A day in old Rome

138. Scanty Qualifications and Training of Doctors.—People fall sick in Rome quite as much as in every other great center of humanity, but the healing art has not really progressed a great deal beyond that in Athens in the days of Hippocrates nearly five hundred years earlier.[78] A great proportion of even the most fashionable doctors are freedmen, and nearly all of these have Greek (or sometimes Egyptian) names. There is no medical examination. Anybody who has made a failure in other callings is welcome to pose as a physician and try to extract money from the unfortunate. There are many “surgeons” and “therapists” around the city who, a little while ago, were shoemakers, carpenters, or smiths, and who, perhaps, keep up their old handicraft on the side. Six months is time enough to learn a little medical jargon while serving as “disciple” to some experienced doctor; after that, let the invalids beware.

Under such circumstances the glory of the medical profession suffers. Rightly did Pliny the Elder complain of doctors: “Any voluble person has powers of life and death over us, just as though thousands of persons did not live on without doctoring, as Rome existed for six hundred years [before the first physicians came].” Such gentry inevitably, if they fail at quackery, can then drift off to something else, and very familiar is Martial’s epigram: “Diaulus has been a surgeon and is now an undertaker. At last he’s begun to be useful to the sick in the only way that he’s able.”

139. Superior Class of Physicians.—Nevertheless, the physicians of Rome are by no means all of them charlatans. If their theories are grossly imperfect, many of them are men of wide experience and keen insight. A sick man able to command the best, need not give up in despair unless his case is really complicated and difficult. Great cures are recorded, as that of Augustus, whose life was saved in a most critical illness by the “cold-water treatment” ordered by his doctor, the wise freedman Antonius Musa—a cure which by saving an all-important life affected the world’s history.

Whatever their qualifications, physicians, if not highly educated, assuredly abound in large numbers. Every chartered city maintains a corps of them for the free treatment of the citizens, and keeps up public hiatreia—well-lighted, spacious halls for offices and dispensaries.[79] Every cohort of the army has four physicians attached, with superior medical officers over the larger divisions, and camp sanitation has been worked out excellently by the Roman military experts.

In the Imperial Court, the archiater (“head physician”) is a well-paid and very important dignitary. Between him and the miserable slave doctors who bleed and physic their fellows in the private familia there are any number of gradations. Most of the doctors, of course, practice for fees, although in Rome, too, a system of free clinics and dispensaries is coming in, with a special public physician for each of the fourteen regions of the city.

140. A Fashionable Doctor.—A doctor of the superior kind is Symmachus whom Calvus summons whenever any of his own family are seriously ill. He has one of the most fashionable practices in Rome, and his annual income is not much under that of Quintus Stertinus whose fees in Claudius’s day brought him 600,000 sesterces ($24,000) per year. A high-grade physician does not render a monthly bill. He expects to be paid once annually—on the first of January. Besides he counts on receiving a substantial legacy whenever a regular patient at length escapes him and dies. Lower grade doctors, however, are less delicate. They are charged with being greedy for unreasonable fees and with prolonging illnesses easily curable, demanding outrageous sums for common medicines, and taking every sordid advantage of the needs of the sick.

Symmachus is apparently above all such gaucheries. He has been trained to bear himself as a polished gentleman. His visits are long or short according to the desires of his patients. He never blurts out unpleasant truths and he always repeats the Hippocratic maxim, “A cure depends on three things, the sick man, his sickness, and the physician”; and that the physician’s business is to help the sick man to cure himself. The result is that while his anatomical theories would distress a later age, and some of his medicines are very crude, he often effects excellent results especially in those cases where mental therapeutics can avail a little.

Such a doctor possesses a set of surgical instruments quite as good as any available in a later age until at least the time of the French Revolution, and assuredly he knows how to use them very skillfully. He can dull pain for operations or induce sleep by juice of mandragora or atropin, and he can operate for cataract by distending the eye-pupil by anagallis. Delicate surgical operations, however, he will probably turn over to specialists. There are such surgeons who operate, no doubt with reasonable success, for hernia and fistula, who take out gall-stones, and deal with very dangerous fractures. There are also lesser specialists who can remove or fill aching teeth and can banish superfluous hair, and there is one shrewd old fellow who commands a princely income—he can really erase the degrading marks of branding upon slaves, after they become lordly freedmen.

