk overgeneralization through exemplification;my interest is underlining the substantial contrasts across time asmuch as the continuities.

The Mid-Republic and the Tomb of the Scipios

The dearth of evidence from Rome of either houses or tombs predatingthe late Republic, coupled with the sharp imbalance in evidence fromEtruria in the same period between abundant tombs and scarce houses,has long meant that Etruscan tombs have had to work very heavily tosupply the gaps in our knowledge of housing in both areas, and oftombs in Rome.26 Carandini’s excavations at the foot of the Palatine,coupled with the chance discovery of a suburban villa site beneathRenzo Piano’s new Auditorium, now mean we are on better ground intalking about Roman houses of the period between the sixth and sec-ond centuries. Even so, it is striking to observe how in the publicationof the Palatine houses by Carandini and Carafa, Etruscan tombs arestill put under heavy contribution to establish the development of theatrium houses.27 Just how plausible are their reconstructions of houseplans of sixth-century Roman atriate houses with central impluvia isnot a theme I wish to pursue here, though it must be said it takes cour-

25 For the inscriptions, D’Ambrosio and De Caro, Un impegno per Pompei.26 Hesberg, Monumenta, 29–32 for an overview of this early period.27 A. Carandini and P. Carafa, Palatium e sacra via I. Prima delle mura, l’età delle

mura e l’età case arcaiche. Bollettino di archeologia, vols. 31–33 (Rome: Istitutopoligrafico dello Stato 1995), esp. 237ff., 266ff.

Housing the Dead 53

age to reconstruct an entire atrium-house when the evidence is the odddisjointed fragment of walling.

That Etruscan tombs have long seemed to offer a reflection of hous-ing is scarcely surprising. Consider the striking transformation thattakes places in the Banditaccia necropolis of Cerveteri in the late archaicperiod. In the seventh century the cemetery is characterised by circulartumuli, some very large, some quite modest. The burial chambers be-neath them appear in plan rather like bacilli: long corridors with shortside elements towards the end, and a culminating chamber. Then in theearly sixth century the form of the burial chambers beneath the tumulichanges significantly. They become square in plan, with a characteristicthree-fold division: short entrance flanked by two chambers lead to awide central chamber, and at its back, a group of three equal cells. Theformal links with the atrium house seem irresistible: fauces flanked bytwo rooms lead into atrium, leading to tablinum flanked by two rooms.Then in the late sixth century, the tumulus shell is dropped, to be re-placed by neatly aligned streets of “cube tombs” (tombe a dado). Weseem to be witnessing an urban revolution, a move from villages ofhuts to colonial cities laid out on a grid pattern. At the same period wefind these neat streets of tombs at a number of other sites, includingthe necropolis at Crocifisso del Tufo at Orvieto, and the Monterozzicemetery at Tarquinia.

It seems quite reasonable to interpret these tombs as deliberatelyevoking a domestic parallel. This seems to be underlined by theevocation of domestic features like windows, doors, and pilasters, andparticularly by the ceilings which often evoke a pitched roof, with cen-tral beam and downwards-sloping rafters. Yet these pitched roofsare as ambivalent as those of the Vatican “house tombs.” Colonna,followed by Carandini, argues strongly for the introduction of thecompluviate roof and central impluvium from as early as the sixthcentury.28 That is the rereading of the fifth-century houses of Marza-botto, long supposed to have been covered by displuviate, outward-sloping, pitched roofs, but now argued on the basis of their internaldrainage arrangements to have been compluviate. If it is the case thatas early as the sixth and fifth centuries, the characteristic image of theatrium was the inwards sloping roof and impluvium, were the tombswith their outwards-sloping roofs really evoking atria?

28 G. Colonna, “Urbanistica e architettura” in Rasenna. Storia e civiltà degli Etru-schi (ed. Massimo Pallotino; Milan: Libri Scheiwiller, 1986) 371–530.


Short of substantial new evidence about early housing in both Romeand Etruria, this debate is liable to loop in circles. But for present pur-poses, it is enough to observe that Etruscan tombs persistently had fea-tures that evoke a domestic context, like chairs, couches, and pillows,taken to a height in the fourth-century Tomba dei Rilievi at Cerveteri,in which the plastered walls are decorated by a splendid range of fur-nishings which are at least partly domestic (though also partly ritual,pointing to sacrifice). But where the domestic imagery gains its rele-vance is in the function of such tombs in reconstituting and represent-ing the family. The architecture in itself, by creating a series of beds,arranged with a strong sense of hierarchy, the preferred position beingthe central niche of the “tablinum,” and possibilities of subgroupings inthe lateral chambers, points to the desire to represent the occupants asa structured group. The abundant epigraphic material confirms thatthe typical group was the multigenerational family.

A classic example, from a period of close interaction with the middleRepublican Roman aristocracy, is the tomb of the Volumnii at Peru-gia.29 Dating from the late third century, the tomb is located outsidethe town at the bottom of the hill. Externally it is unremarkable: stepslead down to an underground chamber hewn from the soft tufo. At thebottom is a large rectangular hall (“atrium”) with a pitched roof andrafters, with a main chamber (“tablinum”) on the central axis, and twolateral chambers (Fig. 2.4). The main chamber contains the remainsof seven named members of the Volumnius/Velimna family. ArnthVelimnas, the founder of the tomb, dominates from his high couchwith pillows and drapes, held aloft by two winged daemons. To the left,his daughter Veilia Velimnei is the one female of the group, the unmar-ried daughter of Arnth. Male descendants (Thefri, Avle, Larth, andVel) stretch down to the last, early imperial, member of the group,Publius Volumnius Violens, Roman enough to Latinise his script andname, but still Etruscan enough to give his matronym. His elegantlycarved ash urn is in the form of a rectangular building with a pitchedand tiled roof, double doors, and Corinthian pilasters; a house, it isnormally said, though the form is a great deal closer to a temple than ahouse.

I linger over this Etruscan background in order to bring out a pointrelevant to the issue of the internal/external functions of the tomb.

29 S. Haynes, Etruscan Civilization: A Cultural History (Los Angeles: J. Paul GettyTrust, 2000), 379ff.

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Despite the appearance of “streets of tombs” from the sixth century, thetombs of the classical Etruscan tradition have a relatively minor en-gagement with the external display of status. Indeed, the great tumuliof the seventh century make notable statements in the landscape, asindeed do some of the rock-cut tombs as at Sovana. But the streets ofCerveteri-Banditaccia, or Tarquinia-Monterozzi, or Orvieto-Croce-fisso are not streets in the sense of Roman Gräberstraßen, major thor-oughfares where the public pass, but internal paths within a cemetery.Again, the Volumnii tomb at Perugia may be on a main road, but ex-ternally nothing survives to mark it as conspicuous; only once you

2.4. Tomb of Volumnii, Perugia, view of “atrium” and “tablinum”(German Archaeological Institute in Rome. Used with permission.)


have descended the stairs does it make its impression, as is true of thefamous frescoed tombs of Tarquinia.30

The internal function of all these tombs, on the other hand, is verystrong. They go to considerable lengths to construct the family groupas a living continuity. Architectural evocations of domestic structures,hierarchical disposition of multiple burial couches, decorative details,frequently evoking the theme of banqueting, figured representationsof the dead, and extensive inscriptions underlining their relationships,all work together to ensure that the living visitor to the chamber will beimpressed, and presumably identify strongly with the family group towhich they by definition belong. These tombs, unlike those of the viaAppia, were not designed for tourists.

The tomb of the Scipios off the via Appia finds itself in an ambiva-lent role (Figs. 2.5–7). As one of the rare surviving examples of a burialplace of a noble family from the middle Republic, it has to serve as theillustration of everything Polybius has to say about the vital import-ance of display of family continuity in the ritual of a noble Romanfuneral.31 Certainly other families made impressive tombs, though itis from the literature that we hear how the tomb of the Marcelli at thePorta Capena had three statues with the notable inscription, “threeMarcelli nine times consul”;32 and Cicero famously attests the impres-sion made on one leaving the Porta Capena by the tombs of “Calati-nus, the Scipiones, the Servilii and the Metelli” (Tusculan Disputations1.7.13). Yet we know, and Cicero remarks on it, that the Cornelii werein some sense exceptions in their funerary practice: they continued tofollow the old Roman practice of inhumation when cremation had be-come the standard Roman practice, the mos Romanus as Tacitus calls

30 For overviews, S. Haynes, Etruscan Civilization, 142–71; F. Prayon, “Architec-ture” in Etruscan Life and Afterlife (ed. L. Bonfante; Detroit: Wayne State Uni-versity Press, 1986), 174–93.

31 The third-century tomb from the Esquiline with its historical paintings of theFabii and Fannii, suggestive of Fabius Pictor, is another possible example:F. Coarelli, Roma medio repubblicana: aspetti culturali di Roma e del Lazio neisecoli IV e III a.C. (Rome, 1973), 200–208; E. La Rocca, “Linguaggio artisticoe ideologia politica a Roma in età repubblicana,” in Roma e l’Italia: RadicesImperii (ed. G. Pugliese Carratelli; Milan: Scheiwiller, 1990), 354–7, figs 156–69;F. Oriolo, “Sepulcrum: Fabii/Fannii,” Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae(ed. M. Steinby, vol. 4; Rome: Quasar, 1999), 288.

32 Ascanius Commentary on Cicero in Pisonem 44; F. Coarelli, “Sepulcrum: M.Claudius Marcellus,” Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae vol. 4, 279–80.

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it.33 Their sepulcrum may have been in some ways a deliberate displayof a consciously maintained difference.

As analysed by Coarelli, the tomb goes back in its earliest form tothe early third century (fairly close in time to that of the Volumnii).34

Cn. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, consul of 298 B.C.E., is taken to be thefounder, and like Arnth Velimnas, he dominates his family from theaxial position at the center at the back of the tomb (Fig. 2.5). Unlike thetomb of the Volumnii, this is rather crudely hewn from the tufo. Themain chamber is broadly square in plan, with four tufo pillars left

33 Cicero de legibus 2.56; cf. Pliny Natural Histories 7.187; Tacitus Annals 16.6;on cremation and inhumation, see Morris, Death-Ritual, 31–69.

34 F. Coarelli, Il sepolcro degli Scipioni (1972), reprinted in Revixit Ars. Arte e ideo-logia a Roma. Dai modelli ellenistici alla tradizione repubblicana (Rome: Quasar,1996), 179–238; cf. with recent bibliography, F. Zevi, “Sepulcrum (Corneliorum)Scipionum,” Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae vol. 4, 281–85.

2.5. Tomb of the Scipiones, Rome, tomb of Scipio Barbatus(Filippo Coarelli. Used with permission.)


more of less symmetrically disposed (Fig. 2.6). The eventual capacityof the tomb was 30 couches, which, Coarelli points out, correspondswith the likely total of members of the family between the early thirdand mid-second centuries. This is to say that the interior of the tombhad already reached capacity in the mid-second century when its fa-çade was rebuilt, as Coarelli hypothesizes, by Scipio Aemilianus him-self (Fig. 2.7). Alternatively, one might argue that the interior was re-modelled at this period to fit the existing burials.

Only nine of the sarcophagi survive, each with an inscription, six inverse. All the verses are in Saturnians, except the last in the series, thatfor the praetor of 139 B.C.E., which is in elegiac couplets. Since Satur-nians were standard in early Latin poetry (such as Livius Andronicusand Naevius), and the shift to Greek verse forms (elegiacs andhexameters) is linked with Ennius, it is particularly intriguing to knowwhat the role of Ennius was in the reshaping of this tomb. For Ciceroand others attest Ennius’s statue there (pro Archia 22), while Livy(38.56.4) reports that its façade carried statues of three men, ScipioAfricanus, Scipio Asiaticus, and Ennius. The use by the Scipios ofverse epitaphs evidently correlates with their persistent patronage ofpoets.35

We cannot draw comparisons or make contrasts between the Sci-pionic tomb and its Roman mid-republican rivals, for lack of evidence,but at least we can make some comparisons with the tomb of the Vol-umnii. Both are multigenerational family tombs, making much ofthe agnatic male descent line. As with the Volumnii, the Scipios haveonly one surviving female sarcophagus, that of Paulla Cornelia, wifeof Hispallus, which is slipped behind that of the founder Barbatus.They stretch over at least five generations, though the total duration ofusage of the tomb was extended by the fact that the Cornelii Lentuliused it in the early empire for the incineration burials. In so far as itunderlines the importance of the agnatic descent group, it reflects per-fectly Polybius’s account of the aristocratic funeral and its parade of im-personated ancestors. Like the Volumnii tomb, it originally containedportraits in peperino; one was stolen, another has been attributedto Ennius, but is unlikely to be so; but there are other possible candi-

35 Cf. Ovid Ars Am. 3.409; Valerius Maximus 8.14.1; Pliny Natural Histories 7.114.On the inscriptions, H. I. Flower, Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power inRoman Culture (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 159–80.

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2.6. Tomb of the Scipios, Rome, plan(Filippo Coarelli. Used with permission.)

2.7. Tomb of the Scipios, Rome, reconstruction of facade(Filippo Coarelli. Used with permission.)


dates.36 Like the Volumnii tomb, care is taken by the inscriptions toidentify the name and relationships of the commemorated, but theverse inscriptions also allow the res gestae to be celebrated.

It is not easy to imagine that the envisaged audience of the interior ofthe Scipio tomb was anyone other than the Scipios themselves. Therewere certainly parts of the noble funerary ritual that were designedto impress the public and consolidate the reputation and political cloutof the family, particularly the parade and public speeches described byPolybius. But the sarcophagi and their verse inscriptions did not serve,even if they reflected, this external function. Rather we are in the worlddescribed by Sallust in the preface to the Jugurthine War:

I have often heard that Q. (Fabius) Maximus and P. Scipio, among other leadingfigures in our city, used to say that when they looked at the images of their an-cestors, they felt strongly inspired to virtue (Bellum Iugurthinum 4.5).

The visit to the tomb, like the viewing of ancestral portraits, serves toadmonish and inspire new generations, consolidating the family, con-structing it as a continuity over time.37

There was of course an external aspect to the tomb, in the façadewhich partly survives, but has to be reconstructed as it is by Coarelli asa more magnificent example of mid-second-century “hellenistic” archi-tecture in order to accommodate the statues described by Cicero andLivy. Two points may be made here. The first is that the location ofthe tomb, set back from the main road and at an angle to it, seems ill-designed to catch the attention of passersby on the via Appia. Assumingit is right that Scipio Barbatus established its location, the implicationis that in the early third century this external function of the tomb wasnot regarded as primary. Only in a second moment does it acquire animposing façade, and by then it is too late to remedy the location. Pos-sibly the monumental façade raised its visibility sufficiently to be seenfrom the junction where the via Appia and the via Latina part, thoughthat would require the absence of competing structures on the inter-vening triangle of land. At least Cicero’s words suggest that it made

36 Note however that the supposed portrait of Ennius must be one of the earlierScipiones,: Coarelli, Il sepolcro degli Scipioni, 232–37; L. Giuliani, Bildnis undBotschaft: hermeutische Untersuchungen zur Bildniskunst der römischen Republik(Frankfort: Suhrkamp,1986), 172–75.

37 On noble funerary rituals, see J. Bodel, “Death on Display: Looking at RomanFunerals,” in The Art of Ancient Spectacle (eds. B. Bergman and C. Kondoleon,New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999) 259–81; Flower, Ancestor Masks, 159–80.

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an impression as the traveller left the Porta Capena. The second pointis to observe the misfit between the figures celebrated, as least asrecounted to us by literary sources, and the inhabitants of the tombitself. Scipio Africanus was buried at Liternum, and there is somedoubt whether the poet Ennius was buried here or at his native Rudiae.The façade paraded a rather different view of the Scipiones from themultigenerational lesson contained within.

It is, as we have already remarked, dangerous to generalise froma single instance. But it might be reasonable to hypothesize that theRoman tombs of the early to middle Republic were closer to those ofcontemporary Etruria than of the late Republic. The prominent dis-play of eye-catching funerary monuments along the Appian and otherways presents itself to us as a feature of the late Republic, from the mid-second century on. These monuments may appear very traditional,and in line with the Polybian account of eye-catching noble funerals,but there is a good chance they are innovative, a new appropriation ofold traditions, a monumentalization of the popular impact of the fu-nerary ritual.38 As the emphasis shifts from projecting the continuity ofthe household beyond death to display of magnificence, the architec-tural language of the domestic becomes less important.

Pompeii, Porta Nocera Necropolis:A Late Republican and Early Imperial Transition?

What characterizes the classic streets of tombs of the last centuryB.C.E. and the first C.E., as we meet them in Rome, Pompeii, Sarsina,Aquileia, and the locations assembled in Römische Gräberstraßen, is aformal diversity. Beyond doubt that diversity reflects a strong impulseto competitive display. But does it say more than that? The authorsnote the failure of their conference to establish a semantics of the di-verse topologies.39 But did the variety have a semantic significance atall? If you chose an altar or a mini-temple, were you showing yourselfmore pious? If a tumulus-shaped mausoleum, were you more heroic?If a triumphal arch, more military? If a palace-façade, more regal? If a

38 Cf. von Hesberg and Zanker, Römische Gräberstraßen, 9; von Hesberg, Monu-menta 32–38.

39 Cf. von Hesberg and Zanker, Römische Gräberstraßen, 11. The typology is sup-plied by von Hesberg, Monumenta ch.4.


house-façade, more domestic? What is surely most striking about thisformal diversity is its indifference. The inscriptions follow the sameformulae on all types of structure. There is no meaningful distinctionof the burials of magistrates versus freedmen, or of Augustales versusordinary freedmen, of men against women, of people of different eth-nic origin, or even of period. As we move down the extraordinaryclutter of the via Nocera necropolis, we can see the instinct to keepringing the changes. We can see too the vast differences between richand poor, from Eumachia’s gigantic semicircular exhedra constructionat one extreme (11 OS), to the fragile little niche tomb of CastriciaPrisca with its perished plaster decoration of garlands, cupids, andbirds (25 OS). But can we say that they are making different statementsabout their identity, status, or family affiliations?

For all the paraded difference, these tombs have in fact certain fun-damental factors in common. The variety of the external aspects con-ceals a consistent relationship between the external and internal func-tions of the tomb. Architectural variety in the outward appearance ofthe monumentum reflects the common desire to catch the eye of thepassersby and inform them about the identity of those who lie buried.Hospes, paullisper morare, si non tibi molestum est …There are so manyothers buried along the road, and the traveller may be in a hurry, but,please, stranger, tarry a while and hear my tale. Vesonius spells it outmore explicitly than others, but they all have a tale to tell. In contrastto the homogeneous “cube tombs” of Cerveteri or Orvieto, whichneither stand on the main road, nor seek to stand out architecturally,nor contain more than minimal inscriptional evidence about the occu-pants (maybe a family name incised above the lintel), inscriptions andportraits reward the stranger who tarries outside the Porta Nocera.

We may be struck by how strong was the instinct to portray on theexterior of the tomb. Portraits are common in Etruscan cemeteries too,but they belong, together with the inscriptions, on the inside, withinthe family chamber. The typical Etruscan portrait is a full figure reclin-ing, either at full length on the lid of the sarcophagus, or in abbreviatedform above an ash-urn. Roman funerary portraiture shows as muchvariety as the architecture of the tombs: full-length standing figures,like Vesonius’s group, or Marcus Octavius and Vertia Philumina a fewtombs down at 13 OS, or seated figures, like the couple on the far sideof Eumachia’s tomb (9 OS), reduced to anonymity by the removal oftheir inscription, or simple portrait busts, most strikingly in the tombof the Flavii, with its symmetrically arranged niches in two rows, six

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below and eight above, that await the arrival of the Flavii to come(their death cycle cut off by Vesuvius), but in notably asymmetricalpositions to the right display the chunky busts of Flavius Philoxenus andFlavia Agathe (Fig. 2.8). The tomb within has two separate chambers;the western one contained the ollae, identified by labels in carbon, asFlavius Philoxenus and Flavia Agathe. The external portraits thereforecorrespond to the chamber within, in relation to which they are in factsymmetrically placed, rather than to the monument as a whole.

The Flavii help to underline the vital point: that the external por-traiture is a mirror of the internal function of the tomb, which consistsin burial chamber, pots containing ashes, and further identifying la-bels. Thanks to the superb publication of the old excavations at PortaNocera by Stefano De Caro and Antonio D’Ambrosio, and above allto their extension of the line of graves in a new excavation,40 we can re-store the fragile traces of the internal aspects of these tombs which areconcealed to the modern visitor as to the ancient passerby. The use ofcarbon to record the names of the Flavii within reminds us of how thenumerous apparently anonymous burials in columbaria and chambertombs must in fact have had labels in evanescent materials, carbon orred pigment on terracotta, plaster, and surely frequently wood. We ac-cept far too easily the idea that naming was a privilege for the masterof the house and his close family; it is the use of incised marble that isthe privilege.

What makes this point most forcefully at Pompeii is the use of col-umellae within the chamber to mark the burial place of the individual.These headstones, as we have seen with Vesonius’s tomb, evoke the shapeof a head without attempting a portrait. The rear part is rounded, andin the case of females often sketches out a head of hair. Their front sur-face is always flat, and serves as a support for an inscription. It is thesecolumellae, rather than the external inscriptions or portraits, whichprovide the evidence for the location of the buried.

The most remarkable example is that of Munatius Faustus and Nae-voleia Tyche (Fig. 2.9). We have already met this couple on the splen-didly carved marble altar outside the Herculaneum gate, with theirship, like Trimalchio’s, in full sail. But that altar, it would appear, was acenotaph, for outside the Porta Nocera, they have another tomb (9 ES).This is less ostentatious, taking the form of a rectangular enclosure with

40 A. D’Ambrosio and S. De Caro, “La necropoli di Porta Nocera. Campagna discavo 1983,” Römische Gräberstraßen, 199–228.


a gabled roof. The fact that it is one of a pair adds to the vague impres-sion of a row of houses. Externally, a marble inscription on the gableidentifies C. Munatius Faustus Augustal(is) et pagan(us) d(ecreto)d(ecurionum) sibi et Naevoleiae Tyche coniugi. Internally, there areeight columellae, recording Munatius Faustus himself (misspelt as‘Fausus’), one L. Naevoleius Eutrape(lus), taken to be the freedmen ofNaevoleia, but perhaps more plausibly her father or patron, the freed-woman Munatia Euche, and five slaves, Helpis, Primigenia, Arsinoe,and Psyche, all of whom died at the age of 3 or less, and Atimetus whodied at 26. The interesting absentee is Naevoleia Tyche; and thoughit has been assumed that the new tomb at the Herculaneum gate was acenotaph, there is surely a chance that she is buried there, having out-lived her husband; if indeed she was not still alive at the moment of theeruption, and still planning to transfer her husband’s remains to theirfancy new tomb.41

I take one further illustration of the inward/outward rhythm of thePorta Nocera burials from the new excavations, where because of theirfreshness, the significance of the columellae is particularly visible.Tomb F north is formally similar to the tomb of Munatius Faustus: arectangular enclosure with a gabled roof. In the gable, the inscriptionannounces C. Veranius Rufus Q.f. IIvir. It is worth taking note thatthis city magistrate, a duumvir, has exactly the same tomb type as anAugustalis, and that in neither case is the tomb particularly eye-catch-ing. The dedication is made by his father’s freedwoman and one mayassume his partner: Verania Q.l. Clara optimo patrono sibi et suis. In-side the low, arched doorway is visible a line of half a dozen columellae.The central couple, neatly framed by the doorway, are Verania Q.l.Clara and Q Veranius Q.f. Rufus, though this time his office is givennot as duumvir but aedile, a usage which is paralleled in Pompeii (thatis to say, the aediles described themselves, being a pair, as duumvirs, socreating a constructive confusion of their precise rank). The other fourcolumellae are without inscriptions, or as I prefer to put it, withoutsurviving legible labels.

We have seen in the cases of Veranius and Verania, Munatius andNaevoleia, Flavius Philoxeus and Flavia Agathe, and Vesonius Phil-eros, that there is a close relationship between the external and internalaspects of the tomb. The essential feature of the tomb is in fact the en-closure or chamber: it is here that the family members are assembled,

41 Kockel, Die Grabbauten vor dem Herkulanertor, 107.

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2.8. Tomb of Flavius Philoxenus and Flavia Agathe, Porta Nocera, Pompeii(German Archaeological Institute. Used with permission.)

2.9. Tomb of Munatius Faustus and Naevoleia Tyche, Porta Nocera, Pompeii(Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei. Used with permission.)


and here too presumably that the ritual activities of the survivingfamily focused on the Parentalia and the days of roses and violets. Butin comparison to the Etruscan tombs, they have been turned insideout. The columellae represent minimalist markers of the presence ofthe deceased; the portraits and detailed inscriptions are displayed forpublic consumption on the outside. The phenomenon is so markedthat we run the risk of noticing only the external aspects and thereforethe external function: we think of the Roman tomb as a monumentumto boast the status of the dead to the outside world. In truth, this isonly the outwards face of a structure that still has a critical internalfunction in reconstituting the family.

By my argument, then, these tombs are indeed parallel to the housesof the living. One notable feature of the Pompeian domus is that theexternal function (the desire to impress the visitor from outside) is sostrong that it almost overwhelms the internal functions of a familystructure. Women and children prove relatively elusive within thehouse. But of course the internal function is still there. The link be-tween tombs and houses lies not in their typology (if the tomb of Mu-natius Faustus at the Porta Nocera is more house-like, his altar-tombat the Porta Ercolano is less so), but in their management of the rela-tionship of the external and internal function. Where the tombs of thislate republican/early imperial period seem to be historically distinctiveis in the extraordinary degree of importance attributed to the externalfunction; and that, by no coincidence, is also true of the treatment ofdomestic space.

Valerius Herma and the High Imperial Necropolis

My third and last moment is the mid-second century C.E. floruit of thestreet of the tombs beneath the Vatican (Fig. 2.10). That they were insome sense “representative” is suggested by the close typological par-allels with the Isola Sacra necropolis with its tight chronological rangefrom Trajanic to Severan.42 True, we are looking at burials overwhel-mingly of freedmen, and not of the urban elite. Equally, the poorare under-represented. That the vision is partial is brought out by the

42 I. Baldassare, “La necropoli della Isola Sacra (Porto),” Römische Gräberstraßen,125–138.

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equally important necropolis of the Vatican autopark. Thanks to Mar-gareta Steinby’s careful publication, we can recover the full clutter ofan ancient graveyard, where the neat rectangular structures of chambertombs are surrounded by a dense spread of simpler burials, in urns, orcapuchin tents of tiles, or simple wooden boxes that have rotted away.43

That is a vital reminder that brick-built chamber tombs were no uni-versal norm, but a specific effort to group the dead together.

The brick facades of the St Peter’s necropolis, or the Isola Sacra,have often put visitors in mind of rows of houses.44 The analogy, aswe have seen, has its limits; but coming to this material from thePompeian Porta Nocera, what must surely strike us is a sense of uni-formity. It is because modern houses often come in rows of uniformbrick structures that the image seems irrepressible. Although, as Eckhas shown, there is a considerable range in size of recorded plots thatfollow the formula, so many feet in fronte, so many in agro, there is anotable cluster around a uniform size of around 10–12 feet wide andas many deep.45 To call these frontages homogeneous is not to saythey are without individuality: the occasional scenes at the IsolaSacra representing the trade activities of the deceased are especially

43 E. M. Steinby, C. Coletti, M. B. Carre, and M. T. Cipriano, La necropoli della viaTriumphalis: il tratto sotto l’autoparco Vaticano (Atti della Pontificia AccademiaRomana di Archeologia, ser. 3. Memorie, vol. 17; Rome: Quasar, 2003).

44 Toynbee and Ward-Perkins, Shrine of St. Peter, 132ff.; H. von Hesberg, “Planungund Ausgestaltung der Nekropolen Roms im 2. Jh. n. Chr,” Römische Gräber-straßen, 43–60.

45 W. Eck, “Römische Grabinschriften. Aussageabsicht und Aussagefähigkeit imfunerären Kontext,” Römische Gräberstraßen, 61–84.

2.10. Vatican (St. Peter’s necropolis), plan and section.(German Archaeological Institute. Used with permission.)


effective in this sense. Nevertheless, compared to the competitive di-versity of the Pompeian streets, there seems little attempt to catch theeye of the passerby. The one pyramid at the Isola Sacra is not, likethat of Cestius in Rome, a conspicuous monumentum aere perennius,but a modest miniature.

In a word, there seems to have been another flip-round in therelative importance of the external and internal function. ValeriusHerma’s tomb is a powerful illustration because of the sheer richnessof its internal decoration (Figs. 2.11–15).46 The magnificent stuccowork enriches an internal architecture elegantly articulated withniches, and ranges statues of the gods and philosophers, and of Val-erius Herma, his wife, daughter, son, and perhaps patron. As in Pom-peii, there is a close relationship between the presentation outside, inthe form of an inscription, and that inside. From outside, we meet thefamily:

C Valerius Herma fecit etFlaviae T.f. Olympiadi coiugi etValeriae Maximae filiae et C ValerioOlympiano filio et suis libertislibertabusque posterisque eorum.

The classic nuclear family grouping is extended, just as at Pompeii andacross Italy, by the generic grouping of freedmen and freedwomen andtheir descendants.

But it is only inside that we can get a grip on the family. Flavius Her-ma presents himself repeatedly, almost obsessively.47 The marble panelof his sarcophagus reintroduces himself and his wife:

C Valerius Herma dumvivo mihi feci etFlaviae T.f. coiugi.

46 The definitive publication is H. Mielsch and H. von Hesberg, Die heidnischeNekropole unter St. Peter in Rom: die Mausoleen A–D (Atti della Pontificia Ac-cademia Romana di Archeologia, ser. 3, Memorie, vol. 16, 2. Roma: “L’erma” diBretschneider). See also Toynbee and Ward-Perkins, Shrine of St. Peter, 82–87;Eck, “Römische Grabinschriften,” 71–73. I am indebted to the forthcomingpaper by Regina Gee, “Being Greek in Rome: Identity, Memory, and Status inthe Tomb of Gaius Valerius Herma.”

47 Eck, “Römische Grabinschriften,” 71–73 for the inscriptions.

Housing the Dead 69

2.11. Tomb of Valerius Herma, necropolis of the Vatican, St. Peter’s, plan.(German Archaeological Institute. Used with permission.)


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Housing the Dead 71

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2.13. Tomb of Valerius Herma,necropolis of the Vatican,St. Peter’s, marble portrait ofHerma (a), death mask (b)(German ArchaeologicalInstitute in Rome. Used withpermission.)

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2.14. Tomb of Valerius Herma, necropolis of the Vatican, St. Peter’s, gildedstucco portrait of son Valerius Olympianus (a) and death mask (b). (German

Archaeological Institute in Rome. Used with permission.)

2.15. Tomb of ValeriusHerma, necropolis of theVatican, St. Peter’s, deathmask of infant. (GermanArchaeological Institute inRome. Used with permission.)

a b

Housing the Dead 73

The lettering is elegant, the grammar a touch uncertain (“dum vivo”combines the dative of “vivo mihi feci” with the fragmentary clause“dum vivus eram”). He introduces himself again on his son’s sar-cophagus:

C Valerio Olympiano qui vixitannis IIII menses V dies XIIIC Valerius Herma pater.

The early loss of his four-year-old son could well be the occasion ofhis building of a tomb “dum vivo.” But it could equally have been onthe loss of his 12-year-old daughter, Valeria Maxima, whose titulus canbe reconstructed on the model of her brother’s:

[Valeriae] C.f. M[aximaequae vixit an]nis XII [mens.?dieb. ? C Valerius Herma pater.]

Since both dead children figure on the titulus at the entrance, we canassume both children died before the tomb’s construction.

Valerius also marked the loss of a foster-child of 3 years old, Val-erius Asiaticus:

C Valerio Asiaticoalumno C Valerius Hermaqui vixit an. III m. XI d. III.

Asiaticus must have become alumnus of Herma on the death of hismother, Asia, who is commemorated by her husband, Valerius Prin-ceps, presumably a freedman or fellow freedman of Herma:

C Valerius Princeps [Va]leriae Asiae libertae i[ncom]parabili quae vix[it ann …]mecum [ann …]

Valerius’s nuclear family thus extends through the links of manu-mission and fostership. But it also extends to another alumnus, an8 year old from a different family:

C Appaieni Ca-ti qui vix. ann. VIIIm. X d. XXVIII alumnodulc.cui locum optu-lit C Val. Herma infrontf (sic) ped. V sarcofag-go terra deposito.


Finally, the family is extended to the wife of a freedman, ValeriusEutychas, though she was apparently a slave:

Dynateni C Valerius Eutychascoiugi benemerenti fecitpermissu C ValeriHermaes patroni optimi.

The presence of Herma himself is felt massively in this epigraphicensemble. So it is in the stucco decoration of the tomb. The figure ofthe god which occupies the central niche opposite the entrance is toodamaged for certain identification, but Mielsch feels confident inseeing in him Hermes (rather than Guarducci’s Apollo/Harpocrates).Even more striking, columns are replaced in the decoration by thesquared pilasters of Herms; of the original 23 Herms, 10 heads survive.Since these are a non-standard decorative form for a tomb, one infersthat Herma is playing a deliberate game with his name.

His self-representation goes far beyond punning. In the bearded fig-ure in sacrificial pose on the west wall, Mielsch identifies the portraitof Valerius Herma (Guarducci had seen this implausibly as theemperor Marcus), in the female figures that flank him, his daughterValeria Maxima, his wife Flavia Olympias. An older male figure isidentified as his patron, C. Valerius. But these stucco representations(assuming that they do indeed consist in the family group) are backedup by two well-carved marble portraits, of a bearded man and an idea-lized woman wearing the turban-like hairnet that is typical of the sec-ond century. They are identified as Valerius Herma (Fig. 2.13a) andFlavia Olympias.

Herma might be thought to have done well in terms of self-repro-duction. But he is not finished. His wife seems to be subject of a furtherportrait, this time in stucco, looking older and more tight-lipped, butwearing the same turban-like hairnet. It is strange that these remark-able portraits have not attracted more attention from those concernedwith “realism” and “idealism” in Roman portraiture. The stucco por-trait series continues. A young woman with wavy hair, and a young boywith short-cut hair with a quiff at the back, are taken to be portraits ofthe prematurely dead Valeria Maxima and Valerius Olympianus. Inthe latter case, the portrait is gilded, indicating an especial importance.

Even so, the portrait gallery is not complete. Three startling deathmasks complete the collection. One (surviving as a mould) shows abearded figure so close to the bearded portrait as to make the choice of

Housing the Dead 75

Valerius Herma seem inescapable (Fig. 2.13b). The final two, evenmore powerful, show a young boy with long eyelashes, hard not to takeas the 4-year-old Valerius Olympianus (Fig. 2.14), and an even youngerchild, not identified by Mielsch, though the fosterchild Valerius Asiati-cus might be a candidate (Fig. 2.15).

After this extraordinary catalogue of self-representation, let us takestock. Without pushing any of the individual identifications too hard,it is fairly evident that Valerius Herma projects himself inside his tombwith an insistence that puts even a Trimalchio to shame. From outsidewe see him in the titulus; inside we see him in his own sarcophagusinscription, and in those of his many dependents. His face looks downon us from the stucco decoration, from a marble bust, and even froma death mask. He ensures that his wife is also represented multiplywithin, along with his children and possibly alumni. His theophoricname seems to play even into the decorative scheme of herms.

But while we cannot mistake the urgency of his projection of himselfand his family and dependents, it is only from within the tomb that wecan pick up the message. Unlike Trimalchio, he is not interested inmaking an ostentatious statement about himself to the world: his trimbrick façade speaks respectability but not vanity. It is for the benefit ofhimself and his close circle that he makes his not inconsiderable finan-cial investment. We have seen Toynbee and Ward-Perkins commentwith surprise on the richness of the internal decoration – indeed, thequality is quite remarkable. But we may find difficulty with their con-cept that this was done for the benefit of the dead, to make them feel“at home” in their “eternal abode˜. It is surely done with an eye to theliving, that is to say Valerius himself, who as he lost members of hisfamily spent perhaps even more of his life than he would have wel-comed in the tomb, amid the cycle of regular annual rituals; for thebenefit of the survivors in his circle, who wished to remember theirloved ones; and for the benefit of the future generations which Hermasurely hoped would continue to remember and revere him. That is tosay, the functions of the tomb are predominantly internal; the externalfunction is present but subsidiary.

This is perhaps the place to add a comment about portraiture inRoman funerary art. There is an uncomfortable misfit between archaeo-logical reality on the one hand, and on the other the well-knownaccounts by Polybius of masks and impersonation in the Roman funer-ary ritual, and by Pliny of the atrium as a location for ancestral imageswith tituli linked by red thread. No archaeological evidence instanti-


ates these descriptions: there is no known example of any sort of maskthat might be used for impersonation at a funeral, nor of an atriumwith a collection of portraits such as might be linked by red thread.48

These passages are so much cited because they are assumed to providethe key to what we actually do find: numerous portraits in connectionwith tombs. If the Scipio tomb originally included portraits, as we havesuggested, it might make the tomb an evocation of the Plinian atrium.The best example of a collection of ancestral portraits are those fromthe tomb of the Licinii in Rome of the early first century C.E., whichhave made their way, including the famous portrait of Pompey, to theNy Carlsberg Glyptotek – always supposing the finds are genuine, nota nineteenth-century fake assembled to order for the market by thosewho well knew their Pliny.49

The overwhelming assumption, apparently supported by Polybiusand Pliny, is that Roman portraiture was all about status, that is to sayabout its external function, or advertising the image of the portrayedto the outside world. That is certainly borne out by the portraits on thetombs of Pompeii, not to speak of those on the via Appia and otherstreets of Rome, including the serried ranks of freemen solemnlyframed in the windows from which they look out on the world.50 Butportraits, like houses and tombs, have an internal as well as an externalfunction. They are a mechanism whereby a family represents itself toitself and constructs its identity. That is also what Polybius and Plinyare saying. A tomb like that of Valerius Herma shows this function atwork.

Conclusion

In sum, my argument is that the analogy between tomb and house inRoman Italy is perhaps stronger than we suspected. I remain scepticalabout the importance of the formal architectural evocations. These arepresent, but always partial. It seems to me risky to reconstruct theimage of the Etruscan house on the basis of the Etruscan tomb, how-

48 Flower, Ancestor Masks, 36–40.49 P. Kragelund and M. Moltesen, The Licinian Tomb: Fact or Fiction? (Copen-

hagen: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, 2003).50 D. Kleiner, Roman Group Portraiture: The Funerary Reliefs of the Late Republic

and Early Empire (New York: Garland, 1977).

Housing the Dead 77

ever plausible the links. But it is a game of allusion where one needs toknow both sides of the equation to see how it works. On the otherhand, I have argued that the tomb is a conscious extension of the two-fold function of the house, internally to articulate the household, ex-ternally to present the household to the world. The tomb, like thehouse, is where two worlds intersect, the world of the family or house-hold, and the world beyond. In providing a home in which the deadare reassembled with the family of the living, the tomb also invites theworld beyond, the passing stranger, to take note, shed a tear, or gaspwith astonishment.

But the most interesting conclusion, I feel, is one about which wemust be tentative without a more extensive examination of the evi-dence. It is that over time, there are significant shifts in the balancebetween this internal and external function.51 In the mid Republic andthe high Empire, I have argued, the internal function is dominant.Tombs are about representing the family or household to itself. Themain difference is that the mid-Republican family, like the Etruscan, isone with significant duration over time, across several generations,while that of the Empire is short-lived, and recruits the servile house-hold to bolster its numbers. The high imperial model is by no meansa return to the mid-republican one, but a new one suitable to thechanged society of the empire. Hence I have deliberately characterisedthe late Republic/early Empire as a transitional period, to counter theimpression it always creates as the classic and timeless expression ofthe true Roman way. The novelty lies in the vigorous and competitiveinterest in self-representation to the world outside; though I have triedto underline that the internal function persists and should never beoverlooked. The tomb, like the house, enables this constant dialogue.

51 Cf. the similar conclusions of von Hesberg, Monumenta, 277–79.


Commemorating the Dead 79

Susan T. Stevens

Chapter 3

Commemorating the Deadin the Communal Cemeteries of Carthage1

Since Lantier’s 1922 landmark article “Notes de topographie carthagi-noise,” burials at Carthage have been discussed mostly in the contextof the city’s growth and transformation, reflections, in part, of changesin attitude toward the dead in Late Antiquity wrought by the beliefsand practices of Christianity.2 As a result, much emphasis has beengiven to the location of burials during the period and the typology oftombs, topics that tend to mask the distinctiveness of individual sites.3

Thus, fifth- through seventh-century burials at Carthage tend to betreated in one of two mutually exclusive categories: Christian, that isburials in and around Christian basilicas and other cult buildings, or“urban,” individual tombs or small groups of tombs, not specificallyChristian, in and around buildings of the city or in cemeteries on its

1 I am grateful to Laurie Brink and my other colleagues in this volume for dis-cussions of commemoration of the dead that have added a dimension to mystudy of cemeteries in a time and place where commemoration is often difficultto recognize. An early version of this paper was delivered as part of a panel, “Ur-banism in North Africa: Beyond the Forum,” at the Archaeological Institute ofAmerica Annual Meeting, Montreal, January 2006.

2 Raymond Lantier, “Notes de topographie carthaginoise. Cimitières romainset chrétiens de Carthage,” CRAI (1922): 22–28; Henry R. Hurst, “The LateRoman-Byzantine Defences of Carthage,” in Excavations at Carthage: The Brit-ish Mission Vol.1.1: The Avenue du Président Habib Bourguiba, Salammbo: TheSite and Finds other than Pottery (eds. Henry R. Hurst and Simon P. Roskams;Sheffield: The British Academy, 1984), 31–41; Liliane Ennabli, Carthage:Une métropole chrétienne du 4e à la fin du 7e siècle. (Études d’antiquités afri-caines; Paris: CNRS Éditions, 1997).

3 A recent welcome exception is Naomi J. Norman, “Death and Burial of RomanChildren: The Case of the Yasmina Cemetery at Carthage: Part 1: Setting theStage,” Mortality 7.3 (2002): 302–23.

80 Susan T. Stevens

periphery.4 These models leave out of discussion burial sites that do notfit comfortably. One example is the cemetery that includes mass gravesat Falbe Point 90 on the north coastal periphery of Carthage. The di-versity of practice at this site and others warns that traditional modelsof “urban” and Christian burial, developed from coarse-grained evi-dence when little specific archaeological data was available, may havebeen too broadly applied. The dichotomy implied by these models tendsto obscure a shared ideology of communal burial in the cemeteries ofthis period.5

The overall aim of this paper is to explore the internal logic of re-cently excavated and published cemeteries of the fifth through seventhcenturies by focusing, initially, on five cemeteries: two in and aroundthe basilicas of Bir el Knissia and Bir Ftouha, two associated with thecity wall, the Theodosian Wall and Circus cemeteries, and the seem-ingly anomalous burial site at Falbe Point 90.6 Each of these five sites

4 For the first category see Noël Duval, “L’inhumation privilégiée en Tunisie et enTripolitaine,” in L’inhumation privilégiée du 4e au 7e siècle en Occident, (eds. YvetteDuval and Jean-Charles Picard: Paris, De Boccard, 1986), 13–42 and “Les nécro-poles chrétiennes d’Afrique du Nord,” in Monuments funéraires, institutionsautochtones en Afrique du Nord antique et médiévale, VIe colloque international surl’histoire et l’archéologie de l’Afrique du Nord, (ed. Pol Trousset: Éditions CTHS:Paris, 1995), 187–205 which set Carthage in the context of other, better knownNorth African Christian sites. For the second category see Susan T. Stevens, “Sép-ultures tardives intra-muros à Carthage,” in Monuments funéraires, 207–17, id.,“Transitional Neighborhoods and Suburban Frontiers in Late- and Post-RomanCarthage,” in Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity, (eds. Ralph W. Mathisen andHagith Sivan; Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996), 187–200, and more recently, AnnaLeone,“L’inumazione in ‘spazio urbano’ à Cartagine tra 5 e 7 secolo D.C.,” An-tiquité Tardive 10 (2002): 233–48 which is especially useful for fig. 5, an updatedplan of the later city, id., “Changing Urban Landscapes: Burials in North AfricanCities from the Late Antique to Byzantine periods,” in Mortuary Landscapes inNorth Africa (eds. David. Stone and Lea M. Stirling; Toronto: University of To-ronto Press, 2007), 164–203. The same author generously shared the manuscript ofa book in progress, Transition Revisited: Decline and Ordered Evolution in NorthAfrican Towns (Zeugitania, Byzacena, Tripolitania) from Late Antiquity to theArab conquest that sets Carthage in the context of other North African cities.

5 G. Cantino Wataghin, “The Ideology of Urban Burials,”in The Idea and Ideal ofthe Town between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, (eds. Gian P. Brogioloand Bryan Ward-Perkins; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 147–63.

6 Following Lantier, I use the word cemetery in its modern sense of collective burial.For the debate over the word’s ancient origins see Éric Rebillard, “KOIMHTH-PION et COEMETERIUM: tombe, tombe sainte, nécropole,” MEFRA 105.2(1993): 975–1001.


has fixed limits in space and time, clear principles of spatial arrange-ment, and a burial koine in the consistency of tomb types, markers, andgifts. These features reflect a conformity to tradition at each site thatcan be taken as evidence of a distinctive collective identity, even if thespecific nature of the community cannot be ascertained.7 The details ofeach cemetery reveal the importance of individual and group identityand landmarks of social status within each community, as well as be-tween communities. Together, the sites, with a handful of other re-cently excavated cemeteries of the period, suggest a more nuanced pic-ture of the fifth- through seventh-century cemeteries at Carthage.Rather than being a continuous zone of cemeteries,8 the urban pe-riphery of Carthage may have been a fluid landscape in which distinctcemeteries within specific enclosures or clustered around landmarkscame and went like alluvial islands.

The basilica at Bir el Knissia was built just outside a gate in the lateRoman city wall on Kardo 5 east in the late fifth-early sixth century. Itis known from excavations in 1922–23 by Delattre and in 1990–92 by ateam with access to Delattre’s field notes and excavation plan.9 Indi-cations that the basilica was a cemetery church by design are its originalbeaten earth floor, an apsed structure attached to its west wall, and apresumed atrium at the north, all used for burials.10 The burial functionof the complex was expanded in the later sixth and seventh centuries:porticoed courtyards were added to the east and west long sides of thebasilica in the Justinianic period (540–566) and an east courtyard wasattached to the east wall of the basilica in the post-Justinianic period(575+), a change of plan that may have linked the original basilica to alarge symmetrical building to its northeast, perhaps a second basilica.11

7 Ann Marie Yasin, “Funerary Monuments and Collective Identity: From RomanFamily to Christian Community,” Art Bulletin 87.3 (September 2005): 433–57,esp. 442–45.

8 Ennabli, Carthage, 56.9 Alfred-Louis Delattre, “Fouilles sur l’emplacement d’une basilique près de

Douar-ech-Chott à Carthage,” CRAI (1922): 302–07, and “La basilique deBir-el-Knissia à Carthage,” CRAI (1923): 449–51; Susan T. Stevens, Bir el Knis-sia at Carthage: A Rediscovered Cemetery Church: Report no. 1 (JRASup. 7;Ann Arbor, 1993).

10 As at Demna, Sétif, and Uppenna, see Duval “Nécropoles chrétiennes,” 203.11 Stevens, Bir el Knissia, 303–8. In his review, Nöel Duval suggests that the sym-

metrical building might be a second basilica, “La basilique de Bir el Knissia àCarthage: une fouille du Père Delattre redécouverte et réétudiée,” Antiquité Tar-dive 3 (1995): 295.

82 Susan T. Stevens

How far east the basilica’s burial area extended is unknown. Delattre’sexcavation plan suggests that its structures extended to the north towithin 10 meters of the rural extension of Kardo 5 east and to the westperhaps as far as a perpendicular rural road that may have confinedthe southwest annex. At the southern end of the complex, structuresand burials appear to have extended as far as 15 meters southeast ofthe southwest corner of the basilica, an area that bears a remarkablesimilarity to the burial area that lay immediately outside the apse andsoutheast corner of the basilica. At the southern extent of the burialcomplex were one robbed burial, fragments of three Christian tomb in-scriptions, and disarticulated human bone representing a minimumnumber of three individuals. The burial lay perpendicular to two phasesof a SW-NE-aligned wall, and probably lay inside a structure, the align-ment of which, while unlike that of the basilica proper, was similar tothat of the southwest annex of the basilica. The burials associated withthe basilica did not extend as far south as sondages 1 and 6 where typi-cal domestic contexts roughly contemporary in date with the basilicamarked the edge of the low plateau on which the complex was built.12

A Roman necropolis just outside the gate of the city has been con-sidered a kind of predecessor of the cemetery in and around the Chris-tian basilica, although some 50 meters separate the Roman tombsfrom Bir el Knissia’s symmetrical building.13 Indeed, the paucity ofRoman epitaphs at Bir el Knissia seems to argue against any real con-tinuity: only nine of 89 small fragments of funerary inscription foundin the complex are arguably Roman, most of which appear to havebeen reused as paving or cut for frames for other tomb markers.Only one retained evidence of attachment to the masonry of a Romanmonument.14

Seventy-four tombs are known from inside the basilica and its an-nexes. Forty-seven were shown on the 1922–1923 excavation plan or indetailed sketches in the diary, though Delattre’s passing mentionsof sépultures indicate that he encountered many more burials than heinvestigated or recorded. The 1990 excavations encountered the tracesof another 27 tombs, though the minimum number of 55 individualsrepresented among the disarticulated bone suggests many more within

12 Stevens, Bir el Knissia, 4, fig. 3 and 67–71.13 Lantier,“Notes de topographie,” fig. 1, no. 10; Duval, “Nécropoles chrétiennes,”

193.14 L. Ennabli, “Inscriptions de Bir el Knissia,” in Stevens, Bir el Knissia, 257–88.


the limited area excavation.15 Although the excavated tombs representonly a sampling of the cemetery, they appeared in every area of thecomplex, including some burials originally placed outside the basilicathat were later incorporated into its annexes. The distribution of funer-ary inscriptions from 1990 suggests that tombs were most concen-trated in the symmetrical building and in the basilica proper.16

The tombs probably belong to all phases of the basilica, from thelate fifth to the late seventh century, though very few can be more spe-cifically dated. In a pattern long recognized for churches, the tombswere arranged parallel to the walls of the complex.17 The vast majorityof the tombs were aligned either with the NNW-SSE long walls orSSW-NNE short walls of the basilica, with five tombs in the southwestannex area aligned roughly WSW-ENE conforming to a later crosswall that was not perpendicular to the basilica’s long axis. Among thetombs where an orientation of the body was clear, no preference wasobvious. Limited evidence from the east aisle suggests that the burialsinside the basilica may have belonged to two sequences, arranged ver-tically. The relatively deep-shafted NNW-SSE graves cut from thebeaten earth floor, including Delattre’s best-preserved burials, seem todate to the late fifth to mid-sixth century, while the comparatively shal-low graves aligned SSW-NNE and cut from the level of the mosaicpavement belonged to the lates sixth and seventh centuries.18

The vast majority of graves were formae, shafts cut into the pave-ments of the complex at the bottom of which the deceased were placedsimply in the earth or contained in cists of stone, masonry, or terra-cotta.19 The tops of many shafts were marked with an inscription inmosaic or stone, most frequently commemorating a single individual.However, four inscriptions from this site commemorated two and fourindividuals.20

15 Stevens, Bir el Knissia, after 24, 38, 47, 102–4, 121–27, 144–50, 183–86; CherieK. Walth and Laura J. Miller, “Burials and Disarticulated Human Bone (1990),”in Stevens, Bir el Knissia, 191–92.

16 Ennabli, “Inscriptions,” 257–88 catalogues 22 inscriptions from the NE annexand 14 from inside the basilica.

17 Duval, “Nécropoles chrétiennes,” 206.18 Stevens, Bir el Knissia, 304–6.19 Three amphora burials were also recorded: outside the apse aligned N-S with the

basilica, oriented S-N just outside the chancel entrance and oriented S-N againstthe east wall of the basilica.

20 Stevens, Bir el Knissia, 35; Ennabli,“Inscriptions,” 272.

84 Susan T. Stevens

Four group tombs stand out in the Bir el Knissia cemetery. Theseconsisted of three to nine prefabricated tombs built side by side allat one time in a single masonry structure. Two group tombs lay insidethe basilica, a structure with nine graves in the apse, and another withfour tombs associated with a small cistern in the floor of the chancel.The other two group tombs were located in the western annexes of thebasilica: eight tombs in a hypogeum under the west portico floor, threein the southwest annex. How or if these groups or their individualmembers were marked at floor level is not attested. While the grouptombs conform to the larger community in that they are individualformae, the fact that they were built together all at once instead of beingdug ad hoc defines them as a group apart from other tombs, asserting asmaller group identity within the larger cemetery community. However,because group tombs located inside the basilica were in areas ordinarilyrestricted to the clergy, clergy may have been the small community ex-pressed here. Similarly, clergy were distinguished from laymen in thecemetery churches at Demna, Sétif, and Haïdra 1 by epitaphs that in-cluded the name and titles of clergymen, but only the names oflaymen.21 The other two group tombs at Bir el Knissia may have beenfamily monuments, and therefore like the numerous small masonrytomb groups (for two to five individuals) and even tomb monumentsfound in the large burial enclosure southeast of the basilica of Mçidfa,and outside that basilica’s north corner.22 Their location in com-paratively informal and less privileged spaces of the basilica may haveenabled families to assert their smaller group identity.23 The closest par-allel to the hypogeum at Bir el Knissia may be the late-fourth- or early-fifth-century hypogeum of Flavius Valens found by Delattre against thesouthwest corner of the basilica at Damous el Karita.24

21 Yasin,“Funerary Monuments,” 447.22 Liliane Ennabli, Les inscriptions funéraires chrétiennes II. La basilique de Mçidfa

(Tunis and Rome: Institut national d’archeologie et d’art and École française deRome, 1982), 11, fig. 5.

23 The southwest annex at Bir el Knissia also included a highly unusual funerarymonument for a single individual, a caisson shown in F4 of Delattre’s plan andp. 4 of his carnet, Stevens, Bir el Knissia, 40. Duval, “La basilique de Bir el Knis-sia,” 291, interprets this feature as the basin of an earlier Roman house.

24 Heimo Dolenz, Damous el Karita: Die österreichisch-tunesischen Ausgrabungender Jahre 1996 und 1997 im Saalbau und der Memoria des Pilgerheiligtums Da-mous el Karita in Karthago (Österreichisches Archäologisches Institut Sonder-schriften 35; Vienna, 2001), Abb. 54, Beil.1/10.


Delattre made no mention of any grave goods, and none were foundamong the surviving burials of the 1990 excavation, but the profounddisturbance of the basilica by grave robbers suggests that enoughtombs were furnished to make the practice profitable. Indeed, uninten-tional disturbance of tombs would have been unlikely because manyformae were marked at floor level, a practice attested at Bir el Knissiaby 89 recorded epitaphs. In fact, the elevation of the new mosaic floorsome 0.5 meters above the original beaten earth surface sealed thelayer of early tombs. This strategy to accommodate a new layer ofburials cut from the new floor, without disturbing earlier ones, sug-gests the value placed on the integrity of tombs.

The inscriptions were all in Latin except for two in Greek; most wereon stone (marble, limestone, kadel, in descending order) with at leasteight in mosaic. The epitaphs have a standard format: a single namefollowed by some or all of the fomula fidelis in pace vixit annis …depositus with a date and a limited range of familiar iconography. Inthis respect, the Bir el Knissia community conforms to the epigraphictraditions for this period in Carthage known from other basilica cem-eteries.25 The cognomina, with the exception of Siricia (cat. no. 6), arewell-attested, though no names of Germanic origin are recorded asthey were at nearby Bir el Knissia 2 and other basilica cemeteries. Thisis surprising given the origin of the basilica in the late Vandal period,and it may be a clue to the ethnic identity and religious persuasionof the basilica community: Roman and Catholic as opposed to Vandaland Arian.26 Little other information can be gleaned about thecemetery population. The few preserved burials and disarticulatedbone from the 1990 excavations suggested that immature individuals(16 of 55) were under-represented, perhaps because they were largelyexcluded from the area excavated inside the basilica.27 This pattern isdiscernable on the 1922–1923 excavation plan: the standardized adult-sized shafts predominate, with only three very small tombs shown out-side the basilica proper, probably representing the graves of children,to which may be added at least one of Delattre’s two amphora burials,

25 Ennabli, “Inscriptions,” 287–88 and id., Les inscriptions funéraires chrétiennes dela basilique dite de Sainte-Monique à Carthage (Tunis and Rome: Institutnational d’archéologie et d’art and École française de Rome, 1975), 59–69,77–82, 87.

26 Stevens, Bir el Knissia, 1–6.27 Walth and Miller, “Burials,”192–93.

86 Susan T. Stevens

the small globular amphora shown outside the east wall of the basilica.A similar imbalance is better documented at the so-called basilica ofSainte Monique where only 28 of 86 individuals identified by age ontheir epitaphs are classified as immature.28

Clearly, the defining feature of the Bir el Knissia community as awhole was its association with the structures of the basilica complex,a living monument that commemorated members of the community.As a communal monument the Bir el Knissia basilica was small andrather simple both in plan and adornment by comparison with otherburial churches at Carthage. On the other hand, the basilica is unusualin being a new foundation in the late fifth or early sixth century witharchitectural ornament specially made for this structure rather thanbeing composed of spolia.29

The probable density of burials at Bir el Knissia, in and around a ba-silica that expanded both horizontally and vertically to accommodatemore burials, suggests a large and not particularly exclusive community.Within this community the abundance of inscriptions and the concernfor the integrity of tombs attest to the value placed on the individual.The prevalence of forma-type tombs and the standard repertory offormulae, iconography, and nomenclature reflected on their markerssuggest a deliberate conformity to tradition.30 Hierarchy within the Birel Knissia cemetery is also expressed by the privilege attached to indi-vidual graves and tomb groups in the chancel and apse as opposed toburials in the rest of the basilica, to graves inside the basilica as com-pared with those in its annexes, to those in pre-fabricated group tombscompared to individual formae placed ad hoc.

Beyond the notion of communal commemoration, what attractedthe community to Bir el Knissia at the outset is not clear. While theanswer usually given for suburban churches is the prospect of burialad sanctos, no specific evidence at Bir el Knissia supports its origin asa martyrial church. In fact, of the suburban basilicas at Carthage onlyBasilica Maiorum (Mçidfa) produced circumstantial archaeologicalevidence, an inscription with the names of Perpetua and Felicitas and

28 Ennabli, Sainte-Monique, 91–92: five sub adults (13–17 years), 12 children(3–12 years), and one infant (fetal-2 years).

29 Naïdé Ferchiou, “Les éléments architecturaux (1990),” in Stevens, Bir el Knissia,254–55.

30 Yasin, “Funerary Monuments,” 442–45.


a crypt at the center of the basilica, suggesting it was martyrial inorigin.31

The elaborate basilica complex at Bir Ftouha on the northwesternoutskirts of Carthage was built approximately 1 kilometer outside thecity wall, the most distant of the known surburban basilicas. Dis-covered in 1895 by A.-L. Delattre, the complex was partially exposedin 1897 by P. Gauckler in the process of lifting mosaics, but not exten-sively excavated until the 1994–1999 excavations.32 The origins of thebasilica complex may have been four tombs around a column foun-dation that were cut through a beaten earth floor dating to the earlysixth century, though the identity of these individuals cannot now be re-covered. The four individual tombs of pre-basilica date were incorpor-ated into the foundations of the Byzantine north building. One tombwas one of adult dimensions, aligned SE-NW. The other three were ofdimensions appropriate for children. While the reason for their irregu-lar alignments is unclear for the pre-basilica phase, such alignments arecharacteristic of tombs in centralized structures in the Byzantine com-plex. Two of the tomb shafts were sealed by a coarse gray mortar andcobble layer, presumably a practical measure to prevent disturbance.One of the these (tomb 30), the only one of the four that was bottomed,contained coffin nails in situ on the carefully cut hard clay bottom ofthe shaft that otherwise contained no tomb structure. A concentrationof loose mosaic tesserae suggested that at least one of these tombs(tomb 31) may originally have been marked by a tomb mosaic.

Thus, the first documented use of this part of the Bir Ftouha fieldfor burial appears to be the early sixth century. The only traces of pre-Christian cemetery were three fragments of epitaph (cat. nos. 3–4, 7)and the only other pre-basilica structure was a single wall of anom-alous alignment and unknown date beneath the south portico. An ex-tensive site that Delattre explored in 1928–1929 some 50 meters to thenorthwest of the basilica complex, included a small bath complex, tre-foil funerary chapel with sarcophagi, and a few Christian funerary in-

31 Ennabli, Mçidfa, 5–17 reproduces early excavation drawings, plans, and photo-graphs.

32 Alfred-Louis Delattre, “Inscriptions chrétiennes,” Cosmos 542 (June 1895):337–39; Paul Gauckler, “Fouilles,” Marche du service des antiquités 1898, 7; id.,Inventaire des mosaïques de la Gaule et de l’Afrique 2: Afrique proconsulaire (Tuni-sie) (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1910), 263–64; Susan T. Stevens, Angela V. Kali-nowski and Hans vanderLeest, Bir Ftouha: A Pilgrimage Church Complex atCarthage, (JRASup 59; Portsmouth, R.I., 2005).

88 Susan T. Stevens

scriptions. While the full extent of the Bir Ftouha basilica complex andits cemetery is not known, the results of a magnetometer survey in2000 and the marking of tombeaux between the two Bir Ftouha siteson an early-twentieth-century map of the field suggest that it extendedsome distance west of the recent excavations, perhaps as far as Del-attre’s 1928–1929 site.33

The whole Byzantine basilica complex was built all at one time in thelate 540s, its plan modified slightly in a second phase dating from thelast third of the sixth through the last half of the seventh century. AtBir Ftouha 95 tombs belong to the basilica cemetery. Original to theconstruction of the basilica was a roughly cruciform masonry burialstructure aligned E-W with the long axis of the complex. This wasoriented to the cardinal compass points rather than with the rural cad-astration. The tombs of this structure, described by Delattre as finelyplastered auges,34 lay under the floor of the chancel and apse and ac-commodated 16 individual tombs in one layer or as many as 32 in two.The best-preserved tomb structure (tomb 1) was a rather narrow lowertomb revetted in marble about 0.5 meters deep with a ledge for a coverslab, above which was place for another deeper but wider tomb underthe presumed marble-tiled floor of the basilica.35 The tombs were all ofa standard adult size and were probably marked at floor level by tombmosaics or inscriptions in stone, of which Delattre found fragments,one for a presbyter and one apparently for a monk. After the construc-tion of the basilica floor two additional tombs (or four in two levels)appear to have been added, extending the burial structure by the lengthof two tombs end to end down the middle of the nave, perhaps under aprostoon in the fifth and sixth bays.36 Disarticulated human bone in theheavily robbed chancel amounted to a minimum number of threeadults, with an additional two adults attested in the disturbed fill of thebest preserved later tomb in the nave (tomb 4).37

33 P. J. Bordy, Carte archéologique et topographique des ruines de Carthage (1897);Alfred-Louis Delattre, “Séance du 27 juillet,” CRAI (1928): 252–54 and “Lesfouilles de Bir Ftouha,” CRAI (1929): 23–29; Stevens, Kalinowski, and vander-Leest, Bir Ftouha, 21–26, 580–82.

34 Ibid., 15–34, esp. 20–21. The recent excavation found another three fragments ofstone inscription in the chancel area.

35 Ibid., 35–114, esp. 44, fig. 2.7 and 45, fig. 2.8.36 Ibid., 53, fig 2.14.37 Cherie K. Walth,“Human Bone,” in Stevens, Kalinowski, and vanderLeest, Bir

Ftouha, 482–83.


Beginning in the last third of the sixth century 26 individual tombswere cut through the mosaic floor of the west building and an attachedsouthwest external room, though only one burial of two adults in asingle shaft escaped tomb robbing. In the west building the burials wereconcentrated in the eastern part of the ambulatory nearest the basilica’snarthex, in a variety of alignments, generally parallel or perpendicularto the polygonal outer walls of the building. In the building’s centralspace the tombs seem to have been aligned with column foundations.The 16 tombs with some surviving structure were of a size appropriatefor adults (1.84–2.2 meters × 0.5–0.8 meter and 1.06–1.53 meters deep)buried in stone cists of various kinds and levels of elaboration. Two insitu fragments of different mosaic inscriptions were found (tombs16–17), as well as several examples of cobble bedding for tomb markersnear floor level in other tombs. One of the tomb mosaics was a smallrectangular marker (0.50 × 0.15 meter) for Be… or Ve…rudus;38 theother was probably a tomb-sized marker incorporating a multiple-lineinscription panel. Four fragments of inscription suggest that othertombs may have been marked with marble slabs. The absence of tombintercutting and the pattern of targeted tomb robbing suggest that allthe tombs were clearly marked.

The centralized north building yielded 18 individual tombs insertedad hoc into its flagged floor in phase 2 of the basilica complex, thoughthere are likely to have been many more tombs in the unexcavatedtwo thirds of the structure. The principle behind the placement of thetombs, while less clear than in the west building, appears similar: fivetombs were aligned parallel to the south wall of the building, thereused column foundation, and each other; the rest apparently werealigned with paving stones that seem to have been laid in a patternradiating from the center of the building. As in the west building thetombs are of a size and shape appropriate for adults. Only tomb26 yielded any indication of tomb structure: it was unusually large(2.4 × 0.75 meters), deep (1.8 meters), and nicely plastered on the in-terior. The north end of the tomb was marked at floor level by a frameenclosing a firm cobble and mortar bedding, in which a new or reusedpaving stone once lay.39 The pattern of targeted tomb robbing and the

38 Henry Maguire, “Mosaics,” in Stevens, Kalinowski, and vanderLeest, BirFtouha, 332–33, fig. 6.25.

39 Stevens, Kalinowski, and vanderLeest, Bir Ftouha, 109–112, fig. 2.55 and moregenerally 574–76.

90 Susan T. Stevens

absence of tomb intercutting suggest that the other tombs in the northbuilding were also clearly marked, like those in the west building. Infact, disturbance of the pre-basilica-phase tombs was likely to havebeen prevented by markers, albeit anonymous ones, in the Byzantinefloor: the paving stones over the early tombs were aligned with thegrave beneath instead of conforming to the radiating pattern of the restof the floor.

An additional 15 tombs (alone or in pairs) were inserted ad hoc intothe floors outside the monumental center of the complex or outside thecomplex altogether, varying in alignment according to nearby wallsor features. One sub-adult tomb consisted of a shaft without any struc-ture 1 meter below the floor of the north hall of the ambulatory (tomb 5,burial 1). It was centrally located and oriented N-S parallel to the longwalls of the room. Another, evidently for a child, was also aligned N-Sand lay inside an adjacent structure to the west of the north hall ofthe ambulatory. Two side-by-side graves, marked by fragmentary butin situ tomb-sized mosaic panels, were aligned roughly parallel to thecurving northeast wall of the north peristyle. Of these two tombs, themore northerly was definitely child-sized. The better preserved of thetwo, for Gaudiosa, was oriented W-E, its child-sized panel enclosed inan unusually wide border.40 Another tomb was probably located underthe floor of northeast room 2, aligned with its walls. The nineteenth-century excavators recovered two other tomb mosaics for the childrenAdeodatus and Redibibus or Redibiba, laid end to end, probably in thesouth peristyle. Recent excavations found two other child-sized simpleshaft tombs: one in the ambulatory of the baptistery, aligned locallyroughly NE-SW with the outside wall of the building and centralizedat its entrance, and another single tomb outside the southwest curvingwall of the south peristyle, aligned roughly E-W, not quite either par-allel or perpendicular to the walls of the area. One tomb was cut intothe courtyard floor north of the west building, and two in the southyard: one adult-sized tomb against the polygonal wall of the westbuilding and one child-sized, locally centralized and aligned N-S, par-allel to the west wall of the narthex.41 Finally a cluster of three individ-ual tombs, aligned E-W, lay against the outside south wall of southeastroom 2, one of these, tomb 7, consisted of a stone cist. Although noidentifiable tombs were found in the south courtyard or portico, the

40 Maguire, “Mosaics,” 325, fig. 6.18.41 Stevens, Kalinowski, and vanderLeest, Bir Ftouha, 105–109, fig. 2.50.


five inscription fragments found there may have been redeposited fromtombs outside the south portico wall.

Ninety-five excavated tombs is a surprisingly low number for thislarge and extensively excavated a complex with well-preserved floors.The pattern of distribution of these tombs is striking. Just over a thirdof the tombs are in the masonry structure at the core of the basilica, agroup tomb that differs significantly from the group tombs in the Bir elKnissia basilica because of its size, its central location, and the factthat it was original to the construction of the monument. This groupburial appears to have been designed as a kind of internal martyriumaround which the rest of the basilica was built. The Bir Ftouha basil-ica, rather than housing the cemetery, was a basilica ad corpus, in thevicinity of which some privileged individuals were buried. Even privi-leged tombs were excluded from the basilica proper, its narthex, apseambulatory, and south courtyard area. The real communal burial monu-ments at Bir Ftouha were the west building, southwest external room,and the north building which housed nearly half of the attested tombsin the basilica cemetery, arranged according to the logic of each space.While the west and north buildings were probably entrance buildingsby design, the former had higher status as an elaborately decorated mainentrance on the long axis of the basilica than the latter, a subsidiary en-trance on the minor axis of the complex. The cemetery population ofboth buildings appears to have consisted of adults who enjoyed thestatus of a smaller group identity associated with a functioning basilicacomplex. The least privileged members of the Bir Ftouha community,perhaps those not yet full members, appear to have been buried singlyor in pairs in the less important, outlying buildings, outdoor spaces ofthe complex, or adjacent to but outside the complex. Of these 15 tombs,as many as nine were for children, an indication that children in theBir Ftouha community were differentially treated, sometimes deferen-tially, as in the case of the single tomb in the baptistery ambulatory. Itis also worth noting, in reflecting on the possible status of this commu-nity, that only formae were found at Bir Ftouha, by contrast with Bir elKnissia which also had amphora burials.

Both the Bir el Knissia and Bir Ftouha cemeteries were separatefrom other cemeteries of the city. Their communal monuments, the ba-silicas, were visible and easily accessible by suburban roads, thoughnot located on the main roads from the city. The organization of thecemeteries was local, conforming to the buildings with which they wereassociated that were themselves not aligned with the Roman rural cad-

92 Susan T. Stevens

astration. Both cemeteries, with their individual graves indicated bytomb markers and lack of intercutting, appear to have preserved theidentity of individuals within the community. The cemeteries also re-flect a clear hierarchy with the greatest privilege granted to grouptombs closest to the core of the basilica and to group and individualtombs inside the basilica and its annexes. Single tombs in outsidespaces probably represented the least privileged members of the basilicacommunity. Both cemetery populations appear to reflect a differentialtreatment of children and adults, perhaps reflecting a prohibitionagainst the unbaptised being buried inside the church.42 If architec-tural elaboration, obvious hierarchy, and strict control of the type andarrangement of tombs reflect privilege, then Bir Ftouha’s communityappears the more privileged of the two.

The Theodosian Wall cemetery was located in the northwest quad-rant of the city, approximately 200 meters west of the main northgate (on the Kardo maximus).43 It occupied a long narrow area about5 × 30 meters between the city wall and a ditch outside it, an area thathad once been part of the urban grid of streets at the intersection ofDecumanus 5 north with Kardines 5 and 6 west. The 213 primary in-humation burials of the cemetery are dated to the period between theconstruction of the city wall ca. 430 and the mid-sixth century. Thiscemetery appears not to have had a Roman phase.

The cemetery was organized with individual graves aligned NW-SE,roughly parallel to the Theodosian city wall, with the greatest densityof graves closest to the wall, and thinning out further from it. While theplan of the complete cemetery gives the impression of being organizedin serried rows, its chronological development suggests rather that

42 Augustine, De sepultura catechumenorum 7 (F. Dolbeau, Augustin d’Hippone:vingt-six sermons au peuple d’Afrique 1, Collection des études augustiniennes,série antiquité: Paris, 1996) mentioned by Yasin, “Funerary Monuments,” 451.

43 Andrea Carandini, Lucilla Anselmino, Clementina Panella, et al., “Gli scavi ita-liani a Cartagine: Rapporto preliminare delle campagne 1973–1977,” Quadernidi Archeologia della Libia 13 (1983): 7–61; Lucilla Anselmino, “Le secteur nord-ouest de la ville,” in Pour Sauver Carthage (ed. Abdelmajid Ennabli; Paris andTunis: Institut national de l’archéologie et l’art and UNESCO, 1992), 125–130;Mark B. Garrison, “A Late Roman/Early Byzantine Cemetery at Carthage:The University of Michigan Excavations at Carthage,” Archaeological News 15(1990): 23–29; Mark B. Garrison and Susan T. Stevens, “Le cimitière du Mur deThéodose,” in Pour Sauver Carthage, 131–34; Susan T. Stevens, “A Late RomanUrban Population in a Cemetery of Vandalic Date at Carthage,” JRA 8 (1995):263–70 with a final report in preparation.


tombs of roughly the same date may have been clustered. Muchclearer is the vertical arrangement of graves with burials over oneanother in irregular stacks or overlapping end to end, a system thatwas consistent over time and was probably intentional. This verticalarrangement of tombs, the precedent for which may have been setby two early cist burials, one over the other sealed under the samemarker, may have been devised in the absence of grave markers toavoid disturbing recent graves. It appears likely that some verticalstacks are family plots.

