Commemorating the Dead: Texts and Artifacts in Context. Studies of Roman, Jewish and Christian Burials 9783110211573, 9783110200546

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1. An Overview of the Intellectual History of Catacomb Archaeology
Chapter 2. Housing the Dead: The Tomb as House in Roman Italy
Chapter 3. Commemorating the Dead in the Communal Cemeteries of Carthage
Chapter 4. Dining with the Dead: From the Mensa to the Altar in Christian Late Antiquity
Chapter 5. Sweet Spices in the Tomb: An Initial Study on the Use of Perfume in Jewish Burials
Chapter 6. From Columbaria to Catacombs: Collective Burial in Pagan and Christian Rome
Chapter 7. Roman and Christian Burial Practices and the Patronage of Women
Chapter 8. From Endymion in Roman Domus to Jonah in Christian Catacombs: From Houses of the Living to Houses for the Dead. Iconography and Religion in Transition
Chapter 9. Looking for Abercius: Reimagining Contexts of Interpretation of the “Earliest Christian Inscription”
Backmatter

Citation preview

i Commemorating the Dead

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Commemorating the Dead Texts and Artifacts in Context Studies of Roman, Jewish, and Christian 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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Ü 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 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Printed in Germany Cover design: Martin Zech, Bremen Cover photos: Laurie Brink, O.P., and Margaret M. Mitchell Typesetting: 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 Early Christian Literature, the University of Chicago, whose lifelong commitment to investigating the origins of early Christianity within the cultural, historical, and social context of ancient Rome inspired this project. In memorial to Estelle Shohet Brettman, l ü z, the founder of the International Catacomb Society, who desired to preserve and document the Roman catacombs in order to illustrate the common influences on Jewish and Christian iconography. May this publication forward her legacy.

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Preface

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Laurie Brink, O.P. , and Deborah Green

Preface Our fascination with the artifacts of the ancient world began when we worked on the archaeological dig at Caesarea Maritima, Israel. As two text-based doctoral students of Judaism and early Christianity, our experience of uncovering and analyzing material remains provided a view into the ancient world that had produced our texts, a view that reading alone could not fully provide. The richness of the conversations among Israeli and American archaeologists, ancient historians, and textual scholars further fueled our recognition that fostering dialogues across the divide of academic disciplines would benefit not only our own academic work but the work of all who participated, helping to lower the wall of academic territorialism. More than thirty years ago, Church historian, Robert M. Grant, acknowledged the chasm between the research efforts of classicists and those of scholars of Christianity: The early history of Christianity is Roman history, and I should claim that Roman history itself needs the collaboration of those who try to relate the Christian movement to the whole life of the Empire, not explaining everything Christian in Roman terms or everything Roman in Christian terms but trying to understand identities, similarities, and differences.1

Our own attendance at conferences and participation in interdisciplinary courses further confirmed our recognition that research about the ancient world would benefit from cross-disciplinary work in which scholars of various academic fields investigated, analyzed, and interpreted texts and artifacts in context. Similar work by Eric Meyers and James Strange in the areas of Judaism and Christianity in the Galilee laid the foundation for a more expansive project that would include comparisons of the two religions with Roman religions and cultural 1

R. M. Grant, “Introduction: Christian and Roman History,” in The Catacombs and 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 the topics of study in order to accomplish meaningful comparisons. One arena in which historians, archaeologists, and scholars of Judaism and early Christianity may share equal footing is investigations of Imperial period burials. The distinctions and similarities among Roman, Jewish, and Christian burials can provide evidence of social networks, family life, and, perhaps, religious sensibilities. Is the Roman development from columbaria to catacombs the result of evolving religious identities or simply a matter of a change in burial fashions? Did Christians practice inhumation in imitation of the Jews or was this 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 evidence an adherence to ancient customs, new beliefs about an afterlife, or adaptation of rituals from surrounding cultures? Investigating the emergence of a Christian or Jewish material culture that may be distinct from general Roman practices requires that the material culture be viewed, whenever possible, in situ, through multiple disciplinary lenses and in light of ancient texts. Scholars of Roman history and classics (John Bodel, Richard Saller, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill), archaeology (Susan Stevens, Amy Hirschfeld), history of Judaism (Deborah Green), 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: Two weeks of field research in Rome and Tunisia (June 2004). The Shohet Conference on Roman, Jewish, and Christian Burials, held at The Divinity School of the University of Chicago (May 2005). This publication of articles resulting from the project.

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Commemorating the Dead: Texts and Artifacts in Context is an attempt to build bridges across the divide of disciplines simply by creating a con2

Eric M. Meyers and James F. Strange, Archaeology, the Rabbis, and Early Christianity (Nashville: Abingdon, 1981). Also see the interdisciplinary work of Carolyn Osiek and David Balch, Families in the New Testament World: Households and House Churches (Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1997) and Daniel Schowalter and Steven Friesen, Urban Religion in Roman Corinth: Interdisciplinary Approaches (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005).