141. Medical Books and Famous Remedies.—Symmachus affects to be a man of professional learning. He possesses and claims to have studied carefully the great medical treatises of Hermogenes of Smyrna in 72 books, and that of Tiberius Claudius Menecrates in 156 books. To impress his patients he will talk learnedly of the jangling theories of the “Dogmatics,” and “Methodics,” “Pneumaticists,” etc., although professing himself to be an “Eclectic.” However, his own shrewd common sense is usually of greater avail than all his books.

A large part of a popular physician’s gains come not from regular fees, but from supplying his patients with medicine. There are many shops selling crude drugs in Rome but no regular prescription pharmacists.[80] Public opinion avers that the more costly remedies are always the best, and Symmachus does not discourage that idea too much, although telling his select patients that cheap medicaments often are as effective. It is often hard, however, to get pure drugs, and genuine ingredients.[81] Even the best doctors will be deceived by oriental drug dealers palming off false balsams, and similar commodities.

Many physicians consider it professional to keep their remedies secret, and boast of private formulas, which they will not share with their rivals. In Tiberius’s day there was a Paccius Antiochus who prepared a marvellous powder, a kind of panacea for many ills. He compounded it behind locked doors and mystified even his assistants as to its nature; but on his death he had the decency to bequeath his formula to the Emperor who had it deposited for inspection in all the public libraries; and Hadrian has just done the same with some formulas left by the great Marcellus of Side.

142. Absurd Medicines. Theriac.—Some of these remedies are of an extraordinary nature and so intelligent a man as Symmachus can have no confidence in them. Still plenty of good doctors will tell you that a piece of hyena-skin is an excellent remedy for mad-dog bites, and that certain very filthy substances make good poultices for swellings. The imperial government actually employs several slaves to catch adders, whence are derived several important medicaments; and it is claimed that medicines to cure gall-stones must be pounded with a pestle that contains no iron. There is no need to dwell on the absurd articles foisted on the gullible by the quacks; pills made from dried bugs and centipedes are among the very least obnoxious.

There is supposed to be a specific medicine for every disease, and Symmachus’s office is crammed with little chests bearing such labels as “Drug from Berytus for watery eyes. Instantaneous”; “Ointment for gout. Made for Proculus, imperial freedman. Safe Cure”; “Remedy for scab. Tested successfully by Pamphilius during the great scab epidemic,” or “Eye-salve tried by Florus on Antonia, wife of Prince Drusus, after other doctors had nearly blinded her.”[82] There is also a large box of a famous compound to be used whenever diagnosis is uncertain. Theriac is a mixture of sixty-one different elements including dried adders. Whoever takes it is sure to find at least one substance that will assist his disease; and it is prescribed by almost every physician at the opening stages of a malady, before he can attempt diagnosis.

143. Fear of Poisoning. Popularity of Antidotes.—A large part of the doctor’s drug collection is, however, made up of antidotes for poisons. Everybody dreads being poisoned. Many peculiar deaths which ought to be diagnosed as caused by natural illness are charged up to venomous drugs[83] and indeed a deadly dose rather than a deadly dagger seems a favorite means for murder. People still whisper stories of that awful poison-vender, the woman Locusta, who probably supplied Nero’s mother Agrippina with the fatal powder she sprinkled on her husband Claudius’s dish of mushrooms, and then another dose to Nero himself to kill his stepbrother, Britannicus, with a highly spiced goblet.

If a man has many deadly foes, he is likely to take a potion of the precious theriac daily—because antidotes for so many poisons are carried in the compound; and all histories tell how Mithridates of Pontus, that famous adversary of Sulla and Pompeius, used to take antidotes so constantly that he became entirely immune to the venoms prepared by all his enemies. Symmachus, as part of his stock in trade, therefore, keeps the proper antidotes for all such familiar poisons as hemlock, opium, henbane, gypsum, white lead, etc., as well as for many obscurer foods of evil. Rumor says that not long since he had to use several of them on the old ex-consul, Annæus, whose spendthrift sons seemed very anxious to get their inheritance.