Except for a handful of double burials of siblings or mothers andinfants buried at the same time in the same grave, the burials were forsingle individuals. The vast majority of the graves (142) were simple pitinhumations in which the bodies were covered only with earth, thoughsome graves were also lined with stones or covered by large piecesof amphora. In the 71 most elaborate grave structures, bodies werecontained in amphoras, stone, or mud-brick cists. The only discern-ible grave goods were a coin or coins in 36 of the graves, and a fewpersonal items (earrings, a pair of tweezers). The differential treat-ment of infants is attested in this cemetery both in a rather isolatedinfant section, and by the fact that elsewhere only infants were buriedin amphorae. The cemetery population was made up of 63 percentadults, 37 percent infants-sub adults, an expected proportion for apre-industrial population.

The cemetery contained one possible monument, an enclosure wallthat may have set off two tombs, albeit temporarily. Eleven tombs hadinscribed tomb mosaics, of which two were iconographically identifi-able as Christian. Nine of these markers were laid against each other,a small group distinguished from the larger community by their orien-tation. The mosaic-marked burials in the eastern part of the cemeterywere unusually deep, in sturdy cists, suggesting intent to protectthem from disturbance. The intensity of later burials around and cutthrough this mosaic group suggests their perceived importance. Themosaics originally enhanced the sense of smaller-group identity andlater may have served as a kind of communal monument for this partof the cemetery. Indeed, the other two mosaic-covered tombs in thecemetery lay isolated in other parts of the cemetery and did not attractlater tombs. Another homogeneous group of burials set somewhatapart from the larger community included six young infants. All thetombs of the cemetery are for individuals except where members ofsame nuclear family were buried at the same time, or in two cases,

94 Susan T. Stevens

apparently in sequence (one over the other in the bisomum of Codbul-deus, or side by side inside the enclosure wall). While some tombclusters appeared to be family plots, other individuals were groupedby age (infant section) or commemorative status (graves marked withmosaics).

The off-the-beaten-path location of the cemetery and absence offunctional buildings or streets in the vicinity would not have promotedvisitation. Furthermore, there were no recognizable paths betweengraves, few monuments and markers, and no evidence for ritual activity,the usual indicators of a continuing association of the living with thedead. While a few cases of bone reburials suggest some managementof the cemetery and a certain respect for earlier burials, the abundanceof bone dumps and disarticulated bones indicate that disturbance ofearlier graves by later ones was routine. The cemetery’s users could nothave ascribed much importance either to the physical commemorationof the individual or the integrity of the grave. The cemetery neverthelessexpresses a communal identity in the limited range of simple tombtypes and the prevalence of coins as grave goods. The chronology of thecemetery, that is, its beginning with the building of the Theodosian citywall and its end with the destruction of the wall, the arrangement oftombs parallel to the city wall and the concentration of tombs against itsuggests that the city wall acted as the collective marker of the cem-etery. Within the cemetery a smaller community may have been formedby the interlocking of mosaic markers, subsequently destroyed by laterburials, making them their collective marker.

The Circus cemetery is located in the southwest quadrant of the cityclose to the circus’s northwest end, near the carceres, between the longsouthwest wall of the circus and the Theodosian city wall.44 The useof the area before the construction of the city wall is unknown. Afterits construction the slope up to the north was gradually filled in withdebris and flattened out. Access to the cemetery is unknown, thoughit may have been from the area of the circus, the bays of which wereoccupied for domestic habitation after the circus no longer func-

44 Simon P. Ellis, John H. Humphrey, and Judy P. Marshall, “The Theodosian Walland the Cemetery,” The Circus and a Byzantine Cemetery at Carthage, (ed. JohnH. Humphrey; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988), 179–256 andSimon P. Ellis and John H. Humphrey, “Interpretation and Analysis of the Cem-etery,” in The Circus and a Byzantine Cemetery, 325–36.


tioned.45 The earliest human burial in the area was of three adults in ashallow pit probably dating to the late sixth century, a burial strati-graphically linked to a large dump of partially articulated equids, in-cluding at least 14 individuals.46

The formal burial area that followed, dating to the first half of theseventh century, included 50 inhumations (27 primary and 23 dis-turbed burials), although the cemetery was more extensive than the ex-cavated area.47 The excavated portion of the cemetery was approxi-mately 20 meters wide and 30 meters long, with all but two gravesoriented NW-SE, aligned roughly parallel to the city wall, with thegreatest density of graves close to the wall, and thinning out to thenortheast. The Circus cemetery was newly founded, probably in thelate sixth century, in quite a remote and probably poor area of thecity. It included no enclosures or paths, only one obvious mud-brickmarker (though other markers may have been removed in the levelingof the area), and no inscriptions either in situ or in fragments. The ma-jority of the graves were in well-defined rectangular pits, most hadsome kind of solid tomb structure, a stone or mud-brick cist or an am-phora, and at least three graves (possibly as many as six) contained evi-dence for a coffin. Grave goods were found only in three burials: acomplete cooking pot placed in the west end of the shaft (above thehead) over the cover slabs of two cist burials and coins scattered in theshaft fill of one grave. The extensive intercutting of tombs suggests thatthe location of graves was rarely known, and a concomitant opportun-istic robbing and reuse of stone from earlier graves is well attested.Although the numbers are small the cemetery population consisted ofapproximately 60 percent adults and 40 percent infants-sub adults andthe ratio of sexable skeletons was 1:1. The Circus cemetery contrastswith the Theodosian Wall cemetery in its lack of small groups or othersuggestions of differential treatment of some individuals in the com-munity.

45 The circus seems to have functioned into the sixth century but not into theseventh, Naomi J. Norman, “Le cirque romain,” in Pour Sauver Carthage, 162.Five additional burials were found within the confines of the ruined circus.

46 Kevin Rielly, “A Collection of Equid Skeletons from the Cemetery,” in The Cir-cus and a Byzantine Cemetery, 297–300.

47 A minimum of 30 individuals were represented among the redeposited bone andthe excavators remark that many rectangular pits from which no bones wererecovered may have been robbed graves. Ellis and Humphrey, “Interpretation,”330.

96 Susan T. Stevens

The cemetery at Falbe Point 90, now dated to the mid-fifth throughsixth century, was excavated by a Danish team in 1975, 1977, and 1981.48

The cemetery includes at least 44 individuals buried in three parts of thevaulted substructures of a fourth-century Roman villa which were re-turned to domestic use after burial activity ceased in the sixth century.Although the cemetery includes mass burials, one of only two sites withmass graves known at Carthage in this period,49 the general interpre-tation of the cemetery as a burial site for victims of epidemic or faminemasks other characteristics highlighted in the latest excavation report.50

In AO, the southernmost room, the excavators report 30 skeletonslaid in three shallow horizons. The earliest layer of burials included 14individuals: seven (mostly infants under 1 year) that lay both underand on the feet of seven W-E-oriented adults aligned with the walls ofthe structure. Ten centimeters above these in the same sandy fill weresix S-N-oriented adults, again aligned with the walls of the vault. Athird group burial, including three adults and two infants less than twoyears old, was in the SE corner of the room, though both the originalorientation of these individuals and their chronological relationship tothe other two groups was uncertain. The plan suggests, however, thatthis last group contained the jumbled remains of five individuals cutinto a seventh adult burial in the horizon of six N-S-oriented adults fora total of 26 individuals.51 The room is interpreted as a mass grave ofindividuals who died and were buried at the same time, identified by

48 Søren Dietz and S. Trolle, “Premier rapport préliminaire sur les fouilles danoisesà Carthage: les campagnes de 1975 et 1977,” National Museum of DenmarkWorking Papers 10, Copenhagen, 1979; Lucinda Neuru, “Late Roman Pottery:A Fifth-Century Deposit from Carthage,” Antiquités africaines 16 (1980):195–212, discussed by John H. Humphrey, “Vandal and Byzantine Carthage:Some New Archaeological Evidence,” in New Light on Ancient Carthage (ed.John Pedley, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1980), 109–113. SørenDietz, “Fouilles danoises à Carthage 1975–1984,” Cahiers des études anciennes16 (1984): 107–18; Erik Poulsen, “Tombs of the 4th–5th centuries A.D. in theDanish Sector at Carthage (Falbe Site no. 90),” Cahiers des études anciennes 18(1986): 141–159, although the probable later date suggested in the article is notreflected in its title. The latter was most recently discussed by Norman, “RomanChildren,” 42–44.

49 The other possible mass burial dates to the first half of the sixth century and wasfound in the Italian Taglio 3A of the Theodosian Wall cemetery, Carandini et al.,“Gli scavi italiani a Cartagine,” 46.

50 Poulsen, “Tombs,” 141–159.51 Poulsen, “Tombs,” 152, fig. 1a.


pottery and coins in the sandy fill of the room to be after the secondhalf of the fifth century. The assemblage of at least one complete vesseland many broken ones concentrated in the northwest corner of theroom near the head and torso of skeleton AO 19, the two complete jugsat the right shoulder of skeleton AO 20 (or perhaps at the feet of skel-eton AO 28) near the center of the west wall as well as the three com-plete jugs at the feet of skeleton AO 22 against the east wall of theroom, are interpreted as a collective offering.52

However, with two such clearly delineated strata of perpendicularlyoriented burials, it is tempting to refine the excavator’s interpretationof a single mass grave, into two (or perhaps three) different grouptombs for individuals who died at the same time. Indeed, it is not un-usual to find only ten centimeters of fill between individuals buried se-quentially, as in the uneven stacks of burials at the Theodosian Wallcemetery. There individuals buried together in the same tomb had nodirt between them and layers of cemetery earth laid down at what musthave been different times were virtually impossible to distinguish at thetime of excavation.

In the central room (AG), two groups of adults were buried in thesame horizon and interpreted by the anthropologists as parts of a massgrave, collectively commemorated by the two whole jugs against thewest wall of the room. The stratigraphy indicates, however, that therewere at least two and perhaps three phases of burial in the room. Twowell-preserved adults oriented roughly N-S, and aligned with the walls,were buried together (AG 8 supine and AG 9 on its right side facingAG 8) in the west end of the room, accompanied by a series of vesselsthat lay along the right side of AG 8, from shoulder to knee, and per-haps two whole jugs.53 Pottery suggests a mid-fifth-century terminuspost quem for the burial of these two individuals. The second andslightly later group (with a terminus post quem from pottery of themid- to late fifth century) consisted of three adults (AG 5–7), orientedroughly west-east. A close examination of the plan invites a furthercomplication to the sequence of burial in the room: skeleton AG 5appears isolated so much further west and south of the pair AG 6–7(buried in very close proximity to each other) as to raise a questionabout whether it was a single burial or part of a group of three. Poulsenhimself suggests that a very disturbed but partially articulated skeleton

52 Ibid., 155–56, figs. 2–3.53 Ibid., 157, fig. 4.

98 Susan T. Stevens

between the two groups may represent the remains of a single individ-ual buried on a N-S alignment, presumably earlier than the two ident-ified group tombs in the room.54

Finally, the remains of numerous infants or small children werefound in three groups in the northern room (CL):55 CL 5 consisted ofthree burials in the northwest corner of the room; CL 6 included atleast eight individuals, two amphora burials, a skeleton in the north-east corner of the room and the disturbed remains of at least five otherindividuals against the north wall. CL 7 had at least two burials thatoccupied the southeast quadrant of the room. The burials within thesegroups, as well as the groups themselves, cut one another and weretherefore not contemporaneous. Coin evidence suggests that the burialsbegan in the early fifth century and continued at least into the earlysixth. The burials, in amphoras or covered with a combination of am-phora sherds and stones, appear to have been disturbed because theywere placed ad hoc, in a variety of alignments that did not follow thewalls of the room.

The cemetery had a distinctive and consistently applied burial prac-tice. Adults, buried singly or in groups side by side, were buried supinewith the right arm under the right side, aligned with the walls of thestructure. The pattern was flexible enough to be adapted by AG 9,an individual buried on the right side to face AG 8, the other half of apair buried together. The same flexibility characterizes the treatmentof children who, perhaps in the circumstances of famine or epidemic,were buried with adults in AO who died at the same time. In less stress-ful circumstances they were buried sequentially with other children inCL, in varied alignments that seem to have little to do with the vaultthat contained them. The children in CL had some of the same goods(coins, whole jars) as the adults in AO and AG, but other goods in CL(animal bone and wooden plaques) appear to distinguish the childrenfrom the adult population of the cemetery. This cemetery demon-strates not only that groups, pairs, and individuals were differentiallytreated, but also that the grouping and placement of individuals in dis-tinct parts of the cemetery in rooms AO, AG, and CL, may have beendetermined by the circumstances of their deaths.

On the strength of this survey of fifth- through seventh-century cem-eteries at Carthage some general observations are warranted, although

54 Ibid., 146.55 Ibid., 148, fig. 1b.


they are hardly conclusive in the absence of final site reports. Each ofthe five cemeteries was identified by a shared burial practice and a col-lective marker, a building or structure, in use or reuse. Within eachcemetery individuals or small groups of individuals with a distinctiveidentity within the community were commemorated to a greater orlesser degree by tomb enclosures or markers. The feature that mostclearly distinguishes the Bir el Knissia and Bir Ftouha cemeteries fromthe Theodosian Wall, Circus, and Falbe Point 90 cemeteries is thecharacter and degree of commemoration of the dead. At Bir el Knissiaand Bir Ftouha the dead were commemorated not only by their basil-ica as the overarching collective monument of their community, butalso by individual markers and group monuments for small groups ofindividuals within the larger community. The endurance of individ-uals, groups, and the whole community of the dead was ensured by theforma-type tomb which was principally designed for a single individ-ual, and also was usually marked. The dead, in a collective sense, werealso incorporated into the community of the living.

In comparison, the dead in the Theodosian Wall, Circus, and FalbePoint 90 cemeteries seem to have been separated from the living, inlargely anonymous and ephemeral tombs, in cemeteries in peripheralor uninhabited areas of the city. In two cases, however, they wereclosely associated with the functioning city wall. The general absenceof individual markers in these cemeteries and the extensive intercuttingof graves suggest a tacit acknowledgement of the impermanence ofburial and a recognition of the temporal limits of the community.

Finally, the social stratification implied by the presence of smallgroups of graves in some cemeteries suggests higher social status thanin cemeteries where distinctions between members are not apparent. Inother words, commemoration of the dead in this period at Carthage, asin earlier periods and elsewhere, appears more pronounced among theprivileged, and this elite expressed itself by affiliation to a church and aliving community. The less privileged may have been imitating the eliteby developing a distinctive burial koine of their own and adapting ear-lier structures as collective monuments.

None of the five cemeteries featured here appears to extend the lifeof a Roman necropolis, either chronologically or spatially. A similardiscontinuity characterizes two other recently excavated sites. At Yas-mina on the southwestern outskirts of the Roman city, an elite necrop-olis that included a second-century three-story stucco monument forM.Vibius Tertullus, possibly of consular family, and the mausoleum of

100 Susan T. Stevens

a circus sparsor and his wife, dating to the first quarter of the third cen-tury. This necropolis was abandoned by its original users by the earlyfourth century when burial activity ceased.56 A new inhumation cem-etery, apparently for individuals of lower social status, developed inthe fifth and sixth centuries and may have continued later. The latecemetery included 60 tombs, approximately a third of which were forchildren under the age of seven, the only tombs which had associatedgrave goods. Burials in the cemetery were in a variety of structures:simple pits, stone-lined trenches, occasional sandstone cists, coveredby broken amphoras and cobbles, or pitched stone or tiles. The un-marked tombs, some of which were stacked on top of each other, wereclustered around and were cut into the still-standing early tomb monu-ments that may have acted as collective markers for the later cemetery.

A Roman necropolis along Kardo 2 east included high-status monu-ments of the third century, a hypogeum of the late fourth or early fifthcentury, and six individual late-fifth- or early-sixth-century inhumationgraves aligned with the hypogeum entrance. All were leveled in the sec-ond third of the sixth century to make room for a Christian memoria,associated with the basilica of Damous el Karita. The side chambers ofthe new memoria may have been designed for high-status burials.57 Atthe still-poorly-understood Christian basilica, the pattern of burialmay also have changed. Formae (excavated by Delattre in the nine-teenth century) cut through the floor of the basilica’s nave, aisles, andgreat hemicycle atrium in the later fourth and fifth centuries (phase 1)may have become less frequent in the early sixth century. In their placemore exclusive burial rooms were incorporated into the basilica’sphase 2 annexes and perhaps into its later sixth-century, phase 3, funer-ary hall.58

The establishment of new cemeteries in this period and the concomi-tant loss of older ones should be read, at the very least, as part of thesame social fragmentation of the city’s population evinced by the small

56 Naomi Norman and Anne Haeckl “The Jasmina Necropolis at Carthage,” JRA6 (1993): 238–50. I am grateful to Norman for sharing the text of her paper,“Death and Burial in Roman Carthage,” delivered at the Classical Associationof the Midwest and South, Southern Section, Birmingham, Ala., Nov. 2002, ac-cess to a website devoted to the Yasmina necropolis, and a list of the late burials,which were discussed in part in Norman, “Roman children,” 305–08.

57 Dolenz, Damous el Karita, 43–51.58 Ibid., 21–39.


groups of burials in the buildings of the former urban center.59 Per-haps, in addition to enclosing and protecting the dead, the reuse ofClassical buildings for burial provided a communal identity for thegraves and means of collective commemoration similar to that foundin cemeteries on the periphery.

Another recently excavated cemetery site, Bir el Jebanna, suggestsfirst that the two phenomena, the insertion of burials in Classicalbuildings and the establishment of new communal cemeteries, may becontemporaneous. Second, the two phenomena suggest a similar com-munal ideology. A second-century public bathhouse on the peripheryof the city fell into disuse in the fourth century. The use of Bir el Jeb-anna for burials began in the fourth century, before it could have beentransformed by being excluded from the urban fabric by the construc-tion of the Theodosian city wall in the early fifth.

By the mid-fourth century a series of NE-SW-oriented graves, alignedwith the walls of the bathhouse, were first cut into the floor of the origi-nal north and later south rooms of the baths. By the late fourth century,a more numerous series of NW-SE-oriented burials were cut into thefill representing the collapse of the bathhouse, though probably alsoaligned with its ruined walls. A small group of shallow masonry tombsoriented NE-SW, outside the bath complex to the northeast, and astack of burials in an adjacent room also dated to the fourth century.Burial in and around the ruined bathhouse appears to have continuedinto the mid- to late sixth century, the date of the latest burial, a neon-ate in a shallow amphora tomb.60

By the sixth century a new cemetery had established itself behind anenclosure wall that may have been built as early as the late fourth cen-tury at the eastern extent of the ruined bathhouse. Among the morethan 30 tombs recently excavated in this cemetery were some marked

59 Leone, “L’inumazione,” 233–48.60 J. J. Rossiter, “A Roman Bathhouse at Bir el Jebanna: Preliminary Report on the

Excavations (1994–1997),” in Carthage Papers: The Early Colony’s Economy,Water Supply, a Public Bath and the Mobilization of State Olive Oil (JRASup 28,Portsmouth, R.I., 1998), 112–13; 103–115; id., “Excavations at Bir el Jebanna,Carthage (1994): A Roman Bathhouse Rediscovered,” Actes du 8e colloque inter-national sur l’histoire et l’archéologie de l’Afrique du nord, Tabarka (Tunisie) 8–13Mai 2000 Tunis (2003), 491–501. Rossiter generously shared the text of his paper“From Bath-house to Cemetery: The Transformation of Suburban Space at Bir elJebbana, Carthage,” delivered to the Société d’Étude du Maghreb Préhistorique,Antique et Médiévale.


with architectural fragments from the bathhouse, fragmentary inscrip-tions, and tomb mosaics. Limited finds from the tombs fall within thestandard repertory of grave goods of the period, coins and a few itemsof personal adornment (worked bone objects, bronze rings, and brace-lets) dated to the fourth through the sixth century. As in the TheodosianWall cemetery, Christian tomb mosaics were found at Bir el Jebannawithout an attested Christian cult building. This cemetery includedthe mosaic-covered cupola tomb for the child Theodora excavatedby Delattre in the nineteenth century. Despite their similarity in date,the burials in and around the bathhouse and the cemetery behind theenclosure wall were not specifically connected to each other. Fur-thermore, neither group of burials can be considered a continuation ofthe extensive first through third century necropolis known as the Cem-etery des officiales, that lay on the line of the Decumanus maximusadjacent to the west gate of the city.61

Together the featured cemeteries demonstrate a shared burial ideo-logy expressed in (mostly) individual tombs placed ad hoc in horizon-tal and vertical relation to each other that is strikingly different fromthat lying behind the familial monuments of Roman necropoleis offirst–third-century Carthage. The chronology of these sites suggests arecognizable development of that communal ideology. Bir el Jebanna isa reminder that this development was already underway in the fourthcentury, at least in the periphery of Carthage.

The Bir el Knissia, Theodosian Wall, and Falbe Point 90 cemeterieswere all founded in the fifth century and, despite the differences in so-cial status of their communities, demonstrate a communal burial ideo-logy that is quite inclusive. At Bir el Knissia, the social hierarchy of thecommunity is expressed in two ways, familial, with group tombs out-side the core of the basilica and clerical, with group tombs inside it. Atthe Theodosian Wall cemetery some groups of tombs stood out, suchas the possible family enclosure, and the cluster of tombs marked bymosaics. The latter, rather than being honored as grave markers for in-dividuals, were destroyed in the process of being transformed into acollective marker for later graves. The flexibility of burial practice atthe Falbe Point 90 cemetery is most obviously demonstrated by the

61 Lantier, “Notes de topographie,” fig. 1, no. 14; Robert Étienne and GeorgesFabre, “Démographie et classe sociale: l’example du cimitière des officiales deCarthage,” in Recherches sur les structures sociales dans l’antiquité classique,Caen 25–26 Avril 1969 (Paris: Éditions CNRS, 1970), 81–97.


presence of mass graves together with burials in pairs or as individuals.The variety of orientation of graves, abundance of grave gifts of a li-mited variety, and even possible collective markers in some rooms, canbe interpreted as other indicators. Some of the gifts, unusual by thestandard of the other cemeteries, suggests a tightly knit community,though its status is unknown.

The origins of the Circus and Bir Ftouha cemeteries fall squarely inthe Byzantine sixth century and later. The Circus cemetery, as the pres-ence of amphora burials and absence of inscriptions probably indi-cate, is lower in social status than the Bir Ftouha cemetery. Never-theless, these two cemeteries look similar in that individuals with fewgifts were buried in a limited number of tomb types strictly arrangedwithin the cemetery. This austere pattern is confirmed by the sixth- andseventh-century cemetery at Le Kram that lay approximately 200meters outside a southern stretch of the Theodosian city wall, and wasarranged and governed by principles similar to those at the Circuscemetery.62 The Le Kram cemetery consisted of 50 unmarked tombs oftwo simple types, invariably oriented NW-SE. Seventy percent of thegraves were for adults in stone cists that lay deep (between 1.5 and3 meters) and thirty percent of the graves were burials for infants andchildren (except for one anomalous adult) either in large African cylin-drical or small eastern globular amphoras. Both the Circus and LeKram cemeteries have less variation in tomb type and orientation andfewer grave goods than the Theodosian Wall cemetery.

Thus, the relatively expansive and fluid burial practice seen in cem-eteries originating in the Vandal fifth century seems to have given way tothe rather austere and tightly controlled system in cemeteries originatingin the Byzantine sixth century and later that are more homogenousand egalitarian in appearance. However, the differential treatment ofchildren in cemeteries,63 though manifested in various ways, continuedunabated from the fifth through the seventh century at Carthage, per-haps an indication of the strength of the African and Roman roots of itsinhabitants.

62 Mohammed K. Annabi, “Deux nécropoles au sud de la ville,” in Ennabli, PourSauver Carthage, 186–87.

63 Norman, “Roman Children,” 37–45, explores the pattern in Africa proconsu-laris.


Ritual and Religious Rites

Dining with the Dead 107

Robin M. Jensen

Chapter 4

Dining with the Dead:From the Mensa to the Altar in

Christian Late Antiquity

Roman tombs were gathering places for the living as well as for thedead. Family members and friends came to graves at regular intervalsin order to honor the departed by sharing a meal with them. Sincetombs, then as now, displayed the wealth or social status of the de-ceased and their heirs, more elaborate private family enclosures in-cluded furnishings and facilities for pouring libations, and preparingand sharing simple food offerings with the shades (manes) of the dead.Cemeteries featured communal banqueting tables that might be usedby visitors to collective grave areas. Grave goods included drinkingcups, bowls, and other dishware. Consolation, convivium, and nourish-ment were thus offered to mourners as well as to their departed lovedones, and social contact was established at least briefly, between theupper and lower worlds.

Visual and epigraphic artifacts as well as textual evidence offer bothconcrete and verbal testimony to this funerary practice and demon-strate that it was continued by converts to the Christian religion, whoalso adapted it for the feasts of their martyrs and saints despite theoften vehement disapproval of church officials. Gradually, the tradi-tion of eating a meal with the dead was also transformed into the prac-tice of celebrating a eucharist at an “ordinary” funeral. First at thetomb, then at the altar, the church family gathered to hear the tales ofheroism and to eat a meal – celebrating the lives of their spiritual aswell as blood ancestors. Funerals and food, then as now, are a naturalcombination.

Pictorial representations of the deceased reclining on a couch (kline)and enjoying a banquet are nearly ubiquitous in Greek and Roman fu-

108 Robin M. Jensen

nerary sculpture from the fifth century B.C.E to the fourth centuryC.E.1 Art historians traditionally refer to this iconographic motif as“Totenmahl” or “meal of the dead.” Most of these were crafted fornon-Christian clients and show a reclining figure (usually male) hold-ing a drinking cup. Spouses, children, and servants often appear in thecomposition, wives usually seated next to their reclining husbands.Other details, such as pets, flowers, birds, and small tables or trays offood may be included (Fig. 4.1). The images are sometimes carved inthe round, but also carved in relief on sarcophagus fronts or on free-standing monuments.

Funerary meal scenes appear also on a few polychrome mosaictomb coverings from Roman Africa.2 Although most of the survivingexamples of these tomb covers were produced for Christian clients(and do not portray meals), a small group of pagan tomb covers dem-onstrates that non-Christians occasionally ordered such decorativesepulchral embellishments. A few, from the area of Thina and now inthe Musée Archéologique de Sfax, specifically represent the deceasedon a dining couch, holding a drinking cup as if toasting the viewer.A small tripod table stands in front of the couch, laid with delicaciesappropriate for an underworld repast (Fig. 4.2). In a matched setmade for a husband and wife, eroti (naked and winged children)bring baskets of red roses, and small winged musicians play onstringed instruments (panduria). Along with bird and garlands, the

1 For evidence dating to a period before the common era, see Jean-Marie Dentzer,Le motif du banquet couché dans le proche-orient et le monde grec du VIIe auIVe siècle avant J.-C. (Rome: École française de Rome, 1982). Among the manyvolumes on Roman sarcophagi, the following (in English) are recommended:Michael Koortbojian, Myth, Meaning, and Memory on Roman Sarcophagi(Berkeley, Calif.: University of California, 1995); Guntram Koch, Roman Funer-ary Sculpture: Catalogue of the Collections (Malibu, Calif.: J. Paul Getty Mu-seum, 1988); and Susan Walker, Memorials to the Roman Dead (London:Trustees of the British Museum, 1985).

2 Many catalogues of Roman African mosaics contain examples of these tombpavements. The most comprehensive works on Christian funerary mosaics, how-ever, are the as-yet-unpublished dissertations of Margaret Alexander “EarlyChristian Tomb Mosaics of North Africa” (Ph.D. diss., New York University,1958), and James Terry, “Christian Tomb Mosaics of Late Roman, Vandalicand Byzantine Byzacenal Mosaics, Tunisia” (Ph.D. diss., University of MissouriColumbia, 1998), as well as Noël Duval, La mosaïque funéraire dans l’art pa-léochretien (Ravenna: Longo, 1976). See also Paul-Albert Fèvrier, “Mosaïquesfunéraires Chrètiennes datées d’Afrique du nord,” ACIAC 6 (1965): 433–56.


4.1.

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110 Robin M. Jensen

4.2.

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iconography portrays the pleasures of a luxurious earthly life, or per-haps a hoped-for blissful afterlife (Fig. 4.3).3

A different type of image – one that portrays a group of diners (ratherthan a couple or small family gathering), reclining at a semicirculartable (stibadium) and sharing a convivial banquet – is frequently seenon both Christian and pagan monuments from third- and fourth-cen-tury Rome. In these, like the others, a small tripod table usually standsin front of the couch. Wine cups are visible on the table or in raisedhands.4 This banquet motif appears on both pagan and Christian sar-cophagi, as well as painted on walls of pagan and Christian hypogeain the Roman catacombs (Figs. 4.4–5).5 In both pagan and Christianexamples the assembly consists of seven (but sometimes five or twelve)diners reclining around a table set with wine, bread, and fish. In onewell-known fresco, from the (pagan) Hypogeum of Vibia, the GoodAngel (Angelus Bonus) guides the deceased (Vibia) through the gate ofParadise by the Good Angel. In the same image, Vibia appears again,seated at a table with five others who, like her, were judged by the“good ones” (bonorum iudicio iudacati, Fig. 4.6).6

Scholars have interpreted these scenes in various ways. Whetherthe iconography alludes to some aspect of funerary practice, representsthe deceased’s past life, or offers an optimistic view of the afterlife isa matter of debate. Katharine Dunbabin has recently argued that allare possibilities – that the scene probably denoted different things in

3 A fourth-century mosaic from Antioch gives a different, notable example fromanother region. See the depiction of a funeral banquet now in the Worcester ArtMuseum, showing women reclining on couches or serving the meal. Illustrationin Christine Kondoleon, ed., Antioch: The Lost Ancient City (Princeton: Prince-ton University Press, 2000), 121–2.

4 See Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, The Roman Banquet: Images of Conviviality,esp. chap. 4, “Drinking in the Tomb,” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2003), 103–40; as well as her earlier article, “Triclinium and Stibadium,” inDining in a Classical Context (ed. William J. Slater; Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press), 1991.

5 For discussion of these images, typological categorization, and the iconographi-cal distinction between pagan and Christian examples see Friedrich Gerke, Diechristlichen Sarkophage der vorkonstantinischen Zeit (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter,1940), 123–42.

6 On the Christian images see Josef Engemann, “Der Ehrenplatz beim antikenSigmamahl” in JAC 9 (1982): 239–49; Elisabeth Jastrzebowska, “Iconographiedes banquets aux IIIe–IVe siècles,” RecAug, 19 (1979): 3–90; and Robin Jensen,“Dining in Heaven,” BRev 14 (1998): 32–39, 48.

112 Robin M. Jensen

4.3.

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114 Robin M. Jensen

4.5.

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116 Robin M. Jensen

different places and times, and also that it may have been intentionallyambivalent and lacked any clear or definable content, allowing differ-ent viewers to read whatever meaning they chose into the image – aflexibility that could have added to the theme’s popularity.7

Accompanying inscriptions sometimes provide explanations, manyof them being of the “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you maybe dead” type, written in the first-person “voice” of the deceased, whoadvises the passerby to enjoy the transitory pleasures of life, or asksthe visitor to pour him a drink. One monument, that of Flavius Agri-cola, today in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, puts words into the de-ceased’s mouth, advising his friends to mix up wine and drink and keeppretty girls handy since death comes all too quickly.8 Another, the sar-cophagus of Titus Aelius Euangelus and his wife Gaudenia Nicene,now in Malibu’s Getty Museum, includes an inscription that asks thereader to pour unmixed wine for him – a “patient man.”9 Others, likean inscription from the city of Rome, expressed the expectation that thedeceased couple would attend the funeral feast and enjoy themselvesalong with everyone there.10

Descriptions of funeral banquets also appear in literature. Petro-nius’s fictional comic freedman, Trimalchio, solicits a promise that hisfriends would erect a lavish monument to decorate his tomb, whichwould include a sculpted representation of dining couches (triclinia)with a gathering of people enjoying themselves at a banquet. He re-quests the image of his pet dog to be placed at the feet of his portraitstatue, along with some banqueting wreaths, a sun dial (a kind of mem-ento mori to remind the visitor of life’s brevity), and the fights of achampion gladiator. He further asks that large jars filled with wine beplaced at his right hand so that the libations poured over his bonesmight do him as much good dead as when he was alive.11

Taken at face value, these pleas suggest that many ancient Romansbelieved that even after death, disembodied spirits could partake insome kind of nourishment. But the nourishment likely was intended asmuch for the surviving as for the dead. According to documentary evi-

7 Dunbabin, Roman Banquet, 109, 126, 140.8 This monument described at length by Dunbabin, Roman Banquet, 103–4.9 See Koch, Roman Funerary Sculpture: Catalogue of the Collections, 24–27.

10 CIL 6.26554. See the discussion of this and other texts in Keith Hopkins, Deathand Renewal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 233–34.

11 Petronius, Satyr. 71. See also Apuleius, Metam. 8.9. Note the sundial on theChristian sarcophagus fragment (Fig. 4.11).


dence, entertaining at the tomb was a fairly common practice andgatherings, although intended to be solemn, could sometimes get a bitrowdy, especially when mourners ate and drank to excess. Leftovers,once the party had broken up, might be gathered later by the desti-tute.12 Thus the living honored the dead by dining with them, a ritualthat obliged them also to confront (and perhaps boldly laugh in theface of) the transitory nature of life and its ephemeral pleasures.

Traditional Romans celebrated funeral banquets at the graves offamily and friends, first on the day of burial (silicernium) and thenagain on the ninth day after the funeral (cena novendialis) which indi-cated the end of the official mourning period.13 Very little data exists toindicate the actual kinds of food consumed at the grave. Cups, loaves,and fish appear in the imagery, as well as the heads of a pig and fowl, anda joint of beef. Both archaeological and textual evidence indicate thatgrain, wine, oil, incense and flowers were brought as offerings for thedead, either scattered or poured on and into the tomb itself.14 Ovid rec-ommends that the gifts left for the dead be modest (a little scatteredgrain, some salt, bread soaked in wine, loose violets, or flower garlands)but added that neglecting the festival would court disaster. Another

12 See Dennis Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the EarlyChristian World (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 40–1; Jocelyn M. C. Toyn-bee, Death and Burial in the Roman World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UniversityPress, 1971; repr., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) 51; andJon Davies, Death, Burial and Rebirth in the Religions of Antiquity (London:Routledge, 1999), 139–54.

13 In the Greek-speaking part of the ancient world, a common practice was to cel-ebrate the meal on the third day after death. See discussion of the Roman festi-vals in Toynbee, Death and Burial, 50–51, 61–4.

14 In regard to the types of food consumed see Cyrille Vogel, “Le poisson, alimentdu repas funéraire chrètien?” in Paganisme, Judaïsme, Christianisme: influences etaffrontements dans le monde antique, mélanges offers à Marcel Simon (Paris: Édi-tions E. de Boccard, 1978), 233–43. Vogel argues that fish is the special food ofthe funeral banquet, especially for Christians as it holds both eschatological andeucharistic signficiance. See also Andrew McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists: Foodand Drink in Early Christian Ritual Meals (New York: Oxford University Press,1999), 127–35. Note here the funerary inscriptions of Abercius (second century;see Margaret Mitchell’s chapter in this volume.) and Pectorius (fourth century) inwhich fish, along with wine and bread, are part of a ritual meal. Cf. JohannesQuasten, Patrology (Utrecht: Spectrum Publishers, 1966) I.171–75 for trans-lation. Platters of fowl (chickens?) appear on a late-third-century sarcophagus inthe Museo Gregoriano Profano in the Vatican, and the leg of a calf on a fragmentin the Museo Pio Cristiano, inv. # 31662 (Lat. no. 117).

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meal could be held on the fortieth day after death, and then in sub-sequent years on the deceased’s birthday (dies natalis), and on the an-nual festival set aside for commemoration of ancestors (the parentalia),from February 13 to 21. Furthermore, during those days, marriageswere prohibited, the family hearth kept unkindled, business suspended,and the temples closed with altars incense-free.15 Another festival knownas dies rosationis or rosalia in May or June, when family membersbrought roses to the graves of their kinfolk, may be the reason for theseflowers to appear in fresco or mosaic on tomb walls or coverings.16

As Ovid warns, neglecting these rituals could be perilous.17 At leastsome ancients tried to observe these festivals with decorum and rever-ence – making them occasions for paying pious respect to the dead.Ausonius of Bordeaux, tutor to the Emperor Gratian, prefect of Gaul,consul in 379 C.E., and a Christian convert, wrote a series of memorialverses to honor deceased ancestors, the Parentalia. The respectful butgrief-filled sentiments expressed in this document suggest that for him,at least, this was a bittersweet time of recollection and filial devotion,rather than a time for a drunken revel.18

One of Ausonius’s epitaphs (written for “the tomb of a happy man”)commands the passing stranger to “sprinkle my ashes well with un-mixed wine and sweet-scented oil of nard” and to bring balsam androses to his “tearless urn.”19 Such libations were accommodated byproviding tombs with holes or pipes for pouring liquids (Fig. 4.7). Thesefeeding tubes projected above graves, often made from the necks ofbroken or even buried amphorae which held the remains (both cre-mated and inhumed) of the deceased. Grave markers (cippi ) often hadattached platforms for food offerings sometimes with indentations inthe shapes of the foods themselves (bread or fish, especially), whichsuggest a representative as well as actual offering (Fig. 4.8). Archaeol-ogists also have found permanent tables, either semicircular (stiba-dia), biclinia, or triclinia forms, attached to a family mausoleum or in acommon area of the cemetery, to facilitate the meal shared by the liv-

15 Ovid, Fasti 2.533–70.16 On the rosalia see “Rosalia,” Pauly-Wissowa, ser. 2, vol. 1 (1920), cols. 1111–

1115; On the practice of bringing roses to the tomb see inscriptions in HermannDessau, ILS, 7213, 7258, 8369, 8370, 8371, 8372, 8373, and 8374 (“et rosas suotermpore deducerent”).

17 This is also clear in Porphyry (on Horace) Ep. 2.2.209 and in Apuleius, Metam. 8.9.18 Ausonius, Parent. passim.19 Ausonius, Epit. 31; cited also in Toynbee, Death and Burial, 63.


4.7. Mensa from the Capitoline Museum,Rome. (author’s photo)

4.8. Mensa from Algeria, from area ofTimgad. (photo: Michael Flecky)

120 Robin M. Jensen

ing (Fig. 4.9).20 Elaborate vessels, dishware, and other furniture couldbe provided both as grave goods and as utensils to be used by visitingrelatives, or even painted onto the walls of very important tombs(Fig. 4.10). Some burial sites included hearths for cooking, and cem-eteries even provided water fountains and channeling systems forpurification and post-meal washing up.21

The diversity of funerary banquet facilities or equipment is paral-leled by the variety of iconography depicting or pertaining to the prac-tice. The kind and quality of the monuments or furnishings differs ac-cording to date and geography, but also reflects the social status andwealth of the patron. Similarly, the Roman sarcophagi bearing the mostelaborate banquet scenes have been shown to come from the middleclasses or – like Trimalchio – freedmen or their descendents, a case welldemonstrated by the graves discovered in the necropolis under the Vati-can car park.22 Dunbabin astutely argues that wealthy freedmen, un-able to “exploit the ancestral images that played so great a part in theRoman upper class funeral” chose to portray themselves as enjoying aluxurious banquet as a part of their compensatory funeral display.23

Despite their rejection of many other aspects of pagan culture,Christians continued these traditional funerary practices – probablybecause they did not view giving honors to their dead relations as hav-ing anything to do with the pagan god, religion, or idols. Meanwhile,church leaders were attempting to transfer these customary practicesfrom cemetery to the church by encouraging mourners to observe theanniversary of a loved one’s death with alms and eucharistic offeringsrather than food shared at a tomb.

In his treatise On Monogamy, Tertullian remarks on the duties ofa wife to her dead husband and makes passing reference to the tradi-

20 The semicircular shaped table was especially associated with dining al fresco ac-cording to Dunbabin, “Triclinium and Stibadium,” 132–5.

21 On water in cemeteries see also the discussion of tombs at Isola Sacra in Toyn-bee, Death and Burial, 136; also in Tipasa, Paul-Albert Février, “A propos durepas funéraire: culte et sociabilité,” CahArch 26 (1977): 29–45. An inscriptionfrom Rome records the transfer of rights in a tomb that included 24 urns, the useof a kitchen, and a well for drawing water, CIL 6.14614.

22 On the issue of social class and representations of actual feasts, see AndrewWallace-Hadrill, “Imaginary Feasts: Pictures of Success on the Bay of Naples,”in Ostia, Cicero, Gamala, Feasts and the Economy: Papers in Memory of John H.D’Arms (ed. Anna Gallina Zevi and John H. Humphrey, JRASup. 57; Port-smouth, R.I., 2004), 109–26.

23 Dunbabin, Roman Banquet, 112–13.


4.9. Biclinium from Isola Sacra. (author’s photo)

4.10. Tableware on tomb of Vestorius Priscus, Pompeii. (author’s photo)

122 Robin M. Jensen

tional funeral customs that he assumes even Christian women wouldobserve: “Indeed, she prays for his soul, and requests refreshment inthe waiting period (refrigerium interim) for him, and companionship(with him) in the first resurrection; and she makes offerings on theanniversaries of his falling asleep. For, unless she does these things, it isas if she has truly divorced him.”24 In another place, Tertullian admon-ishes a widower against remarrying since doing so would require thehusband to offer the annual oblations for the first, in the presence ofthe second – an awkward situation.25 The anniversary “offerings” thatTertullian mentions might refer to food or liquids left at the grave asnourishment for the body as well as the soul awaiting the general res-urrection (and reaffirmation of the marriage bond in heaven), but itmight also refer to gifts brought to the church.26 In his treatise On theSoldier’s Crown, he describes such rituals as baptism, eucharist, fast-ing, and prayer, and includes occasions when “we make offerings forthe dead.”27 In his Treatise on the Soul, Tertullian mocks the offeringsbrought by pagans to the tombs, as being more for the enjoyment ofthe living than for the benefit of the departed, and notes that whilereclining at a sumptuous funeral banquet, no one would dare to speak

24 Tertullian, Mon. 10.4, author’s translation. The verb here (offert) does not makeit clear, however, what or where she “offers.” See also Uxor. 2.8.

25 Tertullian, Exh. cast. 1126 The Latin word refrigerium actually means “refreshment” or a “cooling off” but

in the context of a tomb inscription, it referred to a state of blessed rest or re-pose. In early Christian texts it probably referred to the time of waiting beforethe general resurrection, e.g., the term refrigerium interim which seems to havebeen coined by Tertullian. See also Tertullian, Test. 4 where he describes thepagan customs of wishing the bones and ashes a bene refrigeria and bene requi-escat. See Tertullian, Marc. 4.32.13, where interim refrigerium refers to the restof Lazarus in the bosom of Abraham (Luke 16.19–31). See also Passio. Perp. 8;Cyprian Epp. 6.3.1, 30.7.2; and Augustine Gen. litt. 8.5. It appears on many earlyChristian epitaphs. See Enrico Josi, “Refrigerium,” EC 10, 627–31; André Par-rot, Le “refrigerium” dans l’au delà (Paris: Librairie E. Leroux, 1937); and Chris-tine Mohrmann, Études sur le latin des chrètiens, II (Rome: Edizioni i storiae letteratura, 1961), 81–92. The idea that the refrigerium may refer specificallyto the funeral meal (actual “refreshments”) or a heavenly banquet is suggestedby some inscriptions in the catacombs including at the triclia at S. Sebastiano,see discussion below (and fn. 29). On the early Christian belief in the time afterdeath – and its reflection in the iconography of Christian burial places – seeAlfred Stuiber, Refrigerium Interim: Die Vorstellungen vom Zwischenzustand unddie frühchristliche Grabeskunst (Bonn: Peter Hanstein Verlag, 1957).

27 Tertullian, Cor. 3 (oblations prodefunctis pro nataliciis annua die facimus).


ill of the dead, since they are thought to be, in some manner, presentat the party.28 On the other hand, Tertullian also condemns those whodo these things, since they are associated with idolatry and the feasts ofthe pagan gods. Citing the text from 1 Cor 10.21, he asserts that offer-ing funeral oblations or partaking in what is offered at the banquet isakin to sitting down at the table of the demons.29

Paintings of banquet scenes, found on walls in the Christian cata-combs of Rome or carved on early Christian sarcophagi demonstratethat Christians continued to share the traditional meals with the dead(Fig. 4.11). Although historians of the past have attempted to find a spe-cifically Christian significance – either a liturgical reference or a repre-sentation of a biblical scene in these images – their obvious similarities toparallel pagan paintings counter their being interpreted as portraying aChristian agape or eucharist, Christ and his disciples at the Last Supper,or referring to the gospel story of the multiplication of the loaves andfish. The more straightforward conclusion, that these are scenes of ac-tual funeral banquets, or evocations of the future paradisiacal banquetlike that of Vibia (Fig. 4.6), better explains the compositions in any case,which either display or lack key details necessary for those identifica-tions (e.g., the fish on the table as well as the seating arrangement arguesagainst these as representations of a late-third- or early-fourth-century

28 Tertullian, Test. 4. Here he comments on the inconsistency of believing that thedead are beyond feeling, but at the same time making them offerings and worry-ing about their opinion. See also Res. 1.

29 Tertullian, Spec. 13. See also Apol. 13.

4.11. Sarcophagus from Museo Pio Cristano, Rome. (author’s photo)

124 Robin M. Jensen

eucharist; the number of diners makes no sense for a scene of the LastSupper).30 Some particularly well-known images, from the catacomb ofPeter and Marcellinus even give captions to some of the diners, callingevocatively named women servants (Irene and Agape) to bring themmore warm, mixed wine (Fig. 4.12). The group in this painting looksanything but solemn or mournful, as they raise their glasses and orderrefills.31 Certain graffiti from the triclia under S. Sebastiano at the Mem-oria Apostolorum (site of the translation of relics of both Peter and Paul)specifically use the term refrigeria to mean either a funerary meal orheavenly banquet, in either case perhaps hoped to have been shared withthe saints (Peter and Paul) as well as with deceased family members.32

In addition to evidence from the paintings in the Christian cata-combs in Rome are funerary inscriptions. For example, an epitaph of aChristian woman named Aelia Secundula, dated to 299 C.E. from theAfrican province of Mauretania Sitifensis, gives insight into how thesefuneral meals might have been observed, in this region; it describes theplacing of a stone table, laying out of food and drink, reciting of eu-logies and telling of stories about the deceased, long into the night:

Memoria Aeliae Secundulae.Funeri mu[l]ta quid[e]m condigna iam misimus omneS,Insuper ar[a]equ[e] deposte Secundulae matrILapideam placuit nobis atponere mensaM,In qua magna eius memorantes plurima factA,Dum cibi ponuntur calicesq[ue]. E[i] copertaE,Vulnus ut sanetur nos rod[ens] pectore saeuuMLibentur fabul[as] dum sera redimus horACastae matri bonae laudesq[ue], vetula dormiTIpas, q[uae] nutri[i]t, iaces et sobriae semper.V[ixit] a[nnis] LXXV a[nno] p[rovinciae] CCLX,Statulenia Iulia fecit.

30 Identifications of these images as portraying eucharists or agape meals – oralternately of the Last Supper or the multiplication of loaves – are common-place. For instance see Graydon Snyder, Ante Pacem: Archaeological Evidence ofChurch Life before Constantine (Rev. ed.; Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press,2003), 124–26; Such identifications have been used to argue that certain Chris-tians were still celebrating agape meals into the early fourth century, or thatwomen were celebrating the eucharist in certain instances. For example see Do-rothy Irvin, “The Ministry of Women in the Early Church,” Duke DivinitySchool Review 45.2 (1980): 76–86. See also the articles noted above, fn. 6.

31 See Février, “A propos du repas funéraire: culte et sociabilité,” which considersthe message of conviviality imparted by these particular images.

32 See examples, discussion, and bibliography in Snyder, Ante Pacem, 251–58.


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126 Robin M. Jensen

To the memory of Aelia SecundulaWe all sent many worthy things for her funeral.Further near the altar dedicated to Mother Secundula,It pleases us to place a stone tableOn which, we placing food and covered cups,Remember her many great deeds.In order to heal the savage wound gnawing at our breast,We freely recount stories at a late hour,And give praises to the good and chaste mother, who sleeps in her old age.She, who nourished us, lies soberly forever.She lived to be seventy-five years of age, and died in the 260th year of theprovince.Made by Statulenia Julia.33

Mensae in cemeteries are found throughout the Roman world. In ad-dition to Italy and Africa, examples can be seen Spain, Dalmatia, Ger-many, and in the catacombs of Malta (Fig. 4.13).34 Somewhat to the westof Aelia’s tomb is the ancient site of Tipasa in Mauretania Caesarien-sis, which includes two huge cemetery areas outside the eastern andwestern city walls. These areas were equipped with tables for memorialfeasts, many of them in very good condition and covered with mosaicdecoration, along with cisterns and systems for drawing water andchanneling it onto the tombs. In addition to open-air burials, theseareas included a martyr’s shrine (Sta. Salsa), and a basilica built pri-marily to house funeral banquets and private memorial services. Oneof these, built around 400 C.E. by the bishop Alexander to provide aplace for his own tomb, also contained the burials of his nine prede-cessors as well as a number of other, probably more ordinary, burials.A structure roughly 23 by 14 meters in size, this basilica’s nave andaisles are filled with graves and feature several semicircular stonecouches for the celebration of funeral meals (Fig. 4.14).35

A stone mosaic mensa cover from the late fourth century, recoveredfrom an nearby area known as the necropolis of Matares, contains a

33 Diehl, ILCV 1. 1570; CIL 8.20.277. This inscription cited also by JohannesQuasten in his very helpful article, “Vetus Superstitio et Nova Religio: The Prob-lem of Refrigerium in the Ancient Church of North Africa,” HTR 33 (1940):253–66.

34 See the article by X. Barral i Altet, “Mensae et repas funéraires dans la pèninsuleibérique,” ACIAC 9.2 (1978): 49–69, for discussion of funerary menase in Spain.

35 On the site of Tipasa and these cemeteries see Paul-Albert Février, “Le culte desmartyrs en Afrique et ses plus anciens monuments,” Corso di cultura sull’arte Ra-vennate e Bizantina 17 (1970): 191–215.


4.13. Mensa from St. Paul’s catacomb in Rabat, Malta. (author’s photo)

4.14. Mensa from Tipasa, basilica of Alexander. (author’s photo)

128 Robin M. Jensen

legend embodying the optimistic spirit of such banquets. In additionto images of fish, typical of North African mosaics, is a legend thatreads: IN DEO, PAX ET CONCORDIA SIT CONVIVIO NOSTRO.“In God (Christ), may peace and concord be on our banquet” (Fig. 4.15).

As these cases show, although Christians continued to honor their“ordinary” dead family members, they also extended these funerarypractices to honor deceased clergy (bishops in particular) and incor-porated them into the cult of the saints – individuals who were membersof the extended church family, but who also functioned as patrons andintercessors.36 Oral reading of the martyr’s heroic deeds (acta), singingsongs of praise, and sharing food on a saint’s “birthday” (natalacius)into heaven was a kind of communion with that holy person. Cyprianof Carthage urges his congregants to record the days of martyrs’deaths, so that they might celebrate them afterwards with offerings andsacrifices as well as festive meals.37 Thus the martyrs’ celebrations werenoted on the church calendar and commemorated with sacrifices (pre-sumably a eucharist), offerings, and a banquet. Such adaptation of thefunerary banquet allowed a special kind of communion with holy menand women. Saints’ shrines came to be augmented with banquetingfacilities that could accommodate pilgrims bringing food offeringsto the tombs of their spiritual, rather than their biological, ancestors.The inscription on a large stone slab, discovered in northwest Altava(ancient Mauretania) identifies it as a mensa dedicated to St. Janua-rius. The text, which is difficult to interpret, indicates that it might havebeen placed in a church (basilica dominica) and used for the euchar-istic liturgy.38

The same evolution of ritual action, space, and table characterizedthose other places in the Roman milieu where the practice of holdingbanquets at the tomb was ancient and entrenched. As noted above, thetriclia in the Memoria Apostolorum on Rome’s Via Appia Antica dis-plays graffiti produced by ancient pilgrims which invoke the blessings ofPeter and Paul on the funerary banquets (here “refrigeria”) celebrated at

36 Tertullian, Cor. 3, mentions making annual offering for the dead as birthdayhonors.

37 Cyprian, Epp. 12.2.1; 39.3.1; see also Tertullian, Scorp. 7.2 on the singing ofsongs in honor of the martyrs.

38 See Jean Marcillet-Jaubert, Les inscriptions d’Altava (Aix-en-Provence: Gap,Éditions Orphrys, 1968), 32–34; and Février, “Le cult des martyrs en Afrique,”191–215.


4.15

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130 Robin M. Jensen

that place.39 Another well-known example, excavated in an ancientpagan and Christian cemetery beneath the Cathedral of Bonn, gives aclear example of a matryrium equipped with a mensa. An enclosure hadbeen built around or near the sarcophagi of what were presumed to befour saints, and funerary mensae and benches were discovered, probablythose used by late-third- or early-fourth-century pilgrims.40 The trans-formation of burial places into pilgrimage sites required architecturalmodifications, gathering spaces, and mensae. These eventually becamechapels with eucharistic altars.41 Such arrangements still exist today asChristian visitors continue to hold services in the catacombs of Rome.

The area around these shrines became desirable for burials ad sanc-tos. Thus burial continued in the proximity to the saints’ tombs wellafter they were set apart as holy places. In the late fourth century PopeDamasus began to identify the tombs and promote the cult of the mar-tyrs in the catacombs of Rome, even composing epigrams which he hadinscribed on marble plaques and placed near the saints’ remains.42 Pre-sumably many of these places also included mensae that later wouldhave been used as small eucharistic altars for occasional celebrations.For instance, the catacomb of Domitilla’s crypt of Veneranda featuresa sarcophagus that appears to have been appropriated as a mensa de-dicated to the cult of St. Petronilla. The fresco in the arcosolium overthis sarcophagus shows Petronilla escorting Veneranda into paradise(Fig. 4.16). Presumably, family members commemorating their “ordi-

39 The Memoria Apostolorum (part of the catacomb of St. Sebastian) probably datesto the mid-third century. For general discussion and bibliography see Antonio Fer-rua, La basilica e la catacombe di S. Sebastiano (Vatican City: Pontificia Commis-sione di Archeologia Sacra, 1990); and Elisabeth Jastrzebowska, Untersuchengenzum christlichen Totenmahl auf Grund der Monumente des 3. und 4. Jarhhundertsunter der Basilika des hl. Sebastian in Rom (Frankfurt am Main: P.D. Lang, 1981).

40 See bibliography in G. Snyder, Ante Pacem, 164. See also discussion of Salona inSnyder, and bibliography.

41 For a (dated but traditional and illuminatingly pious) study of this phenomenonsee Ludwig Hertling and Englebert Kirshbaum, Die römische Katakomben undihre Martyrer (Vienna: Verlag Herter, 1950); trans.: The Roman Catacombs andTheir Martyrs (Milwaukee, Wis.: Bruce Publishing, 1956), esp. chap. 3, “TheTombs of the Martyrs,” 49–86.

42 Epigrammata Damasiana. On Damasus’s activities see Jean Guyon, “Damaseet l’illustration des martyrs: les accents de la devotion et l’enjeu d’un pastorale,”in Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective (eds. Mathijs Lamberigts andPeter van Deun; Louvaine: Peters, 1995), 157–77; and Victor Saxr, “Damaseet le calendrier des fêtes de martyrs de l’église romaine,” Saecularia Damasiana(Rome: Pontificial Institute of Christian Archaeology, 1986), 59–88.


4.16. Veneranda with St. Petronilla, catacomb of Domitilla, Rome. (Photo:Estelle S. Brettman, International Catacomb Society. Used with permission.)

132 Robin M. Jensen

nary dead” sometimes had to share tight spaces with pilgrims arrivingto honor a saint.

Monumental examples this complex of tomb, dining room, andmartyr’s shrine, include the extra-urban Roman cemetery basilicas ofSt. Agnes, Ss. Peter and Marcellinus, and St. Lawrence. Large funerarybanquet halls erected at these sites, near to (but not on top of) the mar-tyrium, housed those who came to honor family members buriedwithin (or nearby) and provided a venue for the saint’s commemor-ation – a time when crowds would fill the hall, celebrating with songsand drink, sometimes to bawdy and inebriated excess.43 This adap-tation of the funerary banquet created certain new problems thatchurch officials needed to resolve.

The structures built to serve these festivities were not regular parishchurches like those built inside the walls of the city for regular Sundayeucharistic celebrations. Although many were equipped with altars andbaptismal fonts along with mensae and couches for the purpose ofserving both private funeral banquets and public saint’s feasts, theyneither had resident clergy, nor were the seat of a bishop. The presenceof an altar in the large hall as well as one inside the small shrine enclo-sure indicates that a eucharist could be held either place, perhapsmoved to the hall when the size of the gathering required a largerspace. At the same time, this larger and more removed space could ac-commodate the (sometimes rowdy) activities associated with the vigil.Jerome complained to one of his correspondents that night-watches inthe basilicas of the martyrs were spoiled by young men and women ofbad reputations who behaved scandalously.44 Before long, church offi-cials attempted to put a stop to these practices, which they saw as dis-respectful, disorderly, and fundamentally profane.

St. Peter’s, undoubtedly the most popular pilgrimage church inRome, was likely built originally to serve as a funeral hall (rather thanas the papal basilica that it appears today).45 Augustine decries theregular spectacle of inebriated pilgrims coming to visit the saint. Al-

43 See Richard Krautheimer, “Mensa-Coemeterium-Martyrium,” CahArch 11(1960): 15–40 reprinted in Studies in Early Christian, Medieval, and RenaissanceArt (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 35–58.

44 Vig. 9.45 On the reconsideration of the original structure of St. Peter’s as a funerary

church with saint’s shrine, see Alberto C. Carpiceci and Richard Krautheimer,“Nuovi dati sull’antica basilica di San Pietro in Vaticano,” Bolletino d’arte delministero per i beni culturali e ambientali 81 (1996): 1–84.


though such behavior was forbidden, he explained, the prohibitionwas hard to enforce because the place was “distant from the residenceof the bishop and in so large a city of people living according to theflesh.”46 Simultaneously, however, St. Peter’s shrine served as a venuefor banquets honoring dead members of prominent Christian families.Paulinus of Nola, in a condolence letter to the Roman senator Pamma-chius upon the death of his wife, mentions the funerary feast in the“basilica of the apostle” and commends his friend for using the occa-sion for a charitable act. For, instead of only inviting members of hisown social class, Pammachius had opened the doors to a large crowdof the hungry poor. This, Paulinus approvingly comments, recalled thestory of the multiplication of the loaves and fish. By “feeding bodies inneed,” Pammachius has garnered God’s good will and also “refreshedthe soul of his dead wife.”47

An earlier effort to turn rowdy or exclusive funeral feasts eitherinto more sober occasions, or into opportunities to show charity, arerecorded in the Apostolic Constitutions, which instructs Christians onhow to conduct decorous and charitable funeral banquets: “Let thethird day of the departed be celebrated with psalms, and lessons, andprayers, on account of him who rose within the space of three days;and let the ninth day be celebrated in remembrance of the living, andof the departed, and the fortieth day according to the ancient pattern:for so did the people lament Moses, and the anniversary day in memo-ry of him. And let alms be given to the poor out of his goods for amemorial of him.” The document further urges those who attend theirmemorials to feast with “good order” and refrain from drinking to ex-cess.48

Dated to the early fourth century, Constantine’s Oration to theAssembly of the Saints contrasts the commemoration of a Christianmartyr with pagan funerary festivities, pointing out that the Christianceremonies include a sacrifice of thanksgiving in honor of the saint,“a bloodless, harmless sacrifice” with neither frankincense nor fire butonly enough “pure light” (i.e., torches and candles at the tomb) to sat-isfy the assembled worshipers. The oration further praises Christians

46 Augustine, Ep. 29.10–11.47 Paulinus, Ep. 13. 11–14. Pammachius’s wife, Paulina, was the daughter of Paula

and sister to Eustochium and Blesilla. After her death, Pammachius went into amonastery and dedicated his life to aiding the poor.

48 Ap. Const. 8.42–44, trans. ANF 7, 498.

134 Robin M. Jensen

for transforming funeral feasts into occasions for a charitable display,while subtly acknowledging the tenaciousness of the old, more self-in-dulgent behaviors: “Many too there are whose charitable spirit leadsthem to prepare a temperate banquet for the comfort of the needy,and the relief of those who had been driven from their homes; a customwhich can only be deemed burdensome by those whose thoughtsare not accordant with the divine and sacred doctrine.”49 This kind ofpractice may have grown out of those earlier “agape meals” Tertullianrefers to as those feasts “we give for the relief of the poor.”50

Gradually the memorial banquet function of the halls was repressedand abandoned, while the adjacent buildings that included the actualsaint’s shrine were enlarged and transformed into basilicas dedicatedto martyrs whose relics were placed under their main altars. In this wayfuneral mensae in cemeteries were adapted and moved inside of churchesand funeral rites began to include a eucharistic celebration at the“table of the saint,” rather than a meal at the “table of the dead.” Thepractice of celebrating a eucharist at an actual funeral (rather than thetraditional memorial feast at the grave) is not mentioned in the literarysources before the end of the fourth century and then only indirectly.A council of African bishops forbade the celebration of a eucharist inthe presence of a corpse, specifically prohibiting the practice of puttingthe consecrated bread into its mouth.51 Other decrees allow the euchar-ist to be offered as part of the burial only if participants had fasted(prior to the first meal of the day).52 Augustine, describing Monica’sfuneral, notes that the practice in Italy was different than that ofAfrica, in that they celebrated the “sacrifice of our redemption” at thetomb, in the presence of the corpse.53

Meanwhile, as the saint’s festival was moved inside of the church,the term mensa gradually came to refer to any eucharistic table or altar,but especially denoted an altar found at a major saint’s shrine.54 That

49 Orat. Const. 12; trans. NPNF 1, 570–71. This oration, appended to Eusebius’sVita Const. is not certainly an original work of the Emperor himself.

50 Tertullian, Apol. 39 (siquidem inopes quosque refrigerio isto iuvamus). See Fév-rier, “A propos du repas funéraire,” 40–5, in which he argues that this transitionfrom private banquet to occasion for almsgiving can be seen clearly at Tipasa.

51 Con. Hippo A 393 c. 4, CCSL 149.21.52 Ibid.53 Augustine, Conf. 9.12.32 (cum offerretur pro ea sacrificium pretii nostri iam iuxta

sepulchrum posito cadauere).54 See Krautheimer, “Mensa-Coemeterium-Martyrium,” passim.


the early mensae were mostly made of stone may explain why stonealtars began to replace wooden ones in the late fourth and earlyfifth centuries.55

A well-known effort to move a saint’s celebration “inside” a churchwhere the memorial ritual would be conducted with decency and de-corum is illustrated by the way the fore-mentioned Paulinus of Nola,managed his own pilgrimage site. Paulinus tries to discourage therowdy revelers at Felix’s shrine in Nola by luring them inside the basil-ica proper by the “novel” addition of paintings on the walls. Address-ing a visitor to the shrine, he outlines his problem:

Now the greater number among the crowds here are country-folk, not withoutbelief but unskilled in reading. For years they have been used to following pro-fane cults in which their god was their belly, and at last they have turned as con-verts to Christ out of admiration for the undisputed achievements of the saintsperformed in Christ’s name. Notice in what numbers they assemble from all thecountry districts, and how they roam around, their unsophisticated minds be-guiled in devotion … See how they now in great numbers keep vigil and prolongtheir joy throughout the night, dispelling sleep with joy and darkness withtorchlight. I only wish they would channel this joy in sober prayer and not in-troduce their wine cups within the holy thresholds … Their naivety is uncon-scious of the extent of their guilt, and their sins arise from devotion, for theywrongly believe that the saints are delighted to have their tombs doused withreeking wine.

Paulinus then offers his solution – pictures on the walls as a competingattraction:

This was why we thought it useful to enliven all the houses of Felix with paint-ings on sacred themes, in the hope that they would excite the interests of therustics by their attractive appearance, for the sketches are painted in various co-

55 For documentary evidence that early altars were made of wood see Augustine,Cresc. 3.47, Ep. 185.27; Optatus, Donat. 6.1; Athanasius, H. Ar. 56. Sigma-shaped stone tables, found in churches (especially in Provence and Africa) andoften referred to as “agape tables” may have been used as offering tables ratherthan as eucharistic altars. See W. Eugene Kleinbauer, “Table Top with LobedBorder,” in Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third toSeventh Century (ed. Kurt Weitzmann; New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art1979), 637–38. On the transformation of altars see Catherine Metzger, “Lemobilier liturgique,” in Naissance des arts chrétiens (eds. Noël Duval et al.; Paris:Ministère de la culture et de la communication, 1991), 256–67; X. Barral i Altet,“Mensae et repas funéraire,” 67–8; H. Leclercq, “Autel,” DACL 2 (1924):3155–89; and Johann P. Kirsch and Theodor Klauser, “Altar,” RAC 1 (1950):334–54.

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lors. Over them are explanatory inscriptions, the written word revealing thetheme outlined by the painter’s hand. So when all the country folk point out andread over to each other the subjects painted, they turn more slowly to thoughtsof food, since the feast of fasting is so pleasant to the eye. In this way, as thepaintings beguile their hunger, their astonishment may allow better behavior todevelop in them … as they gape, their drink is sobriety, and they forget the long-ing for excessive wine.56

In his Confessions, Augustine recalls another campaign to bring thecelebration of the saint “inside” the church proper (and the “properchurch”) and to squelch the practice of Christians banqueting incemeteries. Monica, carrying food to a martyr’s shrine in Milan (aswas her former custom in Numidia), was stopped by the doorkeeperwith orders from Ambrose to bar anyone from bringing in food anddrink. Augustine comments on how hard it was for her to discontinuea custom which she had long practiced, one motivated by devotionrather than personal pleasure, and even seemed a little surprised atAmbrose’s influence over his mother (one her son apparently did nothave). The bishop of Milan successfully admonished her to turn her“pagan” custom into a pious celebration inside the church where shewould attend a eucharistic banquet rather than leave food at a grave.She “happily abstained,” offering her gifts instead to the needy andbringing a heart “full of purer vows” to the memorials of the martyrs.57

As in Nola, this incident illustrates a process that would eventuallylead to saints’ relics being placed under the main sacramental altar –thereby joining all three feasts (memorial, martyr’s feast, and euchar-istic sacrifice).

Official attempts to transform the ancient practice of dining with thedead by converting boisterous and unruly celebrations at tombs intosober and respectful liturgies in churches may have underestimated thedifficulty of such an undertaking. Such efforts met resistance, some-times overt and riotous, and sometimes passive and merely stubborn.Augustine himself, attempting to curb the wild parties that character-ized the feast of Cyprian in Carthage, or the feast of Leontius, the mar-tyr saint of Hippo, realized that he might as well compromise and allowfamily memorial meals to continue, at least. Nevertheless, in his treat-

56 Paulinus, Carm. 27.542, trans. P. G. Walsh, The Poems of Paulinus of Nola(Ancient Christian Writers Series 40; New York: Newman Press, 1975), 290–291.

57 Augustine, Conf. 6.2.


ise, The City of God, Augustine praises those “better” families who hadabandoned the practice.58

Documents recounting the progress of a more complicated case, thatof the Mensa of Cyprian in Carthage, vividly show how difficult it wasfor church leaders (in this case Augustine of Hippo and Aurelius ofCarthage) to gain control of the festival of a beloved local saint. Cy-prian, the bishop of Carthage, martyred in 258, was the perhaps themost important and revered martyr of African Christians – holy to Do-natists and Catholics alike. His shrine was the destination of pilgrimsfrom all parts of the region, and his feast day, September 14, was theoccasion for a momentous – and sometimes riotous – celebration.

In one of more than a dozen extant sermons he preached on the vigilor feast of Cyprian between 394 and 419,59 Augustine refers to thesaint’s shrine in Carthage by its traditional name, the Mensa Cypriani.Although its location is no longer certain, it would have been wellknown to anyone who visited Carthage in Augustine’s time. This par-ticular shrine, one of at least three dedicated to Cyprian, was con-structed at the place known as the Ager Sexti, the site of Cyprian’sexecution by the Roman governor, on grounds just behind his ownresidence. Cyprian’s beheading was witnessed by a throng of his fol-lowers, who rushed to dip cloths in his blood and who bore his bodyaway in triumph for burial in the cemetery of Macrobius Candidianuson the Mappalian Way.60

Concerned to disabuse his audience of certain misunderstandings,Augustine explains that the shrine’s name – “The Table of Cyprian” –was given because Cyprian had been martyred at that place, not be-cause he had dined there: “And because by this very sacrifice of himselfhe prepared this table; not as one on which to feed or be fed, but as oneon which sacrifice might be offered to God, to whom he offered hisvery self.” Therefore while it was called “Cyprian’s table,” this mensa

58 Augustine, Civ. 7.26; much of the following discussion was covered more brieflyin Quasten, “Vetus Superstitio.” Note, however, that some of Augustine’s ser-mons hint at a Christianized version of the Parentalia, oriented more toward achurchly celebration of “days for remembering the departed” on which sermonsmight be preached on Christian beliefs about death and resurrection. See Serm172, 173.1 and possibly 361.

59 Augustine, Serm. 308A, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 313A, 313B, 313C, 313D, 313Eand 313F; Enarrat. Ps. 32.2, 323.

60 Acta Proconsularis (Sancti Cypriani) 5 (CSEL 3.3), 113–14; trans. H. Musurillo,The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 173–4.

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was actually God’s table. The very place where Cyprian was once sur-rounded by his persecutors is now a table surrounded by worshipers.61

Such an explanation indicates that Augustine meant a eucharisticaltar when he spoke of the mensa, a equation strengthened in two other(possibly earlier) sermons given at this same shrine where he identifiedan altar (altare) honoring Cyprian but raised up for God.62 He alsoinstructed his listeners in the difference between the honor paid tomartyr and that paid to God, and admonished them to be respectful bycelebrating the saint in a “holy way as Christians.” After all, he says,“we have not erected an altar to Cyprian as though he were God, butwe have made an altar to the true God out of Cyprian.”63

Here Augustine tries to rein in certain aspects of the martyr cultby carefully redefining the purpose of this popular pilgrimage site as abasilica dedicated to the worship of God, not to “disrespectful” feastsin honor of a saint. The name of this particular shrine, however, musthave given him some qualms since the word mensa never applied toplace of sacrifice or the shedding of blood, but rather only used for anordinary dining table, a funerary table, or some other ritual or cultictable.64 Augustine’s equation of the words mensa and altare suggeststhat he was eager to transform the cult through its ceremonial cel-ebration in (God’s) eucharist rather than a festival banquet. Further-more, when in other places Augustine applies the term “mensa Domini”(or mensa Dominica) to the eucharist, he contrasted it with “mensadiaboli,” a translation of “trapezes kuriou” found in 1 Cor 10.21.65

Augustine may have attempted to rename the shrine itself, referring toit elsewhere as the Domus Sancti Cypriani.66

The shrine known as the Mensa Cypriani had existed for more than acentury by the time Augustine preached his sermons there, and musthave been called by this name from the beginning. As noted above, the

61 Augustine, Serm. 310.2.62 Ibid., Serm. 313.5; 313A.5. Hill argues for a date of 419, although 406 is possible

for the former and 401 for the latter.63 Ibid., Serm. 313A.5.64 See Cicero, Leg. 2.26.66; Virgil, Aen. 2.995 “mensaeque deorum;” Cic. Har. resp.

57; Pliny, Nat Hist. 25.59, “Iovis mensa.”65 See Augustine, Peccat. Merit. 1.24.32; Ep. 149.16, Ser. 31.1.2 for example.66 Author has adopted this title from Enarrat. Ps. 32.3, where Augustine may

in fact be using it to refer to the Mensa Cypriani – in order to make a point. Onthe matter of terminology, mensa = altare, see R. Krautheimer, “Mensa-Coeme-terium-Martyrium,” 49–50.


terminology is puzzling, since the shrine commemorated the site whereCyprian was executed, not the place where he was buried. Located inthe Ager Sexti (the Estate of Sextus), where the proconsul GaleriusMaximus was temporarily residing for reasons of his health, it musthave been built in an open field outside the city walls.67 Cyprian’s tombwas in another pilgrimage site, the basilica known as the Mappalia,also outside the city walls in the suburban cemetery of the ProcuratorMacrobius Candidianius, on the Mappalian way (near the fish-ponds).68 Based on traditional funerary practices, one would expectthis shrine to have a funerary mensa, and perhaps it did, even though itsname does not reflect that possibility. In any case, by Augustine’s time,the shrine presumably also held an altar for eucharistic celebrations.

Sources indicate that Augustine preached in both places on the feastof Cyprian. Based on textual evidence it seems likely that he preachedmore than a dozen sermons in Carthage, five at the Mappalia and atleast eight at the Mensa Cypriani. The sermons at the Mappalia werelikely preached on the evening of the feast (vigil), while the Mensa washis venue on the next day – thereby distinguishing the two shrines bythe type of commemorative celebration held in each.69 The evening cel-

67 Acta Proconsularia (Sancti Cypriani), 2 and 5, as noted above. The Mensa also ismentioned in Augustine, Enarrat. Ps. 80 (4, 23), which seem to have beenpreached there on Cyprian’s feast day.

68 About the two basilicas, see Victor of Vita, Hist. Pers. Af. Prov. 1.16. Their pres-ent-day locations (ruins) are still debated; see Othmar Perler, Les Voyages deSaint Augustine (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1969), 420–21; Liliane Ennabli,Les inscriptions funéraires chrétiennes de la basilique dite de Sainte-Monique àCarthage (Rome: École Française de Rome 1975), 12–16; and Yvette Duval,Loca sanctorum: le culte des martyres en Afrique du IVe au VII siècle, vol. 2(Rome: École Française de Rome, 1982), 675–77.

69 This corresponds to the identification of the place and time of his preaching ofSerm. 308A (clearly preached on the vigil) and Enarrat. Ps. 32.2, and might besurmised of Serm. 311, 312, and 313C (if the definition of the dies natalis can beextended to include the evening vigil), and Serm. 313F (the latter identified asbeing preached in the evening). This pattern corresponds to the view of MariaBoulding, The Works of Saint Augustine: Expositions of the Psalms III/15 (HydePark, N.Y.: New City Press, 2000), that Enarrat Ps. 32.2 was preached in the vigilat the Mappalia and then the Enarrat. Ps. 32.3 the next day at the Mensa. Seedating of the sermons by Edmund Hill, The Works of Saint Augustine, SermonsIII/9 (Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 1994), 121–22 – who suggests that Serm.308A, 313C and 313F were all preached at the same time, thus arguing againstthis pattern – all three sermons being in the Mappalia: vigil, next morning, andnext evening.

140 Robin M. Jensen

ebration associated primarily with the Mappalia was particularly dis-orderly and included dancing, singing impious songs, and excessiveeating and drinking.70

In any case, Augustine and his fellow bishop of Carthage, Aurelius,made efforts to at least control the celebratory excesses if not eradicatethe practice of festival banquets on saints’ days or altogether. This was,no doubt, part of their larger program generally to contain and controlthe popular martyr cult in North Africa, and to distinguish their con-gregation from that of the Donatists with regard to the decorum bywhich they honored their saints.

Augustine’s sermons allude to his desire to control the disorderlypartying at the Mappalia, which in his mind more dishonored thanhonored the saint. He claims to have had some success. In a sermonprobably preached in the year 405, he says “this place” (Mappalia) wasonce invaded by the pestilential rowdiness of dancers and resoundedwith the singing of impious songs.” But now, he says, based on theinitiative of Aurelius (our brother bishop), the abuse had stopped.These things “don’t go on here any longer.”71

The change may have started around 392, when Augustine wrote toAurelius of Carthage, urging him to join him in reforming the martyrs’feasts.72 Citing Paul’s letter to the Romans, “not in feasting anddrunkenness, not in fornication and impurity, not in strife and jeal-ousy; rather, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and do not provide for theflesh with its desires” (Rom. 13.13–14), Augustine laments the sacri-legious feasting, drinking, and general “foulness” at the tombs ofsaints and the “places for the sacraments.”73 Grudgingly toleratingsuch misbehavior in private funerals, Augustine concentrates on elimi-nating such practices in public, religious spaces and official saints’commemorations. He adds that the churches of Africa were laggingbehind churches elsewhere, and is thus shamed by the relative laxity incorrecting these moral failures.74

70 Augustine, Serm. 311.5.71 Augustine, Serm. 311.5–6, as cited above. Serm. 313A urges people to behave “as

Christians” and in a holy way (cf. Enarrat. Ps. 32.5).72 Augustine, Ep. 22.73 This is the same text (Rom 13.13–14) that Augustine cites in Conf. 8.12. It was

the passage he opened his bible to in the garden, the one that that finally con-verted him.

74 He may be referring, in particular, to Ambrose’s suppression of the funerary cultat Milan, see above.


Although he believed that the remedy required the authority of acouncil, he advises Aurelius to begin at home, since, he argues, otherchurches will be embarrassed to retain what the church at Carthagehad corrected. Reminding Aurelius that as a deacon he had con-demned such practices, he encourages him now to take firm, but notharsh steps to follow up. Once these depraved celebrations in the mar-tyrs’ shrines were eliminated, Augustine optimistically expects that thedissolute funeral banquets held for the ordinary dead would also grad-ually come to an end, and that mourners would voluntarily replacethe feasts with almsgiving to the poor and commemorate their “dearones” inside the church, rather than at the tomb.75 Augustine thus re-veals his larger program – to transform “ordinary” funerals into chari-table and pious celebrations within churches, and to get out of thecemeteries.

Augustine was satisfied in his desire for this matter to come before acouncil of African bishops. Canon 29 of the council held at Hippo in393 probably represents a follow-up to Augustine’s letter to Aurelius:“Neither bishops nor clergy shall dine in the church, except whennecessary for the hospitality shown to travelers, but then the peopleshall be prohibited from this kind of banquet as much as possible.”76

Although this canon offers no prohibition of banquets at familytombs, it nearly caused that above-mentioned riot when it was imposedon the church at Hippo during the feast of the martyr Leontius in 394.Augustine describes his success in suppressing the protest in a letter toAlypius of Thagaste, and summarizes the arguments of the opposition.Having preached a few days earlier on the Gospel passage “do not givewhat is holy to dogs, and do not cast your pearls before swine,” Augus-tine believes he had made his point – but unfortunately to only the fewwho came out to hear the sermon.

Trying again, he preached the next day on the story of Jesus drivingthe money changers from the Temple, and paralleled the “den ofthieves” with drunken revelers. On the next day, the feast day itself,people still complained about the suppression of their celebration, ask-ing “why now?” when others before Augustine had allowed the partiesto go on. Augustine responds that in earlier times, church officialshad to tolerate certain pagan practices because of the weakness of the

75 Augustine, Ep. 22.2–6.76 Brev. Hipp. 29. CCL, CSLIX, 41

142 Robin M. Jensen

newly converted, who were used to their long-standing pleasures.77 Butby now, he points out, Christians ought to be ready to live as trueChristians, and moreover no less pious than members of those otherchurches across the sea. Apparently his words had good effect, and thecrisis was averted and the celebration was marked with both modestyand piety – and, as Augustine asserts – kept quite differently from theheretics (Donatists) in their basilica, where the customary carnal feast-ing and drinking took place.78 This exchange reveals Augustine’s mo-tives for this reform, which includes his desire to show up the Donatistsas immoral in comparison with the pious Catholics.79

Augustine’s position against the feasts of the martyrs was a compro-mise, however. As he explains in his letter to Aurelius, the practice ofordinary funeral feasts was much more entrenched and almost impos-sible to stamp out. Toleration for certain kinds of private celebrationswas probably politically wise and although he disapproved, Augustineprobably turned a blind eye to those long-cherished traditions, es-pecially as they offered some consolation to mourning family members.Nevertheless, as noted above, Augustine recognizes and praises those“better” families who had abandoned the practice.80

At the same time, the legislation of the African church prohibitedthe giving of the eucharist to a corpse, and even the celebration of theeucharist in the presence of a corpse. Legislation further forbade theeucharist as part of a funeral ritual that took place after midday (sincemourners could not be assumed to have fasted before receiving the sac-rament).81 The need for such rules show that by the late fourth century,the eucharist – taken in the church and at its altar rather than at the

77 In roughly contemporary exchanges with the Manichees, Augustine had to ac-knowledge that many ignorant or still-superstitious Catholic Christians hadforgotten their vows to abstain from pagan practices and still drink to excessover the dead and “bury themselves over the buried” in gluttonous funeral feastsin the name of religion. See Mor. ecc. 34.75 (ca. 388); also Faust. 20.21 (ca. 397),where he says that some things must be borne for a while since “intemperance iseven worse than impiety.” Here Augustine also insists that Christians distinguishbetween sacrificing to the martyrs and sacrificing to God in memory of the mar-tyrs. Worship, he proclaims, is due to God alone.

78 Augustine, Ep. 2979 See also Optatus of Milevis, Donat. 3.4, where he mentions the multiplication of

martyrs’ altars and tables.80 Augustine, Civ. 7.2681 Council of Hippo 393, canon 4 (CCSL 149, 21); Brev. Hipp. 160.28 (CCSL 149,

41).


grave – must have become part of the ritual surrounding most Chris-tian funerals, and that certain practices – like the feeding of the conse-crated elements of the sacrament to a corpse (viaticum) – have a longtradition.82 And, finally, the eucharist itself never really ceased to be acertain kind of funeral meal – a meal at which a once-dead host is nowliving and present.

Archaeological evidence also shows how entrenched the funerarycult was. Given its antiquity it could not be eradicated. In fact, churchofficials even today try to bring the saint’s festival into the church fromoff the street, and admonish their parishioners to respect the dead withproper funeral etiquette. Nevertheless ordinary people still eat anddrink at wakes, and they still get a little boisterous at festivals in honorof their saints.

82 Prayers for the dead at the eucharistic feast, however, are attested much earlier.See, for example Cyprian, Ep. 1.2.1, which specifies the naming of the dead at thealtar during the prayer of the bishop.

144 Robin M. Jensen

Sweet Spices in the Tomb 145

Deborah Green

Chapter 5

Sweet Spices in the Tomb:An Initial Study on the Use of Perfume

in Jewish Burials

How might we account for the numerous perfume bottles (unguen-taria) – both glass and ceramic – found at Jewish burial sites in Pales-tine in the early centuries C.E.?1 A few years ago, scholars thoughtthese might be lacrimaria (“tear bottles”), brought to burial sites bymourners,2 or balsamaria (“balsam bottles”), so named for the scentedoil the bottles were thought to have contained. Others considered thebottles to be part of food and other offerings either buried with thedead for use in the afterlife or brought to the dead for ancestor wor-ship. Both of these theories rely upon the persistence of customs thatmay be traced back to the First Temple and earlier periods.3 Today,

1 I would like to thank Laurie Brink for including me in this exciting project. Iwould also like to extend my appreciation to Annal Frenz and Karen Stern fortheir responses to my paper at the May 2005 conference.

2 See Erwin R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman World (13 vols.;New York: Pantheon Books, 1953–1968), 1:165 and Amos Kloner and Boaz Zis-sou, The Necropolis of Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period (in Hebrew) (Jeru-salem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi; The Israel Exploration Society, 2003), 59.

3 Kloner and Zissou, The Necropolis of Jerusalem, 59. For a discussion of Iron Ageancestor worship and needs and nourishment in the afterlife, see Elizabeth Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs about the Dead (Sheffield: SheffieldAcademic Press, 1992). For the Roman period in the land of Israel, see ByronMcCane, Roll Back the Stone: Death and Burial in the World of Jesus (Harrisburg,Pa.: Trinity Press Internatonal, 2003), 14–15. McCane gives the example of theKidron Valley tomb as reported by N. Avigad, “A Depository of Inscribed Ossu-aries in the Kidron Valley,” IEJ 12 (1962): 1–12. McCane also discusses in detailthe possibility of an early Roman period “cult of the dead,” 49–52. Related to the“cult of the dead” is the mourning practice of “cutting” the body; this ritual isforbidden in the Hebrew Bible (Lev 19:28) and is also referred to in m. Mak. 3:5.

146 Deborah Green

several archaeologists and historians believe that the perfume in thebottles was employed to mask the scent of the decomposing corpse.4

This conjecture, seemingly sound on its surface, is often derived eitherfrom contemporary western cultural attitudes toward decomposingcorpses or from a literal reading of a single line from the BabylonianTalmud. However, when analyzed critically and comprehensively, thearchaeological, textual, and biological evidence point to reasons otherthan the utilitarian for burying the dead with spices and perfume. Thisstudy examines relevant rabbinic texts and compares them to the ma-terial remains of perfume bottles in order to elucidate the three phasesof Jewish burial in which spices, in the form of either perfume or in-cense, may have been used; the phase of burial in which scent may havebeen employed to mask the stench of a decomposing corpse; and thereason, if not to cover odors, perfume bottles may have been interredwith the dead.5

The Problem of Evidence

Before launching into this task, an overview of Jewish burial practiceswould seem to be in order. However, such an endeavor can be an all-consuming, perhaps even futile, enterprise. As Ian Morris has pointedout, the material remains of ancient burials are simply the remnants offunerals – ritual acts steeped in meaning, tradition, and emotion. Assuch, the miscellany of physical evidence cannot adequately illuminatethe process of the rituals or the significance attached to burials. In ad-dition, archaeological remains, along with studies of epigraphic andother literary evidence, provide only singular or fractionalized snap-shots of burials and their attendant rituals located in a specific placeand period, making the inexact science of extrapolation a necessarymeans for surmising anything about ancient burials.6

These problems are aptly demonstrated in the study of ancient Jew-ish burials in the land of Israel, where we can describe the evolution of

4 For example, McCane, Roll Back the Stone, 15, 48.5 This initial study is also part of a larger project on the metaphors and interpre-

tations concerning scent, spices, perfume, and incense in the Hebrew Bible andrabbinic midrash and their connection to realia.

6 Ian Morris, Death-Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 1–15.


particular practices but are left with many unresolved questions. Forexample, in the First Temple period, rock-cut tombs appear to reflectfamily burials with benches or beds cut into the rock in order to ac-commodate decomposing corpses. A compartment under one of thebenches or a separate repository would be located in the tomb to housethe collected bones of ancestors.7 In such cases, the bones were piledtogether.8 During the late Second Temple period, although mosttombs continued to be family structures, bodies were either buried di-rectly in rock-cut niches or placed in coffins which were then placedinto niches. When the bones were collected, they were placed individ-ually or with one or two other skeletal remains (often women withchildren) into separate boxes called ossuaries.9 Although we can seethe change over time in these burial practices, the surviving evidencerepresents only a small portion of the buried populace – most likely therichest members of the community. We have no method to determinehow or in what manner the majority of the population were buried,nor do we know the procedures or rituals leading up to the burial forthose entombed in the structures or for the rest of the population. Fin-ally, although scholars have conjectured as to the meaning and signifi-cance of the collection of bones into ossuaries, no primary text existsthat explains plainly why Jews performed such a rite.10

By the third century C.E., most tombs are no longer family struc-tures; instead, several families and those without familial neighborsare buried together. Some tomb caves, such as those at Beth She‘arim,

7 For example, the St. Étienne tombs in Jerusalem (located at the École Biblique).Gabriel Barkay and Amos Kloner, “Jerusalem Tombs from the Days of the FirstTemple,” BAR 12 (1986): 22–39.

8 Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, 146–149.9 Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Land of Israel

(Leiden: Brill, 1988), 97; L. Y. Rahmani, A Catalogue of Jewish Ossuaries in theCollections of the State of Israel (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, IsraelAcademy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994), 16, 21; Gideon Avni and ZviGreenhut, The Akeldama Tombs: Three Burial Caves in the Kidron Valley, Jeru-salem (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 1996), 118–120; Rachel Hachliliand Ann E. Killebrew, Jericho: The Jewish Cemetery of the Second TemplePeriod, (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 1999), 192–95; Jodi Magness,“The Burials of Jesus and James,” JBL 124/1 (2005): 132; Rachel Hachlili, Jew-ish Funerary Customs, Practices and Rites in the Second Temple Period (Leiden:Brill, 2005), 94, 322–24, 483.

10 This fact has not deterred scholars from trying. For a recent discussion and re-view of opinions, see Magness, “Burials,” 129.

148 Deborah Green

are quite large, were in use for several centuries (making the dating ofindividual burials difficult), and include burials of both local andDiasporic Jews.11 Similar to the earlier burials, it is likely that onlywealthy or high status individuals are buried in these tombs.12 How-ever, either because of changes in style or variations in tradition pos-sibly related to the different cities of origin of the mourners, a widevariety of burial practices is attested in the caves. In Beth She‘arim wesee the employment of two distinct types of burial niches (Figs. 5.1–3):the kokh (a burial niche usually dug perpendicularly to the tomb wall)and the arcosolium (a rectangular niche dug horizontally or parallel tothe wall with an arched top).13 Different types of sarcophagi (Fig. 5.4)and some ossuaries are also present; the former becoming more preva-lent during the third century C.E. (the period of greatest expansion ofthe tombs) and the latter becoming less common. The decorations andepigraphy on the tomb walls, markers, and sarcophagi are quite varied.

11 For the dating of Beth She‘arim, see Benjamin Mazar, Beth She‘arim: Report onthe Excavations during 1936–1940 (vol. 1; New Brunswick: Rutgers UniversityPress, 1973), 22; Nahman Avigad, Beth She‘arim: Report on the Excavations dur-ing 1953–1958 (vol. 3; New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1971), 260;Fanny Vitto, “Byzantine Mosaics at Bet She‘arim: New Evidence for the Historyof the Site,” ‘Atiqot 28 (1996): 137–41. Although five periods of building arefound at the necropolis (Herodian through Arab), Avigad and Mazar viewed themost significant as Periods I through III. Avigad outlines these as Period I (fromthe Herodian through the first half of the second century C.E.), Period II (fromthe second half of the second century to the beginning of the third century C.E.),and Period III (Phase A, from the middle of the third to the fourth century C.E.and Phase B, from the first half of the fourth century to the destruction of BethShe‘arim in 352 C.E.). However, Vitto demonstrates that “ … the city continuedto be inhabited and the necropolis to be used after the mid-fourth century. In theByzantine period, Bet She‘arim apparently enjoyed a second period of prosper-ity …”, Vitto, “Byzantine Mosaics,” p. 138. For information on the local andDiasporic Jews buried there, see Avigad, Beth She‘arim, 259–61.

12 Moshe Schwabe and Baruch Lifshitz, Beth She‘arim: The Greek Inscriptions(vol. 2. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1974), 219–221.

13 Of note, the arcosolia in Beth She‘arim often hold more than one body. In sev-eral cases these receptacles are large enough to accommodate the burial of threebodies placed perpendicularly to the wall and another body placed horizontallyat the back of the niche. For more precise information on the dating of theseniche types at Beth She‘arim, see Avigad, Beth She‘arim, 259. In several sitesthroughout Palestine, the kokh is the most common type of burial niche. Thekokhim are often dug at ground level deep into the wall of the cave, and the bodyis placed perpendicular to the surface of the wall so the feet are facing towardthe room.


As mentioned, some of these differences may be the result of changingpractices, but others may simply reflect differences in custom (local vs.foreign, familial, or fashion). Therefore, even though we may describegeneral changes in burial customs over time, the account remains pro-hibitively sparse, as it concerns only the wealthiest or highest status ofthe population and gives no insights into the processes or motivationsbehind such practices.

Further problems are reflected in previous scholarship. The study ofancient Jewish burials reflects biases similar to those apparent in otherareas of Jewish studies. To a large degree, most of these notions havebeen corrected over time, but their fallout may nevertheless uncon-sciously influence or consciously stymie the researcher. The first is thepreconception that Diasporic Jews who lived across the expanse of theRoman Empire were isolated, either by choice or by force, from theirhost cultures. Leonard Rutgers, among others, has gone a long wayto disprove this misconception.14 In his thorough study of the LateRoman period Jewish catacombs in Rome, Rutgers assesses the ma-terial remains and epigraphy in relation to their Christian and wider-Roman counterparts. In addition, he touches on burials throughoutthe Diaspora and Palestine in order to draw inner-Jewish comparisons.Although there is great similarity between the Christian and Jewishcatacombs in Rome, there is a wide divergence in burial customs foundthroughout Jewish communities of this time period. In the cases ofother Diasporic communities, Rutgers finds that local Jewish practiceshave much in common with their host cultures.15 He further findsthat in several instances in Rome, the decorative art found on sar-cophagi and tomb walls appears to have been crafted in Romanshops, most likely by Roman craftsman.16 These findings indicate thatthe Jews of Rome had regular commercial contact with their Romanneighbors.

Therefore, it should not be a surprise that the type of Jewish burialmost common in Rome in the Late Roman period is the catacomb, an

14 Leonard Victor Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of CulturalInteraction in the Roman Diaspora, (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995). Particularly for thecase of Rome, see also Harry J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome (Philadelphia:Jewish Publication Society of America, 1960; repr., Peabody, Mass.: Hendrick-son Publishers, 1995). For Rome and other areas of the Diaspora, see the earlygroundbreaking work of Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, vol 2.

15 Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome, 65–67.16 Ibid., 68–81.

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5.1. Kokh, Beth She‘arim, Israel. (author’s photo)

5.2. A variety of burial types: arcosolium, loculus, pit, sarcophagus,Beth She‘arim, Israel. (author’s photo)


5.4. Sarcophagus, Beth She‘arim, Israel. (author’s photo)

5.3. Two kokhim, Beth She‘arim, Israel. (author’s photo)

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underground tunnel complex built and in use for approximately300 years,17 and which has several features in common with evolvingRoman tomb types. The catacombs contain columns of horizontalniches (loculi ) cut into the tunnel walls. Corpses were laid into theseniches which were then sealed with a mixture of rubble and brick andmarked with marble or other types of inscribed markers. The catacombcomplexes are exceedingly large and appear to have contained a largeportion of the Jewish community.18 These underground cemeteries re-flect a similar development in tomb structure in the wider Roman com-munity; that is, the move from hypogea (small underground rooms inwhich the remains of families are found) to larger burial complexes sup-ported by membership in particular subgroups of the population.

Only in a few cases in the Jewish catacombs of Rome do we find thekokh type of niche so popular in Palestine.19 Although not in abun-dance, there are also several examples of distinctly Jewish (and in somecases, non-Jewish) hypogea in the catacombs which contain only afew loculi and arcosolia – indicating that these may have been familytombs.20 Unfortunately, very few grave goods survive from the Jewishcatacombs and virtually none of these goods have been recorded in situ,making comparisons with those of Palestinian or other Diasporicburials almost impossible.21

17 Very recent scholarship suggests dating the Villa Torlonia catacomb to the sec-ond century C.E. The entrance to the lower catacomb level may have been dug asearly as 50 B.C.E., while the upper level of the catacomb dates to 400 C.E. Theseestimates derive from radiocarbon dating recently completed and publishedby Leonard Rutgers, Klaas Van der Borg, Arie F. M. de Jong, and Imogen Poole,“Jewish Inspiration of Christian Catacombs,” Nature 436 (21 July 2005): 339.

18 This suggestion is derived from, among other points, the poor quality of many ofthe inscriptions and artistic details; that is, the mix of wealthy and poor commu-nity members suggests the desire to bury as much of the community populationas possible. Rugters, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome, 56; Leon, The Jews ofAncient Rome, 257–59.

19 Except for the Vigna Randanini catacomb, which contains several kokhim;Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome, 62–64.

20 For a discussion on Painted Rooms I and II in the Vigna Randanini catacomb,see Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome, 54–55. Rutgers surmises that theserooms were separate hypogea, possibly pagan, that were later connected as thedistinctly Jewish catacomb was expanded.

21 However, Rutgers does discuss parallels in artistic production between Jewishburials in Rome and in Palestine, 88–92. For evidence of the grave goods (par-ticularly glass), see Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, vol. 3.


According to Rutgers, the surviving evidence of the catacombs them-selves, the inscriptions (which are predominantly in Greek and Latin),the onomastic data from the inscriptions, and the decorative art foundwithin the complexes does shed some light on the Late Roman Jewishcommunity. On the basis of this evidence, Rutgers concludes that thiscommunity not only had extensive contact with the wider Roman com-munity but felt perfectly at ease in adopting or transforming someRoman styles (e.g., highly decorated sarcophagi with images of victo-rae, tomb paintings of vines, etc.) just as they rejected other Romanburial customs or rituals (e.g., cremation and pictorial representationsof the deceased).22 The Jews of Rome, therefore, appear to be free toimitate the Roman iconography and other practices they admire as wellas to develop their own styles in burial without complete assimilationinto the general culture. At the same time, although the Jews of Romedo not seem to be tied to any strict legal code with respect to burial,they do appear to observe traditions and practices similar to Jews inother parts of the empire (e.g., inhumation, employment of the kokh,and widespread use of the menorah as a decorative element).

A second assumption long-held in the study of Jewish history wasthat from the period of 70 C.E. (the destruction of the Second Temple)onward, the rabbis maintained a hegemony over the Jewish commu-nity writ large. This notion derives in part from the uncritical reliancescholars placed on meticulous study of rabbinic texts for historicalinformation and in part from a lack of material evidence.23 How-ever, as Jewish studies became increasingly integrated into Humanitiesprograms, scholars began to adopt methods and practices from otherdisciplines (e.g., history, anthropology, and literary studies) and toreassess the textual data. Likewise, as numerous archaeological exca-vations were completed and published, this new brand of scholars wasalso required to account for the seeming disparities between text andartifact. Several scholars attempted to address these issues via a syn-thesis of the data, thereby indicating that the rabbis did not have thepower they asserted in their texts or that other Jews either maintainedtheir own customs and traditions or adopted Hellenistic morés contrary

22 Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome, 92–99.23 For a more complete discussion, see Jacob Neusner, “The Demise of ‘Normative

Judaism,’ A Review Essay,” Judaism 15 (1966): 230–40, in which he addresses theproblems of writing Jewish history that the studies of such scholars as GeorgeFoote Moore and Ephraim Urbach highlight.

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to the desires of the rabbis.24 Often attendant to this view was theopinion that the rabbis shunned any and all Hellenistic (Roman or“pagan”) customs and culture.

However, as investigations continued, the facts, at least in Palestine,proved more complex. How much power or authority any group ofrabbis wielded at any specific time or place is still being hypothesizedbut remains unknown and is relatively unimportant for this study.25 Ofgreat importance is the recent work of several scholars which demon-strates that the textual and material evidence often reveal the rabbis26

to be just as Hellenized and influenced by Roman culture as other localand Diasporic Jews. In addition, more than a few scholars, throughcareful textual and philological study, have determined that the rabbislived in a society that was both Roman and Jewish just as their counter-parts did across the Roman empire.27 These Palestinian rabbis seem tohave been comfortable with, and adopted as their own, those customsthat did not run contrary to other rabbinic norms or observances.For example, it was Hellenistic custom to light incense after meals, andevidence of this practice in rabbinic households is described in the

24 Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, vols. 1–3. See also Jacob Neusner, “Notes onGoodenough’s Jewish Symbols, I–VIII,” Conservative Judaism 17, nos. 3–4(1963): 77–92.

25 One exception to the notion of the limited influence of any group of rabbis maybe the role of Judah Ha-nasi (the Prince) as Patriarch in the late second centuryand early third century C.E.

26 There is great danger in using the term “the rabbis,” as different groups or“schools” of rabbis seem to be not only at odds with those people who may dis-agree or appear to threaten them (e.g., other Jews, women, and “pagans”), but alsoat odds with each other. In addition, the literature represents redaction and editingof several hundred years of interpretation, and therefore may not reflect accuratelythe views of the various generations. To avoid confusion, scholars often use theterm “class of rabbis”; however, this term presents other obvious problems.

27 For example, see Steven Fine, Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World: Towarda New Jewish Archaeology. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); SethSchwartz, “Gamliel in Aphrodite’s Bath: Palestinian Judaism and Urban Culturein the Third and Fourth Centuries,” Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Cul-ture (ed. Peter Schäfer; Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum; Tübingen:Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 203–17. Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine (1942;repr., New York: The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1994); MortonSmith, “The Image of God: Notes on the Hellenization of Judaism, with EspecialReference to Goodenough’s Work on Jewish Symbols,” Bulletin of the John Ry-lands Library Manchester 40, no. 2 (1958): 473–512.


Talmud.28 Surprisingly, room fumigation after meals was so popularthat the description includes methods for fumigating during the Sab-bath when one is not allowed to kindle fire. Similarly, at the necropolisof Beth She‘arim, where both Diasporic Jews and rabbis are buried,ornate Hellenistic decorations appear on sarcophagi, grave goods, andthe walls.

Of special importance for the study is the fact that the rabbinicliterature provides some of the only textual evidence extant on Jewishburial practices and customs in Palestine. In many instances, it pro-vides the only descriptions of corpse preparation, funeral rites, andsecondary bone collection. Because careful review of the material indi-cates that the rabbis are not necessarily legislating new or previouslyunknown rituals and certainly are not legislating against then currentrituals, the textual evidence can be a valuable tool in the study of Jew-ish burials, particularly if we compare it where possible to the archae-ological evidence.

The methodology employed in this paper may be considered to beoverly parochial and no doubt would run aground of comparativists.However, whenever possible, the paper attempts to consider only Pal-estinian textual evidence that can be compared with archaeologicalevidence from the same location and approximate time period in an at-tempt to uncover the rationale that either already existed or developedduring the early rabbinic period for the employment of perfume in Jew-ish burials in the early centuries C.E. in Palestine. The goal is to de-cipher the texts and compare them to the material remains in order tounderstand how the rabbis justified these practices and to begin toconsider why perfume bottles were buried with the dead.

This study acknowledges as its starting point that the practice ofburying the dead with perfume bottles was already ancient and wide-spread throughout Palestine and the Mediterranean at the time of theearly rabbinic period (Fig. 5.5–8). Unfortunately, most of the materialevidence from Jerusalem – the area containing the largest knownquantity of Jewish burials – all but ceases in 70 C.E. For this study, themost useful evidence would be the burial remains from Sepphoris andTiberias. These cities were among the largest Jewish urban centers inPalestine at the time, served at various times as the seat of the Patri-archate, and are represented as paradigms for Jewish city life in much

28 m. Besah 2:7, b. Ber. 43b and b. Besah 22b.

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5.5. Unguentaria, Maktar Museum, Tunisia. (Photo: Amy Hirschfeld,International Catacomb Society. Used with permission.)

5.6. Unguentaria and assorted glass artifacts, Carthage Museum, Tunisia.(Photo: Amy Hirschfeld, International Catacomb Society. Used with permission.)


5.7. Assorted glass artifacts including candlestick bottles(unguentaria), Carthage Museum, Tunisia. (Photo: Amy Hirsch-

feld, International Catacomb Society. Used with permission.)

5.8. Bone fragments, unguentaria and other grave goods, Via Latina catacomb,Cubiculum A. (Photo: Estelle S. Brettman, International Catacomb Society. Used

with permission.)

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of rabbinic literature. However, no complete excavation of the cem-eteries has yet been accomplished. Finally, the most abundant avail-able evidence is at Beth She‘arim, the difficulty in dating of which hasalready been discussed.

An Overview of the Evidence of Rabbinic Texts

The early rabbinic legal corpora are classified into tractates or unitsbased on the various aspects of organized communal Jewish life asperceived by the early rabbis. In most cases, these are intimately linkedto the laws and regulations of the Torah through interpretation. There-fore, the division of Zera’im (Seeds), contains such subunits as Bera-khot (Blessings), Pe’ah (Gleanings), and Terumot (Heave Offerings).Although almost every conceivable situation may be addressed forcertain legal issues, surprisingly, no division exists dedicated to thesubjects of death, burial customs, or mourning. Only the BabylonianTalmud’s minor tractate of Semahot,29 which is generally dated to theeighth or ninth century C.E., refers to these customs.30 While the trac-tate includes issues and decisions regarding death, burial customs, andother post-burial events and questions, it is difficult to know whetherthe customs described therein reflect accurately the much earlierstratum of rabbinic practice in Palestine or whether they reflect thelate period in Babylonia from which they derive. These issues apply toall tractates of the Babylonian Talmud which is parsimonious in itsmethodology and often so terse in its description as to require lengthyinterpretation, conjecture, and outright speculation by the reader.Therefore, to obtain relevant data on burial practices for the early cen-turies C.E., we must first scour the early Palestinian Jewish texts andresort to the Babylonian Talmud’s comments on these earlier versesonly where necessary. Two texts serve as the primary sources for suchinformation: the Mishnah and the Tosefta. Until recently, the Mish-nah, which serves as the basis for both the Jerusalem and Babylonian

29 Ironically, semahot means “happy occasions.”30 Strack and Stemberger date the tractate, also known as ’Ebel Rabbati, to the

eighth century, noting that Zlotnick and Meyers date it to the third century. H. L.Strack and G. Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (trans. Mar-kus Bockmuehl; Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1991), 249. David Kraemer dates Se-mahot to the Geonic period (ninth century). David Kraemer, The Meanings ofDeath in Rabbinic Judaism, (London: Routledge, 2000), 9.


Talmuds, was considered to have been redacted in 200 C.E. and to rep-resent the first rabbinic legal code. The Tosefta was thought to date ap-proximately 100 years later than the Mishnah. Organized similarly tothe Mishnah, the Tosefta includes much of the same material but alsoevidences several differences. Scholars accounted for these differencesas changes, debating whether observance of the laws actually changedor whether the rabbis changed these laws in order to align them withpopular practice or new customs. However, because recent scholarshiphas reopened the case for the primacy of the texts,31 these “changes” inlaw are also suspect.

Regardless of their status as relevant codes of conduct, the Mishnahand Tosefta present elements of Jewish burial practices in the Romanperiod that may be pieced together by means of close textual study.Upon death, the corpse would be anointed with oil, rinsed, andwrapped in a linen shroud or other type of linen garment.32 As partof this dressing process, the chin would be tied, the eyes closed, andthe orifices stopped up.33 The body was placed into a bier or coffinor onto some type of wooden structure, often referred to as a “bed”(hum). The bed was then carried in a funeral procession from the homeof the deceased through the community to the outskirts of town andthen to the burial site.34 During the procession, stops might be madefor the hired wailers, often women, to sing or lament and clap theirhands loudly.35 Frequently, the burial sites were man-made caves intowhich were carved deep recesses for the burial (kokhim).36 In the latesecond Temple and early rabbinic periods, a second form of burial,known as the “collection of bones,”37 often took place approximately

31 Among others, see Judith Hauptman, Rereading the Mishnah: A New Approachto Ancient Jewish Texts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005). Hauptman dates theMishnah to the early third century C.E., but views it as “an amalgam of the twoolder texts, the ur-Mishnah and the Tosefta, and other materials …”, 21.

32 m. Kil. 9:4; m. Sabb. 23:4, 5; m. Ma’as. S. 5:12.33 m. Sabb. 23:5 and t. Sabb. 17:18.34 m. Meg. 4:3; m. Ber. 3:1; m. B. Bat. 6:7; m. Sanh. 2:1 (2:3).35 m. B. Mesi’a 6:1; m. Meg. 3:3, 4:3; m. Mo’ed Qat. 3:8; m. Ket. 4:4 (also discusses

the playing of flutes); t. Sabb. 17 (also discusses the playing of instruments);m. Menah. 10:9.

36 m. Mo’ed Qat. 1:6; m. B. Bat. 6:8. The term (kokh) arises from the rabbinic tex-tual material. Archaeological evidence in the burial caves indicates other typesof recesses in addition to kokhim (i.e., arcosolia, see note above), although it isalso possible that kokh was a general term for “burial niche.”

37 m. Sanh. 6:6; m. Mo’ed Qat. 1:5.

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one year after the initial burial. From the archaeological evidence, wefind that these bones were placed into small stone boxes known as os-suaries (see above). For the most part, ossuaries were phased out afterthe destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E., although evidence ofossuary use exists through the third century C.E.38

Rabbinic References to Perfume in Burial

Spices were likely used in each of the three phases of burial: corpsepreparation, funeral procession, and interment.39 Sometimes the textsare clear about which phase is being discussed, but often this maybe quite difficult to discern. For example, the Mishnah stipulates thefollowing:

No blessing may be said over the lamp or the spices of idolaters, or over the lampor spices of the dead, or over the lamp or spices [placed] before the idols of idola-ters. No blessing may be said over a lamp until one can enjoy its light.40

This law contains a four-part structure. The first three injunctionsfocus on lamps and spices: those belonging to idolaters, those for thedead, and those for idolatry. The last section seems to be an addition tothe foregoing; namely, that as for lights and occasions on which onedoes say a blessing over a lamp, one does not do so until the light is lit.

Of note, the law regarding lamps and spices for the dead is wedgedbetween the lamps and spices of the idolaters and idolatry. It wouldseem that the rabbinic voices want to stipulate a difference betweenthose lamps and spices owned by idolaters and those actually used inidolatrous practices. One does not say a blessing for either, but never-theless a distinction is made. The rabbis may wish to imply that otherpeople, in addition to those who perform idolatry, are consideredidolaters.41 The three injunctions together also imply that before oneintones a blessing for a pleasant lamp-light or fragrance, one must first

38 See Rahmani, A Catalogue, 21.39 These phases should not be confused with the three-stage pattern of funerals

first outlined by Robert Hertz, Death and the Right Hand (1907; repr., Glencoe,Ill.: Free Press, 1960) and Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (trans.Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffe; 1909; repr., Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1960).

40 m. Ber. 8:6.41 This point is addressed below in the discussion on b. Ber. 53a.


check the source and significance of such a light or scent; that is, who isthe kindler of the light or incense (or person wearing the perfume) orfor what purpose is the light kindled or the scent produced. Thesepossibilities raise several questions about rabbinic attitudes toward thedead. Do the dead own the spices and lamps, or are they employed inhonor of the dead, or are the practices associated with the dead re-lated, in the perception of these anonymous rabbis, with the practicesof idolatry? All these possibilities lay pregnant in the passage withoutfurther elucidation. If we focus on the portion of the passage that con-cerns only the lamps and spices of the dead, several other questionsarise: What are the spices used for the dead? In which phase of burialare they used? How are they used?

A close reading of other early rabbinic statements may help answerthe questions this Mishnah raises. The first possibility concerns theanointing of the dead body. The washing, anointing, and wrapping ofthe body is discussed in m. Sabb. 23:5 in reference to the types of workone is allowed to perform during the Sabbath:

They may make ready [on the Sabbath] all the needs of the dead, anoint andrinse it,42 only [provided that] they do not move any of its limbs.43 They maydraw the mattress away from beneath it and let it lie on sand that it may be thelonger preserved; they may bind up the chin … they may not close a corpse’s eyeson the Sabbath …

The first part of the passage refers directly to the first step of theburial: washing and anointing of the body. Death is a dirty business,and a corpse needs to be washed or rinsed soon after death as the ori-fices may leak before, during, or just after the event.44 Because typicalbathing practices at this time involved anointment with scented oils,45

42 This passage belies a fascinating problem; that is, “anointing” is mentioned be-fore “rinsing” (or washing). However, with reference to bathing, usually “wash-ing” occurs prior to “anointing.” See m. Ta’an. 1:6, where one is not allowed to“wash or anoint” (hkycbv hjyxrb) during a fast.

43 Although “limb” could also refer to the genitals or penis, it is unlikely in thispassage.

44 For the “stopping up” of the orifices, see t. Sabb. 17:18.45 See m. Ta’an. 1:6. Perfumed oils were regularly used from the Greek through

Roman periods by both men and women as part of the bathing process. Bothsexes would apply aromatic oil to the head and hair. See Michal Dayagi-Men-dels, Perfumes and Cosmetics in the Ancient World (Jerusalem: Keter PublishingHouse, 1991), 16–34; Andrew Dalby, Empire of Pleasures: Luxury and Indul-gence in the Roman World (London: Routledge, 2002), 245–47 and passim; Flo-

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it is likely that this anointing of the corpse was performed with scentedoils as well. It is worth noting that it is unlikely that scented oil wasused to mask the stench of decomposition. It is possible that particulardiseases may have caused early on-set decomposition but, for the mostpart, in temperate climes, the odor of decomposition is not detectibleby the human nose until the second or third day.

The burial of Jesus, as recounted in New Testament sources such asMark and John, also provides evidence for anointment after deathwith scented oils. Mark 16:1, describes, “When the Sabbath was over,Mary Magdalene, and Mary, the mother of James, and Salome boughtspices so that they might go and anoint him.”46 Similarly, in John19:39–40 we learn, “Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus bynight, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighingabout a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped itwith the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of theJews.” The books of Matthew and Mark also present a figurative ac-count of this custom, as the anointing occurs before the death of Jesus.In these accounts, an unidentified woman comes to the house of Simonthe leper, where Jesus and his disciples are eating dinner, and anointsJesus with a “costly ointment” from an alabaster jar (Matt 26:6–7,Mark 14:3–8). The disciples become angry over the extravagance, butJesus reminds them, “She has performed a good service for me. Youwill always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me.By pouring this ointment on my body, she has prepared me for burial”(Matt 26:10–12).47

rence Dupont, Daily Life in Ancient Rome (trans. Christopher Woddall; Oxford:Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1992), 264, 266. Men involved in wrestling or other exercisewould also apply oil before bodily exertion and scrape off the oil using a metallicdevice (strigil) before bathing. Several of these have been recovered in areas ofRoman period Jewish communities (Dayagi-Mendels, Perfumes and Cosmetics,16–34. Of interest, as depicted in Dayagi-Mendels volume, The Israel Museum’scollection of alabaster bottles and other unguentaria dates back to pre-Israeliteperiods of the second millennium B.C.E). Cf. Saul Lieberman’s discussion onm. Shabb. 22:6, which states, “They may oil and massage their stomach butnot exercise (the body) and not scrape. They may not go down to the hmydrvqand may not use artificial emetics.” Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine,93.

46 See also Luke 23:55–24:1.47 Cf. Mark 14:6–8 in which we are informed of the specific ingredient: “nard” or

“spikenard.” In both accounts, the alabaster jar adds to the image of costliness.


Although the employment of scented oil appears to have been aregular practice of burial preparation,48 other than this slim textualevidence, there is no direct proof about where this event took place. Inthe New Testament accounts it would seem that the spices are broughtafter the body is interred. However, this may be out of necessity be-cause of the manner of Jesus’ death, the lateness of the day at the timehe was buried, or the impending Sabbath. According to the Mishnaicpassage, it seems that washing and anointing regularly occurred in thehome before burial, and home preparation is the most likely arena forthese activities.49 At home, proper attention, care, and respect for theloved one could be given before the public ceremony of burial. Privatecorpse preparation also accords well with the rabbinic sense of propri-ety, modesty, and public decorum stipulated throughout the rabbinictexts.50 Finally, because the body appears to be already in a bier, coffin,or upon some other type of bedding during its procession to the burialcave, it seems likely that preparation of the body has already takenplace before arrival at the grave.

As to the question of whether the Mishnaic passage concerning thelamp and spices for the dead (m. Ber. 8:6) is referring to the oil used toanoint the dead before burial, it is unlikely. The “lamp and spices” pas-sage specifies lamps and proscribes a blessing. The anointing passage(m. Sabb. 23:5), however, discusses neither lamps nor blessings. There-fore, it is unlikely that the first passage is referring to anointing oilwhen it intones that “no blessing should be said over the lamp or spicesof the dead.”

The second use of spices in the burial of the dead may be either in-cense that is lit during the procession to the burial cave or some kind ofscented oil that was sprinkled on the bier during such a procession.Evidence of the funeral procession is found in several places through-

48 It appears that in addition to regular bathing and burial practices, aromaticswere also used after dining. Evidence in the Babylonian Talmud suggests thatscented oil was employed to rid the hands of unwanted residue from eating(b. Ber. 53a) and that incense was lit after meals (see above).

49 The fact that Jesus does not have a home in Jerusalem may also explain why hisbody is prepared in the burial cave.

50 While this is generally the case for all men, the laws concerning modesty andpublic propriety are quite stringent for the students of rabbis (see b. Ber. 43b).Even stricter are the laws for women (e.g., Gen. Rab. 8:12 and m. Mo’ed Qat. 3:8with direct reference to burial, as the bier of woman is not to be put down in pub-lic out of respect).

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out the Mishnah,51 but for the use of incense or perfume during theprocession it is the Tosefta which contains two interesting passages.The first, t. Seqalim 1.12, concerns funds that are collected for expresspurposes but are found to be surpluses:

… the surplus [of money collected for] the poor, [must be used] for the poor. Thesurplus [of money collected for] the redemption of captives, [must be used] forthe captives … The surplus [of money collected for] the dead, [must be used] forthe dead. The surplus [of money collected for] a [particular] dead person, [mustbe given to] his heirs. Rabbi Meir says, ‘The surplus for a [particular] dead per-son will be left until Elijah will come.’ Rabbi Nathan says, ‘[With] the surplus fora [particular] dead person, they build a structure over his tomb, or he maysprinkle perfume52 for him before53 his bier …’54

The last two lines of this series of instructions are of particular inter-est. Rabbi Meir insists that the surplus monies from burials should bekept until the prophet Elijah comes to decide what shall be done withthem. Rabbi Nathan disagrees and mentions two appropriate uses:erection of a marker or some other structure over the gravesite or ex-penditure of the money on perfumed oil to sprinkle before the bierduring the funeral procession. Although this passage indicatesclearly that the spices were used in the procession (i.e., “before thebier”), it does not explain the rationale or motivation underlyingsuch practice.

The next passage, from t. Nid. 9:16, explains the use of spices in thefuneral procession:

51 See m. Ber. 3:1; m. Meg. 3:3, 4:3; m. Mo’ed Qat. 3:8; m. B. Bat. 6:7, 8; m. Sanh.2:3, and m. Menah. 10:9.

52 xlz; that is, “sprinkled fluid,” or “perfume.” However, this is not the regularword for perfume or spices (,ymsb).

53 Zuckermandel has ynpb (“in front of”), M. S. Zuckermandel, Tosephta: Based onthe Erfurt and Vienna Codices (Jerusalem: Wahrmann Books, 1970), 651. Lieber-man has ynpl (“before” or “in front of”), Saul Lieberman, Tosefta Ki-Fshutah(New York: Jewish Theological Seminary 1992), 204.

54 t. Seqal. 1:12. Lieberman also cites the y. Seqal. 10:2 and b. Sem. 12:9, ToseftaKi-Fshutah, 673. However, the issue in b. Sem. 12:9 is whether one shouldsprinkle wine and oil onto the bodies at the time of burial (or on the bones at thetime of secondary burial, as Kloner reads – see below), as instructed by RabbiAkiba. R. Simeon ben Nanos disagrees and states that oil but not wine shouldbe sprinkled, and the later sages affirm that neither wine nor oil should besprinkled.


At first they would immerse on the basis of women who died while menstruating.Subsequently, they immersed every one of them on account of the honor ofwomen. At first they brought out incense55 before those [who died] of sickness ofthe bowels.56 Subsequently, they brought out [incense] before every one of themon account of the honor of the dead.57

Because Niddah is the tractate concerning the condition of unclean-ness, particularly with respect to menstruating women, the beginningof this passage focuses on the immersion of objects that come in con-tact with menstruating women who die. However, as we move throughthe passage, we can see that the focus is on the change in burial cus-toms over time. The word “subsequently” (vrzx) is literally translatedas “they returned.” This may imply either that the custom changed orthat the rabbis “returned” to the issue and changed their earlier ruling.One might reasonably infer that the rabbis changed their earlier rulingto align the law with widespread practice.

More importantly, the passage imparts valuable information withrespect to spices – namely that their use was widespread as part of theburial process in the early centuries C.E. At one point, only those whodied from intestinal problems had incense lit before their biers,58 but bythe time of the Tosefta, incense was lit before everyone’s bier. Further,it appears from this passage that the burial phase during which theburning of incense took place was the funeral procession, since theterm “before every one” is similar to the term “before his bier” as seenin the Sheqalim passage. In addition, we do not find references to in-cense in any of the passages concerning corpse preparation nor is thereany significant archaeological evidence of incense burners at burial

55 rmgvm. These are spices or perfume placed on hot coals (i.e., incense).56 Or, “intestines.”57 Of note, this passage continues to describe other burial customs that change over

time: “At first they would bring out the rich in a high bed (>grd) and the poor ina box (Xbylk, i.e., coffin or bier). Subsequently, they would bring out some in abed and some in a box on account of the honor of the poor. (17)At first theywould bring [food] to the house of mourning of the poor in a colored glass vesselbut to the rich in a white glass vessel. Subsequently, they brought out some incolored [vessels] and some in white [vessels] on account of the honor of the poor.At first, anyone who had someone who died, his expenses (or, “his departure”)were more difficult for him than his death. Everyone began to set down theirdead and flee. Rabban Gamliel set the example of disregard for the custom him-self, [and then] everyone acted according to Rabban Gamliel.”

58 Or, as might be the case, rabbinic law allowed incense to be lit before the biersonly of those who died of intestinal illness.

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sites – from which we may deduce that incense was not employed aspart of either the preparation or the interment phases.59

This passage raises additional questions: Why was incense lit forthose who died of intestinal disease and, if this passage represents morethan a mere change in rabbinic legislation, for what reasons was thepractice changed? Is it possible that in the beginning, incense wasneeded to mask the odor of those who died from intestinal illness?60 Ifso, then it is possible that incense was later employed to mask the odorsof everyone. But why not cover the odors of everyone from the start?The answer: It is unlikely that incense was needed to cover the odors ofeveryone, as the stench of decomposition would not be so bad so soonafter death. As already mentioned, decomposition does not usuallyhave a scent for the first few days, but these effects can obtain morerapidly due to either increased heat or humidity or decomposition thatbegins before death. Incense might be necessary, though, if the funeralwas delayed for a day or two. We have already seen that one may notbury a corpse on the Sabbath. Further, even though Jewish law requiresburial as soon as possible, the Mishnah cites a qualification underwhich it is permissible to delay a funeral for a day in order to honorthe deceased by bringing a coffin and burial clothing (m. Sanh. 6:5).Although it is possible that incense would be used to cover the odor ofdecomposition, it is just as possible that the Tosefta has explainedexactly why incense was lit for everyone: in order to “honor the dead.”

As obvious as the concept of “honoring the dead” may be, the ref-erence to “honor” (dvbk) might be the key to unlocking the mysteryof the first Mishnaic passage regarding the “lights and spices of thedead.” The Talmudic discussion of this Mishnaic passage also includesthe term “honor,” but instead of coupling “honor” with spices, thistext pairs “honor” with the lights:

A blessing may not be said over the lights or spices of the dead. What is the reason?The light is kindled only in honor [of the dead], and the work of the spices is toremove the odor. Rab Judah said in the name of Rab, “Wherever it is found that[a lamp would be carried] before him (the dead person) during the day and dur-ing the night, no blessing is said over it. But wherever it is found that [a lampwould be carried] before him only during the night, then a blessing is said.” Rab

59 Only Goodenough mentions incense burners with reference to the city of Gezer,Jewish Symbols, 1:165.

60 This might explain why the incense passage follows the immersion passage, asboth concern the removal of something – either contamination or contaminat-ing scent.


Huna said, “Spices of the privy and oil used to remove filth, we do not say bless-ings over.” [Is this] to say that wherever [a spice] is not used for scent no blessingis said over it? An objection: [One] who enters a spice store and smells the scent –even if he sits there all day long – he only says a blessing once. …61

The discussion, part of a larger discourse on blessing pleasant experi-ences (,ynhn tvkrb), assumes that a blessing is regularly said both whenone smells a pleasant fragrance and when lights are kindled. For thelamps and spices of the dead, however, one does not say such blessings.The explanation is that the light is in honor of the person who has died,while the spices are employed to cover up the stench of the decompos-ing body – neither use honors God. These are new pieces of infor-mation not seen in the earliest sources. To review, the only occurrenceof lights in those texts is the m. Ber. passage on the “lights and spicesfor the dead,” and the purpose of the lights does not appear in thatpassage. As for spices, the only information we see in the early sourcesis from the Toseftan passage that describes their purpose as honoringthe dead. Therefore, the Babylonian rationale given here (to mask theodor) clearly contradicts the Tosefta.62 However, because the Toseftapassage and this Talmudic passage both cite “honoring the dead” dur-ing the funeral procession as the reason and time for these rituals, onemight surmise that our first Mishnaic passage which discusses the“lamps and spices for the dead” is referring to the incense and lightsused in the funeral procession. This accords with y. Ber. 8.6.

As for b. Talmud’s rationale that the spices mask the odor of thedecomposing corpse, three possibilities corresponding to the threephases of burial must be addressed. While it is possible that the corpseis malodorous during preparation for burial or during the funeral pro-cession, it is unlikely that the odor was so bad as to require camou-flage.63 The odor from putrefaction is strongest 10 to 20 days after

61 b. Ber. 53a. For comparison, see also y. Ber. 8.7 and “honor of the living.”62 See y. Ber. 8.6. Lights and spices placed on top of the bier are not blessed. Those

placed before it are blessed, as they are for the “honor of the living.”63 In addition, we have no way of knowing whether corpse decomposition was

considered foul-smelling at all by the people in the early centuries C.E. The evalu-ation of whether an odor is fragrant or foul is entirely culture-specific. SeeWilliam Ian Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-versity Press, 1997), 15–18. For example, in the West today certain body odorsconnected to perspiration or vaginal discharge are considered by society to beoffensive, and therefore the market is flooded with perfumes, antiperspirants, de-odorants, and douches. Similarly, in cultures where decomposition represents

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death;64 therefore, masking an unpleasant odor would be most neces-sary during interment.65 The “spices” in the Talmudic passage couldrefer either to perfume or to incense left at the burial cave for the use ofthose who must enter the cave during corpse decomposition. However,perfume sitting in a bottle is not an effective means of masking theodor of an area, as the scent does not spread efficiently. It is muchmore likely that mourners or others who needed to come to the burialcaves during this period would light incense to mask the stench ratherthan employ perfume.66 The flaw in this theory is that incense burnersare not found at the burial sites.67

rebirth or sacrifice to the deity, it is entirely possible that these scents would notonly be tolerable but pleasant. The Berawan of north-central Borneo store the de-composing corpse either inside the longhouse, where the entire community lives,or on a raised platform in the jungle, precisely so that they may be near the bodyin order to ensure it is not reanimated by evil spirits. They may also collect the de-composition liquids in sacred vessels. The neighbors of the Berawan, who havesimilar customs, may consume the liquids with rice. See Peter Metcalf, “DeathBe Not Strange,” in Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion: An Anthropological Study ofthe Supernatural (ed. Arthur I. Lehmann and James E. Myers; Mountain View,Calif.: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1993), 325. Beyond the issue of culturalconstruct, we find in the faunal realm that animal decomposition actually at-tracts certain animals. See for example Steven A. Smith and Richard A. Paselk,“Olfactory Sensitivity of the Turkey Vulture (Cathartes Aura) to Three Carrion-Associated Odorants,” The Auk 103 (1986): 586–92. Although these researchersdispute the generally accepted scholarship on response to particular odorants,they allow that response to several other odorants relative to decomposition maytrigger responses in turkey vultures.

64 This could be later for those corpses in cool caves. In addition, it is questionablehow strong the scent of the decomposing corpses was considering that they weresealed and inaccessible to several types of carnivorous organisms whose feastingand other activities (e.g., laying eggs and attracting other organisms) at thecorpse site often increase the rate and odor of decomposition by increasing thebody temperature.

65 Of note, Arpad A. Vass, Senior Staff Scientist at Oak Ridge National Labora-tory and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Tennessee in ForensicAnthropology, has indicated (via email communication) that he does not believeeven unsealed corpses would have smelled so bad that people would not havebeen able to eat nearby – an interesting point considering that some ancientpeoples included feasting or commemorative meals at the graveside.

66 As already mentioned, incense was regularly used after meals either to cover thescent of the meal or for pure enjoyment, so the Jews of the early Roman period inIsrael would be familiar with its other potential uses.

67 While it is possible that extensive looting of the tombs might account for the lackof incense burners, one might still expect to see remnants of at least a few broken


It would seem then that the Talmud presents its own interpretationof the spices for the dead – perhaps evaluating them anachronisticallyas a custom that has gone out of favor or as a rite with which the laterBabylonian rabbis are unfamiliar. It is also quite likely that the Talmudemploys this comment on the spices of the dead simply to introduce thepredominant themes of the passage; that is, the subject of the incense ofidolatry, its connection to Jewish women who regularly fumigate theirgarments with incense, and rabbinic ambivalence toward these femi-nine customs.68 I have written extensively on this passage elsewhere.69

As such, it seems inherently dangerous to base the analysis of perfumebottles at burial sites on this one particular line from the Talmud.

Unguentaria at Burial Sites

How then are we to understand the preponderance of perfume bottlesevidenced in the archaeological data? According to Amos Kloner, be-cause far fewer lamps are found at Second Temple burial sites than

burners recorded in excavation reports. It is also possible that incense or otherfragrant materials were burned in bowls or other receptacles (as depicted on thewalls of the Hellenistic tomb at Marisa, which is not a Jewish site), but recordedevidence does not so indicate.

68 The Talmudic passage continues as follows: “[If] he goes in and out and in andout, he says a blessing each time. And this is a case in which it is not used forscent, and yet he makes a blessing. Indeed [it is] too [used] for smell! [Its use isthat] it will be smelled by people, and [they] will come and make purchases of it.Our rabbis taught: If one is walking outside the town and smells a [pleasant]scent, if the majority of the inhabitants are idolaters, he does not say a blessing.But if the majority are Israelites, he does say a blessing. Rabbi Yossi says, “Evenif the majority are Israelites, he does not say a blessing, because the daughters ofIsrael light incense for witchcraft.” Do all of them light incense for witchcraft?A minority was used for witchcraft and so too a minority for scenting garments.Consequently, the majority is not for making scent, and wherever the greaterpart is not used for making scent, a blessing is not said over it. Rab Hiya barAbba said, “Rabbi Yohannan said, ‘If one is walking on the Sabbath evenings inTiberias or at the end of Sabbath in Sepphoris and smells a [pleasant] scent, heshould not say a blessing because the presumption is that it is only the scentingof garments.’” Our rabbis taught: If one is walking in a market of idolaters andenjoys smelling [the pleasant scent of spices], this is a sin.” b. Ber. 53a.

69 See Deborah A. Green, “Soothing Odors: The Transformation of Scent inAncient Israelite and Ancient Jewish Literature” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chi-cago, 2003), 274–91.

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perfume bottles, the lamps must have been used to light up the caves.70

This would mean that the lamps found in the caves are not coincidentwith those discussed by the rabbis since we determined that the refer-ences to lamps describe those used in the funeral procession. As for theperfume bottles, the occasional evidence of these bottles in ossuariessuggests to Kloner that perfume and other precious liquids, such aswine, were used to sprinkle on the bones during collection.71 Sincebone-gathering is described in the Mishnah, without reference to thesprinkling of oil, this argument does not seem persuasive.

As mentioned earlier, many scholars assume from the New Testa-ment sources that corpse preparation occurred in the caves, and thatthe bottles were left behind because of contamination from the dead.72

While corpse contamination is a persuasive argument for both per-fume bottles and lamps being left in the caves, we have already seenthat corpse preparation probably occurred in the home (m. Sabb.23:5).73 In addition, the disparity between lamps and perfume bottles isnot accounted for in this theory, as many more lamps would have beenneeded in order to see what one was doing in these very dark caves.

There are also those scholars who believe the perfume bottles werebrought by mourners simply to cover the odor of the decomposingcorpses.74 Although it is possible that some of the bottles may havebeen used for this purpose, as already mentioned, incense would havebeen the preferred method of odor masking. Further, how might oneexplain the many perfume bottles that are sealed within the kokhim?75

70 See Kloner and Zissou, The Necropolis, 59–60.71 Ibid., 60, wherein Kloner and Zissou cite b. Sem. 12:9.72 Ibid., 60. On the problems of ethnographic interpretation of funerary remains

by archaeologists and anthropologists, see Peter J. Ucko, “Ethnography and Ar-chaeological Interpretation of Funerary Remains,” World Archaeology 1 (1969):262–80. On the surprising rites and customs that seem counterintuitive to eth-nographers, anthropologists, and archaeologists whose frame of reference isWestern culture, see Metcalf, “Death Be Not Strange,” in Magic, Witchcraft, andReligion.

73 See also McCane, Roll Back the Stone, 48.74 Ibid., 15, 48.75 See Elena Kogan-Zehavi, “Settlement Remains and Tombs at Khirbet Tabaliya”

(in Hebrew), ‘Atiqot 40 (2000): 53–79; Fanny Vito, “Burial Caves from the SecondTemple Period in Jerusalem (Mount Scopus, Giv‘at Hamivtar, Neveh Ya‘aqov),”‘Atiqot 40 (2000): 65–121; Hachlili and Killebrew, Jericho, 176–91; Mazar, BethShe‘arim, 173; Avigad, Beth She‘arim, 68, 201 (in arcosolium). However, thesebottles may date to the Late Roman period. See also the Akeldama tombs for


These cannot be explained as being for use by mourners. Rather, twosuggestions present themselves as most reasonable. The first is that thebottles are the personal effects of the deceased similar to cosmeticbottles,76 spindle whorls, rings, jewelry and other precious personalitems also found in sealed kokhim.77 Even the late tractate of b. Sema-hot describes bridegrooms being buried with their pens, inkwells, andmarriage documents. Samuel, the Small, a scribe, is buried with his writ-ing tablet.78 These bottles may have been important to the deceased,79

and so mourners wished their loved ones to be buried with them. To ful-fill this desire, the perfume bottles would have been buried in the sealedkokh or arcosolium with the deceased. Occasionally, the bottles may havebeen transported to the ossuary with the bones. Because thieves wereunlikely to find much use in the bottles, robbers would have thrown themout into the chamber of the cave when hunting for jewelry and otherprecious effects. This would explain the broken bottles found in openchambers. Other suggestions are that the vessels were broken on purposeto “reduce the risk of tomb robbery” or as a part of the funeral rites,80

but neither of these claims can be substantiated.A second possibility is that the bottles are related to other “grave

goods,” including cooking pots, bowls, jugs, lamps, and storagejars. Similar to much of this household pottery, the glass perfumebottles of the Roman period are not well-made, which may indicatethat they were not personal items but were specifically produced forburials.81 Further, almost all of the unguentaria from the Second

examples of perfume bottles used in non-Jewish burials in the Late Romanperiod (first through third centries C. E.); Gideon Avni and Zvi Greenhut, TheAkeldama Tombs.

76 For example, glass containers for kohl (used for eye make-up), see Dayagi-Men-dels, Perfumes and Cosmetics, 36–58.

77 Ibid. and Uza Zevulun and Yael Olienik, Function and Design in the TalmudicPeriod (Tel Aviv: Haaretz Museum, 1978), 96–105 (in Hebrew), 51–57 (in Eng-lish). For evidence from the First Temple period see Bloch-Smith, JudahiteBurial Practices, 90.

78 b. Sem. 8:7. Samuel, the Small, is a second generation Tanna (c. 90–130 C.E.),Strack and Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud, 78.

79 This might explain why bottles are found more often buried with the bones ofwomen.

80 For a more expansive list of possibilities, see Hachlili, Jewish Funerary Customs,390.

81 Virginia Anderson-Stojanovic, “The Chronology and Function of Ceramic Un-guentaria,” AJA 91, no. 1 (1987): 120. Although Anderson-Stojanovic’s main

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Temple period were made from pottery similar to these other house-hold items. Rachel Hachlili has identified storage jars as being locatedmost often at the entrance to tombs, whereas cooking pots maybe found inside tombs on shelves, in pits, or even in kokhim.82 Thisis in contrast to Kloner who argues that cooking pots are not usuallyfound in kokhim.83 A definite connection between the placement ofperfume bottles and cooking pots has yet to be determined.84 And,although several scholars have speculated on the meaning of cook-ing pots – as a vestige of the rite of meal offerings or as a symbol ofthe commemorative meals executed in the Greco-Roman world – theyhave not tied the significance of the unguentaria to these food-orientedtheories.

In essence, the perfume bottles, cooking pots, and other grave goodsare symbolic of habits and activities that no longer occur in death –perhaps a striking reminder to the mourners of the death, separation,and loss of the loved one. They may signify consolation either for themourners or for the dead that the loved one is not completely alone oruncared for. Or, as Saul Lieberman indicates, these Jews may under-

concern is the Hellenistic and early Roman funerary unguentaria from Stobi inYugoslavian Macedonia, the presence of these bottles is so widespread thatHachlili cites this article in her discussions on Second Temple burials in Israel;Hachlili, Jewish Funerary Customs, 383–84. Alabastra bottles are also found atthese sites, but in far fewer quantities. In the later Roman period, after 70 C.E.,pottery unguentaria are replaced by glass bottles. Ibid., 383–85.

82 Ibid., 386; Ann E. Killebrew, “The Pottery,” Jericho: The Jewish Cemetery in theSecond Temple Period (eds. Rachel Hachlili and Ann E. Killebrew; Jerusalem:Israel Antiquities Authority, 1999), 123; Rachel Hachlili and Ann E. Killebrew,“Burial Customs and Conclusions,” Jericho: The Jewish Cemetery in the SecondTemple Period (eds. Rachel Hachlili and Ann E. Killebrew; Jerusalem: Israel An-tiquities Authority, 1999), 168.

83 Kloner and Zissou, The Necropolis, 60–62, in which cooking pots are located inthe outer rooms (or tomb areas) and perfume bottles may be sealed in the ko-khim or deposited in ossuaries. In the Akeldama tombs, for example, the per-fume bottles are all found near and around the coffins and bones – particularlythose burials of the later Roman period – while the cooking pots and other jarsare found in other areas of the larger chambers. Avni and Greenhut, The Akel-dama Tombs, 123–29.

84 Unfortunately, many archaeologists in the past did not record the precise place-ment of such items, and there is ample evidence of tomb robbing and secondaryuse of tombs. As a result, we may never be able to determine whether there is aconnection between the placement of unguentaria and cooking pots.


stand their dead as sensate beings who are still able to hear and feel.85

As such, these artifacts, whether personally owned or not, might orientand comfort the dead or be necessary items for resurrection.86 Anotherpossibility is that these items mark a liminal or ambiguous stage in thelifecycle of both participant and family members. The personal effectsthat “travel” with the individual may be symbolic of this transitorystage in which the individual is still a member of the family or commu-nity but not in the same manner as before.87 Any of these reasons couldeither be vestiges of ancient customs that then became regular ritesperformed in honor and memory of the dead or the continuation ofan emotionally and ritually significant embodiment of then-currentbelief.

In sum, if we consider that each stage in the burial process reflectslove, honor, and respect for the dead, as demonstrated by washing andcare for the body, the lighting of incense and lights before the bier, andinterment with personal effects or grave goods, then it seems reasonablethat the spices at each stage are a symbol in some manner of the esteemfelt for the dead by those who grieved for them. And, while it is possiblethat perfume bottles found in graves or at burial sites had other pur-poses as well, the simplest reason for their presence seems to be thatthey belonged to the dead and, as such, were valued by the living.

85 Saul Lieberman, “Some Aspects of After Life in Early Rabbinic Literature,”Harry Austryn Wolfson Jubilee Volume (vol. 2; Jerusalem: American Academyfor Jewish Research, 1965). David Kraemer, The Meanings of Death, also ad-dresses this issue at some length.

86 “The Babylonian and some of the Palestinian rabbis maintained that at the timeof resurrection, the dead would arise in the same clothes which they wore whenthey were buried,” according to Lieberman, “Some Aspects of After Life in EarlyRabbinic Literature,” 510–11.

87 I thank Annal Frenz and her keen insights on the similarities between marriageand death for this point.

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Patronal Relationsand Changes in Burial Practices

177

John Bodel

Chapter 6

From Columbaria to Catacombs:Collective Burial in Pagan and Christian Rome

1 Mommsen fait ma desolation.Il entre dans l’erudition ecclésiastique

comme un rhinoceros dans un champ de vigne,écrasant à droite et à gauche, sans s’émouvoir du dégat.*

Students of classical Roman institutions and scholars of early Chris-tianity have not always seen eye to eye, nor do historians and archaeo-logists invariably agree. More than a century and a half ago, two of thegreatest, Theodor Mommsen and Giovanni Battisa de Rossi, foundmutual inspiration and took equal pleasure in debating the role ofRoman associations (collegia) in burial at Rome during the first threecenturies of the common era; together they set a high standard for pro-ductive and amicable disagreement on a subject central to our con-

1 Louis Duchesne, Director of the École française de Rome, in a letter to GiovanniBattista De Rossi from Paris, 13 November 1892, quoted by Jonathan S. Perry,The Roman Collegia: The Modern Evolution of an Ancient Concept (Leiden andBoston: Brill, 2006), 56. My thanks are due to many: first, to the editors and es-pecially to Laurie Brink, for the inspiration and dedication needed not only toproduce this volume but to arrange the splendid study tour and conference thatpreceded it; to Patricia Duncan and Bradley Peper, my learned and tactful re-spondents in Chicago; to my fellow participant Carolyn Osiek, who provideddetailed criticism on a subsequent written draft; to Simonetta Serra, whose pro-bing skepticism and generously shared knowledge helped to make the argumentless vulnerable; to Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, for valuable conversation and ex-pert opinion at a late stage; and to responsive audiences in Chicago, New York,New Haven, Cologne, Bonn, Munich, and Rome, who improved individual pointsin more ways than can be mentioned. For all the help given, the essay ought tobe better than it is; remaining errors of judgment and fact are the author’s re-sponsibility alone.

**

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cerns.1 This chapter (to compare small things to great), the product ofan equally amicable and stimulating collaboration and debate, hopesto cultivate the more useful elements of that example without wreakingunnecessary havoc in the vineyard.

Burial at Rome:Problems of Evidence and Interpretation

Burial space in ancient Rome was always limited and frequently con-tested. This was true from the beginning of the Iron Age in Italy,around 900 B.C.E., when the few cremation graves in what later be-came the Roman Forum began to be intermingled with inhumationburials of the sort found among the indigenous peoples of the Apen-nine hills, to the fourth century C.E., when Constantine destroyed anearly imperial necropolis along the Via Triumphalis in order to buildan imposing funerary basilica above the spot on the Vatican hill be-lieved to mark the tomb of St. Peter.2 During the three and a half cen-

1 On this rivalry, see the illuminating discussion of Perry, Roman Collegia,23–60.

2 For the early Iron Age culture in Latium, see Timothy J. Cornell, The Beginningsof Rome (London: Routledge, 1995), 48–53. The discovery in early 2006 of a fewlate Bronze Age pit inhumation burials in the Forum of Caesar on the lowerslopes of the Campidoglio has pushed back by about a century the earliestknown graves – and thus the earliest evidence of human habitation – in the area.Constantine’s basilica rose on the site of an earlier (mid-second century) shrineto St. Peter: see Jocelyn Toynbee and John Ward Perkins, The Shrine of St. Peterand the Vatican Excavations (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1956), 12–13for the destruction of existing tombs; further on the Via Triumphalis necropolis,Eva Margareta Steinby, Caterina Coletti, M.-B. Carre, and Maria Teresa Ci-priano, La necropoli della via Triumphalis il tratto sotto l’autoparco Vaticano(Atti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, ser. 3. Memorie, vol. 17;Rome: Quasar, 2003), esp. 22–39. For the history of the site, see briefly MaryBeard, John North, and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, vol. 1 (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1998), 268–69 (shrine of the 170s), 368–69 (Con-stantine’s basilica), 376–77 (subsequent building), with further bibliography. Itwas not until 563 C.E., when the First Council of Braga reversed the longstand-ing Roman prohibition against intramural graves by allowing burials around thewalls of churches, that the competition for burial space in the suburban zonebegan to ease: see R. Naz, Dictionnaire de Droit Canonique, vol. 3 (Paris: Letou-zey et Ané, 1942), col. 730; cf. Orma Robinson, “The Roman Law on Burials andBurial Grounds,” The Irish Jurist 10 (1975): 186.

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turies of pre-Christian imperial Rome between the reigns of Augustusand Constantine, when the population of the city numbered between750,000 and 1,000,000 inhabitants, the suburbs of the city must haveaccommodated between 10,500,000 and 14,000,000 burials.3 Of thesewe have traces of perhaps 150,000 or less than 1.5 percent of the total.4

In generalizing about broad trends, even during the best documentedperiods, we should not forget how little we know. Nor does the surviv-ing evidence provide a representative selection of all Roman burials;our sample is biased by the chances of survival and recovery and in-herently tends to favor commemorative monuments and epitaphs overunmarked and anonymous graves and thus tells us mainly about com-paratively privileged segments of the population.

Columbaria and Collegia

If the state of our evidence raises one set of problems, our explanationsof it raise another. Major changes in Roman funerary behavior havetraditionally been linked to changes in the social or cultural order –mass migrations to the city in one scenario, the arrival of a newreligion in another – but the conventional hermeneutical strategy ofinterpreting historical outcomes in light of their presumed historicalcauses in this case meets an impasse in the evidence. The invention ofa new form of burial monument (the columbarium) around 25 B.C.E.and the emergence in the management of funerary rites at about the

3 Estimates of the population of early imperial Rome and Italy continue to sparkcontroversy, in part because the confines of “the city” are variously defined(or presumed), but scholarly consensus seems to have settled on a figure between750,000 and 1,000,000 for Rome and its surrounding suburbium during the firstthree centuries C.E.: see recently, Geofrey Kron, “The Augustan Census Figuresand the Population of Italy,” Athenaeum 93 (2005): 487 and n. 251 for Rome;Rob Witcher, “The Extended Metropolis: Urbs, Suburbium, and Population,”JRA 18 (2005): 126 and n. 44, 129. Elio Lo Cascio, “Le procedure di recensusdalla tarda repubblica al tardo antico e il calcolo dela popolazione di Rome,” inLa Rome impériale: démographie et logistique (Collection de l’École Française deRome 230) (ed. Catherine Virlouvet; Rome: École française de Rome, 1997),3–76. For ancient mortality rates, see John Bodel, “Dealing with the Dead,” inDeath and Disease in the Ancient City (eds. Valerie M. Hope and Eireann Mar-shall; London: Routledge, 2000), 128–29.