144. Medical Students, “Disciples,” Beauty Specialists.—Symmachus like all responsible physicians keeps an office on a good street, but although patients can visit him there, the place is mainly for the compounding of medicines by various slaves under the direction of several “disciples.” There are no medical schools in Rome,[84] and these young disciples follow their master about, study a little, and learn by watching him. They are kept away from his most select patients; but are allowed to troop into the sick room of the poorer, feel of the pulse, examine the wounds, etc., in a manner most distressing. People, in fact, dread to call in a doctor—it often means being felt over not by one but by a half dozen clammy hands, usually when one is very ill.[85]

In addition to the men of medicine are the “beauty specialists”—persons who claim to have reduced the supplementing of nature to a science. A court physician Crito once wrote four books of standard authority on the compounding of cosmetics. Every physician is called upon to prescribe skin washes, depilatories for rendering the bodies of young dandies perfectly hairless, and formulæ for fragrances for clothes or chambers; but it takes a specialist to know the intricacies of rouge and enamel, and otherwise to assist the ladies. The dividing line also between the physician and the hair-dresser is not always easy to mark. Petronius tells about the dames who not merely have abundant false hair, but “take their eyebrows out of a little box” and “put their teeth away at night just as they do their silks.”

145. Cheap Doctors: No Hospitals.—The inferior grades of doctors do a great deal of office work. In mere booths or small shops opening upon the street they receive patients, sometimes even standing by the door and bidding the hesitant “Step in!” Their surgeries are decked out with a display of ivory boxes, silver cupping glasses, and golden-handled lancets,—the more incompetent the leech the greater often being the display.

To advertise their skill practitioners of this class will often set bones and perform minor operations before a gaping crowd just outside in the streets—actions denounced by men of Symmachus’s caliber; and all their patients are examined with great publicity. Lower still are the itinerant quacks who will diagnose diseases on a street corner and vend alleged theriac and other “medicines” from a pedlar’s pack. There are other unlovely members of the profession who grow rich by performing criminal operations, and to whom unfaithful wives or legacy-seekers can appeal, begging them to “put the patient out of his misery!”—with results deliberately murderous. More legitimate of course are the numerous women who attend to the maladies of their own sex. Some of these women are said to be physicians of high capacity and able to command generous compensation.

A serious handicap to medicine exists because there are no public hospitals in Rome, although sick strangers are probably allowed to lie around the Temples of Asculapius or of other healing deities.[86] The control of epidemics is very imperfect. Rome has been visited severely by the plague, and in the reign of Marcus Aurelius it will be ravaged yet again. The age is a brutal one. Much is done to keep the populace amused and to delight the eye; relatively little to preserve precious human lives. In the great slave familia, however, self-interest if no better motive impels the owners to try to keep their chattels healthy. As already explained nearly every slave household has its special slave physicians, men of tolerable competence; and there is also the valetudinarium, the infirmary—a detached building or a large room in which sick slaves can be properly tended, and also isolated to prevent infection.

146. Suicide as Escape from Hopeless Disease.—Symmachus, despite his reputation for “wonderful cures,” has just lost a wealthy patient. The circumstances were somewhat unusual but by no means unprecedented. Quintus Gordianus, an elderly senator, had been suffering from a very painful internal disease. Symmachus assured him the case was incurable, but that he might, nevertheless, live for years. Thereupon Gordianus announced that he would commit suicide.

The right of a sane man voluntarily to surrender his life is undoubted. Philosophers have written fine essays on the desirability of suicide; only it must be entered upon discreetly and not as a cowardly means of escaping the duties of life. Many of Nero’s and Domitian’s noble victims obviously obeyed the mandate “Open your veins” more because they were tired of existence than because a desperate attempt to overthrow the tyrant would have been hopeless. Many a Roman aristocrat has sucked all the sensual pleasure so completely out of life that the latter has become one great boredom, and no religion commands “Live on!” when it is evident that the remainder of existence must merely be months or years of helplessness and pain.

As soon, therefore, as Gordianus was satisfied that his case was hopeless he declared to his relatives that, “He would starve himself to death.” They pleaded with him faithfully and caused most tempting food to be always within his reach, but later they took pride in telling of his iron will which rejected all their efforts. At last the end came, and all his circle remarked that Gordianus died as became a Roman senator and a true philosopher. Suicides for more trivial reasons than the above are, of course, reported every day.[87]

147. Execution of Wills. Numerous Legacies Customary.—Before Gordianus became too weak, he called in a group of friends to witness the revision of his will. The right to execute a will is a precious privilege for Roman citizens,[88] and the law allows wide options in disposing of one’s property. A Roman gentleman makes his will many times and is constantly revising or adding codicils to the same. Slaves are not supposed to make testaments—their small peculia must legally revert to their masters; but the more decent owners allow even slaves to bequeath their belongings to fellow-slaves.