4 See the Appendix.

From Columbaria to Catacombs

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same time of a social institution previously unconnected with them(the collegium) have usually been linked together and explained as theresult of the demographic pressures created by a large influx of newresidents to the capital following the Augustan peace.5 According tothis view, as the city expanded beyond the capacity of the traditionalsocial support network of families and private patrons to meet theburial needs of an increasingly heterogeneous and rootless urban poor,new mechanisms sprang up to fill the void. Social upheaval exposedgaps in the system, which the organism then evolved in order to fill.There is much of value in such an analysis, but columbaria were ex-pensive structures and served no-less-privileged groups – indeed, inmany respects, no different groups – than traditional tomb monumentsof the same period.6 Nor, as several recent studies have shown, did thecollegia replace the family in caring for the burial of the dead. Whatevidence we have in fact shows families operating in their customaryroles within the framework (both administrative and architectural)of the collegia and columbaria.7 What these institutions represented in

5 So, e.g., Keith Hopkins, Death and Renewal (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1983), 215–17; Nicholas Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb,” in RömischeGräberstraßen: Selbstdarstellung, Status, Standard: Kolloquium in München vom28 bis 30. Oktober 1985 (eds. Henner von Hesberg and Paul Zanker; Munich:Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: in Kommission bei derC. H. Beck’schen Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1987), 38–39; John Patterson, “Patron-age, Collegia and Burial in Imperial Rome,” in Death in Towns: Urban Responsesto the Dying and the Dead, 100–1600 (ed. Steven Bassett; Leicester: LeicesterUniversity Press, 1992), 22–23.

6 Columbaria represented a substantial financial outlay: Ian Morris, Death-Ritualand Social Structure in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1992), 42–47. For the commercial trade and speculation in tomb monu-ments, see also Stefan Schrumpf, Bestattung und Bestattungswesen im römischenReich: Ablauf, soziale Dimension und ökonomische Bedeutung der Totenfürsorge imlateinischen Western (Götingen: V+R unipress/Bonn University Press, 2006),162–72, discussing (inter alia) CIL 6.9189 and the dossier of texts relating to col-umbaria and attesting transactions involving large numbers of burial niches, oftenin multiples of ten: CIL 6.7803 (10 columbaria, 40 ollae), 13557 (100 ollae), 15551(65 ollae), 17780 (30 ollae), 28126 (20 columbaria, 43 ollae); further below, n. 81.

7 See, e.g., Patterson, “Patronage, Collegia and Burial,” 23; Hopkins, Death andRenewal, 213–14; Kinuko Hasegawa, “The collegia domestica in the Elite RomanHouseholds: The Evidence of Domestic Funeral Clubs for Slaves and Freed-men,” in Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History XII (ed. Carl Deroux;Collection Latomus 287; Brussels: Latomus, 2005), 260; Onno Van Nijf, TheCivic World of Professional Associations in the Roman East (Amsterdam: J. C.Gieben, 1997), 33; further Jean Pierre Waltzing, Étude historique sur les corpor-

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most cases were not alternatives to the traditional mechanisms of sup-port but overarching structures that enabled the family and individualpatrons to perform their conventional roles within newly defined so-cial and physical contexts. Demographic change necessitated new so-lutions to traditional problems but did not fundamentally alter thesocial channels through which they were addressed.

Christian Catacombs?

The situation is similar with the advent of Christianity, the early im-perial shift from cremation to inhumation, and the invention of cata-combs. Despite repeated attempts to prove otherwise, what has rightlybeen called “the biggest single event in ancient burial” – the change inpractice of tens of millions of people across the western empire fromburning to interring their dead, which transformed the suburban land-scape of Rome – has persistently defied both theological and sociohis-torical explanation.8 That the main period of transition, from the latefirst century C.E. to the late second century, roughly coincides with thebeginning of the spread of Christianity across the western empire nodoubt helps to explain the appeal of linking these two major culturalshifts, one involving practice, the other belief, but no plausible causalrelationship between the two has ever been found.9 As for catacombs, a

ations professionelles chez les Romains, vol. 4 (Brussels and Louvain: C. Peeters,1895–1900), 509–10, 518–20, listing many examples. The continuity of the nu-clear family as the primary social unit represented in epitaphs is demonstratedby Richard Saller and Brent Shaw, “Tombstones and Roman Family Relationsin the Principate: Civilians, Soldiers, and Slaves,” JRS 74 (1984): 124–56.

8 Quote from Morris, Death-Ritual and Social Structure, 31, who ultimately favorsa modified version of the demographic explanation: it was not people carryingthe idea but the idea itself that came from the east and percolated from thetop down, through the diffusion of Hellenistic culture among the upper classes,rather than from the bottom up, via proselytic immigrants from Palestine andJudaea.

9 The rate of growth of the early Christian community must have varied widelyover time and place, but it clearly began small, with fewer than 1,000 members(mainly, no doubt, in the eastern Mediterranean) around the middle of the firstcentury, and grew by the end of the third century, on one widely accepted esti-mate, to perhaps 10 percent of the population of the empire, or roughly six mil-lion: see Keith Hopkins, “Christian Number and Its Implications,” JECS 6, no. 2(1998): 185–226, esp. 192–95. The popular transition from cremation to inhu-mation around Rome began around the middle of the first century and is evident


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handful of tendentious texts written during the third century by evenfewer Christian bishops and apologists about particular circumstancesat Carthage, Alexandria, and Rome has been taken to show that Chris-tians of that era systematically segregated themselves in death inspecial Christian cemeteries under ground, but the evidentiary value ofthe testimony from such proselytizing polemicists is questionable, andthe archaeological record, though regularly pressed into argument, re-mains equivocal.10 In fact, early Christian bishops seem to have takenlittle interest in the funerary behavior of contemporary Christians andevidently exercised only minimal control over cemeteries before thetime of Constantine.11 Of the three texts regularly cited to demonstratethat Christians avoided burial with pagans, the only one dating to be-

already then among the lower classes (slaves and freedmen): see Franca Taglietti,“Ancora su incinerazione e inumazione: la necropolis dell’Isola Sacra,” in Rö-mischer Bestattungsbrauch und Beigabensiten in Rom, Norditalian, und den Nord-westprovinzen von der späten Republik bis in die Kaiserzeit (eds. MichaelHeinzelmann, Jacopo Ortalli, Peter Fasold, and Marion Witteyer; Palila 8;Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2001), 149–58; cf. Steinby, La necrop-olis della Via Triumphalis, 29–30.

10 For the most frequently cited texts – Tertullian, Scap. 3.1 (ca. 203 C.E.), Apol.39.5–6 (ca. 197 C.E.); Cyprian, Epist. 67.6.2 (251 C.E.) (North Africa); Origen,Hom. Jer. (ca. 200–230) (Alexandria); and [Hippolytus], Philosoph. 9.12.14(ca. 198–217) and Traditio Apostolica 40 (Rome) – see below, p. 205 and n. 54.The difference between perception and reality must be weighed carefully in as-sessing the value of such testimony: see Hopkins, “Christian Number,” 186–87,expressing skepticism. For a good recent statement of the accepted view, see Vin-cenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, “The Origin and Development of Roman Catacombs,” inThe Christian Catacombs of Rome, History, Decoration, Inscriptions (eds. Vin-cenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, Fabrizio Bisconti, and Danilo Mazzoleni; Regensburg:Schnell and Steiner, 1999), 13–17.

11 The last point is controversial, but see Éric Rebillard, Religion et sepulture: l’ég-lise, les vivants, et les morts dans l’antiquité tardive (Paris: Éditions de l’École desHautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2003); Mark J. Johnson, “Pagan-ChristianBurial Practices of the Fourth Century: Shared Tombs?” JECS 5, no. 1 (1997):40–49; and Jill Harries, “Death and the Dead in the Late Roman West,” in Deathin Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100–1600 (ed. StevenBassett: Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992), 61, all emphasizing the dis-tinction between official concern for martyrs’ tombs and relics and the generallack of interest in the burial of ordinary Christians; see also Osiek, below in thisvolume; and below, pp. 202–4. It is not until the Council of Paderborn in 785 C.E.that a general rule was promulgated that Christians be buried in church cem-eteries rather than in pagan tombs: see Charles Hefele, Histoire des Councilesd’après les documents originaux, vol. 3 (trans. Henri Leclerq; Paris: Letouzey etAné, 1910), 994.

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fore the time of Constantine shows exactly the opposite. In a letter of251 C.E. to the clergy and Christians of Spain, Cyprian accuses twoSpanish bishops, Basilides and Martial, of having accepted letters ofidolatry during the persecutions of Decius and complains that Martialhad long been frequenting the “disgraceful and filthy banquets” of apagan collegium and “had placed his sons in the same collegium and, inthe manner of foreign peoples, had buried them with strangers amongprofane graves.” At the time, Cyprian was quarrelling with Stephen,bishop at Rome, who had previously reinstated both Basilides andMartial to their sees, so his charges against the two Spaniards werehardly disinterested and must be seen as part of a larger polemic withhis Roman rival. More importantly, Stephen’s actions show that, re-gardless of Cyprian’s opinion, when Martial as bishop had buried hissons according to the practices of a pagan funerary collegium, he didnot violate any ecumenical principle serious enough to prevent his sub-sequent rehabilitation and moreover had done so openly and withoutfear of retribution. Whatever the currency of Cyprian’s views amongthe Christian community at Carthage, the attitude they representedwas parochial and had no authority over or bearing on Christianburial practices in Spain and at Rome.12

This is not the place to review the remaining literary and archeologi-cal evidence in detail, but a simple demographic consideration mayperhaps illustrate one problematic aspect of the current orthodoxy. Ifwe accept the consensus opinion that the population of imperial Romecomprised between 750,000 and 1,000,000 residents during the thirdcentury, and if we further accept a reasonable estimate of the size of theChristian community at Rome of possibly as many as 7,000 at the be-ginning of that century and follow a plausible model of its projectedgrowth across the empire of 40 percent per decade, then we must sup-pose that by the middle of the century the community counted some37,000 members, and about the time that Diocletian began persecutingChristians systematically, during the first years of the fourth century,they numbered around 200,000 at Rome and constituted between 20 and

12 Cyprian, Epist. 67.6.2, Martialis quoque praeter gentilium turpia et lutulentaconvivia in collegio diu frequentata et filios in eodem collegio exterarum gentiummore apud profana sepulcra depositos et alienigenis consepultos … The other twopassages – Hilary of Poitiers, Mat. 7.11 and Theodoret, Graec. affect. curatio8.29 – belong to the middle of the fourth century and to the first half of the fifthcentury respectively. On all three see Johnson, “Pagan-Christian Burial Prac-tices,” 45–46.


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27 percent of the urban population.13 Those figures compare favorablywith the most careful existing attempt to estimate the number of Chris-tians at Rome from the literary sources, made originally more than acentury ago, which arrived at a figure for the middle of the century of30,000.14 (At the same rate of growth, the community of Roman Chris-tians would have surpassed 750,000 by the year 340 and 1,000,000 bythe year 350. Once Christians constituted nearly 100 percent of theurban population, then virtually all Roman burials, whether in cata-combs or elsewhere, would naturally in some sense have been “Chris-tian.” At this point, of course, the notion of purely “Christian” cata-combs becomes unproblematic.15)

13 Calculating the size of the early Christian community is fraught with difficulties,but one recent estimate for the entire empire places their number around210,000 at the beginning of the third century and close to six million at its close,with a disproportionate concentration in urban centers, especially in the easternMediterranean: see Hopkins, “Christian Number,” 192 and Fig. 1. For the sizeof the Christian community at Rome around 200 C.E., see Robert M. Grant,Early Christianity and Society: Seven Studies (San Francisco: Harper and Row,1977), 6. For the growth rate of 40 percent per decade and other relevant figures,see Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History(Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 4–13, 129–45 (on cities acrossthe empire). The actual (projected) number of Christians at Rome in 250 C.E.would be 37,647; in 300 C.E. 202,474.

14 Adolf von Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den erstendrei Jahrhunderten, vol. 2 (4th ed.; Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1924), 806, relying pri-marily on a famous letter written by Cornelius, bishop at Rome in 251–253, toFabius, bishop of Antioch, boasting of the diversity and number of episcopalpersonnel at the capital – 46 priests, 7 deacons, 7 subdeacons, 42 acolytes, 52exorcists, and various lectors – and claiming that 1,500 widows and poor personswere supported by communal charity: Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.43.11. All such fig-ures must be regarded with caution: see Hopkins, “Christian Number,” 187–92;cf. Luce Pietri, “Les resistances: de la polemique païenne à la persecution deDioclétien,” in Histoire du Christianisme des origines à nos jours II. Naisanced’une Chrétienté (250–430) (ed. Luce Pietri: Paris: Desclée-Fayard, 1995), 134.

15 The actual (projected) figures: in 340 C.E., 777,826 Christians at Rome; in350 C.E., 1,088,956. Across the empire a rate of growth of 40 percent per decadewould have resulted in some 33,880,000 Christians by 350 C.E., or 56.5 percentof a population of 60 million: see Stark, The Rise of Christianity, 7 and Table 1.1.Of course as the absolute numbers, and thus the percentage of a more or lessstatic (if not actually declining) urban population, increased, the rate of growthwould have slowed, but the contours of an exponential curve make it clear thatby the middle of the fourth century virtually all those buried in catacombs wereprobably in some sense “Christian.” Who counted as “Christian,” of course, isproblematic and largely a matter of perception: among early Christian writers,

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If we then compare this hypothetical number of urban Christiansaround the year 300 with the estimated number of individual burialspaces provided by the Roman catacombs before the time of Constan-tine – some 41,800 (see the Appendix) – we confront a notable para-dox. If virtually all the spaces in these purpose-built catacombs wereoccupied by Christians, as is regularly maintained, and if Christiansdied at the same presumed rate as other Romans (roughly 40 per 1,000per year), then, supposing that the rate of growth of the urban Chris-tian community over the course of the century was constant (it almostcertainly was not, but we are here interested only in a hypotheticalmodel), some 234,500 Christians would have died at Rome over thecourse of the century. Bearing in mind the general figures proposedearlier for the percentage of burials of all types at Rome during thethree and a half centuries before Constantine for which we have anyevidence at all (less than 1.5 percent), we must then conclude that – re-markably – we have evidence for nearly 18 percent of all the Christianburials of the third century but only a minuscule portion – less thanone hundredth of one percent – for the disposition of others who diedat Rome during the same period. All of these figures are crude esti-mates and any could be disputed, but even if each were off by 50 per-cent we would still be left with a disproportionately high represen-tation of Christian graves. That is possible, of course, but perhapsunlikely. Even if we grant the pious efforts of later generations ofChristians to cultivate the tombs of their early brethren (to say nothingof the cult of the martyrs), and even if we note the general lack ofChristian concern for the graves of non-believers (to say nothing of thewillful destruction of them during the middle ages), a more plausiblehypothesis might suppose that the evidence we have for Roman burialduring the third century is more or less equally unrepresentative of allgroups and that Christians and non-Christians filled the burial spacesof the catacombs, as well as the other sorts of graves in use during theperiod, in numbers more or less reflective of their numbers within thegeneral population.

If that is so, then not only did Christian dogma about the fate of thesoul after death have little to do with the broad change in preferred

the term was “a persuasive, hopeful and often porous category, used optimisti-cally”: Hopkins, “Christian Number,” 186–87, quote from 187. Among lapsedbelievers who abrogated their faith during the persecutions, on the other hand,many must subsequently have regarded themselves as (again) Christian.


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method of disposal that accompanied the rise of Christianity in the west,but the impulse of urban Christians to be inhumed in collective cem-eteries underground may not have particularly distinguished them fromtheir pagan and Jewish contemporaries.16 Two points, related but dis-tinct, are relevant in this regard. First, and most easily demonstrated,the creation of private cemeteries by groups identified by a common re-ligious bond was not peculiar to the Christians at Rome. In addition tohalf a dozen well-recognized Jewish catacombs , we may note, for in-stance, during the same periods and in the same regions in which the so-called Christian catacombs were being created and developed, collectivecemeteries established by collegia of Aesculapius and Hygia and of Sil-vanus beside the Via Appia between the first and the third mile.17 Indeed,if a recent reassessment of the organization of Jewish burials at Rome iscorrect, Roman Christians will have learned the use of catacombs fromthe local Jewish community, who had developed their own subterraneanburial grounds at Rome beginning already in the first century B.C.E.,

16 The idea that Christian ideology influenced the change in preferred method ofburial goes back to a misapprehension of Minucius Felix, Octavius 11.4, on theChristian condemnation of cremation. See the famous refutation of Arthur D.Nock, “Cremation and Burial in the Roman Empire,” HTR 25 (1932): 321–59;repr. in Arthur Darby Nock: Essays on Religion and the Ancient World (ed. ZephStewart; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), 277–307 and, on“Christian” imagery in funerary art of the same period, “Sarcophagi and Sym-bolism,” AJA 50 (1946): 140–70; repr. in Arthur Darby Nock: Essays, 606–41. For“pagan” catacombs, see Philippe Pergola, “Il ‘praedium Domitillae’ sulla via Ar-deatina: analisi storicotopografica delle testimonianze pagane fino alla metà delIII sec. d.C.,” RACrist 55 (1979): 313–35, hedging the argument, and the dis-cussion among Pergola, Umberto Fasola, and Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, in Actesdu XIe Congrès International d’Archéologie Chrétienne (Rome: École française deRome and Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1989), 2:1207–10.

17 For the Jewish catacombs of Rome, see Cinzia Vismara, “I cimiteri ebraici diRoma,” in Società romana e impero tardoantico II. Roma. Politica, economia,paesaggio urbano (ed. Andrea Giardina: Rome: Laterza, 1986), 351–92, 490–503and (less reliably) Leonard V. Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome: Evidenceof Cultural Interaction in the Roman Diaspora (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995). For col-lective cemeteries of other religious groups, see Lucrezia Spera, Il paesaggio sub-urbano di Roma dall’antichità al medioevo. Il comprensorio tra le vie Latina eArdeatina dalle Mura Aureliane al III miglio (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider,1999), 53 (Aesculapius and Hygia: a schola and burial facilities on the left side ofthe Via Appia between the first and second mile, ca. 150 C.E.; cf. CIL 6.10234;ILS 7213; AE 1937, 161); 138–39 (Silvanus: between the second and the thirdmile, second century; cf. CIL 6.10231 = ILS 7313); further 358–61, 463–64; and,in general, Waltzing, Étude Historique, 1:197–98.

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and who, like Diaspora Jews elsewhere throughout the Mediterranean,relied on family for burial arrangements and followed the funerary cus-toms and organization of the local population.18

Second, and more importantly, not only is it obvious that not all fol-lowers of a particular religion were buried in such collective monu-ments, it is equally clear that burial in such places was not normally re-stricted to devotees of a particular religion. Occasionally one findstestators or the owners of tombs attempting to prescribe burial withinthem to followers of a specific sect – an epitaph of the third centuryfrom the catacombs of Domitilla, for example, declares that a certainM. Antonius Res(ti)tutus “made the hypogeum for himself and hishousehold trusting in the Lord”; another (which may or may not beChristian) of late-second-century date from beside the Via Nomentanaidentifies a monument owned by a Valerius Mercurius and two otherpersons and intended for freedmen and descendants who “belong tomy religion” – but these declarations, which (it may be noted) do notexplicitly exclude burial to anyone but merely designate certain cat-egories of persons welcomed, are the exceptions that prove the rule.19

More often with collective monuments established by groups linkedwith a specific religious identity we find envisaged the possibility if notthe actual fact of the burial of others who do not belong to the samesect. So, for example, the foundation document of the collegium ofAesculapius and Hygia explicitly allows for a member to bequeath hisplace to “a son, or brother, or freedman,” without specifying any otherqualification than payment of a funerary fee.20

18 Margaret H. Williams, “The Organisation of Jewish Burials in Ancient Romein the Light of Evidence from Palestine and the Diaspora,” ZPE 101 (1994):165–82, especially 175–82, arguing convincingly for the absence of control bysynagogues over the burial arrangements of Jews at Rome.

19 ILCV 1597 = ICUR 6555, M. Antonius Restutus fecit ypogeu(m) sibi et suisfidentibus in Domino; CIL 6.10412 = ILCV 3824 = ILS 8337, MonumentumValeri Mercuri et Iulittes Iuliani et Quintilies Verecundes libertis libertabusqueposterisque eorum ad religionem pertinentes meam …; cf. also ILCV 3681 = AE1923, 66, Faltoniae Hilaritati dominae filiae carissimae quae hoc coemeterium asolo sua pecunia fecit et hu{h}ic religioni donavit with Éric Rebillard, “KOIMH-THRION et COEMETERIUM: tombe, tombe sainte, nécropole,” MEFRA 105(1993): 979, Osiek, below, p. 247; CIL 6.10411 = ILCV 3826.

20 CIL 6.10234: … si quis locum suum legare volet filio vel fratri vel liberto, dumtaxatut inferat arkae n(ostrae) partem dimidiam funeratici. Exclusivity was not un-known in Roman collegia but was more characteristic of the associations organ-ized by trades than of those defined by religions: see below p. 192.


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In fact, it is now generally recognized that throughout the third andfourth centuries many Christians continued to be buried in familialmonuments of the traditional sort, long after catacombs came intowidespread use; that the Christian ideology of egalitarianism, which thenetworked galleries supposedly promoted, is belied by their accom-modation from the outset of privileged areas for monumental tombs setoff from the other burial spaces both architecturally and decoratively;and that many of the so-called Christian catacombs originated fromand regularly incorporated subterranean pagan burial areas.21 To thesenow generally conceded points, especially the last, we may add that un-equivocal evidence exists not only for the incorporation within “Chris-tian” catacombs of earlier pagan hypogea but for the contemporaryburial side by side, throughout the third and fourth centuries, of Chris-tians and pagans, not only within a single monument but in adjacentsubterranean spaces connected by tunnels and galleries. Among themore striking examples of the latter are the catacombs of Agnese besidethe Via Nomentana, where pagan hypogea were left intact and access-ible after a Christian cemetery was installed on the site, and the so-called catacombs of Vibia next to the cemetery of Praetextatus at thesecond mile of the Via Appia, where the frescoes decorating certainarched inhumation niches (arcosolia) identify the burial spaces of threepriests of Mithras, a devotee of Sabazius, and his pagan wife, whileother inscriptions clearly mark the graves of Christians – all, it seems,dating from the second half of the fourth century.22

21 See recently, e.g., Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai and Jean Guyon, “Introduzione,” inOrigine delle Catacombe Romane. Atti della giornata tematica dei Seminari diArcheologia Cristiana (Roma – 21 marzo 2005) (eds. Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolaiand Jean Guyon; Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 2006),which Prof. Fiocchi Nicolai kindly shared with me in advance of publication;for non-egalitarian design, see further, below p. 224. Notable examples at Romeof “Christian” catacombs originating from pagan hypogea include the so-calledhypogeum of the Flavii in the cemetery of Domitilla and the hypogaeum of theAcilii in the catacombs of Priscilla: see, e.g., Philippe Pergola, “La region dite des‘Flavii Aurelii’ dans la catacombe de Domitille,” MEFRA 95 (1983): 183–248 andAntonio Ferrua, “Iscrizioni pagane della Catacomba di Priscilla,” Archivio dellasocietà romana di storia patria 110 (1987): 5–19, both with further references.

22 See Johnson, “Pagan-Christian Burial Practices,” 50–59, with examples fromRome and elsewhere. For S. Agnese, see also Umberto Fasola, “La ‘Regio IV’ delcimitero di S. Agnese,” RAC 50 (1974): 175–205, with the remarks of Johnson,“Pagan-Christian Burial Practices,” 50; for Vibia, see CIL 6.142 = ILS 3961 = CLE1317 and Spera, Il paesaggio suburbano, 174–75, 400–1, with further references.

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When all the exceptions are taken into account and all the qualifi-cations have been duly noted, little remains at the foundation of theconventional view but the conviction that purpose-built catacombsmust have been Christian from the outset because after Constantinethe cult of the martyrs caused Christians to vie for burial in close prox-imity to the tombs of their saints and thus to expand the already exist-ing networks of galleries into vast subterranean complexes, whichChristians (numerically predominant now, in the urban population)naturally controlled and eventually monopolized. Whether the origi-nal underground cemeteries developed during the third century wereexclusively Christian, on the other hand, is considerably less certain.Such a situation is demographically improbable and archaeologicallydubious and, on the basis of the ambivalent literary sources availableto us, must remain decidedly open.

Collective Burial

The conventional explanations of these two major innovations in burialpractices during the first three centuries C.E. – the invention of colum-baria and the development of catacombs – fail to convince because thenew funerary forms did not in fact respond to the social pressures thatare thought to have given rise to them: columbaria and collegia did notreplace families and patrons, and catacombs were not invented and de-signed to accommodate the particular ideological beliefs and religiousbehavior of early Christians. What columbaria and catacombs have incommon, and what distinguishes them from other Roman monumenttypes, is their capacity to accommodate burials in groupings larger thanand different from the traditional units of the nuclear family (normallyburied in so-called sepulchra hereditaria) and the extended householdprovided for in sepulchra familiaria, which included, in the well-knownepitaphic phrase, “freedmen and freedwomen and their descendants”(libertis libertabusque posterisque eorum).23 If we start from this obser-

23 For the basic definition, see Dig. 11.7.5 (Gaius), Familiaria sepulchra dicunturquae quis sibi familiaeque suae constituit, hereditaria autem quae quis sibi heredi-busque suis constituit. The distinction was purely a matter of law: see Sergio Laz-zarini, Sepulcra familiaria: un’indagine epigrafico-giuridica (Milan: CEDAM,1991), 7–11 (on Dig. 11.7.6.pr, below n. 73) with Fernand de Visscher, Le droitdes tombeaux romains (Milan: Giuffré Editore, 1963), 93–102. Architecturallythere was no difference in form between the two types, and the legal distinction


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vation and ask first what possibilities for collective burial the newarchitectural forms encouraged and only then proceed to considerwhat social purposes they may have served, we may perhaps avoidsome of the pitfalls that have impeded progress from the opposite di-rection. First, however, it will be necessary to establish one basic me-thodological point about the analysis of ancient burial practices and todispel two common misconceptions about Roman funerary behaviorthat have led some otherwise valuable investigations astray.

Wild Geese and Red Herrings

Method first. In considering the disposition of collective cemeteries wemust resist the tendency to assume that burial arrangements for thedead corresponded directly to the social organization of the living, andin particular we must avoid succumbing to the “housing” fallacy ac-cording to which the internal configuration of columbaria and cata-combs somehow reflected the distribution of space in contemporarydomestic architecture.24 The social arrangements articulated withina columbarium or catacombs are unlike those ever lived out in a houseor apartment block. Romans did not, in fact, live as they died, nor didthey arrange themselves in death as they did in life: the easy analogiesbreak down almost as soon as they begin to be examined, whether we

between them could become blurred in practice: see e.g., Valerie Hope, “A Roofover the Dead: Communal Tombs and Family Structure,” in Domestic Space inthe Roman World: Pompeii and Beyond (eds. Ray Laurence and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill; Portsmouth, R.I.: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1997), 69–88; MarioAmelotti, “Una Visita a Pietro … e a Popilio Eracla,” in Collatio iuris romani:études dédiées à Hans Ankum à l’occasion de son 65e anniversaire (eds. R. Feen-stra, A. S. Hartkamp, J. E. Spruit, P. J. Sijpestein, L. C. Winkel; Amsterdam:J. C. Gieben, 1995), 4–5.

24 Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb,” 39, for example, corrects Hopkins’s comparison ofcolumbaria to insulae (Death and Renewal, 214) by arguing that “the housingwhich parallels it [the columbarium] is the domus,” Each view has something torecommend it, but both are fundamentally incorrect. More cautious (and moreaccurate) is the view of Hope, “A Roof over the Dead,” who likens familial andhousehold structure to tomb configuration only to the extent that both werefluid and changed unpredictably. For the organization of space within theRoman house, see Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, “The Social Structure of the RomanHouse,” PBSR 56 (1988): 43–97 and, briefly, id., Houses and Society in Pompeiiand Herculaneum (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 14–16.

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consider the positioning of sarcophagi within the tomb of the Scipiosor the placement of grave markers in the familial tombs of imperialRomans of moderate means. A recent analysis of a selection of earlyimperial tombs from Isola Sacra and from the section of the ViaTriumphalis necropolis under the Vatican parking lot, for example,shows that in many cases no particular burial place within a monu-ment was marked out more than any other and that where a hierarchi-cal arrangement privileging a central location is found, the principalfocus was less often centered on the proprietor of the tomb or thepaterfamilias than on the first person buried in the monument or onone whose principal claim seems to have been the affection in which heor she was held by the owner.25

It hardly requires observing that Romans of the empire grouped them-selves socially according to various criteria, depending upon the context.Within the home, familial ties and hierarchies dominated, but outside thehousehold, various criteria might dictate not only membership but rankwithin a group. Domestic collegia regularly and naturally subsumed fam-ilial structures in organizing the burial behavior of their members withincollective monuments, but other formal or semiformal voluntary associa-tions – for instance, those that channeled political activity or access tosocial services – bore more complex and variable relationships with thefunerary activities of their constituents. The vici of Rome, for example,provided administrative structure and corporate organization for vari-ous political, social, and religious activities, but residency in a neighbor-hood played little, if any, role in determining funerary behavior.26 Simi-larly, at Pompeii neighborhood groups exhibited corporate organizationand acted collectively at times in endorsing local politicians – as did pro-fessional collegia of dyers (infectores) and fruit-sellers (pomarii), reli-gious associations such as the devotees of Isis (Isiaci universi), the inhab-

25 Francisca Feraudi-Gruénais, Inschriften und ‘Selbstdarstellung’ in stadtrömi-schen Grabbauten (Libitina 3; Rome: Quasar, 2003), 25–42, esp. 41–42. Evenwhen an original decorative scheme or arrangement of burial places seems de-signed to focus attention on a particular location, the practicalities of continueduse of the monument frequently subvert the program, notably when subsequentgraves intrude into the decorative framework: in brief, functionality trumpedaesthetics in determining how burial spaces were used (42–54, esp. 43).

26 See J. Bert Lott, The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2004), 45–60, 106–17. For the mistaken idea that the region inwhich Jews in Rome were buried depended upon the location of their syna-gogues, see Williams, “Organisation of Jewish Burials,” 165–75.


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itants of a single residential block (the insula Satriorum), the patrons (itseems) of the baths of Venus (Veneri or Veneriosi), and informal groupswaggishly identifying themselves as petty-thieves (furunculi), gladiator-ial fans (spectaculi spectantes), sleepers (dormientes), and late-drinkers(seri bibi) – but none of these groups appears anywhere in the organiza-tion of Pompeian cemeteries or tombs.27

In certain cases, however, corporate identity in life might be reframed(rather than replicated) in death. Groups of clients collectively endors-ing a patron for political office might expect in return to have their burialarrangements provided for, and worshippers of a particular cult, asnoted earlier, might band together in death in collective cemeteries. Pro-fessional associations sometimes projected their exclusivity into their fu-nerary facilities: at Rome a collegium of cooks in the imperial householdhad a special burial complex between the second and third mile of theVia Appia, and an association of ivory and citron-wood workers, whichprobably provided burials as well as banquets, restricted membershipto practitioners of those trades.28 Soldiers lived a highly regimentedlife and found in their military units a social institution that providedmuch of the structure traditionally associated with the family. Specialunits of them at Rome, such as the equites singulares and the detachmentof sailors from the Misene fleet assigned to rigging the awnings abovethe Colosseum, segregated themselves in separate burial grounds, butothers of no less specialized and even more élite status, such as the prae-torian guards, preferred individual burial among civilians in the generalnecropoleis outside the city gates.29 Even with corporate institutions, the

27 For the topographical organization of Pompeii, see Paavo Castrén, Ordo Popu-lusque Pompeianus: Polity and Society in Roman Pompeii (2nd ed.; Rome: BardiEditori, 1983), 79–82. For the groups of electoral supporters, see James L.Franklin, Pompeii: The Electoral Programmata, Campaigns and Politics, A.D.71–79 (Rome: American Academy in Rome, 1980), 21–24, with references. Forthe humorously named pseudo-collegia, Waltzing, Étude historique, vol. 1, 51 n. 2aptly compares the jocular references in Horace (Serm. 1.2.1) and Apuleius(Metam. 7.7.4) to associations of Syrian flute-girls (ambubaiarum collegia) andbandits (latronis collegium) respectively.

28 For the imperial cooks, see Spera, Paesaggio suburbano, 187–88 with CIL6.7458, 8750, 8751, the last reused to cover a loculus in the nearby catacombs ofCallistus, a section of which, to judge from a pair of graffiti (ICUR 14815a–b),was evidently known as the regio cocorum. For the collegium of ivory and citron-wood workers, see CIL 6.33885 = ILS 7214.

29 For the legion as a social institution, see Ramsay MacMullen, “The Legion as aSociety,” Historia 33 (1984): 440–56. For the equites singulares, see Jean Guyon,

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correspondence between membership in life and community in deathwas variable and unpredictable. It stands to reason, then, that principlesof organization and hierarchy recognizable in one are seldom foundreflected in the other. Burial architecture in antiquity did not intend toreplicate the circumstances of the living but instead enabled abstract ex-pressions of ideal social orders that seldom, if ever, corresponded di-rectly to the way human relationships were enacted in life.30

Finally, before we turn to the problematic question of definition,it will be necessary to dispel two common misconceptions about theso-called sepulchra familiaria, those which provided for freedmen andfreedwomen to be buried along with their patrons. First, it is not thecase, as is sometimes maintained, that this type of monument, whichwas most characteristic of the second century C.E. and thus representsthe principal alternative method of group burial to columbaria at thebeginning of the century and to catacombs toward the end, first cameinto use during the latter half of the first century.31 Familial tombsexisted already during the final decades of the Republic, when (itseems) it was ex-slaves themselves (often the innovators in commemo-rative funerary behavior) who favored the form.32 Whatever role fam-ilial tombs played in the changing face of collective burial during the

Le cimitière aux deux lauriers: recherches sur les catacombes romaines (Rome:École française de Rome, 1987), 30–33; for the Misene sailors, see Spera, Paes-aggio suburbano, 158; for the praetorian guard, see Marcel Durry, Les CohortesPrétoriennes (Paris: De Boccard, 1968), 60–63.

30 For the basic methodological point, see, e.g., Bruno D’Agostino, “Società deivivi, communità dei morti: Un rapporto difficile,” Dialoghi di archeologia 3,1(1985): 47–58 and, more polemically, Rick Jones, “Rules for the Living and theDead: Funerary Practices and Social Organization,” in Römerzeitliche Gräberals Quellen zu Religion, Bevölkerungsstruktur und Sozialgeschichte (ed. ManuelaStruck: Mainz: Institut für Vor- und Frühgeschichte der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 1993), 247–54.

31 So, e.g., Francisca Feraudi-Gruénais, Ubi diutius nobis habitandum est. DieInnendekoration der kaiserzeitlichen Gräber Roms (Palilia 9; Wiesbaden: Dr. Lud-wig Reichert Verlag, 2001), 152–53, and ead. Inschriften und ‘Selbstdarstel-lung,’ 36, apparently confusing the advent of the architectural form of theKammergräber with the juridical capacity for familial burial, which clearlyexisted earlier.

32 The clearest indication is provided by epitaphs that include the standard phraselibertis libertabusque (in various orthographies), e.g., CIL 12 1226, 1236, 1277,1278, 1330, 1401, 1638; sometimes libertis alone, e.g., CIL 12 1286, 1308, 1313,1355, 1398, 1568; occasionally in the complete formula with posteris also, e.g.,CIL 12 1319, 1334, 2213; AE 1990, 345.


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second century, they were not first invented to respond to new needsfirst arising then. Second, we should not imagine that familial tombs,by including freedmen as well as family members within the monu-ment, somehow reflect a growing magnanimity of patrons towardtheir households. Roman landowners establishing testamentary foun-dations and trusts to allow generations of ex-slaves to inherit theirmonuments were less interested in preserving landed property withintheir families than they were in perpetuating their own names by pas-sing the properties on to their freedmen.33 In this respect, what familialtombs illustrate is not generosity but ego. Nor, on the other hand,should we imagine that during the Republic Roman slaves were norm-ally deprived of formal burial and that columbaria first made thisopportunity available to them. Since slaves did not have juridicalpersonae, testamentary dispositions and the epitaphic formulae thatreflect them naturally took no formal account of their ultimate fate indeath. Although definitive physical evidence of the gravesites of slavesis difficult to identify, psychological plausibility and the apparentlycommonplace presence of unmarked or anonymous graves withintomb enclosures suggest that household slaves often found burial infamilial and even hereditary monuments.34

Let us assume that the primary reason for the introduction of boththe columbarium and catacombs was the simple demographic need cre-ated by a limited amount of land on the outskirts of Rome and the ever-accumulating demands placed on it by successive generations of Ro-mans united (whatever their religious beliefs or social circumstances)by a persistent desire to bury their dead in the suburban soil and a re-

33 David Johnston, “Trusts and Tombs,” ZPE 72 (1988): 81–87 and id. The RomanLaw of Trusts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 77–97.

34 Werner Eck, “Römische Grabinschriften. Aussageabsicht und Aussagefähigkeit imfunerären Kontext,” in Römische Gräberstraßen: Selbstdarstellung, Status, Stan-dard (eds. Henner von Hesberg and Paul Zanker; Munich: Verlag der BayerischenAkademie der Wissenschaften: in Kommission bei der C.H. Beck’schen Verlags-buchhandlung, 1987), 73–74 argued the point persuasively for the second andthird centuries C.E., and the same can be said for the period of the late Republic aswell. Eck believes that during the Republic dead slaves were unceremoniouslydumped in the Esquiline puticuli; I have argued elsewhere that disposal in theseloca publica was more often the fate of the indigent free: “Dealing with the Dead,”128–35. A contract of Augustan date for the undertaking concession at Puteoliprovides for regular, albeit less formal, burial for slaves: see AE 1971, 88 II.22–23,with François Hinard and Jean C. Dumont, Libitina: pompes funèbres et supplicesen Campanie à l’époque d’Auguste (Paris: De Boccard, 2003), 131–32 ad loc.

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luctance to give up the commemorative habit of regular pilgrimages tolocal grave sites. It remains to investigate how these new burial formsaccommodated those desires and what further possibilities for socialexpression they may have supported or imposed. Here we are ham-pered by some fundamental problems of definition, which we mustnow address, for it is clear that those who write about columbaria, cata-combs, and cemeteries do not always mean the same things by the terms.

Problems of Definition

Our problems of interpretation begin with terminology. Unfortunatelythey are acute, since each of the three principal terms used to describecollective burial spaces during the first three centuries C.E. – colum-barium, catacombs, and cemetery (�� or coemeterium) – is,in standard usage, a modern invention that remains elusively ambiva-lent or imprecise.

Columbarium, in antiquity, meant “dovecote,” a nesting-box for apair of pigeons, and then, in a transferred sense, “niche for an ash urn”or more precisely, since pigeons kept for breeding were (and are) norm-ally kept in pairs, “bipartite niche for a pair of urns,” the most charac-teristic form.35 The word is never used in literary sources in this lattersense but is found in some forty inscriptions, all but two from Rome orOstia.36 This extended usage, like the form itself, evidently originatedat the capital and was virtually restricted to its environs.

In modern usage, however, the term columbarium does not normallyrefer to the individual niches or cavities for urns but to the architectural

35 For the Roman dovecote (columbarium or, in fashionable Greek parlance,�� φ��), see the description by Varro, Rust. 3.7.4: Singulis paribus(sc. columbarum) columbaria fiunt rutunda in ordinem crebra, ordines quam plu-rimi possunt a terra usque ad cameram; “Round nesting places are made for eachpair (sc. of pigeons), close to each other in a row, and as many rows as possibleare built from the ground up to the vaulted ceiling.”

36 Cf. Thesaurus Linguae Latinae 3:1734, s.v. “columbarium.” Of the two textsfound elsewhere, one is from Spain (CIL 2.2002); the other, from Antium, 30miles southwest of Rome (CIL 10.8299), evidently describes a bipartite niche:columbaria II ollarum IIII. See further Diz. Epigr. 2:464–65, s.v. “columbarium”(Ettore De Ruggiero); RE IV.1:593, s.v. “columbarium” (E. Samter). Othertransferred uses applied to the niches in walls to hold beams and, in ships, tooarlocks (TLL). For the primary sense of dovecote, see also Pliny, Historia Natu-ralis 17.51 and Palladius 1.24.


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structures that housed them – large or small tomb buildings, built aboveor below ground (or sometimes both) and distinguishable from othermonumental tombs mainly by their interior configuration, which ismarked by plastered walls and pillars systematically lined, from floor toceiling, with rows of niches accessible via wooden ladders or stairwaysand scaffolding (Fig. 6.1). Regimented order and symmetry are charac-teristic of the form. Each niche contained one or more cavities – ollae –normally a pair, sometimes as many as four or six, usually incorporatinga terracotta funerary urn within the wall but occasionally allowing anurn to be inserted and removed independently. Individual niches some-times received personal attention – small shelves built out of the wall tohold offerings, a painted border or marble frame surrounding the niche,personalized decoration, a terracotta or stone tablet cut to cover overthe opening to the niche and inscribed with the name of the owner or ofthe person buried there – but the interior decoration of the chamber wasnormally uniform and sometimes divided the rows of niches by horizon-tal bands of thematically related motifs (Fig. 6.2).37 The architecturalform flourished from the time of Augustus to that of Hadrian, littlemore than 150 years; as a funerary fashion, in other words, it was short-lived. The term columbarium first appears with this modern sense in theeighteenth century in reference to the very largest such structures, theones originally intended for the massive households of the great familiesof Rome, and only became common in the nineteenth century.38 Today it

37 For the decorative program of the largest of the columbaria in the DoriaPamphilj necropolis (for which see below. n. 57), which exhibits themes similarto (but less systematicaly disposed than) those in the nearby columbarium ofC. Scribonius Menophilus (see Fig 6.2), see Roger Ling, “The Paintings of theColumbarium of Villa Doria Pamphili in Rome,” in Functional and SpatialAnalysis of Wall Painting (Proceedings of the Fifth International Congress onAncient Wall Painting) (ed. Eric M. Moormann; Leiden: Stichting BulletinAntieke Beschaving, 1993), 127–35, emphasizing the generic (non funerary) na-ture of the scenes represented, and esp. 129 on the uniformity of the design.

38 Maria Letizia Caldelli and Cecilia Ricci, Monumentum familiae Statiliorum: UnRiesame (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 1999), 76 n. 93 cite an unpublished tesi dilaurea by Simona Crea that traces the modern sense of the term to AntonioFrancesco Gori’s publication of the largest known columbarium, that of thehousehold of the empress Livia, under the title Monumentum sive columbariumlibertorum et servorum Liviae Augustae et Caesarum Romae detectum in ViaAppia anno MDCCXXVI (Florence, 1727). For this work and for Gori’s un-stated rivalry with Francesco Bianchini, who published first, under the titleCamera ed inscrizioni sepolcrali de’ liberti, servi, ed ufficiali della casa di Augustoscoperte nella Via Appia (Rome 1727), the same excavations of 1726 that un-

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has grown in application to encompass almost any tomb monumentwith niches for cremation burials in the walls.

In contrast to the origin of the term columbarium, “catacombs” hasno basis whatsoever in ancient terminology (the singular noun is a lexi-cal anomaly) but derives instead from the Greek phrase �� «

covered the monument, see Maria Raina Fehl, “Archaeologists at Work in 1726:The Columbarium of the Household of Livia Augusta,” in Ultra Terminum Va-gari. Scritti in onore di Carl Nylander (eds. Börje Magnusson, Stefania Renzetti,Paolo Vian, and Sever J. Voicu; Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 1997), 89–92.


6.1. Drawing by Antonio Buonamici of the long wall of the first room of thecolumbarium of the household of Livia beside the Via Appia (reproduced fromFrancesco Bianchini, Camera ed inscrizioni sepulcrali de’liberti, servi, ed ufficialidella casa di Augusto scoperte nella Via Appia, ed illustrate con le annotazioni diMonsignor Francesco Bianchini Veronese, l’anno MDCCXXVI (Rome: GiovanniMaria Salvioni, nell’archiginnasio della Sapienza, 1727), tav. IV [BAV CicognaraVIII 3617A], after Maria Raina Fehl, “Archaeologists at Work in 1726: The Col-umbarium of the Household of Livia Augusta,” in Ultra Terminum Vagari. Scrittiin onore di Carl Nylander (eds. Börje Magnusson, Stefania Renzetti, Paolo Vian,

and Sever J. Voicu: Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 1997), fig. 2.

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(“near the hollows”) in reference to the abandoned quarries, sandpits,and cisterns from which, later in the fourth and fifth centuries, profes-sional gravediggers (fossores) often started digging the networksof burial tunnels to which the term nowadays regularly applies.39 In an-

39 So, convincingly, Bruno Luiselli, “Il toponimo ‘Catacumbas’ e Odilone di SanMedardo,” MEFRA 98 (1986): 852–54, finding a Latin parallel for the usage in

6.2. Columbarium of C. Scribonius C.l. Menophilus on the Janiculum hill besidethe Via Aurelia, main room, long wall, showing rows of niches with painted tabulaeansatae beneath each niche. The rows are divided systematically by painted bandsof (from bottom to top): garlands; flowers, fruits, birds, and Dionysiac motifs;sacro-idyllic landscapes; and narrative scenes with human figures. Several of theniches are sealed with mortar or with stone or terracotta plaques; two, one of whichhad been enlarged and enhanced with a marble tablet bearing an epitaph (in situ),

have had marble frames removed. (author’s photo)

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tiquity the phrase occurs specifically, and for a long time only, in thetopographical designation cimiterium ad catacumbas, in reference tothe subterranean Christian cemetery excavated out from the pozzolanaquarries near the third mile of the Via Appia in the vicinity of S. Seb-astiano, where already by the middle of the third century there was animportant memorial cult of the apostles Peter and Paul.40

Colloquial and vague, the original topographical designation leavesopen the question of a typological distinction between the purpose-built networks of tunnels designed to accommodate hundreds of inhu-mation burials, and other linked hypogaea and underground cemeteries,which are occasionally found beside the Via Appia and elsewhere

the Passion of Saint Sebastian in the phrase ad arenas used to describe the placewhere the martyrs Marcus and Marcellianus were buried (Act. Sanct., Ian.II:642). The neologism “catacumbas” is first attested in the Chronica UrbisRomae inserted in the register of the Chronographer of 354 and edited sometwenty years previously in reference to building activity in the region by the em-peror Maxentius (fecit et circum in catecumbas). Otherwise in antiquity it occursonly and always in reference to the Christian cemetery on the site (see the nextnote). Giuseppe Marchi, Monumenti delle arti cristiane primitive nella metropolidel cristianesimo (Rome: Tip. di C. Puccinelli, 1844), 209 and De Rossi, Romasotterranea 3:427, interpreted kymbas as deriving from Latin cubare, “to sleep”.More recently, Antonio Ferrua, La basilica e la catacomba di S. Sebastiano (2nded.; Vatican City: Pontificia Commisione di Archeologia Sacra, 1990), 11, hasassociated it with cumba, “ship,” in reference to a hypothetical sign or relief inthe area advertising an inn and depicting two or more ships. Kata in the phrasemeans “in the vicinity of” (a late usage), so that, strictly, the construction adcatacumbas in the phrase cimiterium ad catacumbas is redundant. Such bilingualtautologies are not uncommon in late Latin topographical designations. Petro-logical explorations during the early 1940s showed that understanding of thegeophysical properties of the tufa quarries outside Rome was greater amonggravediggers during the first and second centuries than later during the third andfourth, which explains why later diggers often built new complexes off of theolder networks: see Gioacchino De Angelis D’Ossat, La geologia delle cata-combe romane (3 vols; Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana,1939–1943). For the role of the fossores, who not only dug but sold burials spacesin the catacombs, see Jean Guyon, “La vente des tombes à travers l’épigraphie dela Rome chrétienne (IIIe – VIIe siècles): le role des fossores, mansionarii, praepo-siti, et prètres,” MEFRA 86 (1974): 549–96.

40 For the site and its designation, see Anna Maria Nieddu, “Catacumbas ad,” inLexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae. Suburbium (ed. Adriano La Regina;vol. 2; Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2004), 79–82, on the name and “Catacumbascoemeterium. Cimitero sopratterra,” ibid., 82–86; Rafaella Giuliani, “Cimiterosotterraneo,” ibid., 86–93.


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outside Rome already during the second century.41 Whereas the la-bel columbarium aims to characterize an architectural form, the term“catacombs” merely identifies a place. What is more, the burial modeprimarily associated with the phrase can only be inferred from develop-ments of a later period than that when the expression was originallyemployed. In reference to the earliest underground cemetery on thesite – a concentrated grouping of columbaria and familial mausolea,three of them disposed around a sunken “piazzola” with niches forinhumations excavated out of the sides – the term is not only anachron-istic but misapplied.42 The only distinctive architectural featuresuniversally recognized are columns and rows of large niches forinhumation burials (loculi) lining the walls (Fig. 6.3). Since many cata-combs incorporated or originated from earlier hypogea, and since thedeveloped versions regularly included quadrilateral burial chambers(cubicula) similar in form to the earlier and independent subterraneanmonuments, the question naturally arises when a series of linked hypo-gea becomes a catacomb. The solution most commonly proposed is toidentify as proper catacombs only those that could be entered directlyfrom the ground and were designed from the outset to offer as manyspaces for inhumation burials as possible, but typological distinctionsare difficult to draw when one considers closely the various architec-tural configurations of underground burial complexes outside Romeduring the second and third centuries, and in practice the term cata-combs has come to be reserved for those that are presumed to have beencontrolled by official religious authorities and therefore to be charac-terized by exclusive religious affiliations (“Christian,” “Jewish”),whereas those of indeterminate or private status are labeled hypogea. Aspurious semantic precision in this case does not conceal the circularityof the reasoning, nor does it resolve the basic terminological problem.43

41 For an overview of various types of subterranean burial complexes dating fromthe second century, see Spera, Paesaggio suburbano, 355–62.

42 See Spera, Paesaggio suburbano, 209–25; Nieddu, “Cimitero sopratterra,” 82–83.43 For the standard distinction between “Christian” catacombs and “pagan” hypo-

gea, see, e.g., Fiocchi Nicolai, “Origin and Development,” 16–17 and LeonardV. Rutgers, Subterranean Rome: In Search of the Roots of Christianity in theCatacombs of the Eternal City (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), 64. For a typically prob-lematic case, compare the discussions of the so-called “Catacombs of Vibia”by Spera, Paesaggio suburbano, 172–76 and Palmira Maria Barbini, in PhilippePergola, Le catacombe romane: storia e topografia (Rome: La Nuova ItaliaScientifica, 1997), 177–80.

201From Columbaria to Catacombs

6.3. Catacombs of Domitilla, gallery with loculi, after Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai,Fabrizio Bisconti, and Danilo Mazzoleni, The Christian Catacombs of Rome:

History, Decoration, Inscriptions (Regensburg: Schnell and Steiner, 1999), 76.

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Coemeterium, the transliterated form of the Greek ��,came into Latin usage in Christian contexts toward the beginning ofthe third century, when it referred to the final “resting place” of a deadperson.44 The classical Greek term, based on a verb used metaphor-ically of the sleep of death already in the Iliad and attested in its de-nominative form, both in a literal sense (“sleeping room”) and meta-phorically of a burial chamber, already by the third century B.C.E.,had an obvious appeal to those who imagined death as a transitionalsleeping period (the refrigerium interim) between life and the resur-rection.45 By the end of antiquity this metaphorical usage had beenextended and transferred, by a process of pars pro toto similar tothat which created the modern concept of the columbarium, to ourconcept of “cemetery,” that is a collection of individual tombs or “rest-ing places”; but “cemeterium” and �� continued to be regu-larly used also in the literal sense in reference to sleeping places (indi-vidual and collective, that is, dormitories) down into medieval andByzantine times.46

The philological crux lies in determining at what point this later, ex-tended usage first came into currency, but the more important histori-cal question is what, precisely, our earliest literary sources mean whenthey refer to coemeteria – or rather what one source meant in usingthe Greek term ��, since all the earliest Latin attestationsof coemeterium, both pagan and Christian, clearly refer to individualtombs. In a poorly transmitted passage of an anonymous pamphletwritten against the election of Callistus as bishop at Rome in 217 andattributed to Hippolytus, the author claims that Zephyrinus, bishop atRome in 198, in the following year recalled Callistus from exile and as-

44 Tert. Anima 5.17 (of 197 C.E.) appears to be the earliest attestation of the term ina Christian context, but note also CIL 8.7543; 11.1700 = ILCV 2171; ILCV3681. It first appears in Greek in [Hippolytus], Philosoph. 9.12.14 (below n. 48).

45 E.g., Homer, Il. 11.241; “sleeping room”: IG 7.235.43;“burial chamber”: IG3.3545. For the Christian “sleep of death,” see Marbury B. Ogle, “The Sleep ofDeath,” MAAR 11 (1933): 81–117, esp. 85–86 and Alfred C. Rush, Death andBurial in Christian Antiquity (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of AmericaPress, 1941), 12–22. Both rightly trace the Christian (and Jewish) usage to thelong classical tradition of figuring death as sleep in funerary epigraphy and art.

46 Rebillard, Religion et sepulture, 14 n. 11 cites Philippe Gauthier, Revue desÉtudes Byzantines 43 (1985): 5–165, for a typicon of Theotokos Kecharitomene(twelfth century) in which �� is applied both to a dormitory and to acemetery.

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signed him ��« �μ ��.47 In attempting to deduce the meaningof this appointment, de Rossi, through a series of possible but by nomeans inevitable suppositions, arrived at the conclusion that Zephyri-nus had placed Callistus as deacon in charge of a Christian funerarysociety and had given him management over the first official Christiancemetery in Rome.48 Subsequent scholarship has long since discardedimportant elements of de Rossi’s formulation – there were no officialChristian funerary societies or indeed specifically funerary collegiaof any sort, and the notion of a central “Church” at this date, let aloneof an official cemetery “owned” by a church, is doubtful – but onlyrecently has a careful study of the Greek and Latin terms by ÉricRebillard shown there to be no firm evidence for the use of either tomean “cemetery” in a general sense before the beginning of the sixthcentury; in earlier Christian texts the words seem always to refer tomartyrs’ tombs or to the shrines surrounding them (martyria).49 That

47 [Hippolytus], Philosoph. 9.12.14, M��’ �� Z�φ��« <³«> (�)��(�) ��μ <�>�� <��> �μ« �κ �� " ��,#�� < #�λ> �)% �&�)� ��)%, ��λ �� <��> ��'�'Ω $�μ ��"#A�� « �μ �� . “After the death of [Victor],Zephyrinus, wishing to have him (Callistus) as a colleague in the institution ofthe clergy, honored him to his own detriment and, transferring him for his sakefrom Antium (?), appointed him to the koimeterion.”

48 Giovanni Battista de Rossi, “Esame archeologico e critico della storia di s. Cal-listo narrata nel libro nono dei Filosofumene,” Bulletino di Archeologia Cris-tiana 4 (1866): 1–14, 17–33; and La Roma sotterranea cristiana (Rome:Cromo-litografia Pontificia, 1864), 1:197–204. The syllogistic argument is car-ried mainly by assertions of the “must have …” variety, e.g., “Egli è impossibile,che la chiesa romana tanto numerosa e potente non abbia avuto a quei dì alcungrande cimitero commune …” (197).

49 Rebillard, “KOIMHTHPION et COEMETERIUM,” summarized in Religion etsepulture, 11–23. Hippolytus himself uses �� to mean tomb in his com-mentary on Daniel 11, 36–46 (4.51). For the long-standing legal restriction on cor-porate ownership of property, especially as regards Christian cemeteries, see, e.g.,Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Cen-turies (ed. Marshall D. Johnson; trans. Michael Steinhauser; Minneapolis, Minn.:Fortress Press, 2003), 369–72, assembling also the supposed evidence – none of itunequivocal – for a change in legal situation around the time of Fabian’s pontifi-cate (ca. 236–250 C.E.). For the fiction of a specific class of “funerary” collegia,see Frank Ausbüttel, Untersuchungen zu den Verein im Westen des römischen Rei-ches (Kallmünz: M. Lassleb, 1982); cf. John S. Kloppenborg, “Collegia and Thia-soi: Issues in Function, Taxonomy, and Membership,” in Voluntary Associations inthe Graeco-Roman World (eds. John S. Kloppenborg and Stephen G. Wilson; Lon-


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Callistus himself, according to the Liber Pontificalis, was ultimatelyburied in the catacombs of Calepodius on the Via Aurelia proves noth-ing but lends little support to de Rossi’s view that he was appointed bythe Church as official overseer of the first or most important Christiancemetery of Rome.50 The position held by Callistus was in any case nota regular post but an ad hoc assignment, probably coincident with theend of the practice of burying high-ranking clergy near the tomb ofSt. Peter on the Vatican, specifically, perhaps, in order to oversee thearrangement of a new collective tomb for Rome’s bishops on Zephyri-nus’s private plot.51 The custom of appointing overseers to manage pri-vate tomb properties was common in Roman society, and there is noreason to suspect that Callistus’s role departed in any fundamentalway from that tradition.52

The same charge of overreading can be levelled against de Rossi’sinterpretation of the burial enclosures used by Christians in NorthAfrica. Tertullian’s accusation of local hostility toward Christians andthe areae of their burials (areae sepulturarum nostrarum) at Carthage,like several similar references to Christian burial enclosures elsewherein his writings, says nothing about official ownership or adminis-tration of these cemeteries by the church.53 Individual Christians could

don and New York: Routledge, 1996), 20–23; and Rebillard, Religion et sepulture,51–71.

50 Lib. Pontif. I:62, cymiterio Calepodi, via Aurelia. Extraordinary efforts to explainthe burial of Callistus elsewhere than in the catacombs that bear his name –recently, for example, by invoking the tumultuous circumstances of his deathin Trastevere (Acta Sanctorum octobris, V [Paris 1868], 430): see Roberto Gior-diani, “‘Et sepultus est iuxta corpus beati Petri in Vaticano’: qualche consider-azione sul problema delle sepolture dei papi nell’antichità,” Vetera Christiano-rum 40 (2003): 304–5 – betray discomfort with the inconvenience of thecircumstantial evidence for the conventional view.

51 Rebillard, “KOIMHTHRION et COEMETERIUM,” 988–91. For the likeli-hood that Zephyrinus personally owned the property, see Lampe, From Paul toValentinus, 26–27.

52 For custodes (often freedmen of the proprietor) assigned to private tombs, see,e.g., Petr. 71.8; CIL 6.9832; EDR 5184; cf. Liber Pontificalis 51.8 (314 C.E.), cus-tos martyrum. More often in inscriptions the revenue-producing propertiesattached to tomb monuments custodiae causa are explicitly recorded, whereasthe managers of the properties themselves go unmentioned: see Diz. Epigr.2:1426 s.v. “Custodia” (Ettore De Ruggiero).

53 Tert. Ad Scapulam 3.1, addressed to the proconsul of Africa in 212 but invokingan episode of a decade earlier: Tamen, sicut supra diximus, doleamus necesse est,quod nulla civitas impune latura sit sanguinis nostri effusionem; sicut et sub Hil-

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and no doubt often did congregate together in death (especially withinChristian families) and may well have been inclined toward a form ofeuergetism that favored burial of the poor over more traditional dis-tributions of public largesse, but the areae to which Tertullian refers fitcomfortably into a long pagan tradition of private donations by indi-viduals of cemetery plots for public use (sometimes with restrictionsimposed on those who could be buried in them) and have no precedentor likelihood of precedent in official sponsorship by a corporate entitysuch as a church.54

ariano praeside, cum de areis sepulturarum nostrarum acclamassent: ‘Areae nonsint!’ Areae ipsorum non fuerunt: messes enim suas non egerunt. Rebillard, Re-ligion et sepulture, 17–22, notes the double entendre in Tertullian’s phrase (areae= “threshing floors” and “burial enclosures”) and rightly dismisses the notion ofa technical, specifically Christian, application of the term in the present context.For areae as burial enclosures in non-Christian texts, see below, n. 55.

54 Christian concern for the nourishment and burial of the poor (egeni) is touted byTertullian elsewhere (Apol. 39.5–6); cf. also Aristides of Athens, Apol. 15.6;Lactantius Inst. 6.12; and [Hippolytus], Trad. Ap. 40, a work of composite andprobably later date falsely attributed to Hippolytus: see Alistair Stewart-Sykes,On the Apostolic Tradition (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press,2002), 20–22. For private donations of land for Christian catacombs at Rome,see Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, “Euergetismo eccleisastico e laico nelle iscrizionipaleocristiane del Lazio,” in Historiam pictura refert: miscellanea in onore diPadre Alejandro Recio Veganzones (Vatican City: Pontifico Istituto di Archeolo-gia Cristiana, 1994), 243–45 (on ILCV 3681A) and Carolyn Osiek, below in thisvolume. For traditional Roman precedent, note the late Republican donation ofa private cemetery at Sarsina by a certain Horatius Balbus for individual burialsof “his fellow townsmen and residents, except those who pledge themselves asgladiators, or commit suicide by hanging, or practice a dirty profession” (muni-cipibus [su]eis incoleisque … extra au[ct]orateis et quei sibei [la]queo manu(m)attulissent et quei quaestum spurcum professi essent) (CIL 12.2123 = 11.6528 =ILS 7846 = ILLRP 662) with Giancarlo Susini, “Fundus Fangonianus,” StudiRomagnoli 20 (1969): 333–39; id. Sarsina. Studi di anitichità (S. Giovanni in Per-siceto: F.A.R.A.P, 1982), 263–69; a similar donation at Tolentinum in the firstcentury C.E. “to the townspeople of Tolentinum” (municipibu[s] Tolentinati-bu[s]) (CIL 9.5570 = ILS 7847) with Gianfranco Paci, “Tolentinum,” in Supple-menta Italica, nuova serie 11 (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1993),65–67; and the early imperial funeral subsidy of Marius Lupercianus at Bergo-mum (CIL 5.5128 = ILS 6726), with John Bodel, Graveyards and Groves: AStudy of the Lex Lucerina (American Journal of Ancient History 11) (CambridgeMass.: E. Badian, 1994), 18–19 and 34 n. 137. For the long-standing legal pro-hibition against corporate ownership of property, especially in reference toburial sites, see above, n. 49.


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The terms �� and coemeterium, which say nothing aboutany particular form of burial arrangement, raise a semantic problem ofa different sort from the challenges posed by the ambiguities inherentin “columbaria” and “catacombs.” Areae, surface enclosures forburial, present no particular interpretive difficulties of any sort, sinceneither the name nor the significance of the term is in dispute, andboth are found already in earlier non-Christian sources.55 What re-mains in doubt is merely the question of the supervision of individualChristian areae, which can only be determined, if at all, in individualcases. The key to understanding the significance of the major inno-vations in collective burial arrangements during the first three cen-turies of the common era – the rise of the columbarium during the firstcentury and then, accompanying a widespread change in method ofdisposal during the second, the proliferation of catacombs in thethird – lies in interpreting the form and function of these two osten-sibly similar and yet fundamentally different modes of burial. It is tothat question that we now turn.

Form and Function

Two related tendencies have characterized, and impeded, recent studyof the historical significance of columbaria and catacombs. The first isa failure to distinguish clearly between formal and functional criteriain classifying and analyzing the archaeological evidence; the second isan assumption that, because the two modes of collective burial sharesuperficial similarities of form, their functions must also be similar.Each may be addressed briefly.

We noted above that the term columbarium is nowadays used as apurely formal designation to describe any monumental tomb charac-terized by rows of cremation niches lining the walls. Recently, however,the usefulness of such a broad application of the term has begun to bequestioned: as currently employed, the word is appropriately appliedto most of the tombs of first-century date found in the outskirts ofRome, which housed the remains of nuclear families and their immedi-ate households as well as larger, more or less differentiated groups. The

55 See, e.g., ILS 7296, 7899, 8217, 8325, 8326, 8334, 8339, 8347 with Diz. Epigr.1:654 s.v. “Area pura 5, Area di sepolcri” (Ettore De Ruggiero).

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authors of the most recent detailed study of one of the large columba-ria of Rome, that of the familia of the Statilii near the Porta Maggiore,advocate a return to the more restricted usage of the eighteenth cen-tury, when it applied only to the largest such monuments, those of thehouseholds of the most prominent senatorial families of Rome, andsuggest that the identification of a niche tomb as a columbarium not bebased merely on size.56 Although they do not specify what other cri-teria might be relevant to distinguish columbaria from other monumentsdesigned for cremation burials, a helpful distinction emerges fromtheir discussion between those intended to house the remains of familymembers and household staff together (traditional familial tombs),which tend to be smaller, and those exclusively devoted to the burialof members of a slave household or of a mixed group not defined byties of kinship. According to these criteria only nine monuments fromthe city of Rome – and none from elsewhere – qualify as columbaria inthe proper sense, the smallest of which accommodated more than200 burials.57 According to this typology, the total number of niches isa characteristic but incidental feature of the classification. Whether ornot such a restrictive definition is of use to archaeologists interestedin categorizing different types of tomb monuments, it is helpful for our

56 Caldelli and Ricci, Monumentum familiae Statiliorum, 60.57 Of more than 40 “columbaria” excavated between 1700 and 1920 and published

in CIL, the only ones that fit the description are the monumentum familiae Li-viae, which housed more than 1100 burials over little more than seventy years(ca. 10–80 C.E.?); the monument of the Statilii, with three rooms: one compris-ing some 700 loculi, of which only 381 were used, from the Augustan or earlyTiberian era until 53 C.E., the other two first opened in 66 C.E. and in use untilend of the first century; two columbaria discovered beneath the Villa Doria Pam-philj, one, in 1838, with some 500 niches for nearly 1,000 burials (ca. 10 C.E.),the other in 1984 (the monument of C. Scribonius C.l. Menophilus), with morethan 500 burials of the Julio-Claudian era; three from the Vigna Codini betweenthe Via Appia and Via Latina: one, possibly of late Tiberian date, containing500 niches, another (late Augustan?) with some 150 niches, each comprising twocavities for urns for some 300 burials, and the third of unknown capacity butyielding some 180 inscriptions (of Tiberian date but in use, perhaps, until thesecond century); the monumentum familiae Volusiorum Saturninorum, with some200 burials (and over 190 inscriptions) (ca. 20–97 C.E., most ca. 50 C.E.); and amonument of Augustan date unearthed outside the porta Praenestina in thesame region as the monument of the familia of the Statilii, with 118 niches fordouble burials: cf. Caldelli and Ricci, Monumentum familiae Statiliorum, 60–64,with further references.


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purposes in shifting the focus from an architectural form and an arbi-trary number to a social use, which usefully highlights the area inwhich the new funerary facilities (an outgrowth, precisely, of the fam-ilial monuments favored by the more prominent families of the lateRepublic) marked a change in the organization of burial at Rome: forthe first time, it seems, collective tombs housed together, on the onehand, slaves and freedmen of particular households apart from theirfreeborn owners and patrons and, on the other, miscellaneous groupsof persons (sometimes in familial groupings, but not exclusively so) notrelated to each other by blood or ownership.

The separation of form and function is not so clear in current dis-cussions of subterranean cemeteries and graves. As noted above, theprimary criteria used to identify proper “catacombs” are purely for-mal: independent entrances from ground level, intensive use of avail-able space for inhumation burials, and “open” design intended toallow expansion through the extension of existing galleries or the cre-ation of new ones, normally according to a regular plan. In an effortfurther to distinguish purpose-built communal catacombs from pri-vate underground burial complexes, Hugo Brandenburg draws a func-tional distinction between smaller hypogaea comprising up to a dozenor so clearly “mixed,” pagan and Christian burials and larger catacombsaccommodating hundreds and thousands, in which religious distinc-tions are less apparent; but he then compromises the categorization byextrapolating from it a formal rule that correlates size with religiousexclusivity.58 As it happens, and as he notes, intermediate numbers arerare, but they do exist, and where they do they tend to be problematic,since it is not always easy to tell when smaller hypogea were expandedand made more uniform haphazardly or when they were extended byoriginal design, nor indeed can we presume to know in most cases whatconsiderations may have motivated the development of private hypo-

58 Hugo Brandenburg, “Überlegungen zu Ursprung und Entstehung der Kata-komben Roms,” in Vivarium. Festschrift Theodor Klauser zum 90. Geburtstag(eds. Ernst Dassmann and Klaus Thraede; Münster: Aschendorff, 1984), 39 and44–45. The idea that pagans disdained the use of larger catacombs because theyprovided little opportunity for those of greater wealth and status to display it(45) is disproved by the abundant evidence of funerary “self-representation” incubicula already at an early date: see Fiocchi Nicolai, “Origin and Develop-ment,” 22–23 and above, n. 21.

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gea into larger funerary complexes.59 Recent analysis of the architec-tural and decorative program of the controversial Via Latina cemetery,for example, a supposedly private hypogeum complex of the thirdquarter of the fourth century that provided burial for up to 400 per-sons (and thus approaches the size of proper “catacombs”), whereindisputably “pagan” figured scenes are intermingled with Chris-tian iconography throughout a series of luxurious cubicula joinedby galleries with loculi, shows that all the spaces were designed, con-structed, and (variously) decorated according to a single homogeneousplan.60

Philippe Pergola proposes an ostensibly more clear formal distinc-tion between “closed” and “open” underground cemeteries, the formerbeing those intended to house a predetermined and fixed number ofburials, the latter those capable of expansion through existing galleriesand along the principal axes, but then complicates it by drawing a sec-ondary distinction within the “open” type between those centered onand systematized according to a monumental presentation of thefamily of the owner and those which, though not entirely unreflectiveof distinctions of status, nonetheless present a more uniform andhomogeneous aspect.61 He would have done better to stop with thecategories “open” and “closed” – a useful polarity for typologicalanalysis – or to begin with “familial” and “communal” (or perhapsbetter “collective”), concepts useful for evaluating purpose and use,than to have mixed together the two types of criteria, so that form andfunction become confused. It is clear that in Roman funerary architec-ture the two categories are indeed related, but we will not be able to

59 The dating of catacombs is fraught with difficulties and often hangs precariouslyon the stylistic dating of frescoes: see, e.g., J. G. Deckers, “Wie genau ist eine Ka-takombe zu datieren? Das Bespiel SS. Marcellino e Pietro,” in Memoriam Sanc-torum Venerantes. Miscellanea in onore di Monsignor Victor Saxer (Studi diAntichità Cristiana 48; Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cris-tiana, 1992), 217–38, and Norbert Zimmermann, Werkstattgruppen römischerKatakombenmalerei (Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum Ergänzungsband 35;Münster Westfalen: Aschendorff Verlag, 2002), who advocates a more scientificapproach through analysis by workshops and iconography together.

60 See Zimmermann, Werkstattgruppen, 61–125; cf. Johnson, “Pagan-ChristianBurial Practices,” 56–58.

61 Pergola, Le catacombe romane, 60–62. The division into classes (60) inevitablyallows for a variety of indeterminate intermediate types.


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recognize either for what it is if we fail to distinguish each clearly fromthe other in our initial analysis.62

Apart from this categorical confusion of design and purpose, noth-ing has clouded the picture more thoroughly than a repeated insistenceon the obvious but superficial points of formal similarity between col-umbaria and catacombs and a failure to recognize their less strikingbut more fundamental formal differences. To observe that catacombs,like columbaria, feature multiple rows of niches and were designed toaccommodate numerous burials within a minimum amount of spacesays no more than that both offered an economical response to the(demographically predictable and socially inevitable) ever-increasingdemand for burial space in the neighborhood of Rome. But to claimthat “[columbaria] were not the only solution: the catacomb works inthe same way” is, I think, to misrepresent their essential differences inorientation.63 The question of how these two modes of collective burialchanneled that demand must now be addressed.

Columbaria: Members Only

With columbaria, the architectural form, though capable of housinglarge numbers of burials, remains closed (if we may borrow Pergola’sformulation for the classification of catacombs). In this respect thelargest of the collective monuments is essentially no different from thesmallest familial tombs restricting entry to named family membersand, in the formulaic phrase, “freedmen and freedwomen and their de-scendants.” The possibilities for membership within the communityare finite, even if, in principle, they extend (with the inclusion of allpossible descendants) indefinitely into the future. The largest of thecolumbaria, ironically – those devoted to the slave and freed staff of thegreat houses of Rome – provide the clearest indications of the limi-tations of the form, and the very largest of them, that of the householdof Livia, offers the most unequivocal evidence of all (see Fig. 6.1,

62 In fact, one can point to individual examples of the “closed” type of hypogeumwhich present a largely uniform appearance and do not privilege any one burialspace or chamber – which is simply to say that Roman hypogea are equally sus-ceptible to formal and functional analysis: see, e.g., Feraudi-Gruénais, Inschriftenund ‘Selbstdarstellung’, for examples from the Vatican necropolis: 29–30 (mau-soleum F), 33–34 (Tomb of the Octavii), 39–41 (Tomb XXX).