A will implies much more than merely distributing one’s property among near kin. Gordianus’s widow and son were in fact well content when they found not more than two-fifths of the large estate was to pass outside the family. It is a deadly insult—all the more deadly because the departed are beyond retaliation—to fail to remember a familiar acquaintance with a sizable legacy.[89]

“When the tablets are opened” all Rome knows how a man has paid his social debts, usually to people who have no blood connection.

Was the ex-ædile Numerius angry because he only received 10,000 sesterces ($400)? And why was that ill-mannered old eques Albinus left 20,000? And why was the banker Velocius, once such a confidant, left nothing at all? Did Gordianus wish to brand the last-named as a scoundrel? The list of slaves enfranchised, and also of those specifically refused enfranchisement is carefully scanned; as well as various legacies to certain great advocates who have evidently rendered Gordianus service in tight lawsuits, and above all a sum of 100,000 sesterces ($4000) to “Our Lord Hadrianus Augustus Cæsar.” Gordianus had been by no means a great intimate at the palace, but it would have been most untactful to fail to remember the Emperor. Under bad rulers such a slight would probably involve the actual setting aside of the will, posthumous charges of treason, and the ruin of the heirs by the confiscation of the entire property. Under a good Emperor such an insertion puts the donor’s son in good odor with the government, and insures that the imperial procurators (who guard their master’s property) will assist in defending the will if disgruntled kinsmen should try to break it.

148. Regular Incomes from Legacies. Professional Legacy Hunters.—The granting of legacies is in fact so ordinary a part of Roman life that distinguished men like Cicero and Pliny the Younger can almost count on a steady flow of bequests (often from people whom they know but slightly) as part of their income. Gordianus is leaving a mature and proper son to take over his great name, clients, and a good share of his property. His bequests therefore are relatively small, and that fact robs his will of most of its interest. If, however, he had been childless, all Rome would have been agog as soon as people knew that he was dying. Great, if evil, are “the advantages of childlessness.” The rich bachelor is sure of obsequious service from innumerable quarters. The more he coughs and the paler he grows, the more the presents he receives and the more do loudly condoling friends press to his bedside. They reach the very depth of servility, and sometimes they are rewarded.

Years ago Horace gave directions to the successful legacy hunter. “If a man hands you his will to read, be sure to refuse and push the wax tablets from you—-yet take a side-glance to catch the second line of the first table [below the preamble]. Run your eye quickly along to see whether you are the sole heir or one of many.” If the prospective victim has a “crafty woman, or a freedman looking after the dotard, strike a partnership with them and praise them to him, that they may praise you behind your back.” Then when the testator at last dies lament him loudly, as a “worthy and true friend,” shed as many tears as you can, and don’t grudge a splendid funeral.

Thus fortunes can be and often are won, but not invariably. In Trajan’s reign there died a rich Domitius Tullus. He allowed the legacy hunters to fasten upon him; to shower him with all kinds of favors—then he actually left everything to a niece and to grandchildren. All Rome was divided: “Perfidious hypocrite!” some gossips buzzed in the great baths; but others praised him for “cheating the hopes of the rascals.”

149. Public Bequests.—Gordianus, besides these legacies to friends, also makes some public bequests. This is an age when the rich are expected to justify their good fortune by showering favors upon the community. If the rich testator had lived in a municipal town, he would have been expected in his life time to have provided feasts, public games, new civic buildings, and probably to have repaired the city walls. As it is, he leaves the cost of a good gladiator fight to an Italian town that once elected him patron; increases the endowment for a public library which he had earlier founded at another such town near one of his villas; and institutes a trust fund to provide an annual feast in honor of his “Manes” to be shared in by all the freedmen of his family and by their own descendants.

150. Great Funerals Very Fashionable. Desire to Be Remembered after Death.—Before he died, Gordianus also gave particular orders about his funeral. Every Roman seems to look forward to his obsequies with a melancholy, but an enormous interest. If he is poor, he hoards his money and joins a coöperative burial society to provide for final rites that will be long remembered. If he is rich, he will leave nothing undone to succeed in impressing the entire city that it has lost an important citizen. Under the Republic the funerals of great personages were really public pageants, deliberately calculated to teach young nobles the glory of a long career spent in the service of the state. Under the Empire these customs are still maintained, although often they are nothing more than vulgar displays showing forth the wealth of the deceased.