63 Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb,” 39.

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p. 197).64 Among some 140 surviving epitaphs from the first room ofthe monument, which was in use from the end of the Augustan eradown to the time of Claudius, more than 50 were inscribed more thanonce and another 40 record two independent names in the nomi-native.65 The implication is that individual ollae were used for morethan one burial and, despite a no doubt already-existing legal prohib-ition against defacing or erasing epitaphs, were being reused – and thiswithin the space of a few decades. Evidently the nearly 1,100 spaces setaside for Livia’s staff and their dependents were insufficient to housethe remains of those eligible for burial in the monument, and the desireto be included among that group apparently outweighed fear of theconsequences of violating the burial of another.66 Nothing could illus-trate more clearly the comparative pull on funerary behavior of thecompeting social forces of solidarity with fellow members of a corpor-ate group (the staff of Livia) and social ambition for individual repre-sentation within a privileged community.

At the same time, the monument, which was evidently administeredby a collegium of Livia’s slaves and freedmen, housed burials also ofthe servants of Livia’s husband, son, daughter-in-law Antonia, andgrandchildren, as well as persons with no obvious connection to theimperial house.67 Furthermore, other of Livia’s slaves and freedmenwere buried in columbaria primarily devoted to different households(such as those of the children of Drusus or the younger Marcella) or in

64 For the monument, its discovery, and interpretation, see Helke Kammerer Grot-haus, “Camere sepolcrali de’ liberti e liberte di Livia Augusta ed altri Caesari,”MEFRA 91 (1979): 315–42; Fehl, “Archaeologists at Work.”

65 Double burials in a single olla: e.g., CIL 6.3945, 3946, 3992, 8944.66 See Caldelli and Ricci, Monumentum familiae Statiliorum, 60–61, aptly citing

Paulus, Sententiae 5.1.21.8, qui monumento inscriptos titulos eraserit … sepul-chrum violasse videtur.

67 See, e.g., CIL 6.3951 (a slave of Tiberius); 6.3959 (a freedman of Augustus);6.3971 (a slave of Nero Caesar); 4.4049 (P. Caetennius Heraclis); 6.4051 (Corne-lius Chius); 6.4057 (Fuscus, slave of a freedwoman of Antonia, the mother ofClaudius); etc. Jukka Korpela, “Die Grabinschriften des Kolumbariiums Liber-torum Liviae Augustae: eine Quellenkritische Untersuchung,” Arctos 15 (1981):53–66 analyzes onomastic aspects of the 670 names recorded on the 376 surviv-ing inscriptions from the monument: 137 are certain slaves, 184 freedmen (55);two thirds are men; of the 114 identifiable persons who erected epitaphs, only 30are women (57). No system seems to have controlled the elements of nomencla-ture used, and the names of those who erected the monuments were evidentlyless important than those of the ones commemorated. For the collegium itself,see CIL 6.4305 and below, n. 69.


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their own individual monuments.68 Though closed, membership in thegroup of those admitted to Livia’s monument was not strictly definedaccording to membership in the group for which it was intended. Per-sonal associations, marital relationships in some cases but clearly notin all, evidently determined who sought access to this limited resource;deciding who was to be included and where apparently fell to the ad-ministrators of the collegium, probably with the necessary approval ofthe aristocratic patron.69

Normally the problem of overcrowding did not arise. Three of thelargest columbaria in Rome were evidently never used to capacity, buteven in more modest familial tombs, the invitations to “freedmen andfreedwomen and their descendants” to be buried within the familymonument may never have been taken up by more than a few.70 Manyex-slaves and, a fortiori, their descendants preferred to advertise theirnames on their own monuments. Indeed, if we accept the implicationsof Lily Ross Taylor’s classic discussion of the number of urban resi-dents of the first and second centuries carrying some mixture of servileblood in their veins, most people in Rome would have had their burialassured several times over by the pervasive opportunities held out bythese largely underactivated formulae.71 Accordingly, many of thoseadvertising such magnanimity on their tombstones must have countedon the limits of their generosity not being put to the test.72 The promise

68 For slaves buried elsewhere, cf., e.g., CIL 6.4448 (monumentum Marcellae)6.6213; 6. 8727; 6.8903, with Susan Treggiari, “Jobs in the Household of Livia,”PBSR 43 n.s. 30 (1975): 48–49 and the lists on 72–77. With the familia of theStatilii, at least 39 slaves and freedmen were buried outside the household col-umbarium: Caldelli and Ricci, Monumentum familiae Statiliorum, 135–40.

69 See Kammerer Grothaus, “Camere sepolcrali,” 326, on the collegium libertorumet servorum Liviae and the collegium magnum tribunorum divae Liviae; in general,Hasegawa “Collegia domestica,” 252–56, for the administrative organization ofthe collegia domestica, and 261–65 for the role of patrons in granting permissionfor burial within the columbarium; see also below, n. 98.

70 Caldelli and Ricci, Monumentum familiae Statiliorum, 57.71 Lily Ross Taylor, “Freedmen and Freeborn in the Epitaphs of Imperial Rome,”

AJP 82 (1961): 113–32, esp. 128.72 A striking illustration of this confidence is found in an epitaph of perhaps Fla-

vian date from the section of the Via Triumphalis necropolis under the Vaticanparking lot dedicated by a husband to himself, his wife, and their descendants –and inscribed on a single stele marking (it seems) an individual burial! SeeVeikko Väänänen et al., Le iscrizioni della necropoli dell’autoparco Vaticano(Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 1973), 40–41 n. 27, with Steinby, Lanecropolis della Via Triumphalis, 57.

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to provide burial could never be considered completely idle, however,when the judgment of the pontiffs, who controlled Roman tomb law,could be expected generally to follow the written wishes of the testator,as indicated, even, by an inscribed epitaphic formula. So we find, atthe beginning of the third century, the jurist Papinian expressingthe opinion that “freedmen can neither be buried nor bury others [ina familial monument] unless they are heirs to their patron, althoughsome people have inscribed on their tomb that they have built it forthemselves and their freedmen.”73 For the patron, it was the idea ofrepresenting oneself publicly as a beneficent dominus or domina thatmade the gesture worth making, despite the potential cost. In the samefashion, for slaves and ex-slaves of the empress Livia (who were in abetter position than most to control independent financial resources ina peculium), obtaining even ephemeral recognition in a prestigiousburial location was evidently preferable to securing a more permanentmemorial elsewhere. What mattered was to be on the inside, no matterhow futile the hope for lasting commemoration.

This emphasis on the right to be included finds its counterpart in ex-clusionary expressions prohibiting one or more persons by name fromburial in a familial tomb or monument.74 More stridently, if vainly,since such privately (and posthumously) imposed penalties had nolegal force, impressively large fines were threatened against any who in-troduced alien burials into the tomb.75 With columbaria and the later

73 Dig. 11.7.6.pr. (Ulpian 25 ad ed.), liberti autem nec sepeliri nec alios inferrepotuerunt, nisi heredes extiterunt patrono, quamvis quidam inscripserint monu-mentum sibi libertisque suis fecisse. After citing Papinian, Ulpian goes on to saythat “there has very often been a ruling to this effect,” et ita Papinianus responditet saepissime idem constitutum est.

74 E.g., ILS 7602, 7660, 8283–8286, and many examples of more specific formulaeof inclusion and exclusion, often used in combination, in ILS 8259–8282. Seenow also Silvia Orlandi, “Heredes, alieni, ingrati, ceteri. Ammisione ed esclu-sioni,” in Libitina e dintorni (Libitina 3; ed. Silvio Panciera; Rome: EdizioniQuasar, 2004), 359–84. For the legal aspects, see also de Visscher, Droit des tom-beaux, 103–6.

75 On the increasingly extravagant (if idle) threats to exact monetary fines, see GianLuca Gregori, “Si quis contra legem sepulcri fecerit: violazioni e pene pecu-niare,” in Libitina e dintorni (Libitina 3; ed. Silvio Panciera; Rome: EdizioniQuasar, 2004), 391–404, esp. 402–3: fines ranged from HS 1,000 to HS 350,000during the second and early third centuries, with HS 50,000 evidently represent-ing a standard amount; beginning in the third century amounts of HS 100,000and higher became common; cf. de Visscher, Droit des tombeaux, 112–23.


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familial monuments of this sort, what mattered was to be in or out. De-fining the space physically, with a perimeter barrier (maceria) en-closing the plot and an imposing monumental structure designed toimpress those viewing it from the outside, and verbally, with a titulusdeclaring the size of the plot (pedes tot in fronte, tot in agro) and speci-fying persons and categories of persons eligible to be included withinthe monument, served to segregate the members of that circumscribedcommunity from the rest of society.76 So deeply did this impulse pen-etrate into the mentality of those who chose this form of burial that wesometimes find miniature family tombs erected within columbaria andepitaphs marking individual ollae that include the standard formulaepromising burial also libertis libertabusque posterisque eorum.77

Once inside, with the exception of a distinctive emphasis sometimes,but not always, or even normally, focused on a central burial spot, littleattention is devoted to distinguishing individuals: small uniform head-stones line the rear and side walls of familial tombs at Pompeii, andcolumbaria, as noted earlier (above, p. 196) generally exhibit uniformdecoration across rows of niches if not entire walls.78 In the colum-barium of C. Scribonius Menophilus in the Villa Doria Pamphilj, theolla identified by Menophilus’s epitaph is unobtrusively located in thesecond row from the bottom next to a door into a secondary room. Inthe monument of Livia’s household, the draftsmanship and carving ofsome of the small placards found in front of individual ollae are sopoor that it is difficult to imagine the broken and reused stones as eventemporary markers of actual graves rather than mere place holders,

76 For the practice of staking out the dimensions of tomb plots with declarativeinscriptions, see Giovannella Cresci Marrone and Margherita Tirelli, eds., “Ter-minavit sepulcrum.” I recinti funerari nelle necropoli di Altino (Rome: EdizioniQuasar, 2005), especially the article by Gian Luca Gregori, “Definizione e mis-urazione dello spazio funerario nell’epigrafia repubblicana e protoimperiale diRoma. Un’indagine campione,” 77–126.

77 For miniature family tombs, see Hanne Sigismund Nielsen, “The Physical Con-text of Roman Epitaphs and the Structure of ‘the Roman Family,’” ARID 23(1996): 41, 56, 58 n. 27; cf. also above, n. 72. For columbaria inscriptions dedi-cated libertis libertabusque posterisque eorum, see, e.g., CIL 6.5678, 7729, 8100,and especially 6823, for a plot measuring 2 × 3.5 Roman feet.

78 For the rarity of central focus in a sample of familial monuments of the first andsecond centuries, see Feraudi-Gruénais, Inschriften und ‘Selbstdarstelung,’41–42. For the Pompeian stelae (columellae), see Hope, “A Roof over the Dead,”82–84.

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but several of the ollae they identified contained ashes.79 Nor, evi-dently, was much care taken in columbaria to preserve groupings ofclose kin, perhaps of necessity. A detailed study of familial relation-ships represented in the largest of the Vigna Codini catacombs ex-cavated by Pietro Campana in 1840, with some 198 epitaphs in situand another hundred found loose inside, failed to reveal any strongevidence of nuclear families buried together but did find numerous in-stances of families being split up among individual ollae located in dif-ferent parts of the monument.80 Indeed, the grouping of ollae in pairswithin a single niche, the configuration which seems to have suggestedto the Romans the designation columbarium, although it would haveserved well for couples, is singularly ill-suited to the unified comme-moration of nuclear families. Inscriptions sometimes mention multipleollae acquired by a single person in different rows of a columbariumallotted during different rounds of a lottery or selection process, or theresale of ollae acquired on speculation by entrepreneurs.81 Consider-

79 See Caldelli and Ricci, Monumentum familiae Statiliorum, 60–61. Conversely, insome columbaria not all unmarked ollae were unused. In the first of the two col-umbaria discovered on the property of the Villa Doria Pamphilj, for example, allof the ollae contained ashes, but not all were marked with inscribed or (appar-ently) painted inscriptions. In the nearby columbarium of Scribonius Meno-philus, where both inscribed and painted inscriptions are found (the latternormally in the painted tabulae ansatae provided beneath each niche in the uni-form decorative scheme) and both occasionally bear the same name, it seemsthat the painted tituli may have identified the owners of the niches, whereas theinscribed placards recorded the epitaphs of those buried in them.

80 Nielsen, “Physical Context,” 43–44 noting that both of the (only) two certainclose-kin groupings found in the columbarium also reflected ties to patrons out-side the family: cf. CIL 6.4923, 5035, and 5074 (family of M. Valerius Futianus)and 6.5046–5047 (Veturia Helena). This columbarium was evidently built by anentrepreneur who sold spaces in it to any who wanted. For other columbariafound in the Vigna Codini constructed for professional collegia or slave house-holds, see Lucia Parri, “Iscrizioni funerarie, colombari, e liberti: il terzo ipogeodi Vigna Codini ed alcuni dei suoi epitaffi,” Atene e Roma 43 (1998): 54–60,esp. 55–57.

81 Cf. e.g., ILS 7892 (five individual ollae acquired in five consecutive rounds ofa lottery); cf. 7893. For ollae chosen extra sortem or (rarely) contiguous units,cf. ILS 7889 … sine sorte ab socis quas vellet ollae sexs datae sunt; 7900a, ollashabet continentes VI; further Maria Laetizia Caldelli, Simona Crea, and ClaudiaRicci, “Donare, emere, vendere, ius habere, possidere, concedere similia: don-azione e compravendita, proprietà, possesso, diritto sul sepolcro e diritti di se-poltura,” in Libitina e dintorni (Libitina 3; ed. Silvio Panciera; Rome: EdizioniQuasar, 2004), 311 (Ricci), noting that some of the large columbaria evidently


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ation of the bipartite columbarium slabs from Rome – those whichrecord two epitaphs side by side on a single marble tablet – although itreveals a sizeable number of associations that might reflect relation-ships of intimacy in life, equally clearly preserves a number of pairingsthat do not. The overwhelming impression is of fragmentation at an in-itial distribution of burial places within the monument and frequentredistribution of individual ollae or niches by subsequent gift or sale.In this respect, Purcell’s analysis is fully on target in characterizing thenature of such monuments as expressing “neither individuality normembership of a mass society but incorporation in a group a fewhundred or a few thousand strong.”82

But if we wish to pursue the housing analogy, we should observe thatthe most appropriate model for the columbarium is neither the apart-ment block (insula), as Hopkins would have it, nor the domus, as Pur-cell maintains, but rather the divided households with separate larariafor kin and slave familiae, such as in the House of the Vettii at Pom-peii.83 For what is truly novel about the largest of the columbaria isneither their sheer size nor even their essential presentation, which,like the familial tombs, is exclusionary and extroverted, but rather thesegregation of the slave household from the kinship group – a rupturethat shattered the fiction of the paterfamilias treating his householdslaves in loco filiorum (“as if they were his children”) and opened theway for the broader bipartite division of society that would emergemore formally a century later with the segregation of the privileged

did not allow this: already Brizio observed that none of the more than 400 in-scriptions from the columbarium of the Statilii mentions sale, donation, oracquisition. Note also Giuseppe Gatti, “Singolari iscrizioni dell’aedificiumXXXVI sociorum sulla Via Latina,” BCAR 10 (1882): 3–28, esp. 3–8; Schrumpf,Bestattung und Bestattungswesen, above n. 6.

82 Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb,” 39. The claim that the internal configuration ofcolumbaria expresses “hierarchies within the group” and that variations in thesize and décor of individual niches and ollae indicate “minute gradations ofstatus” (38), on the other hand, is difficult to sustain (no examples are cited):certain niches were indeed more lavishly decorated or more advantageously lo-cated than others, but we have no idea what criteria determined who occupiedthem. If, as several indications suggest, distribution by lottery was the norm,hierarchies of status would have been difficult to support, even if desired.

83 For household lararia as markers of separate households of servile familiaeand freeborn proprietors, see John Bodel, “Cicero’s Minerva,” forthcoming inHousehold and Family Religion in Antiquity: Contextual and Comparative Per-spectives (eds. John Bodel and Saul Olyan; Oxford: Blackwell, 2008).

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elite from the more humble free population, or, in Roman terms, withthe discrimination of honestiores and humiliores.84 At another level, themost suitable analogy to the columbarium within the sphere of do-mestic housing is the modern condominium complex, a cooperativeorganization created and designed less to provide a minimum neces-sary service than to cater to those with sufficient resources to expendon amenity and willing to forego individual preference on a smallscale in favor of more lavish accommodation and guaranteed carewithin a collectivity.

It remains to consider briefly the administration of these monu-ments. The earliest of the large columbaria were those constructed forthe household staffs of the senatorial families of Rome. In creating sep-arate tombs for a group that, by definition, had no legally recognizedkinship relations and thus no familial hierarchy to govern the distribu-tion of burial spaces within a collective monument, the aristocraticslave owners who provided (or at least allowed) these structures madepossible the creation of a new system of “tomb management” basedupon other principles than those that governed the administration offamilial monuments.85 In theory slave-owner patrons might have con-trolled admission into these structures and determined the internalarrangement of burials within them, but in practice, it seems, they exer-cised their prerogative only seldom and with discretion. Nor, it seems,did the informal (but nonetheless real) families of slave partners (con-tubernales) and their offspring exert their familial identity sufficientlyto maintain kinship groupings within the collective spaces. Instead, a

84 For the concept of honestiores and humiliores and its implications for the divi-sion of Roman society, see Peter Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in theRoman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 221–33.

85 For slaves as legally kinless, see, e.g., Dig. 38.8.1–2 (Ulpian) and 38.10.10.5(Paul) with William Warwick Buckland, The Roman Law of Slavery (Cam-bridge: The University Press, 1908), 76–79. In addition to the few surviving col-umbaria devoted to the households of senatorial families (above, n. 57),inscriptions dedicated “to the freedmen and familia” of various prominent per-sons (two from Aquileia, the rest from Rome) attest another sixteen examples ofburial places or tombs reserved for particular households: cf. ILS 7848–7860,7862; cf. also ILS 7861 (C.E. 136). We do not know what sort of monuments theinscriptions originally adorned; some of the plots were fairly small: cf. e.g., ILS7850 (15 × 16 Roman feet), 7857 (10.5 × 12 feet), 7862 (12 × 24 feet); but otherswere clearly large enough to have accommodated large columbaria of thesort that occasionally survive: e.g., ILS 7585 (13 × 45 Roman feet), 7854 (35 × 35feet), 7860 (32 × 32 feet, at Aquileia).


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loose corporate structure seems generally to have furnished the organ-izing principle of tomb administration. The flexibility of this model ofself-government lent itself readily to other groups who wished to con-solidate resources in the interest of providing more lavish communalfacilities for the regular commemorative rituals that Roman funerarycustom required than individual members could finance independ-ently, whether the groups were held together by a common interest,such as a shared religion or occupation, or were defined merely by amutual desire to share in the services and amenities that collectivemembership offered.

An inscription set up in 16 C.E. by two freedmen administrators of afamilial columbarium beside the Via Labicana outside Rome illustrateswell the sorts of communal amenity that membership in a columbariummight provide, as well as the subtle blend of autonomous corporateself-government and collective dependence upon a patron that themanagement of such properties seems often to have entailed.

Titus Cocceius Gaa and Titus Cocceius Patiens, quaestors for the third time (ofthe domestic funerary collegium), according to the will of the decurions (of thecollegium) set up the square dining table in the pavilion, the sideboard and base,the sundial, the fountain basin with supports, the marble well, the stucco-workabove the wall of the middle path with the tiled roof, the little travertine columnbeneath the sundial, the projecting roof in front of the portico, the scales andweights. And, thanks to the kindness and generosity of their patron Titus, theyundertook the clearing of a place behind the further perimeter wall and thetransferring of the crematories from the furthest fence to there and the construc-tion of a path there and a doorway. And the same men with public money dec-orated those places which their patron Titus had granted to his decurions withthe seeds of vines and fruits and flowers and all sorts of greenery, in the consul-ship of Sisenna Taurus and L. Scribonius Libo.

The inscription goes on in hexameters to urge readers to recognize inthe expense incurred the just observance of piety and, for peace ofmind, to follow the example of those who created and tended the fu-nerary garden during their lifetimes, so as to be remembered and caredfor by others after their deaths.86 The message it conveys, indirectly but

86 CIL 6.10237 = ILS 7870; for the poem, CLE 371: T. T. Coccei Gaa et Patiensquaest(ores) III mensam quadratam in trichil(a), abacum cum basi, horologium,labrum cum fulmentis, marmor putiale, crustas supra parietem itineris medi cum te-gulis, columellam sub horologio Tiburtina(m?) 7 (sic) protectum ante porticum,trutinam et pondera d(e) d(ecurionum) s(ententia) posuerunt; et locum postmaceriam ulteriorem emendum ustrinasque de consaepto ultimo in eum locum trai-

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no less clearly, is one of exclusivity: the garden appurtenances cata-logued in detail, the reference to worthy expenditure (impensae cau-sam … et iustam … curam), and the appeal to successors to reciprocatethe commemorative care bestowed, are designed not only to encourageimitation among future members of the society but to call attention tothe privileges from which others were excluded.

Catacombs: World without End?

Catacombs, by contrast, were open, ill-defined spaces, infinitely ex-pandable (or at least creating the impression of being so) and offeringlittle or no external public aspect. Upon entering a columbarium, onerecognized the traditional boundaries of place in the Roman world –border stones, a circuit fence or wall marking the perimeter of the plot,the four walls of an enclosed rectilinear space. To be sure, catacombstoo, or rather their central areas, were often marked out at the surfaceby perimeter walls and boundary stones and later, after the time ofConstantine, by large funerary basilicas that provided monumentalfocus on the tombs of martyrs and formed the locus of concentratedburials both above and below ground.87 At certain entrances some hadoutposts for caretakers, who monitored and perhaps restricted visits tothe subterranean galleries. But most eventually could be entered fromany of several different stairwells, many of which seem to have allowedfree access, and the circumscribed surface burials sub divo gave little

ciendas et iter ad eum locum ianuamque beneficio et liberalitate T. patroni faciendacuraverunt; idemque vitium pomorumq(ue) et florum viridiumque omnium generumseminibus ea loca quae T. p(atronus) decurionibus suis adtribuerat ex pecunia pub-lica adornaverunt, Sisenna Tauro L. Scribonio Libone co(n)s(ulibus). See furtherBodel “Roman Tomb Gardens,” forthcoming in Gardens of the Roman Empire(ed. Wilhelmina Jashemski; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

87 For an overview, see Umberto M. Fasola and Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, “Lenecropoli durante la formazione della città cristiana,” in Actes du XIe CongrèsInternational d’Archeologie Chrétienne. Volume II. La Topographie Chrétiennedes Grandes Capitales (Rome: École française de Rome, 1989), 1170–79. For ear-lier surface cemeteries overyling the site of catacombs, see also Osiek, below,248–50. For funerary basilicas, which often took the shape of a racecourse, seeVincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, “La nuova basilica circiforme della Via Ardeatina,”RendPontAcc 68 (1995–1996) [1999]: 69–233, esp., on burials, 145–75 (by MariaPaola Del Moro), with further bibliography.


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hint of the extensive galleries and networked cubicula that openedout below.88

Once inside, moreover, the visitor to a Roman catacomb experienceda sensation of having entered an alien, somewhat disorienting world, inwhich each tunnel and gallery connected with other tunnels or gal-leries, so that there was no sense of center and periphery and no cleardemarcation of finite limits. In some early catacombs, such as the firstfloor of the catacombs of Priscilla, datable to the first decades of thethird century, the galleries meandered unpredictably along the moreeasily excavated seams of the tufa beds, so that anyone attemptingto follow an orderly route would easily loose a sense of direction(Fig. 6.4).89 In others, such as the catacombs of Callistus in their ear-liest phase (around 200 C.E.), the main galleries of a regular plan laidout in correspondence with a clearly demarcated surface plot, origi-nally dug only as far as the boundaries of the area, were designedto allow subsequent extension underground beyond the confines of thesurface cemetery (Fig. 6.5).90 Even where systematic planning pro-duced a regular grid of networked tunnels, as in a second, lower levelof the catacombs of Priscilla dug out beneath the first in a character-istic “fishbone” pattern several decades later, near the beginning ofthe fourth century, one gets the impression of construction by module,

88 At Rome caretakers’ quarters have been identified securely only at the cata-combs of Praetextatus: see Antonio Ferrua, “Un vestibolo della catacomba diPrestestato,” RACrist 40 (1964): 146–65. Other possible examples may haveexisted at the so-called “Villa piccola” of S. Sebastiano and perhaps at the upperlevel of the entrance to the hypogeum of the Flavii at the catacombs of Domitilla(see Fasola and Fiocchi Nicolai, “Le necropolis,” 1179), but most stairwell en-trances have left no evidence of being guarded.

89 See Francesco Tolotti, Il Cimitero di Priscilla: Studio di topografia e architettura(Vatican City: Società amici delle catacombe presso Pontificio Istituto di Arch-eologia Cristiana, 1970), 63–106, 171–89.

90 For the large surface plot (100 × 250 Roman feet, ca. 30 × 75 meters,) circum-scribed by a fence and developed already as a burial area during the first andsecond centuries, see Spera, Paesaggio suburbano, 109–23. For the main sub-terranean galleries of the so-called “Area I” (Regio A), which were entered byseparate staircases at the corners of the surface plot, and the transverse ortho-gonal tunnels planned and subsequenlty dug between them, see Paul Styger,“L’origine del cimitero di S. Callisto sull’Appia,” RendPontAcc 4 (1925–1926):112–19; Brandenburg, “Ursprung und Entstehung,” 91–92; and Donatella Nuzzo,Tipologia sepolcrale delle catacombe romane: i cimiteri ipogei delle vie Ostiense,Ardeatina, e Appia (British Archaeological Reports, International Series 905)(Oxford: Archeopress, 2000), 90–95.


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222 John Bodel

as if additional units could be added on at will – as indeed they were,according to plan (Fig. 6.6).91 In each of these cases the lack of tradi-tional topographical points of reference and a plan designed from thestart to accommodate expansion created a sense of openness andinclusiveness, in the sense that membership in the collectivity of thosesharing the cemetery was never finite but always potentially available.At the same time, the subterranean setting provided an ambience notonly appropriate to the world of dead, who according to a deep-seatedtradition of Greco-Roman culture were to be returned at death tomother earth, but conducive to the sort of oblique expression of anideal social order divorced from the compromising realities of life thatfunerary architecture in antiquity normally aimed to represent.92 Re-moved from the natural light and freed from the contours of the sur-face topography, the interior space of the catacombs was a world of itsown, without normal parameters. Accordingly, the iconography of thescenes from daily life frequently found on tombstones and in painted

91 For the date, see Tolotti, Cimitero di Priscilla, 322–40.92 For the concept of mother earth as the proper recipient of the dead in Roman

culture, cf., e.g., Cicero, Leg. 2.56 with Xenophon, Cyr. 8.7.25; CIL 12.1932 =CLE 1476; CIL 6.15493 = CLE 1129; cf. Livy 1.56.10–12.

6.5. Plan of the so-called “Area I”(Regio A) of the catacombs of Callistusbeside the Via Appia as developedby the middle of the third century,after Styger, “Cimitero di S. Callisto,”103 fig. 7.


6.6. Plan of the lower level of the catacombs of Priscilla, afterFiocchi Nicolai, “Origin and Development,” 25 figure 20.

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frescoes decorating the walls, although it superficially resembles thenaturalistic depictions of occupations and leisure activities familiarfrom traditional Roman funerary art, seems always to have been to acertain extent symbolic and over time grew more detached from realityand increasingly ideological and abstract.93

Within the catacombs different regions of the underground cem-eteries were characterized by different configurations of space: in ad-dition to the networked galleries uniformly lined with loculi, certainareas were topographically distinguished by individual rooms and cu-bicula carved out of the tufa and opening at irregular intervals off ofthe tunnels or more systematically arranged in symmetrical groupings.Within the rooms were not only loculi but graves of different forms –arcuated niches for individual burials (arcosolia); niche tombs in-tended to accommodate multiple burials in the floors and walls;“window” tombs, which gave access to small groups of loculi via rec-tangular “windows” in the walls of the galleries; “a mensa” tombs, inwhich trench graves running parallel to the walls were sunk into thefloors of niches and covered with slabs; “a cappuccina” tombs, simpletrench graves covered by gabled roof tiles; and so on.94 Contrary tothe once popular view that the uniform simplicity of catacomb burialsreflected and promoted an egalitarian ideology within the early Chris-tian community, the variety of architectural spaces and the multiplic-ity of grave types, even in the early phases of development of some ofthe first large catacombs, suggest rather a heterogeneous mixture ofpersons of different wealth and status with no distinctively unifyingbeliefs about the representation of privilege in burial. In the earliestphases of development of the catacombs of Praetextatus, Domitilla,and Callistus, for example, one can recognize two distinct modes ofuse, which correspond to topographically distinct types of regionswithin the cemeteries: in certain sections one finds series of “prefabri-cated” graves, with uniform columns and rows of loculi systematicallycarved out for undifferentiated use; other zones, marked by less inten-sive exploitation, are characterized by individual cubicula and graves

93 See Fabrizio Bisconti, Mestieri nelle catacombe Romane: Appunti sul declinodell’iconografia del reale nei cimiteri cristiani di Roma (Vatican City: PontificiaCommissione di Archeologia Sacra, 2000).

94 See Nuzzo, Tipologia sepolcrale, 199–204, for topographically distinct zoneswithin the catacombs, and 163–76 for a typology of the graves found withinthem.

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of different types apparently made to order and exhibiting greatereclecticism and elaboration in their decoration.95 The first correspondin certain respects (uniformity, systematization, economy of space) tothe prefabricated niches for ash urns, many with built-in ollae, found inthe columbaria, where doctrinal unanimity and religious separatismhave never been suspected; the latter, in many others, recall the free-standing hereditary and familial tombs of the visible suburban land-scape. The novelty in the catacombs is that the two forms of burial areintegrated with each other and housed within the same undefinedspace: not only were the galleries lined with loculi able to be extended,but the cubicula set aside for more prestigious burials, even if theyresembled the traditional familial tombs of the surface topography,opened intermittently off of spaces that were themselves the site ofburials and were evidently accessible to any who passed them.

We have few intact catacombs like the monument of the householdof Livia or the Vigna Codini columbarium excavated by Campana,with hundreds of grave markers preserved in place, and even where wedo, the inscriptions provide little hope of identifying familial group-ings among the undifferentiated loculi or, indeed, in the era beforeConstantine, of the religious affiliation of those buried within them.That is partly because the catacombs have been stripped of most oftheir original grave goods and portable appointments, but also becausemost loculi were not marked with epitaphs, and the epitaphs that arefound tend to identify a single individual with a single name, normallya cognomen, the least distinctive element of the nomenclature then inuse; very few provide any hint of religious belief.96 As with the colum-

95 Nuzzo, Tipologia sepolcrale, 203. The development of specific regions devoted toever more elaborate “architectural” cubicula intensified during the reign of Con-stantine and the pontifcates of Julius (337–352 C.E.) and Laberius (352–366C.E.), when élite members of Roman society (notably senators: ICUR 5.14016,14132, 14155, 14445) began to install expensively carved marble sarcophagiwithin their familial cubicula: see Fiocchi Nicolai, “Origin and Development,”37–43.

96 The most serious plundering of the catacombs, by specialists known as corpis-antari during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was systematic and wasvirtually sanctioned by the Catholic ecclesiastical leaders: see Pasquale Testini,Le catacombe e gli antichi cimiteri cristiani in Roma (Bologna: Licinio Cappelli,1966), 21–26. For early catacomb epigraphy, see Carlo Carletti, “Nascita e svi-luppo del formulario epigraphico cristiano: Prassi e ideologia,” in InscriptionesSanctae Sedis 2. Le iscrizioni dei cristiani in Vaticano (ed. Ivan Di Stefano Man-zella; Vatican City: Monumenti, Musei, e Gallerie Pontificie, 1997), 145–46: in


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baria, little effort seems to have been made in the undifferentiatedareas to accommodate family units in groups. Here it is not the epi-graphy that points to this conclusion but the architecture, in the dis-tribution of the loculi of varying size throughout the galleries, wherenarrow columns of small niches for infant or child burials intermit-tently interrupt the regular series of columns and layers of adult-sizedloculi – all in the interest of maximizing the use of burial space(Fig. 6.7).97 With such schematically imposed imbalances in theconfiguration of niches, few families will have been able to bury youngchildren next to, or even near, their parents in their own spaces. As inthe columbaria, the regimentation of niches in rows imparted uniform-ity, but, unlike in the columbaria, the openness of the architecturalform suggested the possibility of infinite expansion and growth.

the catacombs of Priscilla, which preserves the most coherent and complete col-lection of catacomb inscriptions before Constantine and where some 1500 loculiwere in use before the middle of the third century (see below, pp. 238–39), de Rossifound only 303 epitaphs in place: 206 Latin, 93 Greek, 4 anepigraphic. At thecatacombs of of Saints Marcellinus and Peter beside the Via Labicana, the lar-gest of the pre-Constantinian era, fewer than 10 percent of the (ultimately)22,500 burial spaces seem to have had inscriptions: Jean Guyon, “Dal praediumimperiale al santuario dei martiri. Il territorio ‘ad duas lauros,’” in Società ro-mana e impero tardoantico II. Roma. Politica, economia, paesaggio urbano (ed.Andrea Giardina; Rome: Laterza, 1986), 479 n. 63. The Latin single-name sys-tem became common among all Romans after Caracalla’s extension of Romancitizienship to all the free: see Iiro Kajanto, “The Emergence of the Late SingleName System,” in L’onomastique latine. Paris 13–15 octobre 1975 (ed. NoëlDuval; Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1977), 421–28. Inthe catacombs of Priscilla in the period before Constantine, 83 percent of theepitaphs provide no hint of religious orientation; of the some 100 epitaphs pre-served in the so-called “Area A” of the catacombs of Callistus, 75 present a singlename and 76 give no indication of religious belief; similar figures obtain for theearliest sections of the catacombs of Praetextatus and Domitilla: see Carletti,“Formulario epigraphico cristiano.”

97 Cf., e.g., rooms 56, 57, 58, and 64 in region Y of the catacombs of Saints Mar-cellinus and Peter (ca. 295–320 C.E.), where the architectural innovation was ac-companied by the development of a new decorative design similar to that foundin the columbarium of C. Scribonius Menophilus (above, Fig. 6.2), in whicha ribbon of floral and geometric motifs uniformly divides the rows of loculi:see Zimmermann, Werkstattgruppen, 188, 197, 233–34 and pls. XXX–XXXI.Some children were no doubt placed in individual loculi with their parents: seebelow n. 119, on bisoma and trisoma.

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Collegia: A Flexible Tool

The grease that oiled the funerary machine throughout the first threecenturies of the common era and enabled the major shifting of gears incollective burial from columbaria to catacombs was the collegium.Once the sheer size of elite familiae outgrew the capacity of traditionalfunerary architecture to reconcile the principles of providing for allmembers of the household and suitably distinguishing the proprietorand his close kin, some other mechanism than familial hierarchy,which began with the paterfamilias and was directionless without hisauthoritative presence at the top of the pyramid, was needed to con-trol and regulate the distribution of burial space. As noted above(pp. 217–18), a loose corporate structure emerged in the earliest house-hold columbaria, occasionally beside acknowledgment of the permissionof an aristocatic patron, to control access to the monument and thedistribution of burial places within it, as can be seen from references ininscriptions to decuriones, curatores, magistri, quaestores, and, occa-sionaly, to a collegium itself.98 Even where a formally incorporated col-legium did not exist, however, as must have been the case with thoseburial associations comprised entirely of slaves, the administrative ap-paratus of the professional collegia that first surfaced formally during

98 See Hasegawa, “Collegia Domestica,” 252–56, 262–63, with references; cf.Waltzing, Étude historique, 1:380–83. For “permission” of a patron, the monu-ment of the Volusii provides the most abundant evidence: cf. CIL 6.7368, 7375,7380, 22811; for reference to a collegium, cf. CIL 6.6215, 6216, 6218, 6219 (col-umbarium of the Statilii), 6.7282 (columbarium of the Volusii).


6.7. Cross-section showing the distribution of long (adult-sized) and short (childor infant) loculi in gallery D of the so-called “Area I” (Regio A) of the catacombs ofCallistus (see above, Fig. 6.5), after Styger, “Cimitero di S. Callisto,” 118 fig. 17.

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the Ciceronian age provided a model for autonomous self-regulationthat filled a gap left by the relinquishing of control by a paterfamilias.99

Collegia thus filled an administrative need and, once implicated in fu-nerary responsibilities, quickly evolved into administrative organismscapable, owing to the virtually ubiquitous human desire to secure arespectable burial, of infiltrating numerous walks of Roman life. Thisis the main reason why the funerary responsibilities of the collegiawere misunderstood for so long as being the distinctive purpose of oneparticular type: when one looks for a common denominator that unifiesthe various disparate organizations grouped together under thegeneral rubric of voluntary associations, provision for burial of themembers is often the most conspicuous feature and, when furthergrounds for characterizing a particular association more precisely arenot apparent, that function can seem to be a defining characteristic. Thevexed question of the date and scope of a so-called senatus consultum decollegiis tenuiorum, a measure of the Augustan or Julio-Claudian periodrelaxing the restrictions imposed by a Caesarian lex Iulia de collegiis(which applied only to Roman citizens) by permitting voluntary associ-ations of humbler persons that served the public interest (propter utili-tatem publicam) and intending specifically, it seems, under that rubric toallow associations that ensured the burial of their members, need notconcern us here. It is clear that the proper burial of dead members of thecommunity (whether or not Roman citizens) was regarded by the juristsas a public good; that voluntary associations of various sorts flourishedduring the empire; and that providing funerals for their members,whether or not their raison d’être, was one of the principal functionsthey served.100 Securing a proper burial – a goal common to humanity

99 Waltzing, Étude historique, 1:42–56 (followed by many) described as private col-legia avant la lettre a number of types of voluntary associations well attestedalready during the Republic, such as religious cells (of Bacchus, e.g.), politicalfactions (called sodalitates, sodalicia or factiones – never collegia: 49), and socialclubs (see above, n. 27). By these standards professional collegia defined by par-ticular trades (cf. Dig. 50.6.5.12) had existed since the regal period, when, ac-cording to legend, Numa divided the people into groups on the basis of theiroccupations: cf. Plut. Numa 17.1–2 with Waltzing, Étude historique, 1:61–69.

100 For the (meager) legal evidence for the senatorial decree, see Dig. 47.22.1 (Mar-cianus). For the (copious) modern discussion, see recently Wendy Cotter, “TheCollegia and Roman Law: State Restrictions on Voluntary Associations,” in Vol-untary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World (eds. John S. Kloppenborg andStephen G. Wilson; New York and London: Routledge, 1996), 74–89; Luuk deLigt, “Governmental Attitudes towards Markets and Collegia,” in Mercati per-

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and socially beyond reproach (and thus effectively immune to interfer-ence from the imperial authority) – enabled the collegium to adapt andsurvive, even after the official conversion of the empire to Christianityeliminated or subverted other Roman social institutions of much longerstanding.101 The funerary role of the collegium, ironically, was bornto meet one social need – the proper burial of groups too large ortoo amorphous and heterogeneous to be accommodated directly by thetraditional familial and patronal mechanisms of support – but grew upto address another, the desire for self-defining communities to expresssolidarity and corporate unity within a recognized and acceptable (if al-ways to a certain extent controversial) institutional framework.102

The flexibility of the form has also enabled scholars to shape theirconception of the purpose and nature of the institution to suit theirown predilections and circumstances. Three of the greatest, whosepioneering studies during the nineteenth century have formed the basis(sometimes unquestioned) of most modern discussions, poured intothe empty container of the collegium very different mixtures of the so-cial and political thought that percolated through their times. ForMommsen collegia were secular organizations devoid of religiousorientation that served mainly social funtions. For de Rossi they fur-nished the mechanism by which the early Christian community organ-ized itself and exerted its property rights over communal cemeteries.For Waltzing they were beneficial labor organizations, the prototypesof the Christian Democratic professional associations that formed thebackbone of a well-run imperial society.103 For our purposes it is onlyde Rossi’s thesis that requires attention.

manenti e mercati periodici nel mondo romano (ed. Elio Lo Cascio; Bari: Edipug-lia, 2000), 242–52; id. “D. 47,22,1,pr.-1 and the Formation of Semi-Public Col-legia,” Latomus 60 (2001): 345–58. For the basic principle that the burial ofcorpses was in the public interest, see Dig. 11.7.43.2a (Papinian) and 11.7.12.3(Ulpian), with Bodel, Graveyards and Groves, 33–34.

101 See the remarks of Carolyn Osiek, below p. 269, on the eventual usurpation ofthe private patronage of collegia by Christian bishops during the fourth andfifth centuries.

102 See Francesco Maria De Robertis, “Causa funeris – causa religionis: le commu-nità cristiane tra normativa statale e messaggio evangelico (a proposito di D.47,22,1),” SDHI 54 (1988): 239–49.

103 For the ideological currents of late-nineteenth-century European social thoughtthat informed the divergent theories of Mommsen, de Rossi, Waltzing, andlesser scholars writing on the subject of funerary collegia during the sameperiod, see the interesting discussion of Perry, The Roman Collegia, 23–88.


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According to de Rossi, collegia provided not only a protected andformally recognized medium for Christians to congregate legally butalso a legitimate means for them to own communal property, particu-larly burial grounds, corporately.104 As Carolyn Osiek observes, how-ever (below, p. 266), there is a significant difference between regardingearly Christian congregations as adapting the administrative appa-ratus of communal voluntary associations to ensure the burial of theirmembers, as they surely did, and seeing “the Church” as a formallyconstituted legal collegium which in that capacity corporately ownedcollective cemeteries reserved for the burial of Christians. In fact, as iswell known, Roman law did not recognize corporate ownership ofproperty but regarded private communal funds, real estate, and com-modities as belonging collectively but individually to the persons whocame together for the purpose of owning them. Thus, in the case ofcollegia, a person illegally enrolled in two associations and thereforerequired to withdraw from one of them would receive from the col-legium he left the share of the common fund (ratio communis) due him,and those who belonged to collegia judged illegal and therefore dis-solved were permitted to divide among themselves the common funds(pecunias communes) of the association upon its dissolution.105 Theanalogy sometimes drawn by those who argue that corporate owner-ship of property (notably cemeteries) by communities of Christianswas recognized in practice even before Constantine in 321 C.E. for-mally established Christian churches as juridical entities with propertyrights between collegia and collective entities such as cities and col-onies fails to recognize the difference between communal property ofthis sort, which belonged collectively to the several individual owners,and public property owned by public bodies such as cities and colo-

104 In a letter of 19 June 1882 to his friend Louis Duchesne, Director of the Écolefrançaise de Rome, de Rossi referred explicitly to “le droit du corpus christiano-rum, come possesseur de cimetières”: see Patrick Saint-Roch, ed. Correspond-ance de Giovanni Battitsta de Rossi et Louis Duchesne, 1873–1894 (Rome: ÉcoleFrançaise de Rome, 1995), 221 (letter 174) with the analysis of Perry, TheRoman Collegia, 49–58.

105 Dig. 47.22.1.2 (Marcianus), Non licet autem amplius quam unum collegium lici-tum habere … et si quis in duobus fuerit, rescriptum est eligere eum oportere, inquo magis essse velit, accepturum ex eo collegio a quo recedit id quod ei competitex ratione quae communis fuit. Dig. 47.22.3. pr (Marcianus), Collegia si qua fuer-int illicita … disolvuntur: sed permittitur eis, cum dissolvuntur, pecunias communessi quas habent dividere pecuniamque inter se partiri.

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nies, which belonged to no one individual (res nullius) but was set asidefor the common use of all (res publica).106

A second objection concerns the common assimilation by advocatesof de Rossi’s view of the tenuiores identified in the senatus consultumwith the Christian “poor” (egeni ), whose proper burial the ApostolicTradition and Tertullian claim was the general responsibility of thecommunity.107 The supposed equivalency of the two categories rests ona misunderstanding of the Latin terms. Egenus, in classical and ecclesi-astical Latin, means “needy,” “indigent,” “destitute”; as a substantive,it is vox propria for “pauper,” one without means. The adjective tenuis,by contrast, when applied to persons, particularly in legal contexts,refers primarily to social standing rather than to wealth; as used sub-stantively by jurists in its comparative form it acquires almost thestatus of a technical term and in the plural defines a category equiva-lent to that of the humiliores; specificallly it describes those who donot belong to one of the legally recognized higher ordines (senators,knights, and in some contexts municipal magistrates), many of whomcertainly possessed sufficient financial means to pay for their ownburials and those of their families.108 It is evident that those whom theChristian writers refer to as “the poor” in such contexts – Christianpoor, it may be noted: there is no hint that Christians shared thebroader Roman conception of a public interest in the burial of all whodied in Roman territory – were indeed tenuiores, but not all tenuioreswere poor, let alone indigent. Indeed, those who belonged to collegiatended to be more prosperous than the average urban and municipalresident and regularly received portions of higher value than common

106 For the legal concept of public property, especialy real estate, cf. e.g., Dig.43.7–9, especially 43.7.1 (Pomponius), 43.8.2.3, and 43.8.2.5 (Ulpian). For theanalogy, see, e.g., de Visscher, Droit des tombeaux, 265–71, cited by Osiek,below, p. 264 n. 44.

107 See above, n. 54, especially Tert. Apol. 38–39.108 Egenus: cf., e.g., Plaut. Capt. 2.3.46; Verg. Aen. 6.91; Vulg. Deut. 15.11, Psa.

34.10. For tenuis, as applied to a segment of society, see, e.g., Cicero, Leg.3.10.24, Fin. 2.20.66, Mur. 70, etc. with Guy Achard, Pratique rhétorique etidéologie politique dans les discours “optimates” de Cicéron (MnemosyneSupplement 68; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981), 376; Livy 2.3.2. For legal usage, cf.also Dig. 38.28.2, 48.19.28.2, where the term is synonymous with humiliores (seeabove, n. 84); 50.6.6.12, where the category is explicity contrasted with that ofthose capable of undertaking the financial obligations of municipal office(munera civitatium) (Callistratus); note also Garnsey, Social Status, 222–23.


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members of society in the hierarchically scaled distributions of publicand private largesse.109

Collegia were indeed important in the history of the early Christiancommunity at Rome, but not in the way that de Rossi imagined.Rather than forming the administrative apparatus by which a unifiedChristian church exercised its legitimate property rights, they provideda flexible model for urban Christians to organize themselves in groups(sometimes, but by no mean always, congregations) to express a com-mon interest in collective burial. In this they differed in particulars butnot in kind from other collegia that found convenience and solidarityin uniting for a common purpose. So, for example, even after churchesbecame recognized juridical entities capable of owning (and thus ofcontrolling) collective cemeteries, we find particular groups of Chris-tians, such as workmen involved in the public distribution of grain(mensores frumentarii), for whom Christianity may or may not havebeen an important element of identity, organizing themselves into col-legia (in this case a professional association) and providing separateand independent burial accommodation for their members – withinthe large collective catacombs.110 Behind the collegia stand individualproprietors of funerary properties – purpose-built columbaria andcatacombs – private patrons in some cases but also entrepreneurs anddevelopers. Enterprising businessmen in the death trade, it seems, in-spired the major developments in Roman burial architecture over thefirst three centuries of empire. They operated, often, behind the scenes,but their role in the process was fundamental. Investigating their in-volvement in the funerary industry, however, is beyond the scope ofthis essay.

109 See, e.g., Patterson, “Patronage, Collegia, and Burial,” 21; id. “The Collegia andthe Transformation of the Towns of Italy,” in L’Italie d’Auguste à Dioclétien(Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1994), 234; Van Nijf, Civic World, 18–23.

110 For the distinctively decorated cubiculum established by a collegium of mensoresfrumentarii around the middle of the fourth century in a region of specially de-signed architectural cubicula within the catacombs of Domitilla, see PhillipePergola, “Mensores frumentarii christiani et annone à la fin de l’antiquité (relec-ture d’un cycle de peintures),” RACrist 66 (1990): 167–84.

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Conclusion

There is little evidence to suggest that catacombs were invented byChristians or were originally exploited by Christians to serve their pe-culiar socio-religious ends. The form grew naturally out of develop-ments in the design, and probably the economics, of funerary spaceintroduced with the columbarium during the last decades B.C.E. andseems to have been inspired mainly by the irresistible press of a popu-lation that continued growing – and dying – beyond the capacity of thesuburban landscape to house the bodies. An independently inspired(and, for the thesis advanced here, irrelevant) change in preferredmethod of disposal from cremation to inhumation beginning in thelatter first century exacerbated but did not itself create a demand thathad by then been growing for nearly 200 years, when the introductionof columbaria first signaled a problem. Once discovered, however, andput into use by the mixed population of Rome, the catacomb formquickly recommended itself to the Christian community for its opendesign and otherworldly ambience, which made possible a radical re-formulation of the theological order as expressed through the relation-ship between the divinity and the dead.111

The model of the underground cemetery was moreover well suited toenabling the early Christian community to express its conception of anideal society through its burial customs, in the same oblique butculturally specific way that earlier Romans had expressed theirs. Byhonoring their dead communally as brothers and sisters in Christ,Christians expanded their “family” to a size that soon dwarfed eventhe largest of the imperial households.112 The catacombs enabled themto maintain the familial model of traditional Roman funerary com-memoration without incurring the risk of running out of space, as eventhe familia of the empress Livia had done. In that subterranean worldwithout horizons and poles, new centers of gravity naturally formedaround those with the greatest weight in the new world order, which,increasingly, meant those most closely connected with the church andits origins. If the archaeological dating of the early development of thecatacombs is correct, however, the cult of relics and the competitive

111 The analysis of this fundamental change by Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints:Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1981) is too well known to require further explication.

112 See the concise but incisive remarks of Harries, “Death and the Dead,” 60–61.


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desire among Christians for burial near their saints (tumulatio ad sanc-tos) merely intensified but did not cause the expansion of the subter-ranean complexes of linked hypogea into large collective cemeteries,which was already well advanced by the middle of the third century.Rather it provided a focus to the accumulation of graves near the new“holy” centers, which often were located, not near the center of thevast complexes, but at their periphery.113

Thus grew up the cult of martyrs, saints, and bishops that first burst tothe surface with Constantine’s basilica over the grave of Peter and thenerupted repeatedly above ground later in the fourth and fifth centuries ina series of funerary basilicas, chapels, and burial areae that ringed thecity in a constellation of mega-tombs (the great centers of Christian pil-grimage) – all communally shared by the ever-growing Christian familia.The graves visited now were no longer those of biological relatives but ofthe new Christian saints, kin to all in the ecumenical family. The familialmodel of Roman funerary commemoration thus endured, even as theconcept of the family grew to encompass all who shared the Christianfaith. The traditional family endured also, of course, and continued toassert its cohesiveness in burial through the device of the cubiculum. Thedifference now was that the family unit (whatever its precise composi-tion) no longer isolated itself in independent structures designed tosegregate the chosen few from outsiders but rather established itselfwithin the broader community, in the communal subterranean spacesshared by all. Tombs in this new age were no longer final destinationsbut mere way-stations, places for resting – refrigerium, in the contempo-rary Christian parlance – on the way to salvation and resurrection.

The significant changes in this two-stage process, I have tried toargue, are not in fact found where they have traditionally been located –in the growth in monument-size, from small familial tombs to largecolumbaria, and in the switch from cremation to inhumation – butrather in the separation of the slave household from the biologicalfamily, which opened the way for new, extra-familial expressions of al-legiance and social order, now increasingly articulated through the in-finitely adaptable instrument of the collegium, and in the movementfrom above ground to beneath the surface, which enabled the develop-ment of a burial mode ideally suited to the new theology – all inclusive,

113 In this I disagree with my friend Carolyn Osiek, below p. 256, who is certainlycorrect that the cult of the saints provided new focus and impetus to the expan-sion of the vast complexes.

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otherworldly, and capable (seemingly) of universal expansion andgrowth. By the time the Christian cemeteries around Rome returned tothe surface of the land during the later fourth and fifth centuries, andareae replaced catacombs as the preferred loca of commemoration, theideological foundation of the imperium Romanum had fundamentallychanged, and the traditional Roman tendency toward assertions ofprivilege and rank projected itself against a new backdrop of the Chris-tian faith. If the arguments presented in the preceding pages have anymerit, in the momentous shift that this new orientation ultimately ef-fected in the history of European civilization, the developments in col-lective burial practices that took place during the first three centuriesof the new Christian era played a significant part. The transition inburial architecture from columbaria to catacombs, which replaced aclosed, isolating system of commemorative expression with an open,inclusive form suggesting commonality and community, was exploitedto excellent effect by Christians during the century and a half afterConstantine. Whether the extensive underground cemeteries devel-oped already during the third century belonged originally and exclus-ively to that separatist community is considerably less certain.

AppendixKnown Burials at Rome, 25 B.C.E.–325 C.E.

No one knows how many burials from the three and a half centuries ofpre-Christian imperial Rome have been reported, let alone discovered,but by combining the figures derived from some obvious and well-rep-resented sources with plausible estimates of the uncalculated numbersfrom some recognized categories of evidence, one can arrive at an ap-proximate total not likely, perhaps, to be off by more than 20 to 30 per-cent – a margin of error unacceptable for many purposes but usefulenough for ours, as long as the uncertainties on which it is based arekept firmly in mind and the arguments to which it is harnessed remaincandidly tentative and exploratory. The suggested total of 150,000known burials between the time of Augustus and that of Constantine,then, is no more than an educated guess, but not a useless one, perhaps,for suggesting the tiny percentage, by any reckoning, of those for whichwe have any evidence at all.

Calculations that overrepresent the actual numbers known and es-timates that err on the high side will present the case in the strongest


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possible light, since the aim is to suggest that our information con-cerning the likely burials in the vicinity of Rome is exceedinglymeager and not necessarily representative. The estimate of 150,000,which represents just such a figure, is rounded up from a calculatedtotal (149,700) derived from adding to the number of surviving epi-taphs registered in volume six of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarumdevoted to the city of Rome (some 26,000); the number of funeraryinsciptions destined for the new supplement to be edited by SilvioPanciera (around 10,000); an estimate of the number of unmarkedcremation graves (mainly in columbaria) found in the suburban re-gions of the city (some 11,000); a guess as to the number of simple,often (but not always) unmarked, inhumation burials in shallow in-dividual graves in suburban necropoleis (perhaps 20,000); a veryrough estimate of the number of bodies interred in loculi or inhumedin associated surface cemeteries of the catacombs in use prior to thetime of Constantine (as many as 62,700); and acknowledgment of theexistence – in what quantities we cannot know – of mass graves, somein catacombs and not only for the indigent, that sometimes com-prised as many as 1,000 corpses (possibly 15,000–20,000?). It will beuseful to summarize briefly what little evidence we have for each ofthese categories in turn.

Inscribed epitaphs: the folly of relying on published inscriptions foruseful biometrical information about ancient populations is wellknown, and the sources of bias in our sample need not be rehearsed.114

The numbers that are known, however, can be counted and provide aminimum baseline for individual graves. Many epitaphs, of course, arededicated to more than one person, often to three or four persons byname (to say nothing of the collective formulae sibi et suis, etc.). Butsince we cannot be certain that those included in an inscribed dedi-cation were in fact buried where the epitaph was posted (in certaincases they demonstrably were not), it seems safer, in order to avoiddouble counting, to reckon their numbers among the anonymousgraves and to count a single epitaph as attesting a single burial. Inmany instances, of course, the epitaph is detached from the grave itselfand provides all we know of the burial it commemorates; but since our

114 See, e.g., the contributions of Jean Marie Lassère, Pierre Salmon, and KeithHopkins, in François Hinard, ed., La mort, les morts, et l’au delà dans le monderomain (Caen: Université de Caen, 1987); Timothy Parkin, Demography andRoman Society (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 5–19.

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aim is to cast the net as widely as possible, counting even an intendedburial (whether or not realized in the manner attested) seems justified.The 26,000 epitaphs recorded in CIL 6 furnish numerous illustrationsof the situations mentioned; the estimate of 10,000 unpublished epi-taphs from the environs of Rome derives from Professor Silvio Pan-ciera and is based upon the archive of schede compiled and preservedat the Department of Latin Epigraphy at the University of Rome, “LaSapienza,” from which he is preparing the new supplement to CIL 6.

Unmarked cremation graves: perhaps as many as three quarters ofthe some 5,500 burials accommodated in the ten largest known colum-baria are anonymous: see above, n. 57 [N = 4,125]. If we allow the samepercentage of unmarked burials in another 45 smaller columbaria un-covered between 1700 and 1920 and registered in CIL 6, each compris-ing no more than 100 ollae (for a total, in other words, of no more than3,375), and also in as many as have been uncovered between 1920 andtoday, then the number of known but unmarked cremation graves inthe environs of the city amounts to, at most, slightly fewer than 11,000(N = 10,875).

Individual surface inhumations: this is the type of burial perhaps leastlikely to have survived the ravages of time, since the suburban topsoilaround Rome over the last two millennia has been so frequently tilled,excavated, and built over that most of the burials originally consignedto it have certainly vanished, but in recent years closer attention tochance discoveries made in the course of construction work in the en-virons of the city has revealed concentrations of simple surface burialssufficient to suggest the scale of their original numbers. Hydraulicworks at Isola Sacra during the late 1980s, for example, uncoveredamong the monumental tombs of the well-known necropolis outsidePortus some 650 a cappuccina graves and simple formae dating to thesecond and third centuries.115 And in 2004 construction work on ahigh-speed rail line beside the Via Collatina outside Rome revealedsome 2,000 unmarked simple inhumation graves in a vast surface cem-etery tentatively dated to the second century.116 There is no telling how

115 See Sergio Angelucci, Ida Baldassarre, Irene Bragantini, Maria GiuseppinaLauro, Vanni Mannucci, Alberto Mazzoleni, Chiara Morselli, and Franca Tag-lietti, “Sepolture e riti nella necropolis dell’Isola Sacra,” Bollettino di Archeolo-gia 5–6 (1990): 49–113.

116 The Via Collatina graves have not yet been published but will form the subjectof a forthcoming article by Stefano Musco and Anna Buccellato.


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many similar finds may yet be unearthed, but it is certain that manysimilar necropoleis, if they existed in large numbers outside Rome,have disappeared without a trace. The figure of some 20,000 suchsimple inhumations therefore represents a generous estimate of thenumber that might one day be discovered, rather than the number thatonce existed, which cannot even be guessed.

Catacombs: The total number of loculi in the excavated catacombs isnot known, let alone the total number of those that might have been inuse before the time of Constantine, but approximate figures for thelarger cemeteries can be hazarded. The most serious attempt to esti-mate the number of burials accommodated in a single large pre-Con-stantinian complex, that of Marcellinus and Peter at the imperial prop-erty ad duas lauros beside the Via Labicana, arrived at a total of 11,000loculi distributed throughout two kilometers of tunnels during the firstfifty years of the use of the site following its opening around 260 C.E.,with perhaps as many as 6,000 surface burials (sub divo) in the plotoverlying the subterranean tunnels.117 Three other large catacombs inuse during the third century – that of Priscilla beside the Via Salaria(c. 200–230 C.E., the largest of this period), “Area A” of the catacombsof Callistus beside the Via Appia (c. 230–240), and the catacombs ofNovatianus beside the Via Tiburtina (c. 260–270) – each housed be-tween 1,200 and 1,500 loculi. Three others in use during the first halfof the third century – those of Domitilla beside the Via Ardeatina(the Area of the Flavii, c. 200–230?), of Praetextatus beside the ViaAppia (c. 200–230), and of Calepodius beside the Via Aurelia Vetus(c. 230–250) – may each have included between 500 and 1,000 subter-ranean burial spaces. During the second half of the third century theexisting cemeteries were expanded and new catacombs were opened: inaddition to that of Marcellinus and Peter, these included the so-calledCoemeterium Maius on the Via Nomentana (c. 250), the nucleus ofAgnese (“Regio 1,” c. 250), the lower levels of the catacombs of Pam-philus (c. 260–300) and Priscilla (c. 300–310), and those of the VillaDoria Pamphilj on the Via Aurelia Vetus. These are said to have con-tained “thousands” of burials, but the actual figures are unknown. Ifwe allow a generous 2,000 to each, add another 2,000 for the totalnumber of loculi in a half dozen much smaller complexes dated to thesecond half of the third century, and imagine every catacomb to have

117 Guyon, “Dal praedium imperiale,” 315; cf. 478 n. 52 “probabilmente stime es-sagerate”; id. Le cimitière aux deux lauriers, 101.

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included burials sub divo in the surface soil overlying the tunnels in thesame (generous) ratio as that estimated for the catacombs of Marcel-linus and Peter (that is, approximately 1:2, or a range of 600–1000for the larger complexes and 250–500 for the smaller ones), the totalnumber of burial spaces in the catacombs in use before Constantinewould amount to some 41,800.118

Multiple burials and ossuaries: That figure (41,800) is impressive(and, one suspects, somewhat exaggerated), but there are reasons tomistrust any such calculation of numbers of loculi as a basis for esti-mating the number of Romans buried in the catacombs during thethird century. Many loculi could, and some in fact did, house morethan a single burial. Not only were infants sometimes interred alongwith (one presumes) a parent or parents in a single niche, but someloculi, when found, contained two or even three adult skeletons,lying side by side next to each other on the tufa shelves. Some of thesedouble and triple burials were explicitly identified in accompanyingepitaphs, but others, apparently, were not, and since no systematic rec-ords of such multi-person loculi seem to have been kept, there is no tell-ing how common the practice was.119 Nor can we guess how often asingle loculus might have been cleaned out and reused for new burialsaltogether, as was certainly the case with the original burial sites ofsome 800(?) corpses stacked in an old pozzolana quarry converted intoan ossuary beneath “Area A” of the catacombs of Callistus.120 Medi-

118 For figures, see Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, “L’organizzazione dello spaziofunerario,” in Christiana Loca: lo spazio cristiano nella Roma del primo millen-nio (ed. Letizia Pani Ermini; Rome: Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali,2000), 45 and Fiocchi Niccolai, “Origin and Development,” 17–36, esp. 30.

119 For double burials indicated in epitaphs by the word “bisomum”, cf., e.g., fromthe catacombs of Commodilla, ICUR 2.6030 (370 C.E.), 6110, 6128, 6183,8680; from the Callistus, ICUR 3.3235, 9076, 9143, 9876, 10146; from theDomitilla, ICUR 3.7354b, 7574, 7709, etc. For triple burials (“trisomum”), cf.,e.g., from the Commodilla, ICUR 2.6310; from the Callistus, ICUR 3.9029,9152; from the Domitilla, ICUR 3.8485, etc. All these examples belong to thefourth and fifth centuries, when the practice flourished, but the lack of explicitepigraphic testimony for double and triple burials during the third century can-not be taken as proof that the practice did not occur.

120 Josef Wilpert, La cripta dei papi e la capella di Santa Cecilia nel cimitero di Callisto(Rome: Desclée & C. Editori Pontefici, 1910), 75–80. The bodies, which had evi-dently been removed from loculi and cubicula near the so-called “Crypt of thePopes,” were laid out in rows and stacks, four meters high, with a thin layer of dirtbetween each layer. After consulting a local physician, Wilpert reported that the


240 John Bodel

eval itineraries report similar discoveries of ossuaries in the catacombs“filled with martyrs,” but provide little useful information aboutnumbers or precise locations.121

Mass graves: Equally problematic is the recognition that the openspaces of certain catacombs were used for mass burials in ways thatdefy precise calculation of the numbers of bodies buried there. In thecatacombs of S. Thecla beside the Via Ostiense, for example, some ofthe large rooms (“cameroni”) opening off the galleries, each of whichprovided some 70 to 100 burial spaces in narrow loculi lining the wallsfrom floor to ceiling and in formae sunk into the floors, were filled tocapacity with layers of corpses stacked one on top of another, eachlayer separated by roof tiles or large bricks covering a corpse below.122

Similarly, in “Regio A” of the catacombs of Commodilla, near themartyr’s tomb, some 45 funerary wells, 1 by 1.7–1.9 meters in area and6–7 meters deep, were sunk into the floor, each of which accommo-dated 10–15 loculi cut in two facing columns into the walls; the centers

bodies had been deposited as skeletons, but a recent reconsideration of the evi-dence (reported by Rafaella Giuliani in an oral communication: see below, n. 125)suggests that the corpses were arranged in stacks before decomposing. Intactskeletons are seldom moved without becoming disarticulated. The number 800seems to be derived from an itinerary compiled from a report by William ofMalmesbury (twelfth century) (Notitia portarum viarum eclesiarum circa urbemRomam e Willelmo Malmesburgensi): DCCC martyres ibidem requiescunt. Fourhundred years earlier the Itinerarium Salisburgense recorded that “eighty martyrsrest there down below (sc. the tomb of S. Cecilia)” (LXXX martyres ibi requiescuntdeorsum). One suspects that perhaps a sribal error or lapsus memoriae accountsfor the expansion tenfold of the number of skeletons reported. The Epitome libriDe locis sanctorum marturum e codicibus Salisburgeni puro, Wirgeburgensi puro, etSalisburgeni interpolato speaks vaguely of “a countless number” (innumerabilismultitudo martyrum): for all these texts, see De Rossi, Roma Sotterranea, 1:180.

121 At the catacombs of Pontianus (fourth–fifth century) beside the Via Portuense adursum pilleatum, for example, according to the Epitome libri De locis sanctorummarturum e codicibus Salisburgensi puro, Wirgeburgensi puro, et Salisburgensi in-terpolato, “you will find the church of S. Candida, a virgin and martyr, whosebody rests there. You descend into a cavern and you will find there a countlessnumber of martyrs … and that whole cavern is filled with the bones of martyrs”(invenies ecclesiam s. Candidae virginis et martyris, cuius corpus ibi quiescit. De-scendis in antrum et invenies ibi innumerabiliem multitudinem martyrum … etomnis illa spelunca impleta est ossibus martyrum): De Rossi, Roma Sotterranea,1.182 no. II.

122 Umberto M. Fasola, “La basilica sotterranea di S. Tecla e le regioni cimiterialivicine,” RACrist 46 (1970): 238–52.

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of the wells were filled with a cappuccina tombs laid one on top of an-other, as in the catacombs of S. Thecla; collectively they housed morethan 1,700 inhumations.123 At the so-called Coemeterium Maius on theVia Nomentana nearly a hundred corpses of adults and children werefound in 1956 laid in two layers in the bare soil.124 These mass burialsbelong to the fourth century after Constantine, but in 2003 a series ofrooms and galleries in a network of subterranean burial chambers atthe catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter were found to be filled withsome 1,200 corpses, said to be well dressed and dating (on the basis ofcoins, jewelry, and fabric found with the remains) to between 150 and250 C.E.125 How many similar such finds may yet be made, or wereonce made but not reported, or were reported only vaguely (as in themedieval itineraries) is difficult to say, but there is little reason to thinkthat these discoveries are unique. There is therefore no point in pre-tending that we can estimate with any confidence the numbers of Ro-mans buried in the catacombs before the time of Constantine, but if wetake our generous calculation of the total number of loculi (41,800),guess that no more than half of them could have been used for doubleburials (+ 20,900) and allow for perhaps as many as 15,000–20,000burials in mass graves and loculi used for more than two adults, we maynot seem to underestimate the total.

If we think that we may have a rough idea of how some 150,000 Ro-mans were buried during the three and a half centuries between25 B.C.E. and 325 C.E., we can only guess by what means and wherethe other 98.5 percent of the presumed numbers who died during thatperiod were buried, but it is unlikely that wholly different and unrec-ognized means of disposal could account for any significant number ofthem. Of the methods surveyed above, simple surface burials (whetherof cremations or inhumations) are perhaps the most likely to have left

123 Nuzzo, Tipologia sepolcrale, 25–26.124 Umberto M. Fasola, “Le recenti scoperte agiografiche nel Coemeterium

Majus,” Rend. Pont. Acc. 28 (1955–56): 85–86 (Fig. 7).125 This spectacular find has been published in preliminary fashion by Philippe Blan-

chard and Dominique Castex, with Michaël Coquerelle, Raffaela Giuliani, andMonica Ricciardi, “A mass grave from the catacomb of Saints Peter and Marcel-linus in Rome, second-third century AD,” Antiquity 81 (2007): 989–98. Initialexcavations focused on a series of rooms in regio X of the complex, of whichnumbers 16, 78, and 80 were reportedly filled with stacks of bodies up to twelvelayers high.


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no trace in the archaeological record, but we must admit that ourignorance is profound and that our best calculations barely scratch thesurface of a significant problem for any study of mortuary practicesduring the early Empire. The question remains: where were the bodiesburied?126

126 According to one recent estimate, some 30,000 tombs are known from a com-parable period of early Chinese history, during the Qin (221–206 B.C.E.) andHan (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.) dynasties (Michael Loewe, in lecture, Brown Uni-versity, October 2005).

Roman and Christian Burial 243

Carolyn Osiek

Chapter 7

Roman and Christian Burial Practicesand the Patronage of Women1

We have much to learn from interdisciplinary cooperation. One of theacademic divides has been between Roman historians and Christianhistorians; this project happily spans the gap between them.2 Anotherdivide has been between Christian archaeologists who study materialremains and Christian historians who study texts. This chapter aims tohelp bridge that gap as well.

Early in the third century, several Christian texts seem to indicatethat Christians are burying their dead in common areas. In NorthAfrica, Tertullian refers to animosity on the part of others towardsChristians and the areae supulturarum nostrarum, our burial fields(Ad Scapulam 3.1). He also refers to a Christian practice of taking up acollection once a month for a variety of charitable practices, amongthem the feeding and burial of the poor (Apol. 39.5–6). Elsewhere in theApology he refers to an incident of nocturnal mob violation of Christianburials, but this does not necessarily indicate common burial of an en-tire Christian community together (Apol. 37). The Apostolic Tradition ofHippolytus refers to assuring the burial of the poor in the ��;the Sahidic translation uses the Greek loanword (Trad. AP. 40).3 Pos-

1 Thanks to my two respondents at the May 2005 conference, Annette Huizengaand Matthew Perry, some of whose suggestions have been incorporated here.Basic terminology and setting for this chapter are contained in John Bodel’s pre-vious chapter, which should be read before this one.

2 An earlier conference in 1999 with the same aim culminated in Early ChristianFamilies in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, ed. David L. Balch and Ca-rolyn Osiek (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003).

3 Paul Bradshaw, Maxwell E. Johnson, and L. Edward Phillips, The ApostolicTradition (Hermeneia; Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress, 2002), 191.

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sibly a few years later, Origen homilizes in Caesarea about the “goodold days” of the great martyrs, when the whole church gathered to-gether in assembly coming $�μ �% ��, from the cemetery(ies) (Hom. Jer. 4.3.16). Still a few years later, at the time of the AugustiValerian and Gallienus (253–259 C.E.), Dionysius of Alexandriarelates, as preserved by Eusebius, that Christians there were forbiddenby the sub-prefect Aemilianus to hold assemblies or to go to theso-called cemeteries (��« �� ) (Eusebius, Hist.eccl. 7.11.10).4 All of these references could be to familial tombs ownedby Christians and perhaps extended to needy members of the samecongregation, rather than common or community-owned cemeteries.

The most famous of these passages, and possibly the earliest, comesfrom the beginning of the third century, from Hippolytus’s denunci-ation of his rival, Callistus, who, he relates, was placed by Zephyrinus,bishop of Rome 198–217, over the ��, commonly under-stood to be the catacomb that now bears his name (Refutatio 9.12.14).This burial complex, identified and explored in 1850 by the great nine-teenth-century explorer of the catacombs Giovanni Battista de Rossi,would later contain the tombs of nine bishops of Rome from 230 to274 in the so-called Crypt of the Popes. The generic reference to “the”cemetery without a specific name, at a time when there were surelymultiple burial complexes around the city of Rome being used byChristians, led de Rossi to the conclusion that this was the first cem-etery to be administered, if not owned outright, directly by churchauthorities. Little further evidence has come to light since de Rossi tochange that judgment. But oddly, Callistus himself, according to tradi-tion later bishop of Rome 217–222, was buried elsewhere, in the cata-comb of Calepodius on the Via Aurelia, which relativizes the claimthat the catacomb of Callistus was, at the time of the eponymous fig-ure’s death, any kind of official burial place of the church of Rome.

A century later, most of the Christian burial complexes aroundRome were probably coming rapidly under administration by church

4 Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, Fabrizio Bisconti, and Danilo Mazzoleni, The Chris-tian Catacombs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions (trans. Cristina CarloStella and Lori-Ann Touchette; 2d ed.; Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2002),13–15; Éric Rebillard, Religion et sépulture: l’Église, les vivants et les morts dansl’Antiquité tardive (Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences So-ciales, 2003), 15–20. Rebillard argues that the word �� did not refer ingeneral to burials, but to the tombs of martyrs, but his evidence is mostly fourthcentury, by which time every Christian cemetery had its martyrs.


officials, if not by a central administration, then at least by that of localassemblies. Yet at the same time, there is another noticeable trend:among the names that emerge, those of some of the most prominent ofthese complexes are women. By the middle of the fourth century, thecult of the martyrs was in full swing, every major catacomb had itsmemoria of its own martyrs, and pilgrimage to their tombs was becom-ing a major enterprise, leading to the creation of underground cem-eterial basilicas over or near the tombs of the martyrs, accessible bystaircases from ground level, roofs sometimes protruding above theground, as is the case, for example, in the late-fourth-century basilica ofSts. Nereus and Achilleus in the catacomb of Domitilla. The originaluse intended for these basilicas was family and eventually communityfunerary banquets, leading to the all-night excesses discussed by RobinJensen elsewhere in this volume. The faithful continued for about an-other century to want to be buried in the great underground complexesad sanctos and also above ground in the same area, as close as possibleto the holy places. The fossores (diggers) of the fourth and fifth cen-turies had full-time jobs not only doing the actual digging but servingas agents in the sale of burial space, the clergy having little to do withthe whole business transaction.5

Yet there is today common agreement that all of the burial areas thatwere to become Christian catacombs began as private property andprivate burial areas, in most cases at a time before any Christian iden-tity can be documented. Even most of the references given above neednot refer to common church ownership of burial property. Tertullian’sallusions could be not to cemeteries reserved to Christian use, but toprivate burial plots known to belong to Christian owners.6 The samecould be true of situations referred to by Origen and the ApostolicTradition. Tertullian’s burials of the poor from the common fund could

5 Fernand de Visscher, Le droit des tombeaux romains (Milan: Giuffré, 1963),39–50; Jean Guyon, “La Vente des tombes,” MEFRA 86 (1974): 549–96. In otherparts of the world, however, the clergy may have been more involved in the saleof burials: witness the role of Flavia Vitalia, presbytera, in the sale of a propertyin Solin, Croatia, in 425 (CIL 3:14900; Ute Eisen, Women Officeholders in EarlyChristianity: Epigraphical and Literary Studies [Collegeville, Minn.: LiturgicalPress, 2000], 131–32; Kevin Madigan and Carolyn Osiek, Ordained Women in theEarly Church [Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005], 196). DeRossi thought that the Roman fossores were in some way members of the clergy,but there is no convincing evidence to that effect.

6 Rebillard, Religion et sépulture, 20.

246 Carolyn Osiek

still be in ground owned by generous Christian benefactors. Even theinvolvement of Callistus in Christian burial practices during the epis-copate of Zephyrinus could have been in land owned by Zephyrinus’sfamily and given over to community use.7 Two centuries earlier, Cicerohad spoken of sepulchra communia when he must have meant burials ofthose who held common blood ties and family relationships, not com-mon ownership of burial ground (De Off. 1.17.54–55).

But sometime by the early to mid-fourth century, the transitionfrom private to some kind of centralized church administration hadlargely taken place, and the common assumption is that centralizedchurch ownership followed. How did these burial complexes evolvefrom private property to massive common cemeteries, and under whatlegal auspices? How did ownership shift from private to commu-nal? What does “communal” mean here – central administration by asingle bishop and his staff, or administration of each burial complexby a specific “titulus” church center? What was the role of fami-ly members and patrons in this process? Is there any special connec-tion that can be traced between burial patronage and the patronageand euergetism of women? These questions are the focus of the pres-ent study.

Christian Burial Areas as Private Property

From early on, legislation forbid burials within the city walls of Rome.The first law, in 451 B.C.E., was renewed by Augustus in the Lex Julia.There were a few exceptions in extraordinary circumstances, e.g., Ju-lius Caesar’s body was brought in and burned at the base of the Templeof Castor and Pollux in the Forum in 44 B.C.E., and Trajan’s asheswere buried at the base of the column in his forum in 117 C.E. (butHadrian had to get a senatus consultum to do it). In Roman religion,a corpse must be hidden from the light of day, with dire consequences forthe one who violates this principle: whoever reveals to the sun a buriedbody, “si honestior sit, in insulam, si humilior, in metallum dari solet”(Sent. Paul. 1.21.4). A funerary monument, once a body had beenplaced in it, became a locus religiosus protected by law, not the body

7 Suggested by Bradshaw et al., Apostolic Tradition, 191; Peter Lampe, From Paulto Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries (Minneapolis,Minn.: Fortress, 2003), 25–28, 369–72.


itself, but the place because of the presence of the corpse and the widerassociations of contact with divinity. Because of their religious nature,the sale, construction, and repair of tombs were regulated by the pon-tiffs, even well into the Constantinian era, as late as 385.8

Roman law recognized two kinds of tombs, those for one’s familia –sepulchra familiaria – and those for one’s heirs and other agnate kin –sepulchra hereditaria. The first kind was built by a householder for him/herself and the members of the familia, which included blood family,freedmen/women, slaves, and others attached to the household. Thesecond type excluded non-related household members and was exclus-ively for the use of agnates and potential heirs, whether descendants orotherwise. At the end of the line of inheritance, the last successors couldcontinue to designate others. In either case, the founder of a tomb hada right to specify both inclusively and exclusively exceptions to the nor-mal pattern, e.g., CIL 6.11027 and 14672, which exclude a specificfreedman (One wonders what stories are behind them!), or a third-century hypogeum in the catacomb of Domitilla in which the founderof a cubiculum says that he set up the tomb “sibi et suis fidentibusin Domino,” probably thereby restricting burials to family memberswho were Christian.9 Such specific exclusions had no legal force, butthe one who set up the restrictions would have hoped that his/herwishes were followed.

The overwhelming number of surviving tombs in Italy are of thefamilial kind, intended for members of a household, not a verticalfamily, with the familiar phrase sibi et suis, libertis libertabusque pos-terisque eorum. Often the inscription actually forbids the burial ofheirs outside the familia with the abbreviation HMHNS: Hoc monu-mentum heredem non sequetur. Many tomb inscriptions forbid theburial of anyone not specified, or alienation of the tomb from the fam-ilia, with threats of legal sanction and fines. In the Christian era, thisfear of tomb misuse sometimes takes on eschatological fervor: thedeacon Tetradia in Byzantine Thessaly threatens anyone who opensher tomb with “the punishment of eternal fire,” while the deaconessAthanasia in fifth-century Delphi threatens anyone who dares open

8 Digest 11.7.2.5; Cod. Theod. 9.17.2; Symmachus Epistle 2.36; see Mark J.Johnson, “Pagan-Christian Burial Practices of the Fourth Century: SharedTombs?” JECS 5, no. 1 (1997): 37–59, at p. 39.

9 ILCV 1.307, no. 1597; De Visscher, “Droit des tombeaux,” 96–97; Johnson,“Pagan-Christian Burial Practices,” 40.

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her tomb, “may he share the lot of Judas the [betrayer] of our LordJesus Christ.”10

The familial tomb that gathered together members of a household inseveral generations was a normal exercise of patronage for heads ofhouseholds. Besides members of the familia, others could be specifi-cally included; thus the exercise of patronage could extend beyond thehousehold. A tomb could also be owned by more than one private per-son; several owners could together hold the property and the right ofburial. In this case, all the owners had to agree on the acceptance ofanyone for burial in their mutually owned tomb.

Even in the case of burial areas later associated with the catacombs,it can be assumed that the earliest burials were above ground, perhapsconsisting of a walled-in piece of property in which both incinerationsand inhumations could be placed directly in the ground. When moreburial space was needed, underground areas were excavated under thesurface property. The simplest inhumations were of bodies placed intothe ground with tiles covering the grave in an inverted V pattern, or ofincinerated ashes in urns that were buried up to their necks and filledin with earth or sand. Such burials were still to be seen at the cemeteryof Isola Sacra in the 1970s, but have since disappeared (Fig. 7.1).

For the more well to do, a mausoleum surrounded by open prop-erty enclosed by a low wall allowed for burials both inside the mau-soleum and of dependents in the open ground. In some cases, themausoleum itself covered the entire burial space. Such dedicatedspaces can still be seen, for example, in the cemeteries lining the ap-proaches to Pompeii (Fig. 7.2).

When more space was required, digging went underground withinthe private property and then extended beyond it. This kind ofunderground extension can be seen, for example, in the three privatehypogea that are today within the catacomb of S. Sebastiano, orthe Hypogeum of the Aurelii on Viale Manzoni in Rome. Laws re-garding ownership of space below ground are not clear, but the prin-ciple of superficies solo cedit may have applied: whoever owned an

10 Tetradia: N. I. Giannapoulos, “Palaiochristianike epigraphe,” Epeterias etaireiasByzantinon spoudon 12 (1935): 26; Athanasia: J. Laurent, “Delphes chrétien,”BCH 23 (1899): 206–79, at pp. 272–78; G. H. R. Horsley, ed., New DocumentsIllustrating Early Christianity (9 vols.; North Ryde, NSW: Ancient HistoryDocumentary Centre, Macquarie University/Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981–),4.122.3, p. 240; Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women, 72–73, 91–92.


upper story of a building owned the whole building and the land onwhich it stood.11

Surface burials continued where possible, even while undergroundburial areas were expanding, and even after martyrs’ tombs hadbeen established below ground, which, in the fourth century, encouragedfurther burials as nearby as possible. Surface burial was less expensiveif one already owned the property, and more easily accessible. Unfor-tunately, these aboveground burials did not stand as well the test oftime. In the land surrounding Rome, the surface has been so disturbedover the centuries that little of the aboveground burial area is left intactexcept in the case of stone mausolea that are still standing, and they, ofcourse, no longer hold intact contents. During excavation of the cata-

11 Suggested during conference discussion by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, based oninformation given in Felix Pirson, Mietwohnungen in Pompeji und Herkulaneum:Untersuchungen zur Architektur, zum Wohnen und zur Sozial- und Wirtschafts-geschichte der Vesuvstädte (Munich: F. Pfeil, 1999), 68–69, citing relevant passagein Labeo, Dig. 43.17.3.7. See also discussion of 43.17.3.4 on the roots of vines,discussed by John Bodel in this volume.

7.1. Isola Sacra Cemetery, surface burials in 1973. (author’s photo)

250 Carolyn Osiek

combs, these surface areas were neglected in favor of below ground,where the state of preservation was greater.

One aboveground plot that did survive until excavation in 1960 wasan original area of the catacomb of Domitilla, the so-called PraediumDomitillae, an aboveground area of sixty-two by seventeen meters sur-rounded by a wall of opus reticulatum, where burial activity began inthe Julian or Augustan period. Ownership of the field by one or a suc-cession of the Flaviae Domitillae was attested by inscriptions foundthere: CIL 6.948, 949, 8942, and 16246 (the last a grant of funeraryland to P. Calvisius from Flavia Domitilla, thus indication of extendedrelationships), discovered below ground, having fallen through fromthe surface. A large mausoleum was placed there in the second century,and the surface cemetery continued in heavy use through the fourthcentury. When subterranean burials began, the staircase built to ac-commodate them disturbed some of the surface burials, mausolea, and

7.2. Familial compound, cemetery outsidePompeii. (Photo: L. Brink, O.P.)


columbaria.12 Presumably by that time, the disturbed surface burialswere from past generations and no longer maintained.

The burial complex eventually grew so large that it was originallythought to be part of the catacomb of Callistus. Its independent exist-ence was clarified by de Rossi in 1852. Other original areas later ab-sorbed into the catacomb of Domitilla include two independent hypo-gea built before the end of the second century, the so-called Hypogeumof the Flavii Aurelii A to the south and of the Flavii Aurelii Bforty meters north of it, discovered by de Rossi in 1864. The preservedunderground cubicula were excavated below aboveground burial com-plexes that are no longer extant. The evidence for Christian origins ofthe two complexes is scant: only one inscription, and that not until thethird century.13 Once horizontal underground extension began, the twowere quickly joined, and by the fourth century they were linked to thelarger complex and the underground basilica of Saints Nereus andAchilleus. The third-century non-Christian Hypogeum of Ampliatushad similar beginnings and shared the same eventual fate. Expansionof the complex by the end of the third century made access to thesehypogea difficult.

Below the floor surface of the subterranean basilica of Saints Ne-reus and Achilleus are several pagan sarcophagi in reuse. The usual ar-gument is that they were robbed from older mausolea and movedthere, but in fact they may be reused in situ, where they were originallyplaced in an underground extension of an aboveground mausoleum,a single burial unit consisting of three sarcophagi and six formae(spaces for one body dug directly in the floor of the chamber). If this isthe case, it indicates the presence of another private burial complexabove ground, destroyed when the basilica was built through the samespace.14

12 The area was excavated by Antonio Ferrua in 1960, then covered up again: Phil-ippe Pergola, “Il ‘praedium Domitillae’ sulla via Ardeatina: analisi storico-to-pografica delle testimonianze pagane fino alla metà del III sec. d. C.,” RACrist55 (1979): 313–35, at 318–24.

13 Philippe Pergola, “La region dite des ‘Flavii Aurelii’ dans la catacombe deDomitille,” MEFRA 95 (1983): 183–248.

14 Argued by Philippe Pergola, “Les sarcophages païens réemployés dans la basil-ique des Sts. Nérée et Achillées dans la catacombe de Domitille à Rome: Ré-flexions autour d’une pratique,” Historiam pictura refert: Miscellanea in onoredi Padre Alejandro Recio Veganzones, O.F.M. (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto diArcheologia Cristiana, 1994), 439–50.

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There were many women named Flavia Domitilla in the Flavianfamily. Cassius Dio recounts the ill fate of one, the first-century wife ofFlavius Clemens, exiled to the island of Pandateria after the executionof her husband for “judaizing” (67.14). By the fourth century, her “ju-daizing” was understood as conversion to Christianity, which couldwell have been confused with Judaism by a first- or second-centuryRoman. For Eusebius, however, she had become the niece, not wife, ofFlavius Clemens, exiled as a Christian to the island of Ponza (Hist.eccl. 3.18.3), where the late-fourth-century Paula of Rome went onpilgrimage to visit her cell, as to the sanctuary of a saint (Jerome,Ep. 108.7). Whether these were one or two women, whether attractedto Judaism or to Christianity, has never been clarified, nor whetherthe inscriptions associated with their name and found in the catacombof Domitilla referred to either of them or to other women of the samename.15

The catacomb of Priscilla on the Via Salaria poses no fewer chal-lenges. As with the Praedium Domitillae, here too there were manyburials on the surface, neglected in excavations in favor of the cata-comb complex. Several originally independent components formedpart of it: a nymphaeum, a cryptoporticus, the “Greek Chapel” (Ca-pella Greca) with its unique artwork, and the so-called Hypogeum ofthe Acilii. By the fourth century, a martyr cult of Saints Felix andPhilip made the catacomb a popular place for burials. The Hypogeumof the Acilii, so named by de Rossi, was originally a cistern on the eastside of the complex. Only two inscriptions related to the Acilius familywere found there, and they may have fallen through from the surface.One of them connects the names M. Acilius and Priscilla. Some otherinscriptions in Greek (A��-, A��«, A��) were found else-where nearby in the complex, and could be freedpersons of the samefamily. The hypogeum was not originally connected to other galleries,

15 When Dio Cassius’s Flavia Domitilla was exiled, her land was presumably con-fiscated. Therefore, any continuity of the Praedium Domitillae may be in ques-tion. Most modern historians have assumed Eusebius was confused and turnedthe wife into the niece. Among the few who argue otherwise is Paul Kerestzes,“The Jews, the Christians and Emperor Domitian,” Vigiliae Christianae 27(1973): 1–28. The whole episode under Domitian may have been for politicalrather than religious reasons. For the entire history and a review of scholarship,also see Philippe Pergola, “La condamnation des Flaviens ‘chrétiens’ sous Domi-tien: persécution religieuse ou repression à charactère politique?” MEFRA 90(1978): 407–23.


though, but was a simple space designed to receive a large sarcopha-gus, connected to ground level by an independent staircase.

Members of the Acilius Glabrio family were consuls in 91, 152, and186, and an Acilius Rufus in 106. The wife of the consul of 152 wasthought to be Arria L f Plaria Vera Priscilla (PIR2 A 1120; CIL11.6333; ILCV 1073).16 Thus a mid-second-century origin of part ofthe area is possible. De Rossi went to great pains to connect the sena-torial family Acilius with the origins of the complex, but as usual, pro-vable connections are tenuous. Yet the name Priscilla persevered inconnection with the catacomb.

To the south of the Hypogeum of the Acilii lay the Cryptoporticusand Capella Greca, probably neither originally intended as burial areas,but part of a large villa overhead that was never excavated. Toward theend of the second century or early in the third, the Capella Greca be-came a private burial place, probably for residents of the villa or theirfamilia. Burials adjacent to residential areas seem never to have been aproblem outside the city walls. North of the Capella Greca and westof the Acilii area later lay large burial galleries, called arenaria by deRossi. None of these areas was originally joined to any other, but at alate date expansion of the burial areas brought them all together intoone large complex.17

Another smaller and later burial complex on Via Ostiense is less wellknown, the catacomb of Commodilla. Discovered in 1595, it wasthought by Bosio to be the Crypt of Lucina, mentioned in early textsand later discovered in the Callistus complex, about a mile furthereast. There is no evidence of use before the fourth century. Again, ap-parently no attention was paid to the terrain above ground during ex-cavation. In the mid-fourth century, Pope Damasus “discovered” therethe burial of two martyrs, Saints Felix and Adauctus, probably killedunder Diocletian and buried in a privately owned area. The Depositiomartyrum of 354 does not mention the name, but the fifth-centuryMartyrologium Hieronymianum commemorates Roma via Ostiensi(in cimiterio) Commodellae Felicis et Adaucti. At first objects of only aprivate cult, they had caused the area to become another favorite

16 See also PIR2 P 950; CIL 6.31681; ILCV 127; ICUR 24837.17 P.-A. Février, “Études sur les catacombes romaines,” CahArch 10 (1959): 1–26;

11 (1960): 1–14. For de Rossi’s account of discovery and discussion of the AciliusGlabrio-Priscilla connection, “L’ipogeo degli Acilii Glabrioni nel cimitero diPriscilla,” BACrist ser. 4.6 (1888–1889): 15–66, 103–33.

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burial zone by the mid-fourth century. The later account of two femalemartyrs, the Passion of Saints Digna and Merita, places their burial incoemeterio Commodillae eadem via (Ostiense). The two cults in thesame cemetery therefore would seem to be independent.

An unusual feature of this catacomb is its large collective pit or shafttombs dug beneath galleries, lined with loculi along the sides, and whenthey were full, stacked with other burials separated with tiles. This isthought to indicate a larger concentration of poorer people buriedthere who could not afford anything more individual. The relative lackof painting and the many uninscribed tombs also support the impres-sion of large numbers of burials from modest circumstances. Burialscontinued into the late fourth and early fifth centuries.18 This is prob-ably an example of a catacomb with a single origin that was expandedas the need grew. The identity of the eponymous founder is unknown,but she is likely to have been a mid- to late-fourth-century benefactorwho developed an extensive burial area for the poor, beginning from aprivate complex, by acquiring the bodies of martyrs and then expan-ding the cemetery as needed. This would not be unusual even in a pre-Christian context: the custom of wealthy urban dwellers exercisingbenefaction by donating land outside the city for burial of the generalpopulation dates to Republican times.19

Similar origins can be traced for other catacombs. For example,three original centers formed the nucleus of the catacomb of Callistus.Two are known by women’s names: the crypts of Lucina and ofBalbina. The third center is probably that witnessed by Hippolytus, acomplex that, even if it was originally in private ownership, perhaps

18 B. Bagatti, Il cimitero di Commodilla o dei martiri Felice ed Adautto presso la viaOstiense (Vatican City, 1936) 3–6; Carlo Carletti, “Storia e topografia della ca-tacomba di Commodilla,” in Die Katakombe “Commodilla.” Repertorium derMalereien (eds. J. G. Deckers, G. Mietke, A. Weiland; Vatican City: PontificioIstituto di Archeologia Cristiana 1994), 3–27; V. Fiocchi Nicolai et al., TheChristian Catacombs of Rome, 54–56; photo of a shaft burial on p. 56, fig. 63.

19 Nicholas Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb,” in Römische Gräberstraßen: Selbstdar-stellung, Status, Standard (eds. Henner von Hesberg and Paul Zanker; Munich:Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1987), 25–41, cites the example(pp. 36–37) of Horatius Balbus of Sarsina who gave burial plots for the towns-people at his own expense, excluding suicides by hanging and immoral earners(ILS 7846), and a freedman who gave Tolentinum a plot of 282 by 200 feet forthe same purpose (ILS 7847; see also ILS 6726). Exactly what kind of peoplewere buried in such arrangements is not clear. Presumably, those who couldafford their own burials chose to go elsewhere.


that of the family of Zephyrinus, was quickly turned into a commonburial area under the supervision of Callistus. It cannot have beenCallistus’s own property: both the text of Hippolytus and the fact thatCallistus was not buried there contradict such a hypothesis.

Women’s Patronage and Burial Euergetism

In the previous discussion of the origins of some of the major RomanChristian catacombs, the names of a number of women have surfaced:Domitilla, Priscilla, Commodilla, Lucina, and Balbina. There aremany other women’s names associated with catacombs: Thecla, Bas-illa, Agnes, Felicitas, and others. Of course there are also male namesassociated with a variety of Roman catacombs: Callistus, Sebastian,Calepodius, Trasone, Novatian, Hippolytus, Pamphilus, and others.The remarkable thing about the names of the catacombs in early listsof martyr burials is that they endured as the way to designate a par-ticular catacomb, even when the catacomb was most famous as a placeof pilgrimage for its martyr tombs. The name of the catacomb ofDomitilla did not change to Saints Nereus and Achilleus, the cata-comb of Priscilla did not change to Saints Felix and Philip, the cata-comb of Commodilla was occasionally called that of Saints Felix andAdauctus, but the name that stuck was that of Commodilla. Nor didthe original names associated with the catacombs acquire the title of“saint.” Other catacombs did acquire the names of saints, the most fa-mous being those of Saints Agnes and Lawrence, the most belovedRoman martyrs of the early fourth century. Much later, of course,some of the names connected with the catacombs did assume the titleof saint, when their urban churches became centers of pilgrimage, e.g.,Santa Prisca on the Aventine (but was this supposed to be Prisca thewife of Aquila or Priscilla of the catacomb, or another?).

The names connected to some of the principal Christian burialplaces are early and persistent, and a good number of these namesare of women. We have seen that the most likely scenario for the begin-nings of most of these burial complexes is a group of unrelatedwalled-in surface burial areas containing inhumation and/or inciner-ation graves. If set up by a wealthy benefactor, they would also prob-ably contain mausolea. For want of space and because the popularityof inhumation over incineration by the end of the second century cre-ated the need for more ground and thus higher prices, the owners and

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administrators of these burial spaces began to go underground belowtheir own property and eventually expand the underground area.

When the cult of martyrs’ tombs developed in the fourth century, thedesire of Christians to be buried as close as possible to the martyrscreated the need for extensive burial development, both above andespecially below ground. During this expansion, many previously in-dependent private burial complexes became joined underground,culminating by the late fourth and early fifth centuries in the vast laby-rinths that the major Christian catacombs are today. This developmentis not limited to Rome, but is found, among other places, in Syracuse,Malta, and North Africa. John Bodel is correct to say in his chapter inthis book that Christians did not invent “catacombs,” a method ofburial also used by Jews and others, but the cult of the martyrs in thefourth century caused the formation of the vast underground networksthat are the major Roman Christian catacombs, and these enormouscomplexes are not equaled in use by any other group. In addition, be-cause of the concentration of devotion in Rome and well-kept recordsof martyrs’ tombs and their feast days, we have more informationabout this phenomenon among Christians particularly in Rome thananywhere else.

The historical and social link between the small private burialgroupings and the large communal complexes of the fourth centuryis private patronage. This foundation of social relations in ancientRoman society has been well studied, including the major cross-cul-tural studies of Gellner and Waterbury, Eisenstadt and Roniger, andElliott,20 and of its function in ancient Rome by Saller, Wallace-Ha-drill, and others.21 While most of the examples that have been preservedare from elite classes, this is not true of all. The same social structures

20 Ernest Gellner and John Waterbury, eds., Patrons and Clients in MediterraneanSocieties (London: Duckworth, 1977); S. N. Eisenstadt and L. Roniger, Patrons,Clients, and Friends: Interpersonal Relations and the Structure of Trust in Society(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984); John H. Elliott, “Patronageand Clientage,” in The Social Sciences and New Testament Interpretation (ed.Richard Rohrbaugh; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1996), 144–56, with exten-sive further bibliography.

21 Richard P. Saller, Personal Patronage under the Early Empire (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1982); Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, ed., Patronage in AncientSociety (London: Routledge, 1989); Jens-Uwe Krause, Spätantike Patronats-formen im Westen des Römischen Reiches (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1987).


can be expected to have been replicated as closely as possible at non-elite levels.

Some of the actual persons involved in the creation of the Christianburial sites may have been elites, such as a Flavia Domitilla or a Pris-cilla married into the Acilii Glabriones. But whether elite or less thanelite, those Christians who functioned as patrons and clients presum-ably replicated the same social structures in their own use of power toachieve their ends. Patronage in early Christianity is now beginning tobe studied.22

Women participated heavily in the patronage system on both sides,as patrons and clients, and were deeply involved in both private andpublic patronage. They could attend the morning salutatio of clientto patron (Juvenal, Sat. 1.120–16). They participated fully in businessactivities. Women who were sui iuris could conduct their own transac-tions, though there were some legal limitations imposed. The earlierinstitution of tutela, male guardianship requiring permission to alien-ate property, was mostly inactive by the Augustan age, though formerowners could still exercise considerable control over the property ofa liberta. Other legislation prevented women from taking on liabilityfor the debts of others, which may have been primarily aimed toprotect women from unscrupulous husbands.23 As is often the casewith Roman law, what is on the books is not necessarily what is done,

22 Beginning early with E. A. Judge, The Social Pattern of Christian Groups in theFirst Century (London: Tyndale Press, 1960); “The Early Christians as a Schol-astic Community,” Journal of Religious History (1960): 4–15; (1961): 125–37;“Paul as a Radical Critic of Society,” Interchange 16 (1974): 191–203; “CulturalConformity and Innovation in Paul: Some Clues from Contemporary Docu-ments,” Tyndale Bulletin 35 (1984): 3–24; continuing with Frederick W. Danker,Benefactor: Epigraphic Study of a Graeco-Roman and New Testament SemanticField (St. Louis, Mo.: Clayton, 1982); more recently, John K. Chow, Patronageand Power: A Study of Social Networks in Corinth (JSNTSup 75; Sheffield: Shef-field Academic Press, 1992); David A. deSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship andPurity: Unlocking New Testament Culture (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsityPress, 2000); Stephan J. Joubert, “One Form of Social Exchange or Two? ‘Euer-getism,’ Patronage, and Testament Studies” BTB 31 (2001): 17–25; James R.Harrison, Paul’s Language of Grace in its Graeco-Roman Context (WUNT 2.172;Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003); Zeba A. Crook, Reconceptualising Conversion:Patronage, Loyalty, and Conversion in the Religions of the Ancient Mediterranean(BZNW 130; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004).

23 Jane F. Gardner, Women in Roman Law and Society (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-versity Press, 1986), 233–36.

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and there were perhaps more exceptions than strict applications of thelaw.

Women often served as patrons for other women. Cratia, the wifeof M. Cornelius Fronto, tutor of Marcus Aurelius, is called in one ofhis letters to the emperor a clienta of Domitia Lucilla, the emperor’smother. As such, she visited the imperial family, staying with themin Naples without her husband to celebrate her patron’s birthday.24

An otherwise unknown woman named Valatta on the British frontierwrites to the commanding officer of the Vindolanda outpost, FlaviusCerialis, about a favor mediated by his wife, Sulpicia Lepidina.25 Theepitaph of Epiphania, a second- or third-century benefactor, the well-traveled daughter and wife of ship owners, reports that she was gener-ous with her wealth, motivated by eusebeia, especially to abandonedfriends ³« '�κ '��,�, woman to women.26

But women’s patronage was not limited to women. Women couldnot vote or hold elective office, yet the influence of powerful womenin the palace and the law court through their exercise of patronage,amicitiae muliebres, was always present.27 Roscius of Ameria, whowas later defended by Cicero in a parricide case involving politicalmachinations against Sulla, fled for protection in Rome to the aris-tocrat Caecilia Metella, not to any of her abundant male relatives orher husband, because of her amicitia with his deceased father. Itwas recognized that she was his patron, not one of the male membersof her family.28

Augustus’s wife Livia had her own following and client loyalties; as awidow, she even received the Senate in her house. Josephus recountsher benefactions to the Herodian family, including marriage advice to

24 Marcus Cornelius Fronto (trans. C. R. Haines; vol. 1; LCL; Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press, 1962), 145–51; Edward Champlin, Fronto and Anto-nine Rome (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 25.

25 Alan K. Bowman and J. David Thomas, eds., “Per Lepidinam”: The VindolandaWriting-Tablets (Tabulae Vindolandenses II) (London: British Museum Press,1994), no. 257 (inv. 85.117) 230–31. The tablet is dated to period 3 of the fort,97–102/3 C.E..

26 NewDocs 2.16, pp. 55–56.27 Champlin, Fronto and Antonine Rome, 109, 171 n. 87; Richard A. Bauman,

Women and Politics in Ancient Rome (London: Routledge, 1992); SuzanneDixon, “A Family Business: Women’s Role in Patronage and Politics atRome 80–44 B.C.,” Classica et Mediaevalia 34 (1983): 91–124, at p. 91.

28 Ibid., 94, with other examples.


Salome (Ant. 17.10).29 Upon her death, the grateful Senate voted theerection of an arch in her honor. This had never before been done for awoman, and Tiberius would never allow it to be built. The senators’gratitude was abundant because she had saved the lives of some Senatemembers, sustained their orphaned children, and helped many by pay-ing their daughters’ dowries. She was so loved that she was titled infor-mally, in parallel to Augustus’s title, mater patriae. The title was neverofficially granted to her, however, even after her death (Dio Cas-sius 58.2.3).30 Her activities on behalf of her clients are illustrative ofthe kinds of benefactions expected from a powerful patron. Manysimilar stories can be told about other elite women.

Antonia Caenis, freedwoman of Claudius’s mother Antonia, becamemistress of Vespasian until her death. Dio Cassius (65.14.1–5) givesa vivid description of her patronal power and wealth: in exchangefor money, she granted various public offices and priesthoods, andobtained imperial decisions and secured imperial pardons in favor ofher clients. Hers is an example of the power of women derived fromtheir association with male power, but it could also work the otherway. Juvenal complains of women who attend mixed dinner partiesand even host them, holding sway on politics and literature (Sat.6.434–456).31 He also hints that the best way to social advancementis through the patronage of some aging wealthy woman (Sat. 1.39).Women’s patronage was not limited to elites: a freedwoman namedManlia T. l. Gnome boasts on her epitaph that she had many clients(clientes habui multos; CIL 6.21975).

Women’s patronage of groups and even cities is also well docu-mented. For example, Euxenia, priestess of Aphrodite in Megalopolis

29 Josephus writes of other benefactions to the Herodians from imperial women,Antonia and Agrippina the Younger. Poppaea Sabina, wife of Nero, was also saidto be mediator for Jewish causes (Ant. 18.143, 164; 20.135–36; 20.189–96; Life13–16). In a typical patronage maneuver, Josephus records that at Puteoli hemet an actor named Aliturus, and through him, was introduced to Poppaea. Domi-tia, wife of Domitian, was also a personal benefactor and defender ofJosephus, toward whom she was euergetousa, benefactor (Life 429). See ShellyMatthews, First Converts: Rich Pagan Women and the Rhetoric of Mission in EarlyJudaism and Christianity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001), 30–36.

30 Bauman, Women and Politics, 124–29. Livia’s power was derived from that ofAugustus, but, like many queens and empresses, while she had it, she exercised itquite independently.

31 See Suzanne Dixon, Reading Roman Women: Sources, Genres, and Real Life(London: Duckworth, 2001), 101.

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in the Peloponnesus in the second century B.C.E. donated a guest-house and a wall around the temple (IG 5.2.461).32

Plankia Magna of Perge, who held titles of &��'�« and '��- ��« in the second century C.E. both erected and had erected to herseveral monuments in her city commemorating her benefactions.33

Tation, daughter of Straton son of Empedon, from Kyme either built orremodeled at her own expense the building and the surrounding precinctof a synagogue, for which the Jews bestowed on her two traditional hon-ors for a patron: a gold crown and a place of honor (��&��). Both thewording of the inscription (“the Jews honor her”) and the family namesinvolved suggest that she was an outside benefactor, not a member of theJewish community (CIJ 2.738).34 Julia Severa of Acmonia in Phrygiaheld a number of distinguished priesthoods and city offices and was of afamily that was sufficiently prominent that her son entered the Senate,yet she donated property to the local synagogue, perhaps because two ofits archons were her freedmen or clients (CIJ 2.766; MAMA 6.264).35

Other civic benefactions in which women were involved included ali-mentary programs for poor children. Wealthy women found this an ap-propriate outlet for their money and a suitable way to be immortalized.

And immortalized they were. In Herculaneum, where the hardenedmud that covered the city made immediate retrieval of precious itemsmuch more difficult than at Pompeii, more statuary was thus preservedthan at Pompeii. At Herculaneum, 40 percent of the dedicatory statuesare of women, mostly large and in bronze and metal. They were set upalongside those of men in the theater and the forum area, without anyperceptible gender pattern.36

32 Riet van Bremen, “Women and Wealth,” in Images of Women in Antiquity (eds.Averil Cameron and Amélie Kuhrt; rev. ed.; Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State Univer-sity Press, 1993), 223.

33 Cf. Mary Taliaferro Boatwright, “Plancia Magna of Perge: Women’s Roles andStatus in Roman Asia Minor,” in Women’s History and Ancient History (ed. SarahB. Pomeroy; Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 249–72.Other female gymnasiarchs are known: L. Casarico, “Donne ginnasiarco,” ZPE48 (1982): 118–22. There is even one in Egypt, and a female tax collector: New-Docs 8.4, p. 49.

34 NewDocs 1.69, p. 111.35 L. Michael White, ed., Social Networks in the Early Christian Environment: Issues

and Methods for Social History (Semeia 56; Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1992),18–19.

36 Giuseppina Cerulli Irelli, “Archaeological Research in the Area of Vesuvius:Portraits from Herculaneum,” in Pompeii and the Vesuvian Landscape (Washing-


Women participated in and led collegia or �� , professional andsocial organizations of the nonelite, often patronized by an elite figure.They held such offices as magistra, quinquennalis, sacerdos, curator,honorata, quaestor, decurio, and immunis.37 A well-known Pompeiianbenefactor who illustrates precisely the kind of patronage central tothis study was Eumachia, public priestess, patroness of the fullers’guild, who, in her own name and that of her son, Numistrius Fronto,erected at her own expense a gallery, cryptoporticus, and portico forthe fullers’ building, which was centrally located in the forum, dedicat-ing them herself to concordia and pietas augusta. In gratitude, the guilderected a dedicatory statue of her with inscription, a copy of which stillstands behind their building at the forum in Pompeii (Fig. 7.3). She alsobuilt a tomb for herself and her familia outside the city. Eumachia’stomb outside the Nucerian Gate is one of the largest funerary monu-ments in the area, stating simply her name and filiation on one side, EV-MACHIA L F, and on the other side, SIBI ET SVIS, for herself andthose who belong to her familia (CIL 10.810, 811, 813 and Fig. 7.4).38

Similarly, the Jewish Rufina in second-century Smyrna, a womanwho bore the title $�� '.'�« (synagogue ruler), recorded on amarble plaque on her tomb that she built it for her freedmen/womenand the slaves raised in her house (��« $��« ��λ �� )(CIJ 741). It was familial burial complexes like theirs that formed thenuclei of most of the later Christian catacombs, as discussed above.

Many more examples could be added. This kind of evidence is im-portant for seeing the wide range of possibilities for women’s personalpatronage. Any woman who had accumulated even a modest amountof wealth and connections could be as active in patronage relation-ships as a man of her social status. For elite women, direct intervention

ton, D.C.: Archaeological Institute of America and the Smithsonian Institution,1979), 16–24; Caroline Dexter, “The Epigraphic Evidence of PompeiianWomen” (unpublished paper) n. 18, p. 23.

37 List in J. P. Waltzing, Étude historique sur les corporations professionnelles chezles Romains depuis les origines jusqu’à la chute de l’Empire d’Occident, vol. 4(4 vols.; Brussels: Hayez, 1895), 254–57.

38 Cf. Roy Bowen Ward, “The Public Priestesses of Pompeii,” in The Early Churchin Its Context: Essays in Honor of Everett Ferguson (eds. Abraham J. Malherbe,Frederick W. Norris, and James W. Thompson; Leiden: Brill, 1998), 323–27.There is some doubt whether the building fronting on the forum was actually thefullers’ meeting place, but the inscription on the frieze and the statue behindcommemorate Eumachia as stated.

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7.3. Copy of statue of Eumachia(original in Naples Museum)behind the fullers’ building onthe Forum in Pompeii. (author’sphoto)

7.4. Eumachia’s burial complex for her familia outside the Nucerian Gate, Pompeii.(Photo: David Balch)


in political appointments was lacking, but they exercised no less in-fluence. One of the expected actions of such patrons was to set up aburial place to accommodate not only themselves and immediatefamily, but also members of the network of their familia, as Eumachiaand Rufina did.39

Apparently, this first step in Christian burial practice continued intoa second phase: while the land was still in private ownership, the exer-cise of private patronage by Christians broadened to include provisionof burial space on one’s own cemetery plot to members of the churchnot related by familia and without suitable alternative burial arrange-ments. Some second- and third-century texts tell us of the developingunderstanding of patronage among Christians, and their sometime re-sistance. For example, Hermas criticizes the wealthy of his second-cen-tury Roman community for shirking patronal duties: they get so tiedup in their business interests that they avoid lesser persons becausethey do not wish to be asked for favors (Herm. Sim. 9.20.2–4). Suchpeople would incur the disdain not only of Hermas but of the Chris-tian poor as well, to say nothing of their peers. Their repentance willconsist in “doing some good,” namely, generosity with their riches andthe establishment of patronage relationships. One of those good ac-tions was granting place in their burial properties for the poor.

Other later writers under a growing church centralization are not soencouraging. The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus discourages indi-viduals from holding charity meals for the needy without clericalsupervision (Apostolic Tradition 29).40 If this text does represent early-third-century Rome as tradition would have it,41 it stands at just thetime when central control is being exerted in the church in many areas.In Carthage a generation later, Cyprian, probably like most bishops of

39 An interesting documented parallel to this development is the aggregation ofownership of brick factories in the hands of daughters through inheritanceover the first two centuries C.E. before passing into imperial control in the thirdcentury: Päivi Setälä, Private Domini in Roman Brick Stamps of the Empire:A Historical and Prosopographical Study of Landowners in the District of Rome(Annales Academicae Scientiarum Fennicae. Dissertationes Humanarum Litte-rarum; Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1977). My gratitude to JohnBodel for this reference as for many other insights in this paper.

40 Charles A. Bobertz, “The Role of Patron in the Cena Dominica of Hippolytus’Apostolic Tradition,” JTS 44 (1993): 170–84.

41 The origins and nature of the text are much disputed: see Bradshaw et al., Apos-tolic Tradition, 1–6.

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his time, wanted to consolidate patronal power in his own office byweakening the power of wealthy members of the church, encouragingcentralized charity, and rejecting the charismatic claims of martyrs toforgive sins. The consolidation of collection and dissemination forcharity, already evidenced by Justin and Tertullian, gradually becomesthe normal way for Christians to exercise their generosity. By then, thepatronage system has been vastly overhauled. Eventually, there is onlyone major patron left for Christians: the bishop.42 During this phase,assumption of ownership and administration of cemeteries by thechurches under the direction of the bishop was a natural extension oftheir assertion of centralized control.

From Private to Communal Ownership

At some time, in most cases during the third and early fourth century,while still under private ownership, the underground areas of theseburial plots were extended, at first by the owners of the plots in orderto make room for burials of the poor within their own spaces. This wasthe prelude to the assumption of ownership and administration bychurch authorities. But how did this transition happen legally, andwhat was the legal basis for church ownership?

It is well known that Roman law did not recognize corporate owner-ship by a legal body, though it did allow multiple individual ownershipof everything from land to slaves.43 In practice, there seems to havebeen tacit recognition of corporate ownership. For example, there aredocumented cases in which familial burial property is ceded as a foun-dation to a city, colony, or collegium, apparently only when the entirefamilia no longer had any survivors.44

This implicit recognition of corporate ownership is examined inmore detail in J. P. Waltzing’s monumental study of professional cor-

42 William L. Countryman, The Rich Christian in the Church of the Early Empire:Contradictions and Accommodations (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1980).

43 De Visscher, Le droit des tombeaux romains, 123–27 discusses this and citesCicero De officiis 1.17.54–55 as if Cicero were talking about corporate property,but that need not be the case (see p. 246 above).

44 De Visscher, “Le régime juridique des plus anciens cimetières chrétiens à Rome,”Analecta Bollandiana 69 (1951): 39–54 (same text in Le droit des tombeaux ro-mains, 261–76), at 44–49, citing the example of Junia Libertas. Some examplesgiven: ILS 7846, 7847.


porations, or collegia. He cites four different ways in which Romanlegal practice implicitly recognized corporate ownership: (1) prop-erty bequeathed to the state for accomplishment of a civil responsi-bility (rare); (2) consecratio et dedicatio, goods belonging to a god;(3) property held by a societas, legally understood as personal prop-erty of many individuals; and (4) civil personification in jus privatum,a more limited form of ownership than that of a real person.45 TheLex Julia of 7 C.E. required authorization of every legal collegium byemperor or Senate, therefore presumably with this fourth form ofcivil personification.

By the time of the jurists Paul and Ulpian (early third century), mostof the collegia were de facto, even if not legally, recognized as ownersof property, the legal basis being the logical extension from cities ascorporate persons to recognized organizations, which then were understrict rules of registration and financial accountability.46 Individualscould donate property to collegia (e.g., CIL 6.10231; 10.444, 1579,2112) and collegia could sell property and could reclaim the inherit-ance of one of their freedmen (Ulpian Dig. 40.3.1–2), but could nototherwise inherit by testament. Freedmen were obligated to bequeathhalf their property to their patron. By the third quarter of the secondcentury, this probably applied to former slaves of collegia as well.47

The evidence is not clear on the boundaries and particular charac-teristics of collegia in the Roman world. Some certainly existed forthe purpose of mutual support in a common trade, like the fullers’ cor-poration of Pompeii with their patron, Eumachia. Most probablyhad some kind of religious practice associated with their meetings.This kind of professional guild is known to have existed in most of theRoman world, sometimes assembling in their own building, as did thefullers of Pompeii, sometimes in a rented hall, sometimes in a privatehouse. In addition, it has been thought that another kind of associ-ation of non-elites, the collegia tenuiorum composed largely of the free-born poor, existed for the major purpose of “burial societies,” to assurea decent burial of deceased members through monthly meals wherea collection was taken up for the common chest. But it is difficult toimagine a social association with so limited a scope. Probably this issimply another face of the same kind of social organization or club

45 Waltzing, Étude historique, 2.3, pp. 432–44.46 Ibid., 432–44, 474–75.47 Ibid., 455–67.

266 Carolyn Osiek

that accomplished many purposes at once: social, professional, reli-gious, and funerary.48 The acquisition of one or more patrons to under-write expenses and provide social status was always desirable. It hasbeen suggested that one of the advantages of such societies was to poolresources and so attract patronage that individuals or smaller groupswould not be able to acquire.49

Since de Rossi at the end of the nineteenth century, there has beendiscussion of the possibility that early Christian communities mayhave been associated in some way with this model of the non-elitesocial club. Tertullian (Apol. 39) speaks of the monthly collection forworks of charity, and regular social meals. It is one thing to argue thatChristians deliberately used the legal form of the collegium and wererecognized as such by imperial authority; it is another to see Christiansusing the collegium as a familiar form of social organization. The latteris much more likely than the former: the idea of Christian groups asofficially recognized collegia has not been widely accepted, while theycertainly seem to share some characteristics with collegia, especiallyregular common meals, a common social fund, and provision of burialto those unable to afford it.50

A parallel to Christian activity has sometimes been drawn with thecollegium domesticum that met in the house of Sergia Paulina in early-second-century Rome, in which the surviving inscriptional evidencespeaks of the collegium quod est in domo Sergiae Paulinae, reminiscent ofPaul’s greetings to �κ ��# �� % #�� (e.g., Rom 16:5).51

Besides meeting regularly in a house for an official meal, they alsoseem to have had common burial space.

There is some evidence that Christians in various places continuedto belong to other collegia and were buried in their common burialgrounds. Cyprian in mid-third-century Carthage objects to the actionof bishop Martialis who allowed his son to be buried in the cemetery ofanother (non-Christian) collegium (Ep. 67), presumably because he is

48 Rebillard, Religion et Sépulture, 52–53, 57–59.49 Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb,” 39.50 For a summary of recent scholarship on this question, see Philip A. Harland,

Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Medi-terranean Society (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2003), 178–82.

51 The proposition of Marta Sordi in 1971 that the group in the house of SergiaPaulina was actually Christian has not been accepted; bibliography in Rebillard,Religion et Sépulture, 56 n14.


a member. About the same time, Commodian condemns the decisionsof those who would be buried in such a way (Instr. 2,29,12–13). Bothcondemnations witness to the custom practiced by some, including abishop.52

When finally Constantine in 321 established Christian churches asfull juridic persons for the purpose of inheritance, they became neces-sarily full juridic persons for the purpose of ownership of property,and from then on, there is no ambiguity in their legal status. If the shiftfrom private ownership of Christian burial properties to commonchurch ownership began already in the early third century, as appar-ently witnessed by Hippolytus, then for nearly a century churches musthave shared the ambiguous position of the collegia, operating openlybut without proper juridic status as property owners. As is so often thecase in Roman law, magistrates seem to have looked the other way ex-cept during times of actual persecution.

Even then, however, sources seem to indicate that church ownershipof real property was not questioned. The evidence is puzzling butrather clear, at least as witnessed by fourth-century Christian sources.For example, in the episcopal dispute with Paul of Samosata in the270s, the deposed Paul refused to give up the �/��« �0« #�� «,which the emperor Aurelian decreed should belong (��) to thosewho were in communication with the bishops of Italy and Rome (Euse-bius Hist. eccl. 7.30.18–19). Again, Lactantius relates that during thepersecution of Diocletian and Galerius, officials came to the ekklesiain Nicomedia, burned the books, and destroyed the interior of thebuilding. From their palace, the two emperors could see the building,which they decided not to burn for fear other nearby buildings wouldalso catch fire. So the Pretorian Guards with axes and iron instrumentsleveled the building in a few hours. (Mort. 12). In the account, no ques-tion about legal ownership of the building is raised.

The collegia continued to exist well into the fourth century, eventhough the church gradually took over the function of burial of thepoor. One section of the catacomb of Domitilla apparently belongedto a collegium of mensores, an association responsible for procurementand distribution of the regular dole of grain to the populace of Rome.The corporations sometimes found new patrons in bishops, and thusparticipated in the movement that was happening with regard to pri-

52 Rebillard, Religion et Sépulture, 64–67.

268 Carolyn Osiek

vate patronage generally: the assumption of patronal privilege into thehands of church authorities.53

This does not mean, however, that the practice of private patronagein regard to cemeteries ceased entirely and immediately. Lactantiusnotes that the last great work of piety is burial of strangers and thepoor (Inst. 6.12). Again, there is evidence of wealthy women patronswho continue to function in this way. The small underground basilicaof Saints Felix and Adauctus in the catacomb of Commodilla containsthe grave of the widow Turtura, who was important enough to be im-mortalized on a late large wall painting of the same basilica in the com-pany of the two martyrs flanking the Virgin and Child.54

Outside of Rome, an early-fourth-century inscription from a Chris-tian cemetery at Velletri in Latium records a commemoration to “Falto-nia Hilaritas, dearest lady and daughter, who from the ground up madethe cemetery from her own funds and gave it to ‘this religion’” (FaltoniaeHilaritati dominae filiae carissimae quae hoc coemeterium a solo sua pe-cunia fecit et huhic religioni donavit – ILCV 3681A).55 Seemingly, at thetime she died, the church was already in possession of what began as aprivate patronal enterprise, exactly the same pattern that we have seenbegan to be operative during the third century in Rome. At that earliertime, private burial complexes that had probably been administered forseveral Christian generations by patrons for the care of poor Christianswithout private means of burial were eventually turned over to commu-nal church ownership and administration by at least local leaders of par-ticular congregations. By the fourth century, especially after Constan-tine’s recognition of the legal status of the church, it became normativefor the church to assume ownership and administration of cemeteries,increasingly under centralized administration of bishop and deacons. Inthe case of Faltonia Hilaritas, the transition happened within onegeneration: the woman who founded the cemetery as a private endeavorwas herself buried in the same cemetery, now owned by the church.

53 Ibid., 68–70; Waltzing, Étude historique, 461–74.54 Fiocchi Nicolai et al., Christian Catacombs of Rome, 63.55 Religio originally meant an obligation having to do with the sacred, as for example

the tomb as locus religiosus. Freqently referred to is Cicero’s distinction betweenreligio and superstitio and etymology of religio from relegere, to reread or review(De natura deorum 2.28.71–72). By the second and third centuries C.E. the termhad acquired connotations of faith practice. For other examples of Christian in-scriptions using the word to refer to Christian faith and practice, see ILCV 1.3824,3826 (CIL 6.10412; 10411). Cf. PW new ed., 21. 565–75; DACL 14B. 2291–94.


Once various church entities had taken over administration of thecemeteries and social services in the fourth century, private patronagedid not cease. It did, however, begin to take on a different form. Thesame social classes that were previously both public and private pa-trons continued to be involved in benefactions, but now the bishop ispresented as principal initiator and patron of social projects. The re-sources still come from lay patrons, but now they do not flaunt theirstatus on public monuments, as they did in the past. Rather, they as-sume the position of humble servants of the church, relying on a futurereward.56 Relief efforts for the poor and needy continue, but the re-sources, supplied by lay patrons, are funneled more and more throughthe hands of the bishop and his deacon assistants. Private benefactionalso now frequently takes the form of contributing to the embellish-ment of churches or monuments, as witnessed, for example, on the in-scriptions of an early-fifth-century altar and ciborium in the basilica ofSt. Alexander bearing the names of Delicatus and the aristocraticJunia Sabina c f (ICUR 8. 22958–22959).57 Examples like this abound.

The bishop assumes the position of major patron. Material help nowcomes from the social aid programs administered by the bishop and dea-cons. Moral and spiritual help, an actual spiritual patronage, resides inthe power of martyrs’ bodies in their memoria in the cemeteries, and inthe sacraments. The bishop and deacons are in control of both. Thesefactors help to explain the swift rise of the power of bishops beginning inthe middle of the third century and accelerated in the fourth.58

56 Much as both ancient and modern writers, however, want to contrast the pre-Christian patron, concerned only with the honor that would flow from his or hergenerosity, with the Christian donor who selflessly gives without expecting anyearthly reward, the difference is not so neat. See, for example, Pliny the Younger,who worries lest making known his generosity to an alimentary program mightbe seen as self-aggrandizing. A noble spirit, he notes, seeks the reward of virtue,not popular praise. Fame should be the result of good deeds, not the motive fordoing them, and there is no less merit if it does not follow (Ep. 1,8.13).

57 Vincenzio Fiocchi Nicolai, “Euergetismo ecclesiastico e laico nelle iscrizionipaleocristiane del Lazio,” Historiam pictura refert: Miscellanea in onore di PadreAlejandro Recio Veganzones O.F.M. (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto de Arch-eolgia Cristiana, 1994), 237–52, at p. 240.

58 Y. Duval and Ch. Pietri, “Euergétisme et épigraphie dans l’occident chrétien(IVe–Vie s.),” Xe Congrès International d’Épigraphie Grecque et Latine, Nîmes,du 4 au 10 octobre 1992 (eds. Michel Christol and Olivier Masson; Paris: Publi-cations de la Sorbonne, 1997), 371–96. The amalgamation of patronal power inthe hands of a bishop is an interesting parallel to the role of the emperor, holder

270 Carolyn Osiek

Conclusion

The Greco-Roman system of patronage and benefaction, the back-bone of social relations in the earlier Empire, did not cease amongChristians when they were a minority in the non-elite population, norwhen they gained social and political ascendance. One of the areas inwhich they have left some evidence of their activity is the provision ofburial for their dependents, and developing from there, for other needypersons in the community. The prominence of women in the Greco-Roman system of patronage and benefaction is clear to those who lookat the evidence. Women were prominent, too, in Christian patronage.One of the major ways in which we see this is the development of burialcomplexes in Rome. The prominence of Christian women in this par-ticular exercise of patronage is indicative of the significant numbers ofwomen who owned land and were in the position of head of householdwith responsibility to provide burials for the familia, which then ex-tended to others, especially the needy members of the church.

Gradually, however, church leadership was expanding its adminis-tration and ownership of these properties, initially under questionablelegal arrangements, but from the time of Constantine, with full legalpower. During this development, church leaders, especially bishops,emerge as the prominent element in the patronage system, whileprivate patrons become the background suppliers of materials. Bothwomen and men are among the private patrons who retreat to theshadows in the new Christian order in which the right hand should notknow what the left hand is doing (Matt 6:1–4), the honor due to thepatron goes to the bishop, and for all others, should be reserved for thelife to come.

of supreme and universal patronal power, as argued by Fergus Millar, The Em-peror in the Roman World (31 BC–AD 337) (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UniversityPress, 1977); cf. Richard P. Saller, Personal Patronage, 2–3; Andrew Wallace-Ha-drill, Patronage in Ancient Society, 79–81.

Envisioning Context and Meaning

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David L. Balch

Chapter 8

From Endymion inRoman Domus to Jonah in Christian Catacombs:From Houses of the Living to Houses for the Dead.

Iconography and Religion in Transition

Pre-Constantinian Christians valued the three-stage Jonah cycle. Gray-don Snyder lists how often thirty-one different Biblical stories are vis-ually represented this early: Jonah-cast-into-the-sea appears 38 times,Jonah-and-the-ketos 28 times, and Jonah-at-rest 42 times in variousmedia, including mosaics, wall paintings, and sarcophagi. Of the othertwenty-eight visual images found, the closest is the Sacrifice of Isaac,which appears 8 times.1 Christian artists emphasized the third Jonahimage, Jonah-at-rest, and represented him in the visual tradition ofEndymion, a handsome young man loved by the goddess Selene (themoon). Endymion appears 17 times in wall frescoes in Pompeii,2 inRoman houses dating from the first century C.E. This essay concernshow visual representations of Endymion made the journey from mosaicsand wall frescoes in Roman houses and tombs of the first and secondcenturies C.E. to represent Jonah in Christian catacombs of the third tofifth centuries C.E., then again moved above ground to one of the earliestchurch mosaics that remains – in Aquileia, in the early fourth centuryC.E. Although many authors assume that Jonah is represented in thestyle of Endymion, two important writers deny that Jonah images are de-pendent on him,3 so this essay will also inquire whether they are correct.

1 Graydon F. Snyder, Ante-Pacem. Archaeological Evidence of Church Life beforeConstantine. (Rev. ed.; Macon, Ga.: Mercer University, 2003), 87.

2 PPM 10:560 (Index, s.v “Endymion”).3 Hans Gabelmann, “Endymion,” LIMC 3.1: 726–42, at 742, and Antonio Fer-

rua, “Paralipomeni di Giona,” in RACrist 38 (1962): 7–69.

274 David L. Balch

The question of method is unavoidable. One problem is that onlyabout 40 percent of the catacomb paintings have recently been ad-equately published, a contrast to research on sarcophagi and inscrip-tions.4 Further, some earlier interpreters proceeded from the paintingsdirectly to Christian dogma,5 emphasizing either their sacramental ortheir eschatological meaning. The German reaction has been to studythe catacomb paintings simply as late Roman folk art and to deny theappropriateness of interpreting the visual in light of the textual, that is,by Patristic authors.6 One advantage of this debate is that “EarlyChristian art seems to have freed itself from unambiguous interpre-tations that united the various figurative models using a connectingthread that related them all to a single fundamental reference.”7 Thismethodological fissure means that scholars must decide whether to beItalian or German.

4 Norbert Zimmermann, Werkstattgruppen römischer Katakombenmalerei (JAC,Ergänzungsband 35; Münster: Aschendorf, 2002), 27, 29.

5 André Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins (BollingenSeries 35.10; Princeton N. J.: Princeton University, 1968), Parts 3–5: Dogma.Josef Wilpert, Le pitture delle catacombe romane (Roma sotterranea; Rome:Desclée Lefebvre, 1903), German title: Roma sotteranea: die Malerein der Kata-komben Roms.

6 Zimmermann, Katakombenmalerei, 29, citing Peter Dückers, “Agape und Irene:die Frauengestalten der Sigmamahlszenen mit antiken Inschriften in der Kata-kombe der Heiligen Marcellinus und Petrus in Rom,” JAC 35 (1992): 147–67 andCarlo Carletti, “Origine, committenze e fruizione delle scene bibliche nella pro-duzione romana dell III secolo,” Vetera Christianorum 26 (1989): 207–19. AlsoJosef Engemann, “Biblische Themen im Bereich der frühchristlichen Kunst,”Stimuli: Exegese und ihre Hermeneutik in Antike und Christentum: Festschrift fürErnst Dassmann (eds. Georg Schöllgen and Clemens Scholten; JAC, Ergän-zungsband 23; Münster: Aschendorff, 1996), 543–56. Carletti’s observation(212–15) that the Biblical scenes occur in family burial chambers reserved for theelite renders problematic Snyder’s hypothesis (see n. 1) that these images reflectvalues of the non-elite.

7 Fabrizio Bisconti, “The Decoration of Roman Catacombs,” in The ChristianCatacombs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions (eds. Vincenzo FiocchiNicolai, Fabrizio Bisconti, Danilo Mazzoleni; 2nd ed.; Regensburg: Schnell &Steiner, 2002), 133.

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Selected Second-Century-C.E. Roman Sepulchraland Domestic Mosaics of Endymion and Third-Century

Sarcophagi of Jonah

First, the Hellenistic and Roman “biography” of Endymion: he is saidto have led the Aetolians from Thessaly in northern Greece to Elis, aplain in the Peloponnese.8 Early sources do not narrate Selene’s (themoon goddess’) love of him, an addition to the saga made in AsiaMinor. When describing the Ionians and Carians near Miletus, Strabo(XIV 1.8; C636) mentions mount Latmus and a river nearby, where onemay see the sepulchre of Endymion in a cave, which Selene (=Trivia)left her cosmic course to visit (Catullus 66.5–6, alluding to Callimac-hus;9 also Lucian10). Hellenistic authors expand the bucolic imagery:Endymion is a shepherd whom Selene comes down from Olympus tokiss, which leads to the wish, “O would I were Endymion That sleepsthe unchanging slumber on …” (Theocritus, 3.49–50 [Edmonds,LCL]).11 Propertius emphasizes Endymion’s nudity (II.15.15–16).

Some interpretations are eschatological: “wise souls” among theStoics, named “Endymiones,” live around the moon (Tertullian, An.55).12 Rational souls are resolved into the moon, according to Plutarch(The Face of the Moon, 945AB), but those enamored of the body sleepwith memories of their lives as dreams as did the soul of Endymion.Pliny the Elder rationalizes: “the first human being to observe all thesefacts about her [transformations of the moon during eclipses] wasEndymion – which accounts for the traditional story of his love forher” (Nat. II.43, [Rackham, LCL]). And Lucian satirizes, telling ofEndymion, king of those living on the moon, warring with the peopleof the sun and their king, Phaethon (Ver. Hist. I.11–12). The eschato-logical overtones must be one aspect of the saga that led to RomanChristians’ fascination, but we should also include the early RomanChristians’ appreciation of aesthetic beauty.

8 Gabelmann, “Endymion,” LIMC 3.1: 727–28 gives references to the classicalauthors cited in the following two paragraphs.

9 Callimachus, “Aetia” (ed. Trypanis, LCL), 80–85.10 Lucian, Dial. d. (ed. Macleod, LCL), 328–31.11 Also Cicero, Tusc. 1.38.92; Amic. 1.13.43–44; but see Cicero, Fin. V.20.55.12 A fragment of Varro, Saturarum Menippearum (ed. Raymond Astbury; Leipzig:

Teubner, 1985), 18–20. Lines 100–108 have the title Endymiones, referring to thisStoic conception. Werner A. Krenkel, ed., Marcus Terentius Varro Saturae Menip-peae (Subsidia Classica 6; St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae, 2002), 1.172–84.

From Endymion in Roman Domus to Jonah in Christian Catacombs

276 David L. Balch

Second, selected visual representations: the Roman tombs at IsolaSacra (between Ostia and Porta at the mouth of the Tiber river)include an Endymion mosaic in tomb 87 dated to the Antonine era(c. 140 C.E.), just earlier than the Christian catacomb paintings.13 Thetomb is richly decorated by frescoes, stucco, and mosaic. The epigraphreports that the dedicators, P. Varius Ampelus and Varia Ennuchis,constructed the tomb for themselves, for their patron (Varia Servanda),their children, freed persons, and their descendants, and it also prohibitsthe rite of inhumation – unique in Isola Sacra.14 There are two klinai(dining couches) in front; inside there is an edicola (niche) and an oven.To the right of the niche inside, a male wearing a toga is represented,and to the left a person seated, an emperor administering justice, per-haps Trajan.15 Below the niche one sees Thisbe who has discovered herlover, Pyramus, killed by a lion.16 Left of the niche is Aiace and Cas-sandra;17 one version of this Trojan story is that he drags her away fromthe statue of Athena to rape her.18 Above the niche Diana, spied by thehunter Actaeon while she was bathing, turns him into a deer, and he isthen attacked and killed by his own dogs.19 Diverse artists, whom Bald-assarre judges had little skill, painted these frescoes. The vault was alsodecorated, and finally, there is a black-and-white mosaic pavement ofSelene and Endymion who are placed in the center of a geometric de-

13 Ida Baldassarre, Irene Bragantini, Chiara Morselli, and Franca Taglietti, Nicro-poli di Porto. Isola Sacra (Itinerari dei musei, gallerie, scavi e monumenti d’Ita-lia, n.s. 38; Rome: Istituto poligrafico e zecca dello stato, 1996), 71–74, fig. 28.Hans Gabelmann, “Endymion,” LIMC 3.2 (1986): 551–61, at 553, fig. 29.

14 Baldassarre, Nicropoli di Porto, 71, fig. 26. During the second century C.E.Roman values changed from cremation toward inhumation, a change not gener-ated by Christians.

15 Ostia Museum inventory #10037.16 Ostia Museum inventory #10115. Ida Baldassarre, “Piramo e Thisbe: dal mito

all’imagine,” in L’art décoratif à Rome à la fin de la république et au début du prin-cipat (Collection de ÉFR 55; Rome: L’École Francaise de Rome, 1981), 337–51with 11 figs., including figs. 5–6 of Tomb 87 at Isola Sacra.

17 Ostia Museum inventory #10114.18 A version of this painting also occurs in the House of Menander (I 10,4) at Pom-

peii. See David L. Balch, “Paul’s Portrait of Christ Crucified (Gal.3:1) in Lightof Paintings and Sculptures of Suffering and Death in Pompeian and RomanHouses,” in Early Christian Families in Context: an interdisciplinary dialogue(eds. David L. Balch and Carolyn Osiek; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,2003), 84–108, color plate 11.

19 Eleanor Winsor Leach, “Metamorphoses of the Acteon Myth in CampanianPainting,” MDAI 88 (1981): 307–32 with plates 131–41.

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sign.20 Baldassare sees the theme of violent death in the four visual rep-resentations of male-female couples, images placed here by a societyundergoing ideological change, one aspect of which was the internali-zation of the experience of death.21

Endymion also occurs in domestic settings, as in El Jem, Tunisia,ancient Roman Thysdrus. Four couples (as in Tomb 87 above) are repre-sented in small panels (see Figs. 8.1–2). The museum label reads as fol-lows:

Endymion, a good looking shepherd, sleeping near a rock, Selene, the Moon,admires him. Polypheme playing the lyre to charm Galate, nymph that he loves.Dionysus, drunk, is leaning on a Satyr who reveals Ariadne. Alpheus, god ofriver, attacking the nymph Arethusa. End of 2nd c. A.D. Maison A du terrainJilani Guirot.

The Museo Pio Cristiano in the Vatican exhibits a Christian sarcopha-gus with the three scenes of Jonah dated perhaps from the final third ofthe third century. The third scene exhibits the prophet in a pose likethat of Endymion.22 Another early sarcophagus from the Basilica di S.Maria Antiqua in Rome also has the three Jonah scenes.23 However,this paper focuses on comparing Pompeian visual representation withthose of the catacomb; to some extent frescoes and sarcophagi belong todifferent traditions, so I will notice the latter primarily in footnotes.24

20 Baldassarre et al., Nicropoli di Porto, 74, fig. 28.21 Ibid., also 33–34.22 E. Jastrzebowska, “Sol und Luna auf frühchristlichen Sarkophagen: ein tradi-

tionelles Motif der offiziellen kaiserzeitlichen römischen Kunst in christlicherVerwendung,” in Sarcofagi tardoantichi, paleocristiani e altomedievali: atti dellagiornata tematica dei seminari di archeologia Cristiana (ÉFR – 8 maggio 2002)(eds. Fabrizio Bisconti and Hugo Brandenburg; Monumenti di Antichità Cris-tiana II Serie, 18; Vatican City: PIAC, 2004), 155–63, at 159, Fig. 1. Robin Mar-garet Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (New York: Routledge, 2000),48 with figs. 13a–c dates it to the late third century.

23 F. Bisconti, “I sarcophagi del paradiso,” in Sarcofagi, 57, 72, fig. 32. Marion Law-rence, “Three Pagan Themes in Christian Art,” in Essays in Honor of Erwin Pan-ofsky (vol. 1; ed. Millard Meiss; De Artibus Opuscula 40; New York: New YorkUniversity, 1961), 323–34, at 325 dates it c. 280, later than some other scholars.

24 See Guntram Koch and Helmut Sichtermann, Römische Sarkophage (Munich:C. H. Beck, 1982), 144–46 and Helmut Sichtermann, Späte Endymion-Sarkop-hage: Methodisches zur Interpretation (Deutsche Beiträge zur Altertumswissen-schaft 19; Baden-Baden: Bruno Grimm, 1966), reviewed by Josef Engemann,JAC 10 (1967): 247–50. Josef Engemann, Untersuchungen zur Sepulkralsymbolikder späteren römischen Kaiserzeit (JAC, Ergänzungsband 2; Munster: Aschen-dorf, 1973), 28–30, 70–85. Helmut Sichtermann and Guntram Koch, Griechische


278 David L. Balch

These are examples of Endymion in a Roman tomb, an African-Roman house, and on two Christian sarcophagi from the mid- to latesecond and/or third century C.E. Seeking a more complete aestheticand cultural context, I turn to Endymion represented in houses of theliving in Pompeii, all prior to Vesuvius’s eruption in 79 C.E. I will exam-ine selected frescoes in Pompeii before locating Jonah in some Christiancatacomb visual representations, having the question in mind whetherand how this figure made the transition from the former to the latter.

Endymion Visually Represented in Wall Frescoesand in a Stucco Chapel in Pompeian Domus

Fabrizio Bisconti argues that “the decoration of domestic, funeraryand civil buildings above ground was imitated in these undergroundsettings [Christian catacombs].”25 His supporting observations include

Mythen auf römischen Sarkophagen (Bilderhefte des Deutschen ArchäologischenInstituts Rom 5–6; Tübingen: Ernst Wasmuth, 1975), 27–30. Robert Turcan,“Les sarcophages romains et le problème du symbolisme funéraire,” ANRW 2.6.2(1978): 1700–35, esp. 1704–08, 1712–13 on Endymion; his pl. II.2 exhibits anEndymion sarcophagus from Ostia: see Joan R. Mertens, The Metropolitan Mu-seum of Art: Greece and Rome (New York: Dai Nippon, 1987), fig. 114, a sar-cophagus dated 210–225, the date of the earliest catacomb paintings. FabrizioBisconti, “I sarcophagi: officine e produzioni,” in Christiana loca: lo spazio cris-tiano nella Roma del primo millennio (ed. Letizia Pani Ermini; 2 vols.; Ministeroper i beni e le attività culturali; Compleso di S. Michele, 5 settembre–15 novembre2000; Rome: Fratelli Palombi, 2000), vol. 1, 257–63. Tobi Levenberg Kaplan, ed.,The J. Paul Getty Museum: Handbook of the Antiquities Collection (Los Angeles:Getty, 2002), 169: front of sarcophagus, dated c. 210, with the myth of Endymion;Selene arrives in her chariot, then in a second scene to the right, departs.

25 Bisconti, “Roman Catacombs,” 85. See his pp. 89, 94 on the transition in the lateAntonine and the mature Severan periods from the fourth, architectural Pom-peian style to the red and green linear, illusionistic style that involved demateri-alisation and simplification. This is based on Fritz Wirth, Römische Wandmale-rei vom Untergang Pompeijs bis ans Ende des dritten Jahrhunderts (Berlin: 1934;reprint: Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968). See WladimiroDorigo, Late Roman Painting (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1966 (in Italian); New York:Praeger, 1971), chap. 5, and Johannes Kollwitz, “Die Malerei der konstanti-nischen Zeit (Taf. I–LXVII),” in Akten des VII. internazionalen Kongresses fürchristliche Archäologie, Trier, 5–11 September 1965 (SAC 28; Vatican City/Ber-lin: PIAC, 1969), at 93–98, who dates catacomb visual representations fifty yearslater than the Italian De Bruyne (see n. 86 below).

279From Endymion in Roman Domus to Jonah in Christian Catacombs

8.2. Selene and Endymion, close-up of mosaic in 8.1.(author’s photo)

8.1. Mosaic of four couples, El Jem, Tunisia. (author’s photo)

280 David L. Balch

the triumph of marble in all its forms and the tripartite division ofspaces, i.e., three principle registers on walls, which crescendos as im-ages move up the wall. He concludes that this “betrays, very generi-cally a dependence (of catacomb visual representations) on “Pom-peian” wall painting, with extreme simplification of the architecturalimitation.”26 Agreeing with his argument, I will compare wall frescoesin Pompeii of Endymion with later paintings of Jonah in Christiancatacombs in the larger aesthetic and mythical contexts of domus andcatacomb decoration.

The Casa del Sacello Iliaco (I 6,4)

Two houses in Pompeii, the Casa del Criptoportico (I 6,2)27 and theCasa del Sacello Iliaco (I 6,4) were united, and the decoration is of un-usual quality.28 In the late Republican period (40–30 B.C.E) the cripto-porticus (19) in house I 6,2 was painted in the late second style, fres-coes whose quality is comparable with those of the House of Augustuson the Palatine in Rome.29 Five windows high in the arch of the vaultprovide significant light for the dark cryptoporticus. In the other partof the combined house (I 6,4), a complete renovation in the fourth styleof the atrium area was undertaken, which is to be dated a century later,either just before Vesuvius’s eruption in 79 C.E. or, according to Stroka,

26 Bisconti, “Roman Catacombs,” 88–89.27 I 6,4 refers to the first of nine regions into which archaeologists have divided

Pompeii, then to the sixth insula, a block of buildings typically surrounded bystreets, and third, to the entrance door number.

28 Irene Bragantini, “Casa del Criptoportico e Casa del Sacello Iliaco (I 6,2.4),”PPM 1 (1990): 193–277; 280–329. Vittorio Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce degliscavi nuovi di Via dell’Abbondanza (anni 1910–1923) (Rome: La libreria dellostato, 1953), vol. 2, 869–901 on the “Sacrario,” and 903–970 on the criptoporti-cus. On the innovative quality of the stucco-work in the criptoporticus (19), seeRoger Ling, “Stucco Decoration in Pre-Augustan Italy,” PBSR 40 (1972):11–57, esp. 24–55. For the sacellum see Richard Brilliant, Visual Narratives:Storytelling in Etruscan and Roman Art (Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University, 1984),63–65, fig. 2.5 and Nicole Blanc, “L’enigmatique ‘Sacello Iliaco’ (I 6,4 E): con-tribution à l’étude des cultes domestiques,” in I temi figurativi nella pittura parie-tale antica (IV sec. a.C.–IV sec. d.C.). (Atti del VI convegno internazionale sullapittura parietale antica; ed. Daniela Scagliarini Corlàita; Bologna: UniversityPress, 1997), 37–41.

29 Bragantini, “Casa del Criptoportico,”194.

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just before the earthquake in 62 C.E.30 Triclinium (c) was virtually fin-ished, but cubiculo (d) lacked the socle (the lowest of the three hori-zontal bands of decoration on its walls), the sacello (e) received onlythe stucco decoration in the vault and in the frieze just below the vault,cubiculo (h) received only the upper of its three zones of horizontaldecoration, triclinium (i) lacked central wall pictures in its middlezone, and cubiculo (l) lacked the central picture on its south wall.

An Endymion stucco is in the sacellum (e; see Fig. 8.3). From thefauces (entrance hall) one sees the sacellum on the far, right side of theatrium (typically the first room one enters from the street, the roofof which has an opening to the sky) just to the right of the tablinum(office). It is a small, walled-off space 1.9 m deep with a raised plat-form 28 cm high; the platform covers the full width of the space, 1.5 m,but extends only 1.3 m from the back wall towards the door. There arethus 60 cm remaining between the platform and the door to the at-rium. The base of the Homeric frieze is 1.9 m above the top of the plat-form; the frieze itself, varying from 15 to 17 cm high, wraps horizon-tally around all three walls and extends on both side walls past theplatform to the door. The semicircular lunette on the back wall is justabove the frieze and contains the Endymion stucco measuring 55 cmhigh and 130 cm wide; it is under a barrel vault that extends from theback wall only as far as the end of the platform below. Both the Endy-mion lunette and the Homeric frieze are outlined with stucco borders.Above the floor between the platform and the door there is an openspace (also 60 cm deep), the flat ceiling of which is 1.6 m above thefrieze.