The age does not believe earnestly in immortality. Epicureans deny it outright, and Stoics more than doubt. Sometimes a very gross view of death is taken, that it is merely the careless end of a round of sensual pleasures. You can occasionally read on tombstones inscriptions like this: “Bathing, wine, and love-affairs—these hurt our bodies, but they make life worth living. I’ve lived my days. I revelled, and I drank all that I desired. Once I was not; then I was; now I am not again—but I don’t care!”[90] But most persons, especially grave Stoics like Gordianus, view death otherwise. Death means a going out into the dark; a process of being forgotten by those who once loved or admired you. If, by a splendid funeral, you can make your memory last a little longer, who would fail having one? Hence the excuse for very costly obsequies, often for unimportant individuals.

151. Preliminaries to a Funeral.—The moment Gordianus seemed to be breathing his last his son bent over his face as if to catch his final sigh. Then immediately the young man called his father three times “Quintus! Quintus! Quintus!” partly to make sure he was dead; partly as a signal to start off all the expectant slaves and freedmen in loud and frenzied lamentation through all the wide domus. A messenger promptly summoned a fashionable libitinarius (funeral director) who undertook to conduct everything in the best possible style. While the house rang with outcries, professional experts washed the body in warm water and took immediately a waxen impression of the features.

The dead was thereupon dressed in an embroidered toga, such as he might have worn when a magistrate, and was placed on a gilded couch in the atrium with the feet towards the door, beside which was set a bunch of cypress or pine, in token of the sorrow in the house. Skillful embalmers were available and the actual funeral could have been delayed as much as a week. This was not necessary, however, and the ceremony took place in two days—time enough to arrange the great pyre and other necessary matters.

The old practice was for every funeral to be held at night, and “funeral torches” were once about as common along the streets as the more festive marriage torches. But under the Empire the greater display can, of course, be made by daytime, although by a peculiar survival a few torch bearers will solemnly march along in the procession as if to outvie the sunlight.

The mustering of a large funeral procession calls for no mean executive skill. If the deceased is from an old family, persons must be hired to wear all the death masks found in his atrium, and costumes improvised or rented so that the wearers can appear as consuls, prætors, etc., and all the various articles and exhibits needful for the procession must be assembled. Above all there must appear at the house of mourning a clever Greek actor, selected partly because of some physical resemblance to the dead. This is the archimimus, who carefully confers with Gordianus’s freedmen and even with his son to learn the speech, mannerisms, and the personal foibles of the departed.

152. The Funeral Procession. The Display of Masked “Ancestors.”—At last at a time sure to command the best attention, the criers begin going about all the streets where Gordianus is likely to have had friends. They shout a formula in quaint, archaic Latin. “This citizen, Quintus Gordianus, is being surrendered to death. For those who find it convenient, now is the time for his funeral. He is being borne from his house!” and the procession sets forth commanded by a master-undertaker—the pompous designator.

At the head marches a band of players, their flutes, lyres, and dulcimers keeping up a most melancholy music. Then unavoidably follows a whole platoon of professional clowns and buffoons singing ribald songs and shouting very coarse jokes to the thronging spectators. Next, apparently, there walks Gordianus himself—it is the archimimus dressed like the ex-consul, imitating his gait, gestures, and voice, and even making broad personal jests at the expense of the deceased. Then follows the really imposing part of the display, and the bereaved widow and her son thrill with aristocratic pride at the thought of it. Theirs is a very old house, and a hundred actors are needed to wear all the wax imagines (often battered and blackened) from the great cupboards in the atrium. All his “curule ancestors” going back to the Gallic invasion seem to be accompanying Gordianus to the grave. The spectators are checking off the “consuls” and “ædiles” on their fingers, and at last some cry “a censor,” and presently even more admiringly a “dictator.”[91] One can almost feel that it is no misfortune to die, if only one can look forward properly to this moment of posthumous glory.

153. The Exhibits in the Procession. The Retinue around the Bier.—Behind the procession of death-masks come slaves bearing on poles large crudely sketched pictures upon boards, showing incidents in the Dacian wars where their master commanded as one of Trajan’s legates. Gordianus also had dabbled in literature, and copies of his essays and poems are now tied on tall rods and carried along conspicuously by the marchers. Next comes the corpse itself—exposed to view, upon a couch decked with purple, fretted with gold, and carried aloft upon the shoulders of eight picked bearers. All can see that Gordianus wears the “triumphal ornaments,” the laurel wreath as well as the toga prætexta awarded the favorite generals in the army.[92]

After that follows the family procession. Young Gordianus is robed in black, and leads by the hand his mother, a venerable matron, who wears the mourning color for women, white, and who lets her gray locks stream in disorder over her shoulders. If he had possessed sisters, they would now tear their hair, dig their nails in their cheeks, and utter piercing cries of grief. This clamor is produced sufficiently by a group of slave women led by two or three professional female wailers who, at intervals, set up a shrill chant of lamentation for the dead. Next follow a great company of Gordianus’s more distinguished friends, all walking with down-cast looks and clad in black or sad-colored togas. After them is the large retinue from the familia, first the older freedmen, then groups of ex-slaves wearing tall caps—token of manumission by will, and trying not to appear too exultant in their new freedom, then bringing up the rear the whole group of actual slaves, supposed to be torn with grief at the loss of “so good a master.”

154. The Funeral Oration in the Forum.—The procession heads at first not toward the place of the final pyre but toward the Old Forum. The honor of a public funeral oration is granted to practically every distinguished citizen, including many noblewomen. Indeed, this use of the Forum is an extremely common occurrence. The space around the orator’s stand (the rostra) has been cleared of idlers, and an array of suitable “curule chairs” has been set out for all the wearers of the death masks, as if they were again sitting like the magistrates of old.

After a suitable delay a kinsman of the deceased, a senator somewhat vain of his reputation as an orator, mounts the rostra and delivers a fulsome eulogy. It is notorious that such “laudations” never stick closely to the truth. The audience is made to understand that Gordianus was a very Cato the Elder in personal virtue and a Scipio Africanus in his success as a general. When that ceremony is completed the whole company sets forth again—this time toward one of the gates beyond which is the funeral pyre.[93]

155. Family Tombs. The Columbarium and the Garden.—Burials are not unknown in Rome, but most bodies are disposed of by cremation. Even persons of very modest means will try to provide money for a good pyre. This is partly because the very poor, the worthless slaves, and the lowest of the plebeians, are not burned, but their bodies simply are dumped in hideous open pits not far from the Esquiline itself. Nothing is done to the bodies thus exposed except to leave them to the dogs and ravens, and only the favor of Jupiter averts from the city an incessant pestilence in consequence. Long since, however, Gordianus’s family has erected along the Appian Way (though another frequented highroad could have been selected) a stately tomb, calculated to attract attention from all passers.

Handsome tombs can take many forms; there is even a good-sized stone pyramid, 116 feet high, erected to guard the ashes of Gaius Cestius, a great man under Augustus. That of the Gordiani is of a more modest character; a circular masonry tower, about fifty feet in diameter and rather higher, surmounted by a castellated battlement adorned with life-sized marble statues of famous members of the family. Inside there is no huge chamber for a sarcophagus, but simply a series of arched vaults the walls of which are honey-combed with little niches, each intended to receive a funeral urn. This kind of interior, therefore, is not unhappily called a columbarium—a “pigeon-cote”; and here will be placed not merely the urns of all the regular scions of the family, but (in inferior niches of course) those of all the freedmen and even of all the better loved slaves. The ashes of the Gordiani, mighty or humble therefore rest all together.

Outside this massive tower there is a considerable open compound, laid out as a pleasant garden, with shrubbery, flower-beds, and a little lodge for the slave in residence who acts as caretaker. There is even a small but handsome building, where members of the family can meet for the periodic feasts in honor of the dear departed. Handsome statues and fine bas-reliefs on the inclosing walls abound, and the place in short seems much more like a small pleasure park than a cemetery. This mortuary compound, however, is one of the better types of inclosures. The taste displayed in some adjacent is execrable. Already across the Appian Way opposite, a rich freedman has purchased a large lot and is erecting in his own lifetime a tall central statue of himself, flinging money from a bag to the populace, with the base surrounded by bas-reliefs showing his favorite small dog, some gladiator fights, and deep-laden craft under full sail—to explain how he made his money.[94]

For many miles out into the Campagna around Rome extend these strange cemeteries—not in seclusion, but passed by incessant traffic. Some of the monuments are magnificent, some simple; they illustrate almost every type of sculpture—but the object of nearly all is the same, to remind the living of the one-time existence of the dead, and so to provide a kind of spurious immortality often for very commonplace persons, in an age when the immortality of the soul seems no favored doctrine.