The word sacellum designates “a room set apart for the service of thedomestic cult and especially equipped for that purpose”31 with thestatue of the god(s) in a niche. Cicero (Against Verres IV 2–4) describessuch a domestic chapel in which one could see a marble statue of cupidby Praxiteles and a bronze Hercules by Myron, before which therewere altars, as well as bronzes of Canephoroe by Polycletus and awooden statue of Bona Fortuna. Boyce notes that they are rare in

30 Volker Michael Strocka, “Ein missverstandener Terminus des vierten Stils: dieCasa del Sacello Iliaco in Pompeji (I 6,4) (Taf. 50–61),” MDAI 91 (1984):125–40.

31 George K. Boyce, “Corpus of the Lararia of Pompeii,” MAAR 14 (1937): 5–112,with 41 plates, at 18. Also David G. Orr, “Roman Domestic Religion: The Evi-dence of the Household Shrines,” ANRW 2.2 (1978):1559–91 with 10 plates,at 1578.


282 David L. Balch

8.3.

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Pompeii with only six certain examples (VI 1,132; VI 15,1833; VII 2,20(v)34; IX 8,3.6 (?)35; IX 9,6 (q)36; Villa of the Mosaic Columns37), eachwith benches for worshipers, a niche with or without paintings, and apermanent altar for sacrifice; our room is not among Boyce’s six. Thesacellum in VII 2,20 is a small, walled space comparable in size andshape to the sacellum in the Casa del Sacello Iliaco (I 6,4). It has twoniches and an altar, but pace Boyce, no benches. The lunette exhibitsa peacock fresco instead of an Endymion stucco.38 The sacellum in theVilla of the Mosaic Columns also has an altar, but no benches. Nor arethere benches in Boyce’s plate of IX 8,3.6. To Boyce’s six examplesI add sacellum (d) honoring Egyptian deities in peristyle (F) of houseVI 16,7.38, one with a visual representation of a circular altar in thelower register of the fresco as well as of Anubis, Harpocrates, Isis, andSerapis in the upper register.39

Boyce describing the room in I 6,4, doubts that the room was the “la-rarium” (the household shrine of the family’s tutelary divinities).40 Thereis a lararium near the north door on the west wall of the peristyle in the

32 Boyce, “Lararia of Pompeii,” plate 40, 3–4. Hans Eschebach, “Probleme derWasserversorgung Pompejis,” Cronache Pompeiane 5 (1979): 24–60, at 59, butwithout any description.

33 A. Mau, “Ausgrabungen von Pompeji,” MDAI 16 (1901): 283–365, at 284, fig. 1(sacellum h), and 287–88: “eine kleine Larenkapelle.”

34 Boyce, “Lararia of Pompeii,” plate 41, 2. Valeria Sampaolo, “Casa di N. PopidiusPriscus (VII 2,20.40),” sacello (v), in PPM 6 (1996): 615–58, at 652–58, figs. 74–93.

35 Boyce, “Lararia of Pompeii,”plate 40, 2, but I do not locate it in PPM 9: 903–1104.36 Boyce, “Lararia of Pompeii,” plate 41, 1. Valeria Sampaolo, “Casa del Vinaio

(IX 9,6),” PPM 10 (2003): 131–42, sacello (q) at 140–41, figs. 14–16, a small,walled-off space off the viridarium (p).

37 Xavier Lafon, Villa Maritima: recherches sur les villas littorales de l’Italie romaine(Bibliothèque des École Françaises d’Athènes et de Rome 307; Rome: ÉFR, 2001),416 with fig. 150, citing Valentin Kockel and Bertold F. Weber, “Die Villa delleColonne a Mosaico in Pompeji,” MDAI 90 (1983): 51–89, sacellulm d, at 82–83with figs. 13–14 and pl. 35,2, another small, walled-off, decorated space.

38 Sampaolo, “Casa di N. Popidius Priscus,” 655, fig. 83.39 Florian Seiler, “Casa degli Amorini dorati (VI 16,7.38),” PPM 5 (1994):

714–845, at 764–67, figs. 93–99. Some authors refer to “sacellum f” in the Houseof Octavius Quartio (II 2,4); see Shelley Hales, The Roman House andSocial Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2003), 155 with fig. 42. Ma-riette de Vos, “Casa di D. Octavius Quartio (II 2,2),” in PPM 3 (1991): 71–79,figs. 47–54, at 71, fig. 47, notes that there is a niche outlined in wood in the eastwall that may have exhibited the statue of a divinity, but she refers to the room as“ambiente f,” not “sacellum f.”

40 Boyce, “Lararia of Pompeii,” 25, fig. 37.


284 David L. Balch

other part of the house (I 6,2 [12])41; but nowhere in I 6,4. Boyce gives afootnote observing that “a bronze statuette of Hercules, standing,bearded, nude except of the lion skin over his left shoulder,”42 was foundin the large room east of the fauces (c), indicating, perhaps, that it mighthave been intended for the platform in the sacellum after it was finished.

Spinazzola records that in the sacellum itself, five episodes from theIliad are represented in stucco in the frieze: (1) Hector exiting from thegate of Troy, (2) the combat of Hector and Achilles, (3) Achilles drag-ging Hector’s body (all in the Iliad, book 22), (4) the ransoming of Hec-tor, and (5) Priam, guided by Hermes, returning to Troy with Hector’sbody (both in Iliad 24).43 Spinazzola thinks there is no doubt that theseepisodes in the sacellum of I 6,4 refer to the decoration of nearly a cen-tury earlier in the cryptoporticus of I 6,2, reminding viewers of the mostprominent episodes.44 Discussing this frieze, Simon notes that the ear-lier third style had more figures, but that fourth-style visual represen-tations like this one in the time of Nero and Vespasian concentrate onthe protagonists, great mythical personalities like Hector and Achilles.45

The stucco of Selene and Endymion is in the semicircular lunettejust under the barrel vault on the south wall of the sacellum (e), re-stored today from the many fragments left by Pompeian earthquakes.46

The base is blue, the stucco figures ivory. Selene / Diana descends inher carriage accompanied by perhaps two Eros figures toward a sleep-ing Endymion. Selene’s carriage itself never occurs in contemporarywall paintings, but is common later on sarcophagi; the carriage issomehow compatible with the media of stucco and marble, but frescopainting has a different tradition.47

As Zimmerman investigates different workshops in a single cata-comb, so it is also legitimate to investigate the artistic program in an en-tire house (see n. 43–44, 62, and 66) in order to give the complete aes-

41 Bragantini, “Casa del Criptoportico,” 197, fig. 3.42 Boyce, “Lararia of Pompeii,” 18.43 Spinazzola, Pompeii alla luce, 2:871–901.44 Ibid., 1: 544.45 Erica Simon, “Rappresentazioni mitologiche nella pittura parietale pom-

peiana,” in La Pittura di Pompei (eds. Giuseppina Cerulli Irelli, et al.; Milan:Jaca, 1990, 1991), 239; also in French: La Peinture de Pompéi (Tokyo and Paris:Hazan, 1991, 1993), vol. 1, 267–76, and German: Pompejanische Wandmalerei(Stuttgart: Belser, 1990), 239–47.

46 Bragantini, “Casa del Criptoportico,” 303, fig. 39; 304, figs. 41–42.47 Gabelmann, “Endymion,” 3.1, 732 (fig. 44) and 740.

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thetic context, as Spinazzola does with this house (I 6,4). I follow hislead, down hallway (g) and through the second atrium (m) to room (p),which he names the “salon of philosophers and elephants.”48 Its decora-tion belongs to the second phase of style two, so is contemporary withthe criptoporticus in I 6,2, nearly a century earlier than the sacellum inI 6,4, but in the same house. The north wall has a representation of a gi-gantic philosopher (megalographia) meditating before the globe of theuniverse, and to his left is the Muse of astronomy, Urania.49 Clio, Museof history, is portrayed on the west wall.50 On the east wall is anothermegalografia of two elephants facing each other,51 each of them guidedby reins of myrtle in the hands of small cupids who also hold glass gob-lets. Elsewhere in Pompei, Venus stands on the raised head and trunk ofone of the elephants; Spinazzola suggests her presence above the elep-hants here too, although that portion of the fresco has deteriorated.52

Spinazzola compares the statue of a meditating philosopher in PalazzoSpada, a fresco of Tragedy meditating,53 as well as a fresco of a poet giv-ing friends an audience.54 The aesthetic program in this house, includinga sacellum featuring Endymion, constitutes a portion of the mythicaland political tradition in houses of the living on which artists drew whowere selecting images to paint for burial chambers in Christian cata-combs. The sacellum, “a room set apart for the service of the domesticcult,” should be added to the architectural sources discussed for Chris-tian house churches.55

48 H. G. Beyen, Die Pompejanische Wanddekoration vom Zweiten bis zum ViertenStil, Zweiter Band, Erster Teil: Tafeln (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), 24–25,plates 50–55.

49 Bragantini, “Casa del Criptoportico,” 324, figs. 76–77.50 Ibid., 325, figs. 78–79.51 Ibid., 324, fig. 77.52 Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce, 1: 564–65, figs. 624–25. Compare Valeria Sam-

paolo, “Officina coactiliaria de Verecundus (IX 7,7),” in PPM 9 (1999): 774–78,at 776–77, figs. 2–4: Venus Pompeiana in a quadriga above four elephants.

53 Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce, 1: 568–69 and 573, figs. 628–29, 632. Compare deVos, “Casa del Citarista,” 117–77, at 143, fig. 44a.

54 Valaria Sampaolo, “VI 16,36.37,” in PPM 5 (1994): 981–95, at 988–91, figs. 12–16.55 See L. Michael White, The Social Origins of Christian Architecture (vol. 1 of

Building God’s House in the Roman World: Architectural Adaptation among Pag-ans, Jews and Christians; Harvard Theological Studies 42; Valley Forge, Pa. Trin-ity Press International, 1990). Compare Dirk Steuernagle, “Kult und Commu-nity: Sacella in den Insulae von Ostia,” MDAI 108 (2001): 41–56, who givesexamples of second-century C.E. sacella originally in open spaces that were laterclosed off for cult communities.


286 David L. Balch

The Temple of Isis (VIII 7,28)and the House of Octavius Quartio (II 2,2) in Pompeii

Another domestic setting for Endymion is the residence of the priest(s)in the Temple of Isis (VIII 7,28). The temple was rebuilt after the earth-quake of 62 C.E. On the grounds of the temple is a building for the useof the priests, which includes a cubiculum (7), triclinium (8), and akitchen (9). The decoration is related to Egyptian motifs visually rep-resented by the Roman fourth style. The triclinium (8) includes pic-tures of a candelabrum on which an eagle is perched, the wise centaur(combined horse and man) Chiron, and a fresco that has been inter-preted as either Endymion or Narcissus.56 Stemmer notes that the two(or three) basic traditions of representing Endymion can both reducethe image to Endymion alone.57 Both Endymion and Narcissus arehunters (and both are sometimes shepherds). The beautiful body ofboth young men is emphasized by contemporary authors (for Endy-mion see Propertius 1.15.15–16 and Cicero, Tus., 1.38.9258; for Nar-cissus, Ovid, Met. 3.339–51059).

Narcissus is sometimes, but not always, distinguished by wearinga wreath of narcissi, the flower that sprang up beside the springwhere he died. Actually in another house where a priest of Isis is vis-ually represented, the House of Octavius Quartio (II 2,2, ambiente f,south wall),60 Narcissus is painted above an outdoor biclinium61

(see Fig. 8.4). Just as in the Casa del Sacello Iliaco described above,

56 Valeria Sampaolo, “Tempio di Iside (VIII 7,28),” PPM 8 (1998): 732–849,at 847, figs. 220–22. See David L. Balch, “The Suffering of Isis/Io and Paul’sPortrait of Christ Crucified (Gal. 3:1): Frescoes in Pompeian and RomanHouses and in the Temple of Isis in Pompeii,” Journal of Religion 83, no. 1(2003): 24–55.

57 Klaus Stemmer, Casa dell’Ara Massima (VI 16,15–17) (Häuser in Pompeji 6;Munich: Hirmer, 1992), 51–55 on the iconography of the house, 52–53 on Endy-mion.

58 Gabelmann, “Endymion,” 3.1, 727, 737, with plates in 3.2, 551–61.59 Birgitte Rafn, “Narkissos,” LIMC 6.1 (1992): 703–11, at 703, 709. Another vis-

ual representation of Endymion occurs with a fresco of Io=Isis, Argos andHermes in triclinium (37) of the “Casa del Citarista (I 4,5.25),” described by Ma-rietta de Vos, PPM 1 (1990): 117–77, at 129–30, figs. 19, 21.

60 De Vos, “Casa di D. Octavius Quartio,” 42–108, at 74–77, figs. 50–53.61 Ibid., 103–04, figs. 91–93.

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so also in this house episodes from the story of Troy are painted(oecus h).62

Besides Narcissus’s lethal self-infatuation, death is presented in an-other fresco above the same biclinium: Thisbe finds her lover, Pyramus,whom a lion has killed, and she prepares to take her own life (Ovid,Metam. 4.55ff;63 see Fig. 8.5). Further, a scene of lions chasing deer (seeFig. 8.6) is painted on the left wall leading to the biclinium (not repro-duced by De Vos), and from this place one can see the amphitheater thatis virtually outside the back door. Further, on the garden side of thedoor from room (f) into the garden/portico/biclinium (i) there are visualrepresentations of Diana spied while she is bathing nude by the hunterActaeon; in anger Diana metamorphosizes Actaeon into a deer, who isthen lethally attacked by his own dogs (Ovid, Metam. 3.138–252;).64 Fin-ally, there is a marble statuette of the infant Hercules strangling twosnakes, also a popular subject in Pompeian wall paintings.65

Preliminary Conclusions

I draw some conclusions from these observations. First, we already seethe movement from aesthetic programs in houses of the living to thedecoration of tombs for the dead: the artistic program in the House of

62 Ibid., 84–98, figs. 68–86. Spinazzola compares the Trojan cycles in the crypto-porticus in I 6,2 (II, 903–70) and the sacellum (e) in the Casa del Sacello Iliaco(1, 544–48; II, 869–902) with room (f) in the Casa di D. Octavius Quartio(1, 574–93; II, 971–1008). In the latter house the upper of the three zones on thewall is a megalograph of Heracles’/Hercules’ deeds at Troy. The central zone hasonly a third the height of the upper zone. Brilliant, Visual Narratives, 62–65, figs.2.4–2.5. Antonella Coralini, “Una ‘stanza di Ercole’ a Pompei: la sala del dop-pio fregio nella Casa di D. Octavius Quartio (II 2,2),” in Iconografia 2001: Studisull’Immagine (eds. Isabella Colpo, Irene Favaretto, and Francesca Ghedini;Università degli Studi di Padova; Rome: Quasar, 2002), 331–43.

63 De Vos, “Casa di D. Octavius Quartio,”103, 105, figs. 91–92, 94.64 Ibid., 100–01, figs. 87–88. See n. 19 above. A second Narcissus is represented in

ambient (b; De Vos 55, fig. 21).65 The Hercules statuette in Wilhelmina Feemster Jashemski and Frederick G.

Meyer, eds., The Natural History of Pompeii (Cambridge: Cambridge University,2002), 344, fig. 286. For the fresco, see David L. Balch, “Zeus, Vengeful Protectorof the Political and Domestic Order: Frescoes in Dining Rooms N and P of theHouse of the Vettii in Pompeii, Mark 13:12–13, and 1 Clement 6.2,” in Picturingthe New Testament (eds. Annette Weisssenrieder, Frederike Wendt, and Petra vonGemünden; WUNT 2, series 193; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 67–95, plate 6.


288 David L. Balch

8.4. Narcissus, outdoor biclinium, Houseof Octavius Quartio (II, 2,2), Pompeii.

(author’s photo)

8.5. Thisbe and Pyramus, outdoor biclinium, House ofOctavius Quartio (II 2,2), Pompeii. (author’s photo)

289From Endymion in Roman Domus to Jonah in Christian Catacombs

8.6.

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Octavius Quartio is related to the decoration of Tomb 87 at IsolaSacra. The former is not the direct source of the latter, but the aestheticprograms are strikingly similar.66 Two of the couples visually repre-sented in the House of Octavius Quartio, that is, Pyramus and Thisbe,and Diana and Actaeon, reappear in Tomb 87, as well as the figurethat is Narcissus/Endymion. The artists painting Tomb 87 addedAiace and Cassandra, another violent Homeric episode that was alsopainted in Roman domus.67

Death was visually present on the walls of Roman houses. We ratherwatch bloody deaths resulting from American and British imperialismin Afghanistan and Iraq on TV, a medium that gives some distance,but the residents of Pompeii trooped to the amphitheater to thrill whileanimals and/or people were killed in their presence.68 Investigating an-other image, Kathryn Dunbabin collects a significant amount of evi-dence for Romans displaying and playing with skeletons in Romantriclinia, evidence that I will not repeat here, but she shows that the fa-mous Trimalchio playing with a silver skeleton at dinner is not unusual(Petronius, Satyricon 26–79, at 34).69 Death was not a subject initiallyintroduced into the aesthetic programs of Roman tombs or Christiancatacombs, but was already visually prominent in Roman houses, evenin dining rooms.

66 Contrast Roger Ling, “The Decoration of Roman Triclinia,” in In Vino Veritas(eds. Oswyn Murray and Manuela Tecusan; Oxford: Alden, 1995), 248: “Only onthree occasions (all, curiously, involving pictures of Diana and Actaeon) do two ofthem [the most popular visual subjects] recur together. In no case do three subjectsrecur in combination.” Ling has extraordinary insights into Roman domestic dec-oration, but Simon, “Rappresentazioni mitologische,” sees more significance inthese mythological frescoes. Ling compares single rooms, triclinia, but Spinazzolahad already productively compared the decorative programs of three entirehouses. Also important: Eleanor Leach, “Satyrs and Spectators: Reflections ofTheatrical Settings in Third Style Mythological Continuous Narrative Painting,”in I temi figurativi nella pittura parietale antica (IV sec. a.C.–IV sec. d.C.) (eds.Daniela Scagliarina Corlàita; Atti del VI convegno internazionale sulla pittua pa-rietale antica; Bologna: University Press, 1997), 81–84 and 335, esp. 83–84.

67 See Balch, “Paul’s Portrait,” color plate 11, for the domestic fresco, and comparethe above discussion of four couples represented in the small mosaic panels fromMaison A du terrain Jilani Guirot in the museum in El Jem, Tunisia, includingAlpheus, god of a river, attacking the nymph Arethusa (see Figs. 8.1–2).

68 See Luciana Jacobelli, Gladiators at Pompeii (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Mu-seum, 2003).

69 Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, “‘Sic erimus cuncti …’ The Skeleton in Greco-RomanArt,” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 101 (1986): 185–255.

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Third, Endymion/Narcissus is often represented in a larger mytho-logical context. Romans were fascinated by Greek myths,70 which wehave seen above in the Casa del Sacello Iliaco, in the Casa di D. Octa-vius Quartio, and in a different way in the Temple of Isis. Homer’s nar-ratives provide crucial aspects of the ideological context for the artisticprograms in both houses, interpreted by the philosopher meditating onthe cosmos and history in the House of the Sacello Iliaco, by a priest ofIsis in the House of Octavius Quartio, and by visual representations ofthe tragic suffering of Io (see Aeschylus, Promytheus Bound 561–886)in the Temple of Isis. Not only the visual representation of death, butlarger mythical narratives as well as philosophers and priests visuallyaccompany Endymion, so that it is perhaps not surprising that earlyChristians reinterpreted and visually represented a selection of suchthemes in the catacombs.

I add an observation on the domestic iconography of Endymion:contrary to Gabelmann,71 he is not always represented with one armabove his head. He is portrayed four times in Pompeian domus72 in apose with his arms down at his side, e.g., both frescoes in the House ofthe Dioscuri73 in one of the two frescoes in the House of the Ara Mas-

70 Bettina Bergmann, “The Roman House as Memory Theater: The House of theTragic Poet in Pompeii,” Art Bulletin 76, no. 2 (1994): 225–56, at 249: “In theRoman World, [Greek] tragic myth pervaded the very heart of family life, thedomus.” T.B.L. Webster, Hellenistic Poetry and Art (London: Methuen, 1964),chap. XI: Italian Epilogue.

71 Gabelmann, “Endymion,” 3.1, 742: “Jonah is not an exact copy of Endymion’sbody type. He does, like Endymion (and other reclining figures), stretch onehand over his head; the other arm, however, is stretched out to his side. The fig-ure of Jonah, therefore, is original, related somewhat to older sources (includingthe reclining Dionysus)” (my translation). Gabelmann’s conclusion assumesthat both figures have canonical forms, e.g., that both of them have an arm overtheir head. At Isola Sacra, on the contrary, Endymion is visually representedwith both arms down; and in the El Jem mosaic panel (see Figs. 8.1–2), his leftarm hangs down at his side, the pose Gabelmann ascribes to Jonah. Artists’ por-trayals both of Endymion and of Jonah show parallel variations, so that somerepresentations of Endymion are quite similar to some of Jonah.

72 Herculaneum also has a plump Endymion in the pose with both arms downat his side and a second with his right arm over his head: Franco Maria Ricci,Antiquités d’Herculanum gravées par Th. Piroli et publiées par F. et P. Piranesi,Fréres (Paris: Leblanc, 1804–1806, re-edited Milan: Panatenee, 1989), vol. 2,xxxiv; vol. 3, xx.

73 PPM 4: 894, fig. 65, and 904, fig. 83.


292 David L. Balch

sima,74 as well as in House IX 2,10.75 In the House of the Citarista, hisleft arm hangs straight down.76 The artists of Tomb 87 at Isola Sacraaround 140 C.E. constructed Endymion’s pose with both arms down.These variations in the position of Endymion’s/Jonah’s arms alsooccur in the catacombs of slightly later date.

Finally, on method I pose questions to Zimmerman. When art his-torians interpret the Casa del Criptoportico and the Casa del SacelloIliaco, they quote Homer and Vergil. Neither artistic program is asimple interpretation of Homer: the former concludes with the flightof Aeneas from Troy, which was not the climax of the Homeric epic. Theartistic program is a visual, Roman reinterpretation of the tradition.When art historians interpret the House of Octavius Quartio with itsrepresentation of the Nile River in the garden, they quote Plutarch andwould have difficulties without his text, although Plutarch gives aMiddle Platonic reinterpretation that was not accepted by orthodoxpriests of Isis in Egypt. When art historians interpret frescoes of Pyra-mus and Thisbe, whether in Tomb 87 at Isola Sacra or above the biclin-ium in the House of Octavius Quartio, they quote Ovid.77 Ovid is notsufficient: the visual tradition interprets an Oriental fable,78 so that thisvisual representation too is a reinterpretation.

It is just as legitimate to quote Biblical texts when viewing Christianpaintings in the catacombs as it is to cite Homer, Vergil, Ovid, andPlutarch when interpreting frescoes in Pompeii. The point has beenmade repeatedly and well that catacomb paintings do not simply inter-pret the Biblical text; visual representations in the catacombs are rein-terpretations that may be in significant tension with the Biblical text.The relation between our eyes as sources for the rational analysis of atext and our eyes as sources for the appreciation of beauty is notsimple, certainly not univocal, but also not totally unrelated.

74 PPM 5: 876, fig. 37.75 PPM 8: 1096, fig. 6.76 PPM 1: 128, fig. 19; the upper part of the fresco has disappeared.77 Ludwig Curtius, Die Wandmalerei Pompejis: Eine Einführung in ihr Verständnis

(Leipzig, 1929; repr., New York: Georg Olms, 1960, 1972), 44, 46, observed thatOvid is the most beloved poet in Pompeian art. He completed his Metamor-phoses before his exile in 8 C.E. See Simon, “Rappresentazioni mitologische,” onHomer, Vergil, and Ovid in Pompeian art. Also important: Christopher M.Dawson, Romano-Campanian Mythological Landscape Painting (Yale ClassicalStudies 9; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944; repr., Rome: “L’Erma” diBretschneider, 1965), chap. VI on Euripides and Ovid.

78 De Vos, “Casa di D. Octavius Quartio,” 105, fig. 94.

293

Jonah as Endymion in Christian Catacombsand among African Fish in the Earliest Remaining Mosaic

in a Christian Church (Aquileia)

Christians followed Etruscans, Sabines, and Romans in burying theirdead in hypogea (underground burial chambers).79 The first burials inthe first decades of the third century lacked minimal furnishings or anyform of epitaph, and when the latter appear, they often consist onlyof the name of the deceased, an “archaic laconism.”80 They began toadd the date of deposition in the grave, which often corresponded withthe date of death, important since it represented the date of passage tonew life, although it had been omitted earlier because it was consideredan inauspicious, bad omen.81 This extreme simplicity continued forhalf a century, but Fiocchi Nicolai82 and Reekmans83 observe thatthere are some texts and decorations from the first half of that centuryin the Crypt of Lucina84 (near Callisto), in “Area I” of Callisto,85 ofPricilla,86 of Calepodia where Callistus was buried in 222, of the Cu-

79 Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, Strutture funerarie ed edifici di culto paleocristiani diRoma dal IV al VI secolo (Studi e Ricerche 3, Pontificia Commissione di Arch-eologia Sacra; Vatican City: Istituto Grafico Editoriale Romano, 2001), 18–19.

80 Bisconti, “Roman Catacombs,” 76. Danilo Mazzoleni, “Inscriptions in RomanCatacombs,” in Christian Catacombs of Rome, 148: “a majority of the tombs stillintact do not have any inscription, whereas a certain number of the tombs haveonly small objects of every type fixed into the closing mortar.” On these smallobjects see 76, 79, 152–53, e.g., fig. 153 of a child’s small ivory doll.

81 Mazzoleni, “Inscriptions” 149.82 Strutture 21–25 with plans in figs. 8–18 and “The Origin and Development of

Roman Catacombs,” in Christian Catacombs, 17–19 with figs. 4–14, 30, and 15(Jonah in Callistus).

83 Louis Reekmans, “La chronologie de la peinture paléochrétienne: notes et ré-flexions” in Miscellanea in onore di Luciano de Bruyne e Antonio Ferrua, S.J.(vol. 2; Vatican City: PIAC, 1972), 278.

84 Wilpert, pls. 24s; 26.1; 27.1; 28; 29.1; Callisto 1 & 2 with Jonah. See Louis Reek-mans, “La Chronologie,” 271–91. He lists (276) six styles that developed afterPompeii, based on Wirth, Römische Wandmalerei; also Dorigo, Late RomanPainting 119–20. The standard form of locating and citing these paintings wasdeveloped by Aldo Nestori, Repertorio topografico delle pitture delle catacomberomane (rev. ed.; Roma sotterranea cristiana 5; Vatican City: PIAC, 1993).

85 Wilpert, pls. 88s; 90.1.86 Ipogeo degli Acili: Wilpert, pls. 8.2, 13s, 15.1, 16; also the Capella greca: Wil-

pert, pls. 8.2, 13s, 15.1, 16. Luciano de Bruyne, “La ‘cappella greca’ di Priscilla,”RACrist 46 (1970): 291–330; contrast De Bruyne’s earlier dating with Kollwitz’s


294 David L. Balch

bicle of Urania in Pretestato,87 of Domitilla in the region named afterthe Flavii Aurelii “A,”88 and in the catacomb of Novatianus, seeminglynamed after the martyr himself who was killed in 257–258.89 I will giveone example of an early visual representation of Jonah and then someexamples from later catacombs.

Among the earliest visual representations in Christian catacombsnamed by Fiocchi Nicolai is one of Jonah in the Crypt of Lucina, to bedated early in the third or perhaps to the mid-third century,90 an im-pressionistic, reddish-brown Jonah.

A burial chamber in the catacomb of Callisto, 21, is named for theGood Shepherd in the center of the domed vault.91 Two concentriccircles around the Good Shepherd, the inner one a green line, the outerone red, outline the vault. Painted at the edge of the second, red circleis another impressionistic, reddish-brown Jonah resting.

I mention two or three more Jonahs because they are different oramusing. Marcellinus and Peter 39 and 69 represent the sea monsterexpelling Jonah straight up, nude, his hands stretched out horizontally,with no land in sight.92 In Priscilla 9,93 the painter dressed Jonah in a

dating (cited in n. 25) 50 years later. Klaus-Dieter Dorsch and Hans ReinhardSeeliger, Römische Katakombenmalereien im Spiegel des Photoarchivs Parker.Dokumentation von Zusstand und Erhaltung 1864–1994 (Münster: Aschendorff,2000), 161 with figs. 31–32.

87 Wilpert, pl. 34 exhibits only the top of the Jonah picture, perhaps two sailorsand a sail.

88 Wilpert, pl. 1–5; 6.1; 7.1, 3, 4; 8.1. Letizia Pani Ermini, “L’ipogeo detto dei Flaviin Domitilla,” Miscellanea in onore di Enrico Josi (vol. 4; RACrist 45; VaticanCity: PIAC, 1969), 119–73 and Miscellanea in onore di Luciano de Bruyne e Anto-nio Ferrua, S.J (vol. I; RACrist 48; Vatican City: Ponticio Istituto di ArcheologiaCristiana, 1972), 235–69. Also Ivana Della Portella, Subterranean Rome (Co-logne: Könemann, 2000), 212–15.

89 Mazzoleni, “Inscriptions,” 152; Fiocchi Nicolai, Strutture 21. Novaziano is notin Wilpert or Nestori. See U. M. Fasola and P. Testini, “I cimiteri cristiani,” inAtti del IX congresso internazionale di archeologia cristiana (Roma, 21–27 set-tembre 1975) (Vatican City: PIAC, 1978), vol. 1, pp. 103–39, 191–210, esp. 109,191–94 on the date and plan, but without discussion of any visual represen-tations.

90 See n. 84 citing Wilpert, pl. 26.1.91 Wilpert, pl. 38; Fiocchi Nicolai, Strutture, pl. Vb.92 Johannnes Georg Deckers, Hans Reinhard Seeliger, and Gabriele Mietke, Die

Katakombe “Santi Marcellino e Pietro”: Repertorium der Malereien (2 vols.;Roma sotterranea cristiana 6; Vatican City: PIAC, 1987), pls. 24a and 49a.

93 Wilpert, pl. 109.1.

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robe, and he is thrown overboard facing the viewer, so that he looksout at them/us. In Priscilla 994 again, a small ketos ejects a tiny Jonah,virtually a doll. In Goirdani 11,95 the painter portrayed an exception-ally long sea monster and a small Jonah. In Giordani 6,96 the ketos hasa thin tail, but a huge mouth/head with large, sharp teeth! The cata-comb of Marcellinus and Peter has a long series of Jonah represen-tations,97 but the catacomb of Commodilla has none.98

I do not see Endymion in the earliest example of Jonah in Christiancatacombs, the one in the Crypt of Lucina, but not for the reason givenby Gabelmann. Bisconti’s description of the transition in the lateAntonine and the mature Severan periods, the time of the earliest vis-ual representations in Christian catacombs, from the fourth, architec-tural Pompeian style to the red and green linear, illusionistic style thatinvolved dematerialisation and simplification fits the style of this earlyJonah without need for further explanation. There seems to have beena later assimilation in catacomb painting of Jonah to Endymion, aHellenization / Romanization of the figure, towards portraying Jonah,nude with a beautiful body and one hand above his head, by artistswho were accustomed to representing Endymion in Roman domesticas well as sepulchral contexts in several media. The catacomb artistshad Christian patrons, Romans who valued (also the beauty of) thisimage whether in contexts of the living or of the dead.

94 Ibid., pl. 109.95 Ibid., pl. 122.96 Ibid., pl. 189.1.97 Plates 9a, 10a, 12a, 13a, 14a, 17ab, 23ab, 24a, 27a, 37ab, 40c, 41a, 49a, 50e in

Deckers, Seeliger, and Mietke, “Santi Marcellino e Pietro.” Also Fiocchi Nico-lai, Strutture, color pl. IXa. See Antonio Ferrua, The Unknown Catacomb: AUnique Discovery of Early Christian Art (New Lanark, Scotland: Geddes &Grosset, 1991), figs. 33, 35, 37, 71–73 and H. Gregory Snyder, “Pictures in Dia-logue: A Viewer-Centered Approach to the Hypogeum on Via Dino Compagni,”JECS 13, no. 3 (2005): 349–86, 362–63 on Jonah.

98 Johannnes Georg Deckers, Gabriele Mietke, and Albrecht Weiland, Die Kata-kombe “Commodilla”: Repertorium der Malereien mit einem Beitrag zu Ge-schichte und Topographie von Carlo Carletti (3 vols.; Roma sotterranea cristiana10; Vatican City: PIAC, 1994).


296 David L. Balch

The Mosaic Pavement of Jonah among African Fishin the Early Christian Basilica in Aquileia

Finally, Jonah moved out of the catacombs for the dead into one of theearliest churches that remains to us, perhaps not so far from the func-tion of the sacellum (“a room set apart for the service of the domesticcult and especially equipped for that purpose”) in the House of theSacello Iliaco. Soon after 311 when Galarius declared being Christianlegal, that is, between 313 and 319–320, bishop Theodore constructeda new house of prayer in Aquileia (northeastern Italy), just as bishopPaulinus constructed a basilica at Tyre in Syria, the latter eulogized byEusebius.99 Other than the house church at Dura-Europos, these twobasilicas contain some of the earliest ecclesial visual representationswe know outside sepulchral contexts. Nothing remains of the marblemosaic pavement in Tyre, but visitors may still see the mosaic pave-ment in Aquileia, which divides the nave into four horizontal sections.100

The fourth section across the entire width of the nave and closest to theapse is a marine scene, which has fishermen, some of whom are repre-sented as cupids, dozens of fish, an inscription, and our three episodesof Jonah: (1) thrown overboard,101 (2) ejected by the sea monster, and(3) reclining/resting under the gourd plant, all three times nude rightunder the altar.102

99 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 10.4.2–72, the description at 10.4.37–45, the mosaic pave-ment mentioned but not described at 10.4.45. See Françoise Thelamon, “Jonas:du décor de la tombe au décor de l’église,” in Aquileia romana e cristiana fra II eV secolo, omaggio a Mario Mirabella Roberti (ed. Gino Bandelli; AAAd 47;Trieste: Editreg SRL, 2000), 247–71, with 23 figs, here figs. 1–3.

100 Luisa Bertacchi, Basilica, museo e scavi – Aquileia (Itinerari dei musei, gal-lerie, scavi e monumenti d’Italia n.s. 25; Rome: Istituto poligrafico e zeccadello stato, 1994), fig. 71 for the four sections. See G. Foerster, “The Story ofJonah on the Mosaic Pavement of a Church at Beth Govrin (Israel),” Atti delIX Congresso internazionale di archeologia cristiana, Roma 21–27 Settembre1975 (SAC 32; Vatican City: PIAC 1978), 2.289–94 with 3 figs., from the fifthor sixth century C.E.

101 The first of these, Jonah thrown overboard, visually presents three fishermen ina boat. The one on the viewers’ left, a robed orante (figure praying with botharms lifted), is a late restoration. See Luisa Bertacchi, “I ritratti nei mosaici diAquileia,”in Il ritratto romano in Aquileia e nella Cisalpina (AAAd 44; ed.Alessandra Vigi Fior; Trieste: Editreg SRL, 1999), 81–104 with 32 figures, at 93,103, fig. 11.

102 Graziano Marini and Enzo Andrian, I mosaici della basilica di Aquileia(Fondazione società per la conservazione della basilica di Aquileia; Villanova

297

Thelamon argues that, influenced by African art, this ecclesiasticalmosaic reproduces bucolic scenes from Roman houses of the living (dela maison des vivants) that are combined with images of Jonah fromearly Christian sepulchral art.103 Thelamon publishes a marine mosaicfrom a domus in Sousse, Tunisia,104 which represents four boats offishermen using lines and a net, two men in each boat, among scores ofvarious kinds of smaller and larger marine life. The mosaic fromLa Chebba in the Bardo Museum in Tunis105 is comparable, as is theTriumph of Neptune from Utique, Tunisia.106 I add two more magnifi-cent examples from Thuburbo Majus: the Maison du Char de Vénus,three men fishing in a boat, plus more than seventy kinds of marinelife;107 and the Maison de Bacchus et Ariane, three fishermen in a boat,another fishing from a rock on the shore, with representations ofnearly forty fish.108 Centuries earlier, there is an extraordinary marinemosaic in the House of the Faun, Pompeii,109 also influenced by Afri-

del Ghebbo (RO): Ciscra, 2003), 106–108, fold-out plate. See Yves-MarieDuval, “Jonas à Aquilée: de la mosïque de la Theodoriana sud aux textes du Jé-rome, Rufin, Chromache?” in Aquileia romana e cristiana fra II e V secolo, om-aggio a Mario Mirabella Roberti (ed. Gino Bandelli, AAAd 47; Trieste: EditregSRL, 2000), 273–96.

103 Thelamon, “Jonas,” 253; see 258, 266; 260, n. 47 cites M’hamed Hassine Fantar,et al., La mosaïque en Tunisie (Paris: CNRS Editions 1994), 248. See FedericoGuidobaldi, “La produzione di mosaici e sectilia pavimentali e parietali,” vol. 1,275–81 in Christiana Loca (cited in n. 24).

104 Thelamon, “Jonas,” fig. 17; from Gilles Mermet, Michèle Blanchard-Lemée,Mongi Enneifer, Hédi Slim, and L. Slim, Sols de l’Afrique romaine: mosaiquesde Tunisie (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1995), 122, fig. 81. Also Louis Foucher,Inventaire des mosaiques: Sousse (Institut national d’archéologie et arts Tunis,Feuille n. 57 de l’Atlas Archéologique; Tunis: Imp. Officielle, 1960), plate VIII(second century C.E.) and plate XXI (beginning of third century).

105 Mermet, Sols de l’Afrique romaine, 122, fig. 82.106 Cécile Duliere, Utique, mosaiques in situ en dehors des insulae I-II-III (eds. Mar-

garet A. Alexander et Mongi Ennaifer; vol. 1, fascicule. 2, CMT; Tunis 1974),plates XXXIII–XXXV, the Maison de Caton: beside Neptune there are cupidsriding fish, as well as Venus in one boat and fishermen in others.

107 Margaret A. Alexander, Aïcha Ben Abed Ben Khader, David Soren, MarieSpiro, Région de Zaghouan. Thuburbo Majus, région est, (vol. 2, fascicule 4;CMT; Tunis, 1994), plate XXXIV.

108 Ibid., plate XXV.109 Adolf Hoffmann and Mariette de Vos, “Casa del Fauno (VI 12,2),” PPM 5:

80–141, at 83–85, 107, 121–22, 134, esp. 107, color plate 30 with further refer-ences. See David S. Reese, “Fish: Evidence from Specimens, Mosaics, Wall-


298 David L. Balch

can (Alexandrian) styles. Ovid, “On Sea Fishing,”110 and Oppian, “OnFishing”111 wrote of such scenes.

Patristic (Literary) Interpretations of Jonah

Josef Engemann112 imagines simple Christians (einfache Christen), whowere not theologians (keine Theologen), creating a people’s art (Volks-kunst) in the catacombs. Over against these simple folk he sets thepatristic “theologians” who wrote “literature.” But this polarity is prob-lematic; for example, did these “simple folk” leave the inscriptions?Were the Christians buried in marble sarcophagi decorated by Jonahscenes “simple”? In the catacombs Biblical scenes occur in arcosoliafor the elite (see n. 6); were all these simple folk? Such a dismissal ofcontemporary literature would make interpreting Endymion in Pom-peii impossible, and as argued above, art historians cite Homer andOvid when commenting on many frescoes in Pompeii. Plutarch isnecessary for understanding imagery of the Isis cult. Therefore, I willcite New Testament and patristic texts as sources that suggest at leastsome of the range of meanings early Christians would have seen in theJonah images.

The gospel of Matthew has two interpretations of Jonah.113

Matt 12:38–42 (=Luke 11:29–32 [Q]) parallels Jonah being three days

paintings, and Roman Authors,” 274–92 in Natural History of Pompeii (cited inn. 65).

110 Ovid, The Art of Love and Other Poems (J. H. Mozley, LCL), 309–21, probablywritten during the poet’s exile on the Black Sea (8–17 C.E.).

111 Oppian of Cilicia, “Fishing,” (A. W. Mair, LCL); Mair dates the work to 171 or173 C.E. See Athenaeus, Deipnosophists I.13, dated c. 200 C.E.

112 Engemann, “Bibliche Themen.” Also Theodor Klausner, “Erwägungen zurEntstehung der altchristlichen Kunst,” Zeitschrift für kirchen Geschichte 76(1965): 8, n. 35. For critique of this dualist or bipolar, plebeian vs. patricianmethod of interpretation, see Tonio Hölscher, The Language of Images inRoman Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2004, translation of theGerman of 1987) with the “Forward” by Jás Elsner, e.g., xvii, xx–xxi, and chaps.3 and 8, esp. 92–98: “the structure of the semantic system.”

113 Related literature: Eduard Strommel, “Zum Problem der frühchristlichen Jon-asdarstellungen,” JAC 1 (1958): 112–15. Jean Allenbach, “La figure de Jonasdans les textes préconstantiniens ou l’histoire de l’exégèse au secours de l’ico-nographie,” in La Bible et les Pères. Colloque de Strasbourg (1er-3 octobre1969) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971), 97–112. Yves-MarieDuval, Le livre de Jonas dans la littérature chrétienne grecque et latine: sources

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and nights in the belly of the whale with the Son of Man being three daysand nights in the heart of the earth. Matthew (12:41), not Luke, addsthat the Ninevites repented, but that those of “this generation” havenot, even though something greater than Jonah is here. Verses 38–40parallel Jonah in the whale with Christ in the earth, which might relatelater to the second visual representation in the Jonah series. Verse 41emphasizes repentance. Matthew’s second reference (16:1–4; compareMark 8:11–12 without Jonah) follows a series of Jesus’ miracles, butportrays the Pharisees and Sadducees still asking for a “sign.” Matthewhas Jesus respond that no sign will be given except the sign of Jonah.

Some patristic authors emphasize both the call for repentanceand Christ’s passion and resurrection, as Matthew had done (Justin,Dial. 107–108;114 Tertullian, Pud. 10). Addressed to Trypho, Justin’scall for repentance urges conversion (compare Kerygmata Petrou32.3), but Tertillian’s focus on repentance involves a dispute internalto the church.

Origen (Comm. Matt. 12.3) can focus his interpretation exclusivelyon Christ’s resurrection; the Acts of Paul argues against skeptics thatJonah, swallowed three days and three nights by a whale, means thathe “will raise up you who have believed in Christ Jesus, as he himselfrose up.”115 Several patristic authors, however, focus on the proclama-tion of repentance without mentioning the Christological “three days”(1 Clement 7.5–7; Clement of Alexandria, Strom 1.21; Origen, Hom.Num. 16.4; Hom. Jer. 1.1; Tertullian, Marc. II.17 and 24; IV.10; V.11).

Origen has a striking interpretation with a double point. One de-scribes Jonah as praying, “not having despaired of being heard fromout of the belly of the whale that had swallowed him.”116 The otherassumes the love of monsters in Roman visual representations: after

et influence du Commentaire sur Jonas de saint Jérome (2 vols; Paris: ÉtudesAugustiniennes, 1973). Ernst Dassmann, Sündenvergebung durch Taufe, Busseund Martyrerfürbitte in den Zeugnissen frühchristlicher Frömmigkeit und Kunst(Münsterische Beiträge zur Theologie 36; Munster: Aschendorff, 1973), 222–32.Danilo Mazzoleni, “Giona,” in Temi di iconografia paleocristiana (ed. FabrizioBisconti; Vatican City: PIAC, 2000), 191–93.

114 Justin’s text reflects the difference between the Septuagint (three days for Nine-veh to repent) and the Hebrew/Masoretic text (forty days to repent) ofJonah 3:4. It takes three days to walk across Nineveh (3:3)!

115 E. Hennecke and W. Schneemelcher, eds., New Testament Apocrypha, (2 vols.;Philadelphia Pa.: Westminster, 1963–1989) 2.377.

116 Origen, De oratione in Origen: Prayer; Exhortation to Martyrdom (trans. John J.O’Meara, ACW 19; New York: Newman Press, 1954), 13.2.


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mentioning an asp, a basilisk, a lion and dragon, serpents and scor-pions, he mentions the beast “symbolized by the whale that swal-lowed Jonas.”117

Irenaeus emphasizes the parallel to the Jonah event of death and be-lievers’ (not Christ’s) hope of resurrection. The Word accomplishedthe plan of salvation “that man, receiving an unhoped-for salvationfrom God, might rise from the dead, and glorify God, and repeat thatword which was uttered in prophecy by Jonah: ‘I cried by reason ofmine affliction to the Lord my God, and He heard me out of the bellyof hell.’”118

Tertullian, like Origen, De oratione, refers to the fish, which “sym-bolizes especially the men who are wildly opposed to the Christianname.” In the same work he argues for a literal resurrection: “from thisperfection of our restored bodies will flow the consciousness of undis-turbed joy and peace.” “For to borrow the apostle’s phrase [1 Cor 10:6]:these were ‘figures for ourselves.’”119 This focus on believers’ resurrec-tion is close to Irenaeus (Adv. haer. III.20). The focus on “undisturbedjoy and peace” corresponds to bucolic themes in the art.

Tertullian can appeal to Jonah in order to urge his Christian readersnot to flee from the Lord. Like the prophet, they will be unable eitherto find death or to escape from God (Fug. 10).

Most intriguing for this paper, however, is Tertullian’s discussionof the location of the soul after death: Christ spent three days in theheart of the earth, he journeyed to Hades, Christ sits at the Father’sright hand, some are in the “bosom of Abraham,” and Paul describesbelievers being caught up into the air to meet Him at His coming.“Shall we then have to sleep high up in ether, with the boy-lovingworthies of Plato? … or around the moon with the Endymions of theStoics? No, but in Paradise …”120 All the interpretations detailedabove might occur to Roman Christian viewers of Endymion/Jonahin the catacombs, but this final reference indicates the connection inTertullian’s Roman mind between Endymion (in the catacombs =Jonah) and eschatology.

117 Ibid., 13.4.118 Irenaeus, Adv. haereses in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus

(trans. Philip Schaff, ANF; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001 reprint) 1:450.119 Tertullian, De resurrectionen carnis in Latin Christianity: It’s Founder Tertullian

(trans. Philip Schaff; ANF; Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 2001), 3:568.120 Tertullian, An. 55 (ANF 3:231). See n. 12.

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Conclusions

Death was visible in Roman domestic culture. The gap between housesand graves was not great: the art of the living was employed in tombsfor the dead. Scenes of death and violence that Roman patrons askedartists to paint on their domestic walls and had artisans figure in mo-saics on their floors and sculpt in marble, we see in movies and on theevening news from a greater distance. Roman and contemporary West-ern imperialism, death, and violence have close parallels.121

Endymion was a figure who could absorb many projected meanings;he was viewed by Romans, by devotees of Isis, and by Roman Chris-tians. This figure could be attached to other myths, e.g., not only toNarcissus, Pyramus and Thisbe, but also to Homeric myths of deathand violence, to a decorative scheme in the Temple of Isis where Osiris’sdeath was symbolized, as well as to early Christian experiences ofdeath and martyrdom.

Visually accompanying Endymion, we observe the transition fromHomeric myths to myths of Isis and Osiris, then to the myths of earlyJudaism and Christianity, from Achilles, Priam, Aeneas, Hercules andHera visually represented in the House of the Sacello Iliaco and theHouse of Octavius Quartio, as well as from the myths of Isis/Io/Osirisin the Temple in Pompeii and again in the House of Octavius Quartio,to Noah, Job, Daniel, Jonah, Mary, and Jesus in the catacombs. AsNorthern Europeans move in the opposite direction, rejecting Chris-tian myths and rituals, it is an important moment to reflect on themeaning of such historic transitions.122

121 However, see Keith Hopkins, Death and Renewal: Sociological Studies in RomanHistory (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1983), chaps. 1 and 4.

122 I express enthusiastic appreciation to Laurie Brink for her project, and toAndrew Wallace-Hadrill, Director of the British School in Rome, both for useof that great library and for his critique of this paper, which, of course, does notconstitute agreement with the revised version. Also indispensable for this re-search were two other libraries in Rome, those of the German ArchaeologicalInstitute and of the Pontifical Institute for Christian Archaeology.


302 David L. Balch

Looking for Abercius 303

Margaret M. Mitchell

Chapter 9

Looking for Abercius:Reimagining Contexts of Interpretationof the “Earliest Christian Inscription”

1 A citizen of a select city, I made this,1

2 while living, so that I might have a visible2 place of deposition for my body here.3 Abercius is my name, one who is a disciple of a holy shepherd,4 who pastures flocks of sheep on mountains and plains,5 who has huge eyes which oversee everything.6 For this one taught me trustworthy texts.7 To Rome he sent me to look upon a kingdom8 and to see a queen, golden-stoled, golden-sandaled.9 I saw a people there, having a resplendent seal.

10 And I saw the land of Syria and all the towns,[even]Nisibis11 after crossing the Euphrates. Everywhere I had fellow-?3

12 having Paul?4 … faith everywhere led the way,13 and served up food everywhere, fish from a fountain14 utterly huge and pure, which a holy virgin grasped

1 My provisional translation (the textual, lexical, and interpretive decisions in-volved are legion, and I cannot enter into or defend them all in this context), fromthe text of R. Merkelbach, “Grabepigramm und Vita des Bischofs Aberkios vonHierapolis,” Epigraphica Anatolia 28 (1997): 125–39, 126, in consultation withthe critical text of G. Lüdtke and Th. Nissen, eds., Abercii Titulus Sepulcralis(Leipzig: Teubner, 1910), 36–43, and W. Wischmeyer, “Die Aberkiosinschrift alsGrabepigramm,” JAC 23 (1980): 22–47. The one exception is in line 2, as noted.

2 Here I follow Wischmeyer, “Aberkiosinschrift,” 24–25: φ��[0], “visible,” or“illustrious,” as on the Alexander stele, for Merkelbach’s reading of ��)%, fol-lowing the literary lives (the latter would be translated: “so that when the timecomes I might have a place of deposition for my body here”).

3 “ ��[ der Stein, ��'��« die Handschriften, ��[&�� Preger (im kri-tischen Apparat), ��[&��« Paton, ��[��« Lightfoot und die russischeÜbersetzung, ��[��«] Grégoire” (Merkelbach, “Grabepigramm,” 127).

4 Another apparent lacuna. The literary traditions read � ��, “within.”

304 Margaret M. Mitchell

15 and she freely distributed this to friends to eat at all times,16 having good wine/Christ-wine,5 giving it mixed, with bread.17 When standing here, I, Abercius, said these things should be written just so.6

18 Seventy-two years was I, in truth.19 Let the one who understands these things pray for Abercius, everyone in tune.20 Nevertheless, no one will deposit another in my tomb.21 But if anyone does, he will deposit 2000 gold pieces in the Roman treasury22 and 1000 gold pieces in my good home-city, Hieropolis.

Abercius’s story, like mine in search of him, begins and ends and beginsanew with travel, centrally to and from Rome. I pursued him once inAsia Minor (Turkey), but my itinerary unfortunately included thewrong Hierapolis (not Hieropolis),7 missed his epigone in Istanbul (theIstanbul Archaeological Museum was closed),8 and found him inRome at the Museo Pio Cristiano (treading gingerly over a freshly var-nished floor in order to meet my objective). The moment of actualencounter was furtive, photographically preoccupied, and much toobrief. Yet never to be forgotten.

But it was at the same time (and in memory since then) visually con-fusing, especially from the effect produced by the reconstructed bareblock standing to the left of the original fragments, far more arresting,in terms of sheer real-estate, than the two nubs remaining from Aber-cius’s actual – in its day rather impressive – effort to defy the finality of

5 Word play between �� 1« as “useful” and “Christ” in Christian sources goesback at least to Paul’s letter to Philemon 11 (see W. Tabbernee, “Christian In-scriptions from Phrygia,” NewDocs 3 [1983]:128–39, 129). The itacism is clear inmany of the famous “Christians for Christians” burial inscriptions in AsiaMinor, in which the spelling X� ��1« is more common than X� ��1« (seeG. J. Johnson, Early-Christian Epitaphs from Anatolia [Texts and Trans-lations 35; Early Christian Literature Series 8; Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1995],46 n.5 and many examples [including the plate on p. xiii]).

6 Or “here” (2&�).7 In this I was replicating a difficulty in the whole history of interpretation. Due

to the famous hot springs at Hierapolis on the Lycus, Abercius was often placedhere, because he purportedly performed a famous miracle involving sponta-neous eruption of hot fountains. After his famous finds, Ramsay in the latenineteenth century argued, convincingly to most, that this reflected commonconfusion between the names Hierapolis and Hieropolis. The former, famous asthe home of Papias, is today Pammukale; the latter Koçhisar, in the PhrygianPentapolis (which includes Kelendres). Hieropolis also had hot springs, asRamsay discovered. For discussion see, e.g., L. Duchesne, “Saint Abercius:Evêque d’Hiéropolis en Phrygie,” Revue des questions historiques 34 (1883):5–33, 15–21.

8 See below on the funerary stele of Alexander.


death by depositing his body well (see Figs. 9.1 and 9.2). Having mademy way to Abercius through row upon row of early Christian sar-cophagi, in which third- and fourth-century Christians chose to go todeath’s sleep wrapped in intricately detailed carvings of their sacredscriptures, Abercius’s tomb monument as reconstructed was an aus-tere, lettered front virtually devoid of ornament, figure, or image. Andwhere was Abercius? How could this stark monolith stand sentry overa body? It was such a contrast with the morning I had spent in the Vati-can car park necropolis, which, even in modern restoration, smelled ofmold and death, decay and dirt, and brought me face to face with theuncompromisable reality of what we were doing on our scholarly tourof Roman, Jewish, and Christian burials when I almost stepped on twotiles propped up like playing cards, with the ulna of a departed humanperson sticking vulnerably out beyond the shelter of its humble tent.Not so with Abercius; here death was boneless, clean, marked withsharp lines, a neat stone, and stunningly important verbal content. EI345MHN, “to Rome,” the first two words of the first fragment of theoriginal inscription still proudly proclaimed into the space in the reno-vated gallery in the Pio Cristiano under a natural skylight. A doubleentendre, indeed.

The historical Abercius had made the decision to put the capstoneon his life by composing an epitaph that devoted attention, in stun-ning detail, to an episode that made up a fraction of his 72 years,his journey to Rome and the marvelous things he had seen there:“a golden-stoled, golden-sandaled queen,” “a people having a re-splendent seal.” He says he had set up his monument while still alive,thus inaugurating a series of concentric rings of interpretation andrecontextualizations of his epitaph that continued with his entomb-ment and extend to the present day. The pivotal events that draggedAbercius into the modern world and eventually back to Rome consti-tute an almost unbelievable saga.9 In May of 1881 in Kelendres (=Ka-radirek) in the Pentapolis region of central Turkey, the Scottisharchaeologist William Ramsay found an epigram of one Alexander,the son of Antonius, dated to 216 C.E., which he published the next

9 See Ramsay’s own account in “The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia,” JHS 4(1883): 424–27; idem, Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, vol. 1, part II (Oxford:Clarendon, 1897), 709–746; a lively retelling in W. H. C. Frend, The Archaeologyof Early Christianity: A History (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 1996), 95–98.


9.1. Abercius monument: originalfragments; Museo Pio Cristiano.(author’s photo)

9.2. Abercius monument:“reconstruction”; Museo PioCristiano. (author’s photo)


year.10 Almost immediately Giovanni Battista de Rossi and LouisDuchesne recognized that this inscription seemed to incorporate partof the funerary inscription of Abercius, as found in the late antiquevita Abercii.11 A scant two years later on a June morning after break-fast Ramsay and his companion, the American J. R. S. Sterrett, foundtwo fragments of Abercius’s own epitaph in the ruins of a bath houseon the site they identified as ancient Hieropolis, in Phrygia Salutaris.

Although the antiquity of these fragments was quickly affirmed,the earliest phase of research divided quickly. On one side were theCatholic scholars centered in Rome (de Rossi, Duchesne, Wilpert),12

joined by Ramsay, of course, and some other Protestants in the United

10 Alexander, the son of Antonius, apparently reused part of Abercius’s famous in-scription (lines 1–3 and 20–22) for himself. This funerary altar, found by Ramsayin 1881, dates to 216 C.E. and is now housed in Istanbul (see G. Mendel, Muséesimpériaux ottomans, Catalogues des sculptures grecques, romains et byzantines,vol. 2 [Constantinople: Musée impérial, 1914] #778, p. 569–70). Thanks to theArkeoloji Müzesi and the agency of Ms. Betul Avci, doctoral student at the Uni-versity of Chicago, photographs of this stele are published here for the first time(see Figs. 9.9–10).

11 W. M. Ramsay, “Les trois villes Phrygiennes: Brouzos, Hieropolis et Otrous,”BCH 6 (1882): 503–30; G. B. de Rossi, “Un’iscrizione greca novellamente sco-perta nella Frigia paragonata col celebre epitafio metrico d’Abercio,” BACristser. 4.1 (1882): 77–82; L. Duchesne, “Une épitaphe d’Hiéropolis en Phrygie,”Bulletin critique 3 (1882): 135–36. It is important to note that the discovery ofthe Alexander stele and later Abercius fragments did not just ignite controversy,but they entered into one already under way about the historical reliability of thevita Abercii’s transcribed epitaph, which Cardinal Pitra had defended againstdoubters (see A. Abel, “Etude sur l’inscription d’Abercius,” Byzantion 3 [1926]:321–411, with full bibliography).

12 G. B. de Rossi, Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae, vol. 2, pt. 1 (Rome: Libra-ria pontificia, 1888), xii–xxi; idem, “Il cippo sepolcrale di Abercio collocato nelmuseo Lateranense,” BACrist ser 5.4 (1894): 65–69; L. Duchesne, “L’épitaphed’Abercius,” Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 15 (1895): 155–82; J. Wilpert,Fractio Panis: die älteste Darstellung des eucharistischen Opfers in der “cappellaGreca” (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1895), 105–106. On the controversy, seeFrend, Archaeology, 96: “a first-class row between the Catholic supporters of aChristian-universalist interpretation of the inscription … and a scepticism rep-resented largely by the German Protestant scholars in Berlin”; for full referencessee Wischmeyer, “Aberkiosinschrift,” 22, n. 4. The scholarship produced on the“Abercius inscription” is enormous, and of great interest in itself for the historyof the emergence of Christian archaeology, regional and confessional alliances,and forms of scholarly rhetoric. For literature to 1926, see Abel, “Etude sur l’in-scription d’Abercius,” 406–11.


Kingdom and Germany,13 who championed its Christian nature, seeingit further as a witness to the centrality of Rome-based Christian ortho-doxy and orthopraxy influencing the east already by the late secondcentury. On the other side were several prominent German Protestantscholars who forthrightly questioned the Christian identity of thebearer of the inscription: Ficker argued that he was a priest of Attisand Cybele, the great Harnack that he was a pagan-Christian syncret-ist, and Dieterich that Abercius was a Phrygian delegate to the imperi-ally sponsored festival of Elagabalus in Rome between 218–222.14 Nowin our day (some 1,800 years after Abercius, and 124 after Ramsay),Abercius is again, so to speak, at rest: the heated debate has dieddown, virtually no scholars of any stripe dispute that the inscriptionis “Christian,”15 and it is even honorifically presented as the earliestor one of the earliest extant Christian inscriptions (pre 216).16 As

13 Other influential Protestant scholars (in addition to Ramsay), who regarded theAbercius inscription as Christian include such greats as Th. Zahn, Forschungenzur Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons und der altkirchlichen Literatur,pt. 5 (Erlangen/Leipzig: Deichert, 1893), 57–99; F. J. Dölger, Der heilige Fischin den antiken Religionen und im Christentum (Münster: Aschendorff, 1922),454–507; J. B. Lightfoot, The Apostolic Fathers, part 2, vol. 1, 2d ed. (London:Macmillan, 1889), 493–501.

14 G. Ficker, “Der heidnische Charakter der Abercius-Inschrift,” Sitzungsberichteder königlich preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1894): 87–112, an ad-dress read by Harnack to the membership of the Academy on January 11, 1894;A. Harnack, “Zur Abercius-Inschrift,” TU12, 4B (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1895): 3–28;A. Dieterich, Die Grabschrift des Aberkios (Leipzig: Teubner, 1896).

15 The tide among Protestant scholars can be seen to have definitively turned insuch works as H. Strathmann and Th. Klauser, “Aberkios,” RAC 1 (1950): 12–18(“Die Inschrift ist vielmehr christlich” [16]); J. Stevenson, A New Eusebius, ed.W. H. C. Frend (Rev. ed.; London: SPCK, 1995), 110–11; Wischmeyer, “Aberkios-inschrift,” 22–47; idem, “The Sociology of Pre-Constantine Christianity:Approach from the Visible,” in The Origins of Christendom in the West (ed.A. Kreider; Edinburgh/New York: T & T Clark, 2001), 121–52: “The disputeover the Christianity of the Abercius inscription … is over” (p. 125). More re-cently, in addition to the Merkelbach listing (note 1) see R. A. Kearsley, “TheEpitaph of Aberkios: The Earliest Christian Inscription?” NewDocs 6 (1992):177–81; G. Koch, “Aberkiosinschrift,” RGG4 l:62–63: “Die A. muß zwar christ-lich sein …”

16 The most recent publication of the inscription puts the date as 170/180 C.E.(R. Merkelbach and J. Stauber, Der “Ferne Osten” und das Landesinnere bis zumTauros [vol. 3 of Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten; Munich andLeipzig: Saur, 2001] 182–185 (a listing which largely follows Merkelbach,“Grabepigramme”); in reference works see, e.g., E. Ferguson, “Abercius,” in idem,


for the fate of the original stone, Ramsay initially gave one frag-ment to the Sultan Abdul-Hamid and kept custody of the other, buteventually, through the intercessions of de Rossi, in 1892 arrangedfor both fragments ironically to make their way, like their honoreehad earlier, to Rome, as gifts to Pope Leo XIII (“provvidamente riu-niti,” as Margherita Guarducci puts it).17 They have been housedsince then in the Vatican’s Lateran Museum (now the Pio Cristiano),where I saw them for a fleeting few minutes on the afternoon ofJune 17, 2004.

My reflections on my encounters with Abercius and his burial stone,especially within the context of viewing remains of Roman and Chris-tian burials in Rome and Tunisia (and on earlier trips in Greece, AsiaMinor, and the Middle East) are conditioned by four insights: (1) thecrucial importance of context (literary, historical, physical, artistic,etc.) to interpretation; (2) the composite semiotics of funerary monu-ments which cannot be reduced to the words of their inscriptions;18

(3) the slow emergence of Christian material culture in the first few cen-turies, and the variability in structures of meaning throughout materialculture generally, which conditions our ability to delimit definitivelythe cultural resonances of any particular artifact; and (4) the realizationthat necropoleis, no less than the cities of the living they co-inhabit(whether intramural or extramural), are not static, but continuallyshifting sites. In the case of Abercius’s funerary monument, these gen-

ed., Encyclopedia of Early Christianity (2nd ed.; New York: Garland, 1999),5 (“earliest extant datable Christian inscription”); Kearsley, “Epitaph of Aber-kios,” 181: “widely recognized as the earliest datable epitaph which attempts toregister Christian belief”; L. H. Kant, “Earliest Christian Inscription: BishopAvercius’s Last Words Document Emergence of the Church,” BRev 17 (2001):10–19; cf. Wischmeyer, “The Sociology of Pre-Constantine Christianity,” 124:“one of the oldest Christian monuments.” Among Catholic scholars it has accrueda royal epithet (“epitaphium christianarum inscriptionum dicitur regina” [A. Fer-rua and D. Balboni, “Epitaphium Abercii,” Latinitas 47 (1999): 153–157, 157], asinaugurated by de Rossi, “Il cippo sepolcrale di Abercio,” 65).

17 M. Guarducci, Epigrafi sacre pagane e cristiane (vol. 4 of Epigrafia greca; Rome:Libreria dello stato, 1978), 377–88, 380.

18 J. Bodel, “Epigraphy and the Ancient Historian,” in idem, ed., Epigraphic Evi-dence: Ancient History from Inscriptions (New York: Routledge, 2001), 1–56, 25:“Other than their power to activate speech or to represent writing symbolically,inscriptions conveyed their meaning visually, in a variety of ways. As integralelements of the monuments they accompanied, inscribed texts from an earlydate contributed to a complex semiological message of which their contents con-stituted only a part.”


eral insights have led me to recognize that we should not expect that inantiquity, any less than in the last century or so, it had a single, unal-tered or clear meaning (“pagan,” “syncretistic,” or Christian, and if so,“crypto-Christian” or “phanero-Christian”19), but that from the timeof its construction Abercius’s monument was open to a plurality of in-terpretations and reinterpretations, with various voices seeking tosteer audiences to single authoritative and definitive interpretations.

The first such voice was Abercius himself, who in stages hadcomposed an epigram sufficiently, and presumably intentionallyambiguous even to warrant the verbal elbow to the ribs he offersto some of his viewers (“Let the one who understands these thingspray for Abercius, everyone in tune” [��"�# ² �% �Κ�� 7��8#A�� »« ² �)%&1«], line 19). This expressed intent to fashion amessage that could be understood by two different viewing publics(those in the know and those not) was echoed by what the late antiqueauthor of the vita Abercii had reported as a fact of reception: “theepigram was understandable and useful for those worthy of Christ,but was not able to be recognized by the unbelievers” (��« �8$,��« ��" X� ��" �� λ 9φ��, ��« &8 $�� « �κ'�� 1�� [76 (53)]).20 While this bifurcation of the viewingpublics was true for a time, eventually and incrementally the two audi-ences merged, or one was submerged, with the Christianization ofmaterial culture between the time of the historical Abercius and thecomposition of the vita. Hence, the Abercius monument is a perfectexample of the shift so well captured by Jas Elsner: “The trans-formation of Roman art in the third century can thus be seen as a pro-cess of the growing ritualisation of a culture increasingly towards

19 P. McKechnie, “Christian Grave-Inscriptions from the Familia Caesaris,” JEH50 (1999): 427–41, 439, who applies the latter description; cf. also Wischmeyer,“The Sociology of Pre-Constantine Christianity,” 126, who takes the inscriptionas “perhaps the earliest natural point of access to our question of the increasingvisibility and the appearance of Christianity in the late imperial period.” Theseterms were already in play in Ramsay, Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, vol. 1,pt. 2, p. 710: “He intended this declaration, inscribed in a conspicuous positionbefore the public eye, to be an imperishable record of his testimony and of themessage which he had to deliver to mankind in favour of the one and indivisibleChurch catholic, and against Montanism” (but compare the next page: “it wasnot possible to put forth in such a public way a statement that was overtly Chr[is-tian]”!). For the text-critical issue of the reading φ��0 (or φ��%«, in ibid.,720) in line 2, see n. 2 above.

20 Of course, the narrator may be reifying this line of the inscription here.


ritual or initiate viewing and away from ‘ordinary’ viewing thatpredominated throughout most of the Graeco-Roman period.”21

Ironically (or just plain predictably?) the modern history of the in-scription has replicated that very process of a divided viewing publiceventually becoming amalgamated. The present short and quite pre-liminary essay seeks to enter this complex and charged history of view-ing to examine the role of ambiguity in perception, by attempting tore-envision some of the earliest contextual circles in which this monu-ment was seen, and ways in which its meaning steered. The main con-tention of this essay is that the task of interpretation of what isusually called “the Abercius inscription” must be reconfigured in away that takes this dynamic of interpretation and reinterpretationbetter into account.

We would not know about Abercius’s conspicuous funerary monu-ment unless he had been memorialized in a literary life in the fourth orfifth century,22 from which it found its way into the Menologia (fromthe anonymous compiler, and also Simeon Metaphrastes) and ActaSanctorum traditions. The tradition-historical relationship betweenthe literary life and the documentary inscription has been the subjectof lively debate, largely because the reconstruction of the epigram de-pends upon a critical assessment and cautious alignment of thesetraditions and recensions, together with the Alexander inscription.23

But the literary vita Abercii is not a neutral report about Abercius orhis burial monument; the work deliberately seeks to direct the way itsaudiences viewed the object before them. As a dominant ring of the in-terpretive circle,24 we start there before turning back to the remnants ofthe marble stone themselves.

21 Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World toChristianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 153.

22 Th. Nissen, ed., S. Abercii Vita (Leipzig: Teubner, 1912); hereafter cited bychapter number, with Nissen’s page number in brackets (the translations aremine). In terms of dating, the work mentions #I��μ« ² ��« in 66[47], hence it post-dates 361–363. Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, part 2, vol. 1,p. 500 placed it ca. 380 C.E.

23 There has also been extensive debate about whether this Abercius is the same asthe Avircius Marcellus mentioned by Eusebius in Hist. eccl. 5.16.3 as the personto whom an anonymous writer dedicated a treatise against the Montanists.

24 While the text of the inscription has been pored over letter by letter, more recentscholarship has in my view paid too little attention to the literary context of thetomb monument within the vita Abercii, as I hope to illustrate below.


The hagiographic vita of Abercius, bishop of Hieropolis in PhrygiaSalutaris, commences with the announcement of mandates to sacrificeto the gods imposed by Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus (ca.161–164).25 This requirement is resisted by our hero, who stages anighttime counter-assault on the temple of Apollo, attacking hisstatue, and those of Heracles, Artemis, and Aphrodite (4 [7]). Havingestablished the saint’s prowess as an idol-slayer, the author recountssome of his exploits as an evangelist and miracle worker. These activ-ities aroused the attention of the devil, who approached in the formof a young woman asking for the saint’s blessing. He was promptlydetected and evicted by Abercius (41 [31]). The devil then resumed hisown shape and taunted Abercius, crowing that he was :��1��«�% &�� (“the centurion of demons”),26 and hence not to befooled with like one of those other petty demons who cause everydayillnesses. Leaping next into a �� « in the crowd, he made the boythrash about. Abercius performed the exorcism and prevailed over thisdemonic “centurion,” but at the moment of his exit the devil spoke acurse on Abercius that he would soon cause him to make an unwillingjourney: “Soon, oh Abercius, I shall cause you to tread your way – un-willingly and involuntarily – to the city of the Romans” (42 [32]). Afterhurling this threat, the devil disappeared.

In this case the devil’s words were indeed prophetic; however, lest itappear that the devil really were in control of history, the Lord ap-peared to Abercius in a dream that very night to confirm it as being hisown willed plan (��).27 Abercius was soon summoned via im-perial post to Rome by the emperor and empress themselves, MarcusAurelius and Faustina. They wished him to drive out that very samedemon, which had journeyed to Rome and taken up residence in theirsixteen-year-old daughter, Lucilla (44 [33]), stubbornly declaring overand over again that he would not leave that comfortable abode unlessAbercius were to come from Phrygia (63 [45]). Letters from the em-peror to the provincial administrators conveyed this request, to whichAbercius acceded. After a forty-day journey over land and sea he ar-

25 The tale says the marriage of Verus to Lucilla, which took place in Ephesus in164, had not yet occurred.

26 Surely a play on the ��'�. of Mark 5:9 and Luke 8:30, made explicit in the“show-down” between the two at 62 [44]. See below.

27 This accords, of course, with the text of the inscription, line 7: ��« 74.�� ;«��<� #��.


rived, as he had forecast, in Portus, despite the wintry conditions thatslowed other ships (54 [39]). Once in Rome the queen immediately ledAbercius to her daughter. The demon inside her triumphantly de-clared: “See, Abercius, as I promised I have made you travel to Rome!”Abercius retorted, “Yes, but you will not get any joy from it!” (61 [43]),and then instructed them to take the girl to an open-air place. A hip-podrome28 was selected for the contest between Abercius and thedemon. The saint adjured the devil by the name of Jesus to come out ofthe girl without harming her; the demon asked that he not be sent outto some “wild mountain” or place unknown to him (hence enactingthe typology with Mark 5 and parallels). Abercius consented to this re-quest by substituting another: he commanded the demon to return tothe place from which he had come, i.e., Hieropolis. But that is not all.“‘I, too, command you, in the name of Jesus, to carry this altar [��1«]’pointing out to him a marble altar standing near him [=��&��,�«� #��)% ��μ �� " ¹ ��], ‘to bear it as akeep-safe [��" $�� % ��] to my city, Hierapolis,’ he said, ‘and to set itup near the south gate’” (63 [45]). The demon left the girl for the altar,and, after taking a consolation lap around the hippodrome (groaningunder the weight of the stone), he brought the altar to Abercius’s home-town and “set it up at the previously commanded place” [� �� # )2�� '� �1�)�] (63 [45]).

The altar was there when Abercius finally returned home after all histravels, shortly after which the Lord appeared to him in a dream andannounced his imminent death and well-earned rest from all his labors.At this point we are told that “he constructed a square tomb for him-self [�� :��)% �� '��], and the altarwhich at his command the demon had brought from Rome he placedabove the tomb [��λ �μ ��1, ; �� 1 ��,� � #��" >'�'� ²&�� $�μ �0« 74.��«, � �� #�� " ��], after engravingon it a divinely inspired epigram [#'��,�« ��« ��μ ��1�� #��'��]” (76 [53]). Here in the text the narrator provides a tran-scription of the words of the inscription (��« ��,� � �?��«) andrelates how, after providing for the election of his successor as bishop,with a prayer Abercius handed over his spirit to the attending angels.Those present, after caring for his body to the degree possible, “buried

28 63 [45]. The Russian translation says explicitly that this was “the so-called Pala-tine” hippodrome, which would refer to that built by Domitian. Without thatcomment one might also easily envision the nearby circus maximus.


it in the tomb which, as previously recounted, he had constructed forhimself (��<� ��« �μ ��, ; ³« �� :��)%)” (79 [55]).

The narrator of the vita Abercii makes an implicit claim that he hasseen Abercius’s funerary monument. Hence his work provides us withsomething we too rarely get in the study of ancient inscriptions – akind of history of reception even in antiquity. The relationship be-tween the narrative and the epitaph is much more integral and complexthan that the former has preserved the latter intact as an embeddedsource. It seems likely that the epitaph has had an influential rolein generating the order and substance of the legendary account, withAugusta Faustina coming to life as the elusive royal figure of theepitaph,29 and the travelogue of the inscription (Rome, Syria, Nisibis,Euphrates)30 forming the center of the narrative.31 Yet, perhaps becausescholars have mostly sought to confirm the reciprocal historical relia-bility between the vita Abercii and Ramsay’s marble fragments, themajor narrative element in that literary work as we have traced it – therole of the demon in both instigating Abercius’s journey to Rome and inprocuring for him the stone for his funerary monument – has tended todrop quickly out of the discussion as a patent embarrassment to that

29 �� in line 8. Merkelbach thinks the vita interprets this as the princessLucilla (“Grabepigramm,” 127). There is a famous text-critical question aboutthe reading of BA3[I]@ in the previous line; Ramsay argued that a following etahad broken off in transit in modern times (but this was disproven by W. M.Calder, “The Epitaph of Avircius Marcellus,” JRS 29 [1939]: 1–4, 1–2).

30 But it is important to note that the trip to Rome receives proportionally muchgreater attention in both narrative and inscription (41–68), as compared withSyria (69, with city-names Antioch, Apamea and Seleucia added), and Nisibisacross the Ephrates (70). The discussion of how he was voted � ��1 ��« therelikely constitutes an exegesis of the movement from v. 11a to 11b and 12a of theinscription, and the mention of Paul.

31 So also Lightfoot: “The legend however grew up about the literal interpretation;and, if we abandon the latter, the story of the interview with Lucilla and Faus-tina, which is the pivot of the narrative, falls to the ground” (Apostolic Fathers,vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 498, italics added). It is the pivot, however, because it is the exor-cistic narrative that occasions both the journey and the funerary stone. ContrastDavid D. Bundy, “The Life of Abercius: Its Significance for Early Syriac Chris-tianity,” SecCent 7 (1989/1990): 163–76, who does not mention this linkage inhis resumé (p. 169), and instead centers his whole interpretation on a singlephrase in 69 [49], π �D� �« ��" M��«, to argue that the entire work is ananti-Marcionite tract.


purpose.32 But to ignore it or cast it aside is to miss an uncommon op-portunity, for at the very least this central structural feature of the nar-rative deserves our interest because it shows the way the literary author“saw” and sought to have others “see” the stone as well as the wordsupon it. Hence the vita, by its conspicuous attempt to fix the meaningof Abercius’s funerary monument, gives witness also to the possibilityof variant interpretations. And the problem (solved here by demono-logical explanation) is that Abercius’s funerary monument could be –and presumably was – seen as strange, foreign, and “pagan.”33

The history of interpretation of the inscription in modern times hasdemonstrated that it is indeed possible to read various referents in theinscription in different ways (Is the “holy shepherd” Jesus, or Attis? Arethe references to the queen and people at Rome alluding to the church,or the empress and citizens, or the “queen of heaven,” the MagnaMater?34), and that is the turf on which the battle has largely been con-ducted. But was the ambiguity in reception only related to the meaningof the letters and words on the inscription? Did it not also apply to thefull monument? The saga about the demon can be readily understoodas an attempt from centuries later – post-Julian (the “apostate”) –to account for why such a famous early Christian as Abercius had afunerary monument that deserved the descriptive term ��1«. Inorder for the vita to work, Abercius’s actual monument, as it looked to

32 This can be seen in the repeated assertions by Merkelbach, in his quest to affirmthe historicity of an earlier narrative inside the late-fourth-century vita, thatancients did not think like moderns (“Grabepigramm,” 134–37). He dismissesthe legend as follows: “Hier kommt nochmals ein Zug scherzhafter Phantasie indas ernste Heiligenleben” (p. 137).

33 Ficker’s insight is on target here (though he undoes the ambiguity in his ownway!): “Dazu kommt noch, dass der Verfasser der vita als er die Inschrift ab-schrieb, das Bewusstsein gehabt zu haben scheint, er stehe nicht vor einemchristlichen, sondern vor einem heidnischen Grabmal. Er muss es besonders er-klären, dass die Form des Grabmals keine andere gewesen ist, als die der bei denheidnischen Vornehmen gebräuchlichen Grabmäler” (“Der heidnische Charak-ter der Abercius-Inschrift,” 92).

34 Here Dieterich’s history of viewing (including a visit to Rome in 1894/1895) ismost interesting (see Die Grabschrift des Aberkios, esp. p. 25; also p. 2; p. 7 n. 2).The “enigmatic” and “oblique” nature of the words of the inscription is nicelyappreciated by Kant, “Earliest Christian Inscription,” 17–19 (“In antiquity areader could have understood this text on multiple levels”). Yet his articulationof the goal of research – to reconstruct “the cultural context of the text” (p. 19,italics added) – can be seen to be problematic in two ways: the epitaph is not justa text, and it had plural cultural contexts (and hence readers) over time.


fourth- or fifth-century eyes, must have been a conspicuously “pagan-looking” one, one that could be supposed to have come from the mostarchetypal site of idolatry imaginable in the empire – a hippodromein Rome.35 By a deft tale that combines features of the Acts of theApostles and Apocryphal Acts, with their love of travel lore, with Gos-pel narratives about Jesus’ exorcisms (especially the combination inMark 5 of the Gerasene demoniac36 followed soon after by Jairus’stwelve-year-old daughter, who parallels Lucilla), the author has trans-formed a known and venerable (if already weathered and worn) localartifact from what he may have perceived as an uncomfortably “pagan-looking” monument into an ironic trophy of the exorcistic power ofJesus Christ. This impressive monument, according to the etiologicallegend,37 is Abercius’s souvenir, “keep-safe,” of his famous trip to thecapital city, Rome. Indeed, in terms of local religious culture, the lateantique hagiographer likely expects his historical readers to see Aber-cius’s tale as a reverse Cybele legend: a sacred stone carried from thePalatine in Rome back to the region of Pessinus in Asia Minor for finaldeposition.38 Wrapped in this ironically tied up narrative package, it

35 The notorious association among Christian authors of Roman hippodromes(the circus maximus in particular) with idolatry, altars, and demons is confirmedby Tertullian, Spect. 8.7, who gives the summary exhortation, Animadverte, Chris-tiane, quot numina inmunda possederint circum. Aliena est tibi religio, quam totdiaboli spiritus occupaverunt!

36 Could the inscription have suggested this connection, with the verbal playson the “flock” ($'��), “mountain” (F�«), and “pasturing” (�1 ��) (line 4;cf. Mk 5:11, 13, 14; further discussion of the language in particular in Wisch-meyer, “Aberkiosinschrift,” 31)?

37 The vita also contains a second etiological narrative of the baths near that southgate in Hierapolis, said to have been built by Roman engineers as the solepayment Abercius would accept from the queen for his labors on behalf of herdaughter (65–66 [46–47]; cf. also 75 [52]). A profusion of bath building tookplace throughout the second century in Asia Minor (S. Mitchell, The Celts inAnatolia and the Impact of Roman Rule [vol. 1 in Anatolia: Land, Men, and Godsin Asia Minor; Oxford, Clarendon, 1993], 216–17). Abercius becomes associatedwith these public works, as well.

38 Livy 29.10–14; Ovid, Fasti 4.178–372. Even if some of Ficker’s “parallels” be-tween words in the inscription and the cult of Cybele and Attis seem a stretch(“Der heidnische Charakter der Abercius-Inschrift”), his general point – be-cause the major sanctuary of Cybele was only 20 miles away in Pessinus (p. 94),and her cult ubiquitous in Phrygian life and culture some impact on the meaningof the inscription should be reckoned with – is to be taken seriously. It would bemore fruitful to redirect the question of the influence from an either/or identity ofthe historical Abercius (as simply “pagan” or “Christian” or even “syncretistic”)


is – for right-minded believers – an unambiguous monument (once theambiguity has been removed!) to the power of the one God over “pa-ganism,” symbolized by the subjugated demon. This is what the authorof the vita wishes his readers to “see.”

And this is why I was confused by the modern reconstruction in thePio Cristiano39 – it was hard to see how that blank, austere cippuswould have generated possible embarrassment for a Christian author,or need for later apologetic explanation and transformation. Face toface, even more than in photographs I had seen, I came to appreciatehow much in its own way, like the vita, the reconstruction in the Vati-can Museum is also directing the viewer’s interpretation of the Aber-cius inscription. This is of course patently obvious in the words of themodern Latin inscription that adorns the base on which the two frag-ments now rest (see Fig. 9.3):

FRAGMENTVM · TITVLI · SEPVLCRALISEX · ASIA · ADVECTVM

IN · QVO · ABERCIVS · HIEROPOL · EPISC · SAEC · IIVNIVERSAE · ECCLESIAE · CONSENSVM

IN · VNAM · FIDEM · TESTATVR40

to the frameworks of viewing of those who saw Abercius’s monument (doesthe “golden-sandaled, golden-robed queen” play on the statue of Cybele, forinstance?), and those later who would unmistakably hear in the legend of Aber-cius’s funerary stone’s journey from Rome to Phrygia an ironic inversion of thetale of Cybele’s famous stone in 191 B.C.E, and her temple being set up on thePalatine. In this regard the important study by Dieterich, Die Grabschrift desAberkios, is unfortunately inconsistent, sometimes allowing for multivalencedepending on the viewer, and at other times insisting that one reading (his thesisthat Abercius was a devotée of Cybele) is “unzweideutig klar” (p. 52; but com-pare pp. 2–3, n. 3: [the accession of a fifth-century bishop with the name Abercius]wird die Veranlassung gewesen sein, dass man die alte Inschrift wieder beach-tete, in neuem Sinne verstand …”).

39 As a record of viewing I should note that I had long before looked at photo-graphs of both the fragments and the reconstruction, but seeing the two face toface and in proximity to one another was a unique visual experience.

40 The modern inscription was erected in early March 1895 (as announced byO. Marucchi, “Nuove osservazioni sulla iscrizione di Abercio,” Nuovo bullettinodi archeologia cristiana 1 [1895]: 17–41, 20). Interestingly, Marucchi says de Rossihad composed his own epigram for the base supporting the two fragments, but itcould not be found among his papers at his death, so this one was fashioned(p. 20). There is also a second half to the inscription which commemorates thegift of the Sultan to Pope Leo XIII.


Indeed, the very form of the museum label joins the words in convey-ing this sense of the church catholic, for it appears to have been incisedin imitation of the Latin funerary inscription from the cemetery ofPriscilla cited by de Rossi among other poetic early Christian epitaphsthat parallel the Abercius inscription (see Fig. 9.4).41 Yet the directedviewing of the Abercius epigram in its present habitat does not stopwith this modern, antique-formed inscription, but is also powerfullyat work in the plastic reconstruction of the monument, which, bypresenting an unremarkable, unadorned stone block that is a mereplatform for a fixed and stable message, contributes greatly to thisrepresentation of Abercius’s epitaph as a decisive piece of proof for aunified and uncontroversial “catholic” Christianity in the late secondcentury.42

In evaluating the interpretive force of the 2/3 scale model43 nowflanking the two stone fragments in the Pio Cristiano and its impact oninterpretation, what should not be forgotten is that it was carried outby de Rossi’s students and colleagues according to his wishes, and inline with his work. Indeed, introducing the model and the modern in-scription that serves as its caption in 1895, Orazio Marucchi explainedwith still-fresh grief in the inaugural volume of the Nuovo bullettino diarcheologia cristiana that the master had died just months before theunveiling of the final reconstruction,44 which was set in place as the sig-nature stone that introduced the gallery of Christian inscriptions deRossi had done so much to collect. Marucchi presents the Aberciusfragments, modern inscription, and plastic reconstruction as in manyways a valedictory to the dead de Rossi set up in his favorite museum,the Lateran. (This intention is still today visible for the historically at-tuned viewer in the bust of de Rossi which stands nearby.) Marucchi’sapologetic intent near the close of the nineteenth century was notveiled; his goal and that of his colleagues was to continue the work oftheir mentor and “defend the Christianity of the inscription of Aber-

41 De Rossi, Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae, vol. 2, pt. 1, p. XXX.42 It bears repeating that this interpretation is not confined to Catholic scholars.

See Stevenson, A New Eusebius, 111, where the inscription is featured under thecategory “The Emergence of Orthodoxy,” with the statement: “to those whounderstood, the tombstone was a permanent testimony to Avircius’ faith in theunity of the Catholic church.…”

43 A. Ferrua, “Nuove osservazioni sull’ epitaffio di Abercio,” RACrist 20 (1943):279–305, 289.

44 De Rossi died on September 20, 1894.


9.3. Modern inscription on pedestal holding original fragments.(Photo: L. Brink, O.P.)

9.4. Latin epitaph from Rome, as printed by de Rossi.(Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae, vol. 2, pt. 1, p. XXX)


cius against the attacks that have been made.”45 So how does the physi-cal model participate in this apologetic purpose?

First off, any “pagan-looking” attributes in the reconstructionwould certainly have given amunition for the “attackers” in Berlin(Ficker and Harnack). So all such imaginative options are decisivelycut off by the sharp-edged, absolutely unambiguous square blockwhose job is to present the world with the precious letters of the text, ateye level and for immediate apprehension (see Fig. 9.2). This stone blockhas been sanded clean of any ambiguity or implication in the “pagan”world. But our earlier viewer, the late antique hagiographer, had calledit a ��1« – applying on his own initiative a problematic term to themonument which the inscription itself did not contain. The sacrificialconnotations of the ��1« could certainly still adhere to the artifact,as even the exact term ��1« could never be completely assimilatedby Christians, because the word was used in their sacred scriptures (theSeptuagint) of profane, forbidden altars dedicated to (“false”) idols.46

The form of the ��1« itself was early on presented by Harnack as areason to doubt that Abercius was so easily identified as a Christian.47

But his appeal was countered quickly by de Rossi and his followerswho argued that, in addition to Harnack’s having laid down an im-possible burden of proof on those who had to show that this form wascommonly used by Christians ca. 200 C.E. (given that we have almostno other Christian inscriptions of any sort this early), there are in factsome Christian ��/cippi in Rome and its environs in the earlyperiod.48 Despite the anxious relief one senses in these articles at hav-ing deflected Harnack’s charge by these few examples,49 the questionwas perhaps prematurely settled there, for a few examples do not jus-

45 “Tocca adunque a noi suoi discepoli e continuatori il fare la sua parte e difen-dendo la cristianità dell’iscrizione di Abercio contro siffatti attacchi …” (Ma-rucchi, “Nuove osservazioni,” 19–20). Marucchi says he had been entrusted withprimary responsibility for the reconstruction.

46 E.g., Jer 7:32 (of the Tophet); Isa 15:2; Ezek 34:13, and often.47 Harnack, “Zur Abercius-Inschrift,” 5: “Die Form des Steines (��1«), auf dem

die Inschrift angebracht ist, ist der Annahme, sie sei christlich, nicht eben gün-stig. … Giebt es Beispiele, dass christliche Inschriften um 200 auf Altären oderaltarartigen Steinen angebracht wurden?”

48 For the examples cited, see especially Duchesne, “L’épitaphe d’Abercius,”166;Wilpert, Fractio Panis, 105–106.

49 Wilpert, Fractio Panis, 106 pronounces Harnack’s argument as “in die Vorschuleder Archäologie gehört.”


tify the conclusion that the cippus-form, though perhaps unproblem-atic for Christians to use in the late second century, might not beviewed differently in later Christian history.

The ��1« became a particularly prominent form of burial markerin the Roman imperial period generally (both in Rome and in Asia),and gradually waned towards the mid-third century, as sarcophagi be-come more popular.50 Funerary altars “served as markers rather thanas places for sacrifice, although the sacrifice that took place at the lay-ing out of the gravesite is implied. In this way, the altar was an appro-priate form for a burial stone.”51 Altar and gravestone were firmlylinked, and their functions intertwined.52 Christians naturally sharedthese funerary practices in the early centuries. But a later day (latefourth or early fifth century, as also the late nineteenth) would not findsuch “accommodation” as easy to understand or defend, as Christianculture – material as well as intellectual – developed a more finelytuned and aggressively patroled sense of its unique identity. HenceAbercius’s use of the traditional and regionally ubiquitous ��1«physical form – whether as a commissioned stone, a prefabricatedproduct from a workshop, or a reused stone – would have been a physi-cal correlate to the combination of traditional (i.e., Greco-Roman)epigrammatic topoi with emergent Christianizing diction (especiallybiblicisms) that Wischmeyer has cogently demonstrated was charac-teristic of the text of his funerary inscription.53

But for our viewing imagination we need to ask what it was thatwould have led the late-fourth-century author to apply the term ��1«to this part of Abercius’s funerary monument. And were there features

50 Full treatment of dating, and the genre and adornments for Rome, may be foundin D. Boschung, Antike Grabaltäre aus den Nekropolen Roms (Acta Bernensia 10;Bern: Stämpfli & Cie, 1987) and D. E. E. Kleiner, Roman Imperial Funerary Al-tars with Portraits (Archaeologica 62; Rome: Bretschneider, 1987).

51 Kleiner, Roman Imperial Funerary Altars with Portraits, 21. See also Boschung,Antike Grabaltäre, 12, on the role of DMS: “Formal blieb die Fiktion einer Wei-hung an eine Gottheit oft durch das dis manibus (sacrum) der Grabinschriftengewahrt.”

52 “Göttenaltäre konnten in Grabaltäre und umgekehrt Grabaläre durch die In-schrift in Götteraltäre verwandelt werden. Die beiden Gattungen dürfen dahernicht als Gegensätze verstanden werden” (Boschung, Antike Grabaltäre, 12).

53 Wischmeyer, “Aberkiosinschrift.” In his later study (“Sociology of Pre-Constan-tine Christianity,” 126), Wischmeyer describes the monument as “typical” and“conventional,” including its decoration (more on this below).


that were seen as characteristically Roman, such that the narrativeseeks to explain the provenance of the stone in the imperial capital? Ofcourse the ��1« indicates a certain shape (generally speaking, oftenbroader than a �� or column),54 but what else may have marked itas a ��1« – a “pagan” cult stone?55 The reconstruction largely effacessuch questions, but could the original ��1«, now in reuse by Aber-cius, have had impressions for sacrificial offerings on top, or beenadorned with acroteria and rosettes, like, e.g., the Roman stele of Pub-lius Cordius Cissus,56 of an extremely common type? Or did it haveangular acroteria, like many cippi, from small to large,57 such as thesmall cippus for the boy Barbarianos (a Greek inscription) found nearthe tomb of Cecilia Metella in Rome? Would such “horns,” as well asthe shape, still carry associations of sacrificial altars, such as the fa-mous altar in the Temple of Vespasian at Pompeii (which contains a re-lief of a bull led to sacrifice)? Did Abercius’s ��1« have a relief insidea pediment on the top with a portrait, such as the cippus dedicated to“our sweet Secundus” by his parents,58 or, perhaps closer to Abercius’sfull monument in scope and placement, the famous first-century burialmonument to Q. Sulpicius Maximus at the Porta Salaria in Rome,which, in addition to a portrait, like Abercius’s has a poem in Greek(and Latin) inscribed and a wreath on the right face? Was it as or-nate on top and elevated above street level as that of C. EtuviusCapreolus in Aquileia (Fig. 9.5)?59 Did it have the conventional urceus

54 Boschung, Antike Grabaltäre, 13. A. de Waal, “Die Inschrift des Abercius,”Römische Quartalschrift 8 (1894): 329–31, 330: “der Cippus war also quadra-tisch.” But the two terms are often used interchangeably, in scholarship gen-erally (see OCD, 3d ed. s.v. “altar” [p. 68, where cippus is a subcategory ofsmaller altars]), as is reflected also in writing on the Abercius and Alexandermonuments specifically. The Abercius monument had to have been much largerthan Alexander’s (see below).

55 Note that even the altars Boschung puts in the category “Grundform” containvarious types of ornamentation, including crowns (Antike Grabaltäre, 14–22).

56 Kleiner, Roman Imperial Funerary Altars with Portraits, no. 4.57 See the list of features in Boschung, Antike Grabaltäre, 14–36, and the visual

presentation of the types of pedimentary motifs in his plate 1.58 Kleiner, Roman Imperial Funerary Altars with Portraits, no. 64, with abundant

further examples. Apparently de Rossi allowed for this, as a way to explain whythe inscription began lower on the Abercius stone (“forse per qualche simboloinciso al disopra” [Marucchi, “Nuove osservazioni,” 21]).

59 As the hagiographer described Abercius’s monument, it, too had a square baseand an altar on top (76 [53]).


(pitcher, on the left lateral) and patera (libation vessel, on the right)?60

Could it have born the ubiquitous “D(is) M(anibus)” or “D MS(acrum)” formula?61 What other forms of iconographic expression(a mythological griffin like the Prosenes inscription?)62 might have

60 Wischmeyer, “Sociology of Pre-Constantine Christianity,” 126, the only recentscholar who has addressed the possible ornamentation of the monument, says inpassing “perhaps a pitcher and/or a bowl was on the right side.” (The recon-struction in the Pio Cristiano gives the right side a wreath to match that extanton the left.)

61 As does another one of de Rossi’s and Wilpert’s examples of Christian cippi(Fractio Panis, 105).

62 See below, n. 75.

9.5. Funerary monument of C. Etuvius Capreolus,Aquileia. (Photo: L. Brink, O.P.)


been present on such a funerary cippus? Should we assume that itsvivid verbal imagery – of a holy shepherd with enormous eyes, or fishand bread – was not accompanied by visual counterparts?63

In the attempt at reimagining,64 it may be important to see on whatslim basis the Abercius-inscription model has come to have its presentshape and unornamented top. The initial step was the inference thatsince the Alexander stele replicated some lines of the Abercius monu-ment, the two must have had the same shape. Acting on this assump-tion, Marucchi and his associates, especially Wilpert, apparently drewupon the sketch de Rossi had provided of the Alexander stele.65 But deRossi had never seen the Alexander stele (which has never left Turkey).He depended upon Ramsay’s published drawing, which he reproducedin his monumental ICUR, but with one slight (but ultimately signifi-cant) revision: he added a dotted line across the top of what was anopen space (see Figs. 9.6 and 9.7).66 The model in the Vatican Mu-

63 This was assumed by Wilpert, who thought the misalignment of text on thestone can be resolved by the assumption “dass die Inschrift durch eine symbo-lische Gruppe, sei es durch die Figur des guten Hirten oder des IXGY3 mit demAnker oder durch andere Symbole, eingeleitet …” (Fractio Panis, 125).

64 As a start on this task, here I have been able to cite just a few examples. I chosethem mostly from Rome, both because of the scope of our trip, and because thehagiographer identified the altar with Rome. But one must also set the Aberciusgravestone in the context of other Anatolian burial monuments, of course, whereall of these features are abundantly found as well (see, e.g., Mitchell, Anatolia,vol. 1, 187–88 on funerary fines and curses).

65 See the line drawing in Wilpert, Fractio Panis, 124, fig. 19, which presents theform of the stone essentially as the reconstruction has it (though he thought thefront of the stone was only inscribed inside the text panel [more on this topicbelow]).

66 This is evident when comparing Ramsay’s drawing (Fig. 9.6), Cities and Bishop-rics, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 721 with de Rossi’s redrawing (Fig. 9.7), from Inscriptioneschristianae urbis romae, vol. 2, xviii. One should also note the variance betweenthe photograph of the squeeze published by L. Duchesne, “L’épitaphe d’Aber-cius,” plate I, p. 351, in which the lower edge of the crown is visible, with the laterre-publication of that photograph in Ferrua, “Nuove osservazioni,” 285, in whicheven that trace of the crown has been cropped off. De Rossi did not have accessto Mendel’s line drawing and description in Catalogue des sculptures grecques,romains et byzantines, which was published in 1914, but subsequent scholars did.His description reads: “les angles supérieurs étaient ornés d’acrotères qui se dé-tachent en relief sur un dé rectangulaire; ce dé sert de plinthe à un tambour decolonne, taillé dans le même bloc et creusé de treize cannelures dont la partie in-férieure est remplie par une rudenture et que séparent de larges baguettes plates,partagées en deux par un sillon vertical.”


9.6. Alexander stele: drawing by Ramsay.(Cities and Bishoprics, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 721)

9.7. Alexander stele: re-drawn by de Rossi.(Inscriptiones christianae urbis romae, vol. 2, pt. 1, p. xviii)


seums has turned this drafting line into a physical “fact” as the cippusbears a completely flat, straight and unadorned top. But cippi as foundin both Anatolia and Rome may have any number of ornamental tops,including a pediment, acroteria, “horns,” crowns, raised wreaths andgarlands, and portraits.67 Indeed, de Rossi himself thought the expla-nation for why the inscription appears to have begun lower on thestone (with line 7) was because of a possible symbol or other ornamen-tal element at the top of the stone. It is vitally important in thinkingabout this inscription to expand our mental picture of the Aberciusmonument by trying on a range of tops, from Alexander’s fluted crown(if we accept the analogy between the two funerary stelai, which seemsto me open to question),68 to a pediment enclosing a portrait of the de-ceased, or other adornments that might have marked the stone out as a��1« that, in the eyes of the late antique hagiographer, could havecome from the hippodrome in Rome.

To this line of questioning one might respond that the hagiographerhad included no description of ornamentation on the stone, which jus-tifies the decision to leave the model aniconic on the top. But this ob-jection can be easily overturned, for we know that the original did haveat least one ornament – the wreath which is still well preserved on theleft face of the lettering (Fig. 9.8).69 But if the narrator could leave thewreath out of his description, what else might he have not mentioned,either because it was so formulaic as not to require comment or not im-portant to his narrative, or because it was part of what he was trying toexplain away as suitable to the exorcistic trophy from the hippodrome?As suggested above, these might include a range of ornamental motifs

67 Some altars do have flat tops. In Kleiner’s Roman collection only 12 of 130 areflat on top, but even those (as with all in her collection) have other ornamentalmotifs, including a portrait of the deceased, somewhere else on the stone (RomanImperial Funerary Altars with Portraits, 41). In Kleiner’s estimation, ca. 75 per-cent of extant Roman funerary altars have portraits (see p. 21).

68 Wischmeyer, “Sociology of Pre-Constantine Christianity,” 126 states as thoughit were a simple fact that Abercius’s monument was “a crowned cippus.” But eventhe man behind the Vatican model, Wilpert, admitted “ … benutze ich die Steledes Alexander und wählte dabei die denkbar einfachste Form, selbstverständlichohne beanspruchen zu wollen, dass ich hier das Richtige getroffen habe” (Frac-tio Panis, 125).

69 This has been replicated in the Vatican model, together with a matching wreathimagined for the opposite side. For the consistent presence of wreaths on funer-ary altars from the Flavian period down to the first half of the third century, seeBoschung, Antike Grabaltäre, 16, 20–21.


(such as the wreath, which is admittedly an ambiguous or multivalentsymbol)70 carved into the stone as reliefs71 or painted thereon. And theornamentation and physical composition of the monument were con-

70 Wreaths are very common on funerary cippi (see Kleiner, Roman Imperial Fu-nerary Altars with Portraits, p. 320 s.v. “wreath,” with abundant examples;Boschung, Antike Grabaltäre, 16, 33, plates 931–36, for some examples). Thewreath could have many associations (victory, honor, etc.), but it was a commondecorative motif that may or may not be situation specific. For Christians, thewreath or crown ( ��φ��«) early on became associated with eschatological“victory” over death (see 1 Cor 9:24–27; 2 Tim 4:8). R. M. Jensen, UnderstandingEarly Christian Art (New York: Routledge, 2000), 18–19, speaks of images thatare “religiously neutral,” among which are garlands. Given any viewer’s capacityto invest images with meaning, I would prefer to say the wreath is religiously am-biguous – a kind of open cipher that can be variously filled with import, or leftempty.

71 Such as the third-century Yasmina necropolis monuments in Carthage.

9.8. Abercius monument: original fragments;side view. (Photo: L. Brink, O.P.)


tinually changing, through weathering (as the hagiographer overtlynotes),72 deliberate adaptation, or even defacement.73 Also, perhapsjust as crucial, we must take into account development of the area inwhich it was situated, for the south gate of Hieropolis doubtless wentthrough enormous changes in two centuries or more, including per-haps becoming a Christian necropolis, which would have put Aberciusin more defining company (including possible burial ad sanctos aroundhim and/or other saints).74 And the visibility of the various faces of hismonument, about which we know all too little, is of course a precon-dition for judgments about whether or not it was “crypto-” or “phane-ro-Christian” in its own day.75

The quadrilateral nature of the Abercius stone leads us to anotherneglected question: the disposition of the text and number of inscrip-tions on the monument. A stark element of the Vatican reconstructionis its completely regular lettering, and arrangement of the 22 lines oftext over the entire face of the cippus presented to the viewer, forcingthe impression of a fixed, concurrent, and homogeneous verbal mes-

72 The Metaphrastic version of the vita says this expressly: �� 8 &κ ��" #��'��-��« 2&� ��« #�λ ��,��« �ρ��, Ρ�� κ ² �1�« =φ�� ’ L��'� �0«$��« ��λ π��« �� κ '�φκ �� (“now the wordsof the inscription are given here pretty much word for word, except that time hastaken away a bit from the accuracy of reading, and has rendered the inscriptionflawed” [77 (122)]).

73 Ramsay thought the original stone had been “defaced” or erased already in an-tiquity by a Christian, perhaps because the word “Paul” evoked the seventh-cen-tury Paulician heresy (“Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia,” 425–26). Lightfoot,Apostolic Fathers, pt. 2, vol. 1, pp. 499–500, proposed it may have been done ear-lier, against Marcionite champions of Paul, or followers of the “heretic” Paul ofSamosata.

74 This point was acutely illustrated to me in seeing the impressive Kasserinemonument, and the Punic tower tomb in Dougga (both in Tunisia), whoseprominence is much augmented by their complete isolation in their present sur-roundings. I realized that discussions of Abercius’s burial memorial often seemto assume his also stood out in that way. But did it in his own time, or in the latefourth century, and all the time in between?

75 The hermeneutical significance of this is vividly shown by the Prosenes inscrip-tion from Rome, which has the “Christian” saying, Prosenes receptus ad deum …scripsit Ampelius lib (“Prosenes was received into God … Ampelius, his freed-man, wrote this”) added after his death and in much smaller lettering on theback, and above a griffin (see P. Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians atRome in the First Two Centuries [trans. M. Steinhauser; Minneapolis, Minn.:Fortress, 2003] 330–34).


sage.76 This requires inscribing the text on the top lintel (overflowingthe indentation) and lower base, while staying neatly within the textpanel in the middle. While there are three different “zones” of inscrip-tion on the clean model, all appear to be contemporaneous, by thesame engraver. That the model does not even represent de Rossi’s orMarucchi’s own theories for how the original text of the epigram waslaid out on the stone makes it all the more strange, and its subsequenteffects on viewing history all the more remarkable. After the discoveryof the fragments in 1883, the major scholars who studied them, in-cluding Ramsay himself, Vatican archaeologists like de Rossi, de Waaland Wilpert,77 and others, like the epigrapher Carl Robert, despitedisagreement on some key details,78 had all agreed that the inscriptionhad been originally placed on three of the four sides of the ��1«.Because the existing fragments’ lettered face begins – as the firstline inside a text frame – with v. 7 of the hagiographer’s full inscription(continuing to v. 15), many assumed vv. 1–6 were on the opposite face(north), and vv. 17–22 on the east face, opposite the crown visible onthe face to the left (west) of the lettered side of the recovered fragments.These theories were trying to come to grips with both the extant physi-cal evidence (the presence of both letters and partial borders on twofaces) and the fact that the Alexander stele had selectively copied onlylines 1–3 and 20–22. Hence they all rightly appreciated that Abercius’sfunerary monument was very much three dimensional, both in space

76 One can see how this would act as a blatant refutation of Harnack, for instance,who divided the inscription into more “pagan” (lines 1–6, 10–12 and 17–22, with7–9 ambiguous) and more “Christian” parts (lines 12–16) (“Zur Abercius-Inschrift,” 5, 22 and passim).

77 Ramsay, “Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia,” 425: “One side was plain except fora circular garland or crown in the middle … The other three sides were occupiedby the inscription, which was engraved in a sunk panel surrounded by a broadband of moulding”; De Rossi, “Il cippo sepolcrale di Abercio,” 66; Wilpert,Fractio Panis, 123; de Waal, “Die Inschrift des Abercius.”

78 Robert thought the crown or wreath side was the front of the cippus, and insideits text panel (there is a visible border on the exant fragments) were inscribedlines 1–6, “die eigentliche Grabschrift,” which were carved while Abercius wasalive. Then he thought the “Reisebeschreibung” of lines 7–19 was incised on theright lateral face of the stone sometime later in Abercius’s life (at any date, in hisview, up until 258 C.E.). Lines 20–22, against corruption of the tomb, set in placeafter Abercius’s death, he thought, were located on the back side (i.e., oppositethe crown and named inscription on the front) (C. Robert, “ArchaeologischeNachlese,” Hermes 29 [1894]: 425–28). Where the others dispute Robert is indoubting that there was any text on the crown side, inside the border.


and in time, as he crafted parts of the monument while alive, but likelynot at a single moment. The inference from these judgements is that itwas the hagiographer who had created a single inscription from whatwere actually multiple texts on the monument.79 What is interesting isthat the Vatican reconstruction carried out under the direction of Ma-rucchi did precisely the same thing, in a different medium – create asingle, two-dimensional inscription from a complex, multidimen-sional monument.80 Marucchi himself overtly explained that his pur-pose in so doing was to give the viewer a chance to see the whole(which he thought was displayed on three sides) in a single glance.81

Hence this “reconstruction” was not really even meant to be an exactreproduction of the original monument, but rather a billboard for thecomposite inscription. However, that is not how it has been received inthe history of viewing.

In 1943 Antonio Ferrua (who would be secretary of the PontificalCommission for Sacred Archaeology from 1947 to 1971) championedwhat he openly conceded to be a minority view, that all of the 22-lineinscription was originally placed on a single face.82 In making this ar-gument he was in effect urging the historical authenticity of the 1895model fashioned by Marucchi for convenience of viewing: that vv. 1–6were arranged on the top of the stone in the lintel, the poetic section ofvv. 7–18 neatly set within the framed text panel, and the final prosesection on the base.83 That historical claim was reinstantiated with em-phasis by Guarducci in 1978,84 and reiterated by Ferrua himself (who

79 See the summaries of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century scholarship inAbel, “Etude sur l’inscription d’Abercius,” 344–46, and Ferrua, “Nuove osser-vazioni,” 281–86.

80 Interesting in this regard is that de Waal had promised that the two originalstones would be displayed “auf einem Sockel, drehbar,” “on a pedestal, rotat-ing” (“Die Inschrift des Abercius,” 331). It never occurred to me while at the PioCristiano to see if it might move!

81 Marucchi, “Nuove osservazioni,” 19: “in modo che possa vedersi a colpo d’oc-chio la forma del monumento nel suo stato attuale.” His theory for the disposi-tion of the inscription – on three faces of the stone – is laid out on pp. 21–26 ofthe same article.

82 “Nuove osservazioni,” 286: “E per farla breve, è opinione corrente che su trefacce fosse distribuita l’iscrizione.”

83 Ferrua, “Nuove osservazioni,” 286: “Il testo dell’epitaffio, come vuole il buonsenso, stava tutto inciso sulla faccia anteriore o sud …”

84 Guarducci, Epigrafia greca, vol. 4, 377: “con l’epigrafe apposta – tutta – alla fac-cia anteriore.”


lived to more than 100 years) in a 1999 publication.85 These later Vati-can archaeologists had never seen the Abercius fragments apart fromthe stark, uniformly incised reconstruction that has been its perma-nent neighbor for over 100 years. It seems that its visual presentationbecame their mental image of the original, despite the fact that earlierscholars – including Marucchi himself, who was responsible for the re-construction – believed the inscription was made up of three differentparts on three different faces of the stone.86 The model became think-able, and then it was deemed original. But on historical grounds canone justify its force over interpretive alternatives? The extent of in-fluence of this interpretation and the model are so strong87 that themajor publications of the inscription today do not even raise the issueof the epigraphic placement.88

Father Ferrua did not present his claim that the full text was inscribedon only one side of the stone as a direct appeal to the veracity of themodel. His main argument (in addition to an appeal to “good sense”)was on the analogy of the disposition of the inscription on the epitaphof Alexander, Abercius’s epigone (now in the Istanbul ArchaeologicalMuseum), which is inscribed all on one face of the stele.89 But is thisargument compelling? It seems to me (taking up again the position ofthe majority of the earlier epigraphers) that there are good reasons toreopen the question. First, a general objection may be stated in the

85 “A. epitaphium in una facie inscriptum esse arbitramur contra omnes qui in tri-bus seu quattuor faciebus inscriptum esse putaverunt” (Ferrua and Balboni,“Epitaphium Abercii,” 156; see also p. 153). (Fr. Ferrua died in 2003 at the age of102.)

86 As a sign of its influence, Ferrua himself appeals to the reconstruction as de-monstrating why photographic reproductions are of such little use to epi-graphers (“Nuove osservazioni,” 289).

87 It bears noting that this reconstruction has influenced the imagination ofreaders far beyond those who go to the Pio Cristiano, through wide distributionof photographs of the reconstruction placed in frequently consulted referenceworks: e.g., Ferguson’s Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, 5 (the caption calls itthe “Restored Epitaph”); and G. F. Snyder, Ante Pacem: Archaeological Evi-dence of Church Life before Constantine (rev. ed.; Macon, Ga.: Mercer UniversityPress, 2003) 250.

88 Merkelbach and Stauber, Steinepigramme, 3.182–85 do not discuss the topic;nor does Kearsley, “Epitaph of Aberkios,” who largely follows Wischmeyer,“Grabepigramm,” 24, who had accepted the single-face theory of Ferrua with-out discussion.

89 For Ferrua’s argument, see “Nuove osservazioni,” 286: “Così fu incisa l’iscri-zione sul cippo di Alessandro (che imitò Abercio) ….”


form of a question. Is it clear that textual dependence automaticallyshould entail physical imitation? Second, isn’t that conjecture – thatAbercius’s cippus was arranged just like that of Alexander – made evenmore questionable when we remember that, famously, the Alexanderepitaph only used the opening and closing prose sections of the Aber-cius inscription, and not the longest part, the hexametric poem tellingof the trip to Rome? And Alexander’s stele was considerably smaller insize than the monument of Abercius (see Fig. 9.9).90 Furthermore, whatmakes the Alexander epitaph so useful for historians is that it has athird inscription or part of the inscription that the extant fragments ofAbercius’s do not – a date marker, now found at the base of the stone(#'�φ� �� 2� ��λ 2§ P1��«).91 On this line is an ornamental leaf(none such appears on the reconstruction of the Abercius inscription,but that there was one is by no means impossible), and then a finalblessing has been added, one different from Abercius’s own call to thosewho understand to pray for him (line 19): �� '�� λ�9� ��« ��λ π�% (“peace be to those who pass by and makeremembrance of us”). Hence from the start the physical disposition oftext on the Alexander monument is conspicuously unlike that of Aber-cius in some important respects.92 Third, the Alexander cippus itselfhas a key anomaly in textual placement that is not replicated in thereconstruction of the Abercius epitaph: on the Alexander stele theactual text overwrites the borders of the text panel on both sides(as often happens on grave stelai), suggesting that even on the smallerscale (without the hexametric inscription) the physical form of theAlexander stone was actually not a terrific fit for the inscription.The two Abercius fragments likewise have a border to the left hand

90 Its total height is less than one meter (Om 895) (Mendel, Catalogue des sculp-tures, 569).

91 We cannot be absolutely certain that the original Abercius inscription did notitself have a date marker (De Rossi, “Il cippo sepolcrale di Abercio,” 65, thoughtit probably did). The literary life does not include a death-date within its tran-scription of the epitaph, but does provide a death-date soon after in the vitaproper (vita Aberc. 80 [55]: #E�� &8 ² Ϊ'��« #A��« ��λ L��)�� 74��«). This was of course the basis for Abercius’s placementin October within the Menologion traditions. It is also possible that it wasthe date marker of which the literary author speaks when he mentions that partof the inscription had already been worn away in his time (Simeon Metaphrastes,Aberc. 77 [Nissen, S. Abercii Vita, 122]).

92 The Alexander monument also does not have a wreath, as does that of Abercius(see above).


and above line 7, but the text is set neatly inside. We do not know forcertain that the stonecutter kept inside the panel on the right, but it ismore likely than not (should one trust more the stonecutter’s ownpractice on the left, or the epigone’s form of inscription?!). This obser-vation nonetheless shows that the physical disposition of the twois clearly more complex than the simple invocation of “exemplary”form would have it. We should also note that, whereas the Alexanderstele has the last lines of the inscription on the foot or base of the stele,on the Abercius model in the Vatican that face is bare, and the finallines of the inscription are somewhat oddly set on the curved portionsleading down to the base. And whereas the Abercius fragments havetext and/or ornamentation on at least two sides, the Alexander steleis blank on all but the front face (see Fig. 9.10). Last, as we have

9.9. Alexander stele, front view;Istanbul, Arkeoloji Müzesi.

(Photo courtesy of Betul Avci)


noted above, the argument by analogy to the Alexander stele falterson the fact that the latter does not, like the Vatican reconstruction,have a simple, flat top, but instead a fluted plinth forming a crown(see Figs. 9.9 and 9.10). This of course would have affected the dis-position of the inscriptions enormously, for the questions of thephysical dimensions, ornamentation and textual disposition are allinterdependent. And, we must stress, none of these variables wasnecessarily fixed at one time. If the “Abercius inscription” is actuallythree inscriptions, placed on the stone at different times in the lifeand after the death of the man over whom it eventually stood sentry,then we have a much more complex and diachronic “self-revelation”and “self-presentation” than either the Vatican reconstruction, ormuch recent scholarship, has appreciated.

9.10. Alexander stele, side view;Istanbul, Arkeoloji Müzesi.

(Photo courtesy of Betul Avci)


This essay has sought to demonstrate how two dominant interpretivecircles (the vita and the Vatican Museum) have staged Abercius’s funer-ary monument for us and steered us toward particular readings. Thelarger task lies ahead – of re-envisioning and, reimagining, to open upthe plurality and ambiguity of interpretation that the historical Aber-cius himself encoded as an intended effect and expected outcome ofviewing of this late-second-century monument that has had its own lifewell beyond him, and independent of its task of marking the placementof his long-gone corpse. Previous scholarship, as we have noted, hasbeen mostly preoccupied with locking down such questions as whetherthe epigram is Christian or pagan, if the former, whether overtly orcrypto-Christian, and, if so, was it “orthodox, “catholic,” “Jewish-Christian, “anti-Montanist” or “anti-Marcionite,”93 or otherwiseinvolved in inner-Christian disputes, on the assumption that it is pos-sible to do this in a fixed way. While textual exegesis, sucking the mar-row out of each lexical item and symbolic referent in the inscription, isan essential task, it is not sufficient,94 for the various meanings of themonument cannot be determined in the abstract, on the basis of the re-constructed text of the epitaph alone, but only in relation to our visualreconstruction of the entire monument complex, which, like all inscrip-tions, was part of a “complex semiological message.”95 And the whole,in its various religious, literary, cultural, and geographical contexts,was continually changing over time. So the first step, I would suggest,is that we stop speaking and thinking of “the Abercius inscription,” andreformulate the subject as “the Abercius funerary monument,” and in-tegrate verbal and visual exegesis of this remarkable talking artifactand the changeable meanings it came to represent for its viewers acrosstime.

93 See Frend, Archaeology, 96–98. Such “dogmatic” interests seem to have led to adisproportionate emphasis on the few chapters of the vita (69–72) which recounthis return trip and anti-Marcionite activity (see, e.g., Merkelbach and Stauber,Steinepigramme, 3.182, who assume Abercius was an emissary of the Romanchurch and “catholic;” Bundy, “The Life of Abercius”).

94 Kant, “Earliest Christian Inscription,” 16–17, focuses solely on the words of “thetext” (“a masterpiece of early Christian literature”), and seeks to apply a herme-neutical distinction between “literal” and “allegorical/symbolic” readings. Butthis dichotomy is hard to sustain in general or employ in specific cases.

95 Bodel, “Epigraphy and the Ancient Historian,” 25. See also Bodel’s article inthis volume.


Abbreviations 337

Abbreviations

AAAd Antichitá altoadriatiche (Trieste, Italy)ACIAC Congresso internazionale di archeologia cristiania –

AttiACW Ancient Christian Writers. New York: Newman Press,

1946–AE Année épigraphiqueAJA American Journal of ArchaeologyAJP American Journal of PhilologyANF Ante-Nicene FathersANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt: Geschichte

und Kultur Roms im Spiegel der neueren Forschung.Edited by H. Temporini and W. Haase. Berlin: W. deGruyter, 1972–

ARID Analecta Romana Instituti Danicib. Babylonian TalmudBACrist Bullettino di archeologia christianaBAR Biblical Archaeology ReviewBCAR Bulletino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di

RomaBCH Bulletin de correspondance helléniqueBIAGSR Bullettino dell’Istituto Archeologico Germanico Sezione

RomanaBRev Bible ReviewBTB Biblical Theology BulletinBZNW Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche

WissenschaftCahArch Cahiers archéologiquesCCSL Corpus christianorum: series latina. Turnhout:

Brepols, 1953–CIJ Corpus inscriptionum judaicarumCIL Corpus inscriptionum latinarumCLE Carmina latina epigraphica. Edited by F. Bücheler and

E. Lommatzsch. Berlin, 1895–1897, 1926.

338 Abbreviations

CMT Corpus des mosaïques de tunisieCRAI Comptes rendus de l’Académie des inscriptions et belles

lettresDACL Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie.

Edited by F. Cabrol. 15 vols. Paris: Letouzey et Ané,1907–1953

Diz. Epigr. Dizionario epigraphico di antichità romaneEC Enciclopedia cattolicaEDR Epigraphic Database Roma. Edited by S. Panciera.

<http://www.edr-edr.it>ÉFR École Française de RomeHTR Harvard Theological ReviewICUR Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae. Edited by

J. B. de Rossi. Rome, 1857–1888IEJ Israel Exploration JournalIG Inscriptiones graecae. Editio minor. Berlin: W. de

Gruyter, 1924–ILCV Inscriptiones latinae christianae veteres. Edited by

E. Diehl. 2d ed. Berlin: Apud Weidmannos, 1961ILLRP Inscriptiones latinae liberae rei publicae. Edited by

A. Degrassi. Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1963–1965ILS Inscriptiones latinae selectae. Edited by H. Dessau.

Berlin: Apud Weidmannos, 1892–1916JAC Jahrbuch für Antike und ChristentumJBL Journal of Biblical LiteratureJECS Journal of Early Christian StudiesJEH Journal of Ecclesiastical HistoryJHS Journal of Hellenic StudiesJRA Journal of Roman ArchaeologyJRASup Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary SeriesJRS Journal of Roman StudiesJSNTSup Journal for the Study of the New Testament: Supple-

ment SeriesJTS Journal of Theological StudiesLCL Loeb Classical LibraryLIMC Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae. Edited

by H. C. Ackerman and J.-R. Gisler. 8 vols. Zurich:Artemis, 1981–1997.

m. MishnahMAAR Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome

Abbreviations 339

MAMA Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua. Manchester andLondon: Longmans, Green and Co., 1928–1993

MDAI Mitteilungen des Deutschen archäologischen InstitutsMEFRA Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome, AntiquitéNewDocs New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity. Edited

by G. H. R. Horsley and S. Llewelyn. North Ryde,N.S.W.: The Ancient History and DocumentationResearch Center, Macquarie University, 1981–

NPNF Nicene and Post-Nicene FathersOCD Oxford Classical Dictionary. Edited by S. Hornblower

and A. Spawforth. 3d ed. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1996

PBSR Papers of the British School at RomePIAC Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia CristianaPIR Prosographia imperii romani saceculi I.II.III.PPM Pompei: pitture e mosaici. Edited by I. Baldassarre. 11

vols. Rome: Istituto della enciclopedia italiana,1990–2003

PW Pauly, A. F. Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischenAltertumswissenschaft. New edition G. Wissowa. 49vols. Munich: A Druckenmüller, 1980

RAC Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum. Edited byT. Kluser et al. Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1950–

RACrist Rivista di archeologia cristianaRecAug Recherches AugustiniennesRendPontAcc Atti della Pontificia Accademia romana di archeologia,

RendicontiRGG Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Edited by

H. D. Betz et al. 7 vols. 4th. ed. Tübingen: MohrSiebeck, 1998–

SAC Studi de antichita cristianaSDHI Studia et documenta historiae et iurisSecCent Second Centuryt. ToseftaTLL Thesaurus linguae latinaeTU Texte und UntersuchungenWUNT Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen

TestamentZPE Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigrafik

340 Abbreviations

Bibliography 341

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Index 379

Index

Abascantus 39Abdul-Hamid, sultan 309Abercius monument 4, 5, 6, 7,

303–335reconstruction 304–310, 317–335

see also Vita Abercii 4, 7, 307, 310,311, 312–317

Acattolico 44Accademia Romana degli antiquari 15,

16 n10Achilles 284, 301Acilius family

Acilius Glabrio 253, 253 n17, 257Acilius Rufus 253See also hypogeum of the Acilii 188n21, 252, 253

Acta Sanctorum 204 n50, 311Actaeon 276ad sanctos 86, 130, 234, 245, 328Adauctus, saint 253, 255, 268Aemilianus 58, 244Aeneas 292, 301African art: marine mosaics 296–297Agnes, saint

catacomb of 14 n4, 132, 188, 238,255

Aiace 276, 290Alexander, bishop 126, 127Alexander, St. 269Alexander stele 303 n2, 304 n8, 307

n11, 324, 325, 326, 326 n68, 329, 331,332, 333, 334

Alexander, son of Antonius 305, 307n10, 311, 322 n54

altarfunerary 309, 311, 314, 315, 321,324, 326, 329, 335sacrificial 320–322

Amicitia muliebris 258

Antonia Caenis 259Aphrodite 154 n27, 259, 312Apocryphal Acts 316Apollo 74, 312

son of, see Phaethonapostle

Acts of the Apostles 316Apostolic Tradition 182 n10, 205n54, 231, 243, 245–246, 263, 300n118, 308 n13

Aquileia 61, 217 n85, 273, 322, 323Basilica 296–298

arcosolia 148 n13, 152, 159 n36, 188,224, 298

Areae 204, 205, 206, 234, 235Arnth Velimnas 54, 57Artemis 312Asia Minor 260 n33, 275, 304, 304 n5,

309, 316, 316 n37Athanasia, deaconess 247Athena 276Attis 308, 315, 316 n38Augustales 40, 48, 62, 64Augustus Caesar 179, 196, 211 n67,

235, 246, 258, 259, 259 n30Aurelian 267Aurelii, hypogeum of 188 n21, 248,

251, 294Aurelius, Marcus 258, 312Balbina, crypt of 254, 255Balbus, Horatius of Sarsina 205, 254

n19Banditaccia necropolis of Cerveteri 53,

55Bardo museum 297basilica

of Saint Agnes 132, 188, 238, 255of Saint Alexander 269of Saint Lawrence 132

380 Index

of Saint Maria Antiqua (di S. MariaAntiqua) 277of Saint Peter 13 n4, 14 n5, 42, 124,132, 133, 178, 199of Saints Peter and Marcellinus 124,125, 132, 226 n96 n97, 238, 239, 241,274 n6, 294, 295

Beth She’arim 147, 148, 150, 151, 155,158, 170 n75

biclinium 121, 286–289, 292bisomum 95, 239 n119bomos (��«)

see altarburial

ad sanctos 86, 130, 234, 245, 328surface 219, 237, 238, 241, 249, 250,251, 255see also kokh 148, 148 n13, 150–153,159, 159 n56, 170–172

Calepodius/Calepodiacatacomb of 204, 238, 244, 255, 293

Callista (novel) 23, 24Callisto/Callistus, saint

catacomb of 13, 14 n6, 15, 18, 192n28, 202–204, 220, 222, 224, 226 n96,227, 238, 239, 244, 246, 251, 253–255,293, 294

Campo Verano in Rome 43, 44Capella greca 252, 253, 293 n86Carthage 3, 79–81, 85–88, 92 n43, 96,

96 n48, 98, 99, 100 n56, 102, 103, 128,136, 137, 139–141, 156, 157, 182, 183,204, 263, 266, 327 n71

casaSee also housedegli Amorini dorati 283 n39del Citarista 285 n53, 286 n59, 292del Criptoportico 280, 280 n28 n29,284 n41, 285 n49, 292dell’Ara Massima 286 n57del Sacello Iliaco 280–283, 286, 287n62, 291, 292, 296, 301del Vinaio 283 n36di N. Popidius Priscus 283 n34, 283n38

Cassandra 276, 290Cassius Dio 252, 252 n15, 259Castricia Prisca 62

catacombSee also specific catacomb namesJewish 3, 11 n1, 12 n2, 28–38, 149,152, 186maintenance and renovation 13martyrs’ blood identifying 25–26pilgrimages 28, 130, 132, 135, 138,139, 195, 234, 245, 252, 255radiocarbon dating 36–37, 152 n17rediscovery 14, 17, 18removal of relics 13, 14, 17, 28text-based study 16, 17, 19, 38

cemeteries 3, 13, 16, 21, 29, 30, 33, 62,79–81, 85, 91–92, 98–103, 107, 120,126, 134, 136, 141, 152, 158, 182, 186,189, 190, 192, 195, 199, 203, 204, 209,219, 224, 229, 230, 232, 234, 238,244–246, 264, 268, 269

Cestius in Rome 68Cerveteri 53, 54, 56Cicero 56–60, 120 n22, 138 n64, 222

n92, 246, 258, 275 n11, 281, 286De officiis 264 n43De natura deorum 268 n55

Cippus 317, 321, 322, 324, 326, 328,329, 332

Claudius 211, 259Clement of Alexandria 299Clio 285Codex theodosianus 42Coemeterium 18, 80 n6, 132 n43, 187

n19, 195, 199 n40, 202, 206, 268See also koimeterion 195, 202, 203,203 n49, 206

Coemeterium Maius 238, 241collegium/collegia 177–180, 183,

186–187, 189, 191, 192, 203, 211–213,218, 227–232, 234

columbarium/columbaria viii, 2, 3, 6, 7,46, 63, 177, 179–181, 183, 185, 187,189–241, 251

columellae 46, 50, 51, 63–66, 214 n78Commodian 267Commodilla

catacomb of 3, 14 n6, 239 n119, 240,253–255, 268, 295

concordia 128, 261Congregation of the Oratory 16

Index 381

Constantine/Constantinian 13 n3, 42,133, 178, 179, 182, 183, 185, 189, 219,225, 225 n96, 230, 234–241, 247, 267,268, 270, 273, 308 n15, 331 n87

Constantius II 42Cornelia, Paulla, wife of Hispallus 58Corpisantari 225 n96Counter-Reformation 16, 17, 20Cratia, wife of M. Cornelius

Fronto 258cremation 2, 56, 57 n33, 153, 178, 181,

181 n9, 186 n16, 197, 206, 207, 233,234, 236, 237, 241, 276 n14

Crocifisso del Tufo at Orvieto 53, 55crypt

See also specific crypt nameof the Popes 13, 239 n120, 244

cryptoporticus 252, 253, 261, 280, 284,287 n62

cubiculum/cubicula 157, 200, 208 n58,209, 220, 224, 225, 232 n10, 234, 239n120, 247, 251, 281, 286

Cyprian 128, 136–139, 183, 263, 266Epistle 122 n26, 128 n37, 143 n82,182 n10, 183 n12

Delphi 247depositio martyrum 253de Rossi, Giovani Battista 16, 18,

20–22, 26–27, 29, 31–33, 177, 199n39, 203–204, 226, 229–232, 240n120 n121, 244, 245 n5, 251–253,266, 307, 309, 317 n40, 318–320,322 n58, 323 n61, 324–326, 329,332 n91

Diana 276, 284, 287, 290Diaspora Jews 28 n46, 149, 149 n14,

186 n17, 187Digest 247 n8Digna, saint 254Diocletian 183, 253, 267Dionysius of Alexandria 244Dionysus 277, 291 n71D(is) M(anibus) S(acrum) 321 n51Domitian 39, 252 n15, 259 n29, 213

n28Domitilla

catacomb of 3, 14 n6, 26, 130–131,186 n16, 187, 201, 220 n88, 224, 226

n96, 232 n110, 238, 239 n119, 245,247, 250, 251, 252, 255, 267Flaviae Domitillae 188 n21, 250,252, 252 n15, 257, 294Lucilla 258

Dura-Europos house church 296edicola 276egeni 205 n54, 231El Jem ix, 277, 279, 290 n67, 291

n71Elagabalus 308Endymion 4, 5, 273–301Ennius 58, 60 n36, 61epigraphy

Jewish 28, 148–149, 202 n45Christian 21Latin 27 n43, 237

Epiphania 258epitaphs 1 n2, 29, 42–43, 58, 82, 84–86,

118, 122 n26, 179, 181 n7, 193 n32,211, 211 n67, 214–216, 225, 226 n96,236–237, 239, 318

eschatology 117 n14, 247, 274, 275,300, 327 n70

euergetism 205, 246, 255, 257 n22, 269n57 n58

Eumachia 62, 261, 261 n38, 262, 263,265

Euphrates 303, 314Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 184

n14, 244, 252, 267, 296, 311 n23Euxenia of Megalopolis 259exorcism 312, 316Fabiola (novel) 23, 24Faltonia Hilaritas 268Faustina 312, 314, 314 n31Faustus, M(arcus) Ofellius 48Faustus, Munatius 40, 41, 63–66Felix

saint 135, 252, 253, 255, 268See also Adauctus, saintSee also Philip, saint

Ferrua, Antonio 34 n70, 130 n39, 188n21, 199 n39, 220 n88, 251 n12, 273n3, 293 n83, 294 n88, 295 n97,330

Festivals 42, 45, 117, 117 n13, 118, 134,137, 138, 140, 143, 308

382 Index

FlaviaFlavia Agathe 63, 64, 65Flavia Olympias 68, 74Flavia Vitalia, presbytera 245 n8

Flavii 62–63, 188 n21, 220 n88, 238,251, 294

FlaviusFlavius Cerialis 258Flavius Philoxenus 63, 64, 65T. Flavius Clemens 252

Fossores 198, 199, 245, 245 n5Fronto, Numistrius 261Galerius 139, 267Gallienus 244gymnasiarchs 260 n33Hadrian 13, 196, 246Hector 284Herculaneum 40, 41, 47 n19, 63, 64,

260, 291 n72Hercules 281, 284, 287, 287 n62, 287

n65, 301, 312Hermas, Shepherd Similitudes 263Herod/Herodian 148 n11, 258, 259

n29Hierapolis 303 n1, 304, 313, 316 n37

See also HieropolisHieropolis 304, 304 n7, 307, 312, 313,

328See also Hierapolis

hippodrome 313, 316, 326Hippolytus 202, 203 n49, 254, 255, 267

Apostolic Tradition 182 n10, 205n54, 243, 263Refutatio 244

Hispallus 58See also Cornelia, Paulla

hospes 47, 50, 62house

See also casa, maison, or villaof the Dioscuri 291of Menander 276 n18of Octavius Quartio 283 n39, 286,287 n62 n63, 288–292, 301of the Ara Massima 286 n57of the Citarista 285 n53, 286 n59,292of the Faun 297

Hypatia (novel) 23–24

hypogeum/hypogea 84, 100, 111, 115,152, 187–188, 200, 208–209, 210 n62,234, 247, 293of Ampliatus 251of the Acilii 188 n21, 252, 253of the Aurelii 248of the Flavii Aurelii 188 n21, 220n88, 251, 153

impersonation 75–76inhumation viii, 2, 56, 57 n33, 92–93,

95, 100, 178, 181, 181 n9, 188,199–200, 208, 233–241

Io 286 n56 n59, 291, 301Irenaeus 300Isaac, sacrifice of 213Isis, temple of 286, 291–292, 301Isola Sacra 44–45, 66–68, 120 n21, 121,

182 n9, 191, 237, 248–249, 276, 290,291 n71, 292

Jerome 132Epistle 252

Jewish community in Rome 30, 36,152–153, 186, 260

John, gospel of 162Josephus

Antiquities 258–259, 259 n29Life 259 n29

Jonah 4, 5, 273–301Judah, Rabbi 166Julia Severa of Acmonia 260Julian 42, 250, 315Julius Caesar 246Junia Sabina 269Juvenal, Satires 257, 259Kasserine Monument ix, 328 n74koimeterion 195, 202, 203, 203 n49, 206

see also coemeteriumkokh 148, 148 n13, 150–153, 159, 159

n56, 170–172Lactantius

De mortibus persecutorum 267Institutes 205 n54, 268

lararium 283Lateran Museum 33, 307 n12, 309,

318Lawrence, saint 132, 255Leo XIII 13, 24 n33, 309, 317 n40Lex Julia 246, 265

Index 383

Liber Pontificalis 14, 204, 204 n52Licinii, tomb of, in Rome 76Livia 196 n38, 197, 207 n57, 210–214,

225, 233, 258, 259 n30loculus/loculi 150, 152, 192 n28,

200–201, 207 n57, 209, 224–227,236–241, 254

Locus religiosus 246, 268 n55Lorenzo, saint, catacomb of 14 n4Lucilla 312, 312 n25, 314 n29 n31,

316Lucina 253, 254, 255, 293–295magistra 62, 64, 231, 261, 267Magna Mater/Cybele 315, 316maison

A du terrain Jilani Guirot 277De Bacchus et Ariane 297

Malta 126, 127, 256Manlia Gnome 259Marcelli at the Porta Capena 56Marcionite

anti-Marcionite activity 314 n31,328 n73, 335, 335 n93

Marcus Aurelius 258, 312Mark, gospel of 162, 299, 312 n26, 313,

316Martialis, bishop 183 n12, 266martyrium/martyria 91, 130 n42, 132,

132 n43, 203, 240 n121martyrial churches 13, 14, 34, 86, 87

Martyrologium hieronymianum 253Marucchi, Orazio 21, 30 n53, 31, 32,

317 n40, 318Mary Magdalene 162Marzabotto 53masks

death 71, 72, 74, 75funeral 47

mater patriae 259Matthew, gospel of 162, 270, 298–299Mauretania Sitifensis 124Megalographia 285memoria 100, 245, 269Memoria Apostolorum 124, 128, 130

n39, 199Menander, house of 276 n18Menophilus, C. Scribonius 196 n37,

198, 207 n57, 214, 215 n79, 226 n97

mensa/mensae 107–139Merita, saint 254Metaphrastes, Simeon 311, 332 n91Milan 42, 136, 140 n74Mirabilia Urbis Romae 14, 15Mishnah 158–161, 164, 166, 170Monterozzi cemetery at Tarquinia 53,

55Monteverde, catacomb of 28–32mos Romanus 56Mosaic 83, 85, 87–90, 93–94, 102, 108,

110, 111 n3, 112, 118, 126, 128, 273,275–276, 279, 283, 290 n67, 291 n71,293, 296–297, 301

Museof astronomy 285of history 285

Museo Cristiano Lateranensesee Lateran Museum

Museo Pio Cristiano 33 n67, 117 n14,277, 304–306, 309, 317, 318, 323 n60,330 n80, 331 n87

Naevoleia Tyche 40–41, 63–65Narcissus 286, 287 n64, 288, 290, 301necropolis 6, 29, 44, 48–53, 61–62,

66–72, 82, 99–102, 120, 126, 145 n2,148 n11, 155, 178, 191, 196 n37,210 n62, 212 n72, 237, 315, 327 n71,328

Nero 211 n67, 259 n29, 284niche 54, 62, 74, 148, 148 n13, 152, 159

n36, 195, 196, 198, 207, 215, 215 n79,224, 239, 276, 281, 283see also edicola

Nicodemus 162Nicomedia 267Nisibis 303, 314Nola 133, 135, 136Novatianus, catacomb of 238, 294Numidia 136nymphaeum 252Octavius Quartio

See house of Octavius QuartioOllae 63, 180 n6, 196, 211, 214–216,

225, 287Opus reticulatum 250Origen 244, 245, 300

Homily on Jeremiah 182 n10, 299

384 Index

Orvieto 53, 55, 62ossuary 160, 171, 239Ostia 45, 195, 276, 278 n24, 285 n55Palestine 2, 28 n46, 145, 148 n13, 149,

152, 154, 155, 158, 181 n8Pamphilus 238, 255Pancrazio, saint, catacomb of 14 n4Parentalia 42, 66, 118, 137 n58patera 323Patriarchate 155Patristic authors 23, 274, 298–299

see also specific namepatronage 3, 6, 58, 229 n101, 243, 246,

248, 255–270Paul, the Apostle 13 n4, 124, 127, 128,

199Epistle to the Romans 140, 266in Acts 299letter to Philemon 304 n5

Paul, the Jurist 217 n85, 265Paul of Samosata 267, 328 n73Paula of Rome 252Paulinus 133, 135, 296Paulus, Sentences 211 n66, 246Peter, saint 13 n4, 124, 127, 128, 199

tomb of 178, 204, 234and Marcellinus

catacomb of 124, 125, 132, 226n96 n97, 238, 239, 241, 294, 295

See also basilicaPetronius 40, 116, 290Phaethon 275Phial of Blood Controversy 22 n25,

25Phileros, Vesonius 48, 49, 51, 64Philip, saint 252, 255Phrygia 260, 304 n5n7, 312, 316 n38,

317 n38Phrygia Salutaris 307, 312Pietas Augusta 261pilgrimage 28, 130, 132, 135, 138, 139,

195, 234, 245, 252, 255see also catacomb

Pio Cristianosee Museo Pio Cristiano

Plankia Magna of Perge 260Pliny 57 n33, 58 n35, 75, 76, 138 n64,

195 n36, 269 n56, 275

Polybius 56, 58, 60, 75, 76Pompeii x, 2, 40–41, 49, 51, 52, 61,

63–65, 68, 76, 121, 191, 192 n27, 214,216, 248, 250, 260–262, 265, 273, 276n18, 278, 280–283, 286–293,297–298, 301, 322

Pontianus 240 n121Pontifical Commission of Sacred Ar-

chaeologyfounding 21, 26, 330

excavation of Jewish catacombs30–35

pope/popesDamasus 13, 130, 253Leo XIII 13, 24 n33, 309, 317 n40See also crypt of Popes

Poppaea 259 n29population of Rome 85, 91–93, 95, 98,

100, 147, 149, 152, 179, 181 n9,183–185, 187, 189, 217, 233, 236, 254,270

Porta Nocera 48–52, 61–67Praetestato, catacomb of 14 n6, 15Praetextatus 188, 220 n88, 224, 226

n96, 238see Praetestato

Priam 284, 301Prisca 62 (Costricia Prisca), 255 (Santa

Prisca or wife of Aquila)Priscilla

Arria Plaria Vera 253catacomb of 3, 14 n6, 15, 17 n12, 18,19, 26, 188 n21, 220, 221, 223, 226n96, 238, 252, 253, 255, 257, 294–295,318Priscilla, wife of Abascantus 39, 40

privatization, Italy 36Pushkin Museum 27Pyramus 276, 287–288, 290, 292, 301Rambler, The 25, 26 n40Randanini, vigna, catacomb of 30, 34,

152 n19 n20refrigerium 122, 122 n26, 124, 128, 202,

234Roma Sotterranea 17, 19–21, 26 n40,

199 n39, 203 n48, 240 n120 n121Rosalia 42, 118Rufina of Smyrna 261, 263

Index 385

Sabbath 155, 161–163, 166, 169 n68Sacellum 281–285, 287 n62, 296Sallust 60Salome 162, 259Salutatio 257Santa Prisca 255sarcophagus/sarcophagi 17, 22, 58, 60,

62, 68, 70, 73, 75, 87, 108, 109, 111,116, 117 n14, 120, 123, 130, 148–151,153, 155, 191, 225 n95, 251, 253,273–278, 284, 298, 305, 321

Satiricon 40, 116 n11, 290Scipio 52–61, 76, 191

Scipio Aemilianus 58Scipio Barbatus, Cornelius 57, 60

Scipionessee Scipio

Sebastiano, saint, catacomb of 13 n4,16, 26, 113, 122 n26, 124, 130 n39,199, 199 n39, 220 n88, 248, 255

Selene 273, 275–279, 284Semahot 158, 158 n29 n30, 171senatus consultum de collegiis tenuio-

rum 228Sepphoris 155, 169 n68sepulchra

communia 246familiaria, hereditaria 189, 193,247

Serapis 283Sergia Paulina 266Simon 162Sousse 297Sovana 55Statilii 207, 207 n57, 212 n68, 216 n81,

227 n98,Statius 39stele 212 n72, 303 n2, 304 n8, 307 n10

n11, 322, 324–325, 329, 331–334Stoics 275, 300sub divo 219, 238, 239sui iuris 257Sulpicia Lepidina 258Symmachus, Epistle 247 n8Syracuse 256Syria 192 n27, 296, 303, 314Talmud, Babylonian 146, 155, 158–159,

163 n48, 166–169

Tation of Kyme 260temple

First 145, 147, 171 n77Second 147, 153, 159–160, 169, 172,172 n81of Isis (see Isis) 286, 291, 301of Castor and Pollux 246

tenuiores 231Tertullian 120, 122–123, 128 n36 n37,

134, 182 n10, 204–205, 231, 243,245–246, 264, 266, 275, 299–300, 316n35

Tetradia, deaconess 247Thagaste 141Thecla, saint, catacomb of 240, 241,

255Theodore 296Thessaly 247, 275Thisbe 276, 287–288, 290, 292, 301Thuburbo Majus 297Thysdrus Museum 277Tiberias 155, 169 n68Tiberius 211 n67, 259Tipasa 120 n21, 126, 128–129, 134 n50tituli 75, 215 n79tomb(s)

a cappuccina 224, 237, 240a mensa 4, 224familial 2, 102, 147, 149, 188–194,200, 207–218, 225–235, 244, 247–250,261, 264

Tomba dei Rilievi at Cerveteri 54Torlonia, catacomb of 31–37, 152 n17Tosefta 158–159, 164–167Trajan 66, 246, 276triclinium 45, 111 n4, 120 n20, 281, 286Trimalchio 40, 46–48, 63, 75, 116, 120,

290trisomum 239 n119Troy 284, 287, 292tumulatio ad sanctos 234Turtura 268Tutela 257, 283Ulpian, Digest 213 n73, 217 n85, 229

n100, 231 n106, 265Urania 285, 294Urceus 322–323Utique 297

386 Index

Valatta 258Valentino, saint, catacomb of 14 n4, 18Valerian 244Valerius Herma 45, 52, 66–76Valkenburg catacombs 26, 26 n41, 27Vatican

Car park necropolis 120, 305St. Peter’s necropolis 44, 67, 69–72,178museum 4, 5, 7, 33 n67, 317, 326, 335

Velletri 268Venus Pompeiana 285, 285 n52Verania Q.l Clara 64Veranius Rufus, C.; Q.f. IIvir 64Verria Zosime 45Verus, Lucius 312Vesonius, Philerios 48–51, 63–64Vesonius, Proculus 50Vespasian 259, 284

Temple of 322Vesuvius 63, 218, 280Via Appia 39, 56, 60, 61, 76, 186, 188,

192, 197, 199, 207 n57, 222, 238

Via Appia Pignatelli, catacomb of 31Via Labicana catacomb 31, 218, 226

n98, 238Via Latina catacomb 34, 60, 157, 207

n57, 209, 237Via Salaria Nuova catacomb 17, 17

n12, 18, 221, 238Via Triumphalis 178, 191, 212 n72Vibia, catacombs of 111, 115, 123, 188,

200 n43Vigna Cimarra catacomb 31Vigna Codini 207 n57, 215, 215 n80,

225Villa of the Mosaic Columns 283Villanovan hut-urns 43–44Vindolanda 258Violaria 42Vita Abercii 4, 7, 307, 310–317, 328,

335Volumnii at Perugia 54–60Yasmina necropolis 99, 100 n56, 327

n71Zephyrinus 202–204, 244, 246, 255