156. The Funeral Pyre and Its Ceremonies.—At last the funeral procession has reached the great mausoleum of the Gordiani. The pyre of choice wood, sprinkled with perfumes, unguents, and costly spices is ready at a safe distance. The sides of the pile have been covered with dark leaves, while cypress boughs have been set upon the top. Amid these the bier and the corpse, just as they have been borne, are now planted and various articles of clothing, jewelry, trinkets, etc., used by the deceased are next placed upon the pyre. If the ex-consul had been a younger man fond of hunting, deer nets and boar spears might have been added; or favored horses and dogs slaughtered and their carcasses added to the pile.

At length all is ready. Young Gordianus is handed a torch, and with averted face he touches it to the wood impregnated with perfumed oils. Instantly a great blaze shoots up, the smoke from the aromatic wood smelling most sweetly. The company waits in mournful silence until the tall pyre collapses and the bier has been utterly consumed. Then as the fire glows away, several loyal freedmen dash forward and quench it with great jars of chilled wine. Certain calcined bones and ashes are collected, wrapped in fine linen cloths and placed in a superb funeral urn, blue and white glass cut into exquisite designs, showing boys piping and treading the grapes in a festival of Bacchus. The last mortal remains of the departed senator are, therefore, at rest amid scenes eminently cheerful.

157. Funeral Monuments. Memorial Feasts to the Dead.—The ceremony is over. “Vale!”—and again “Vale!” cries all the company ere departing. The urn will now be placed in one of the niches in the columbarium; but in Gordianus’s honor they will erect a special statue, at its base chiseled a peaceful ship gliding steadily toward a distant shore; the son and widow evidently recalling the peaceful thoughts of Cicero in his essay “On Old Age”—“I find the nearer I come to the time of death the more I feel like one who begins to see land, and knows that sometime he will enter the harbor after the long voyage.”

On Gordianus’s birthday, on the anniversary of his death, and also for eight days in February sacred to the honored dead, his heirs and loyal freedmen will visit the spot, deck his statue with wreaths of roses, violets, and other flowers, sacrifice a black sheep or pig to the “Manes,” and indulge in a feast in his honor. This will be kept up, perhaps, until his own son is placed on the pyre and the fame of the “great Gordianus” has sunk to the barest memory.

158. Funerals of the Poor. “Funeral Societies.”—We have witnessed obsequies of a rich senator. Less favored persons, of course, are buried with ever-increasing degrees of simplicity. There is almost no religious element in Roman funerals. The bodies of unfortunates can be disposed of with brutal abruptness and lack of decorum, but the great host of plebeians and of those freedmen who cannot hope for an urn in the columbarium of a noble family have a recourse. They often club together in a “Funeral Society.” Everybody pays a fixed assessment into a common chest; out of these funds space is hired in one of the great public columbaria which are often erected as legitimate speculations. When a member dies he is assured of a respectable procession of buffoons and weepers (imagines being out of the question), a private harangue in his honor, and a thoroughly adequate funeral pyre. Funds not needed for this purpose are spent on feasts once or more a year in which the names of dead members are solemnly commemorated.

Some of these funeral “colleges” are really elaborate affairs, with considerable ritual, a permanent hall, and a corps of elective officers, “prætors,” “curators,” etc., whose tinsel pomp makes the wearers forget that most of the time they are humble plebeians or even slaves. The collegia, in other words, appeal to those who in another age may find a certain inferior type of “lodge” very congenial. They are grandiloquently named for some patron god, calling themselves “The Worshippers (cultores) of Apollo,” or perhaps for an Oriental deity, “The Servants of Serapis”; but their fundamental purpose is the same; to insure against the horrid thought of having one’s body flung into the open pits of the potter’s field and then perhaps having one’s ghost wander in misery over sea and land instead of finding a calm oblivion in Hades.