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versation wherein we learn from each other. Though certainly not the first of such attempts, the project did incorporate several unique features. First, the discussion extended beyond the institutional boundaries of the University of Chicago where we had first met as doctoral students. It included faculty and doctoral students from the British School at Rome, Brite Divinity School, Brown University, Catholic Theological Union, Northwestern University, the University of Maryland, the University of Michigan, the University of Chicago, the University of Oregon, Randolph College, and Vanderbilt University. Second, in addition to creating a community of colleagues, we wanted to pave the way for future collaborative efforts among the next generation of scholars. To that end, we asked doctoral students in complementary fields to respond to the faculty papers at the Shohet Conference. 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, Trevor Thompson, Janet Spittler, Jennifer Stabler, Karen Stern, James Weaver, and Ann Marie Yasin. Their comments and insights helped shape the final version of the articles that appear in this volume. This project also extended beyond the library, the office, and the conference hall. We secured and sustained a three-year commitment from respected scholars because we promised them an opportunity to do fieldwork – together. As a team, we were able to stand in front of the impressive funerary monument of Flavius Secundus in Kasserine, Tunisia, with its one-hundred-and-ten-line inscription and read it – in situ. Together, we explored the dark, damp tunnels of the Roman catacombs, noting the similarities between Roman and Jewish iconography and pondering the emergence of Christian symbols. We visited tiny museums in Lamta, Salakta, and El Jem, Tunisia – and castle-size ones in Rome and Baia. We waited patiently for custodians to secure access to treasures seldom viewed by the public at large. And, when evening came, we shared food and drink, in lively discussion, debate, and happy conversation about the experiences of the day. We did all of this with scholars who share an interest in the ancient world but who view that world through different disciplinary and methodological lenses. It has been our immense pleasure to be a part of this adventure, and we hope it has been fun and valuable for them as well. This project received the first grant from the Shohet Scholars Program to be awarded by the International Catacomb Society (ICS) of Boston.

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The generous financial support of ICS combined with the encouragement of its executive director, Amy Hirschfeld, are chiefly responsible for the project’s success. In addition, we want to thank Amy for the countless digital images she took during the field research. These are available for viewing 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. Patout Burns, Robin Jensen, and Carolyn Osiek in August 2000, and realized the value of viewing the material remains in situ with a team of scholars. Similarly, the interdisciplinary conference on the family in early Christianity facilitated by Carolyn Osiek and David Balch at Brite Divinity School in 2000 presented a model for our Shohet Conference. The introduction Robin Jensen provided to the International Catacomb Society initiated a relationship that has provided financial support and encouragement. The scholars who participated each contributed their expertise at various points in the project. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill and the British School at Rome provided a hospitable home during our time in Rome. Andrew, along with John Bodel, Robin Jensen, and Susan Stevens served as guides at various sites throughout the two-week research trip. “Unofficial” fellow travelers Patout Burns and Tanya Luhrmann offered insights from their respective academic fields that enriched the conversations throughout. We would also like to acknowledge the support of Richard Rosengarten, Dean of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, who offered invaluable advice in the planning stages of the project as did the former Dean of Students Winnifred Fallers Sullivan and Administrator Sandra Peppers. The Divinity School and the Marty Center for the Advanced Study of Religion assisted in the promotion and hosting of the Shohet Conference. The University of Oregon supplied extra funds for Deborah to travel to Israel to view burial sites and meet with Israeli scholars. Patrick Alexander, formerly with Walter de Gruyter, has been a supporter of the project from its initial proposal in 2003. The editors and contributors are thankful for his editorial insights. Dr. Sabine Vogt, Editor for the Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies of Walter de Gruyter guided our project to publication, for which we are, indeed, grateful. Personally, we would like to thank our families, friends, and colleagues for their support throughout the preparation of this publication. 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 religious community, the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa, WI., and, in particular, Betsy Pawlicki, O.P., for their continual encouragement and understanding, especially at the initial stages of the project. Commemorating the Dead has been based on the belief that conversation among scholars who share similar interests in the ancient world, but who differ in their disciplinary approaches, has the potential to bear much scholarly fruit. May this book be the first of many harvests.

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Table of Contents

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

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

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

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

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

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Ritual and Religious Rites Robin M. Jensen (Vanderbilt University Divinity School) Chapter 4. Dining with the Dead: From the Mensa to the Altar in Christian Late Antiquity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 Deborah Green (University of Oregon) Chapter 5. Sweet Spices in the Tomb: An Initial Study on 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: Collective Burial in Pagan and Christian Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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

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Envisioning Context and Meaning David Balch (Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary) Chapter 8. From Endymion in Roman Domus to Jonah in Christian Catacombs: From Houses of the Living to Houses for the Dead. Iconography and Religion in Transition . . . . .

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

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Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Index of Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Introduction

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Richard Saller

Introduction The death of a family member, friend, or dependent was a far more common experience in the lives of Romans than for us today.1 Consequently, it is to be expected that commemoration of the dead would figure more prominently in our textual and material records from the Roman world than in comparable records today. And yet, burials and the associated artifacts from the Roman world are disproportionately overrepresented in the material record and therefore command the attention of Roman historians and archaeologists, ever hungry for more evidence. John Bodel estimates that we know of only 1 % or so of the burials 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 substantial material attestation of a facet of ordinary life in Rome than survives for any other aspect of sociocultural life. Hence, the disproportionate attention of archaeologists and historians to funerary artifacts is understandable and warranted.2 This volume brings together a set of excellent chapters on disparate topics related to burial. The unifying rationale for the collection and the preceding conferences is that our understanding of burial practices, and the societies that gave rise to them, will be deepened and enriched by bringing together the material record of archaeologists and the texts of historians from both the classical Roman and the Christian fields of study. This involves crossing the divides among four traditional academic specialties. The chronological span covers a millennium from the middle Republic (third–second centuries B.C.E.) to the seventh 1

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The mortality rate in developed countries today is under 15 per 1,000, in contrast to the Roman mortality rate of nearly 40 per 1,000 per year. As an illustration of my point, all of the efforts by demographic and family historians to derive useful generalizations about the Roman life course from epitaphs would be unnecessary if census records for the living survived from the whole empire.

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century C.E., and the geographical span runs from Rome to North Africa to Palestine. My introduction seeks to sketch briefly a broad framework for the chapters and to draw attention to some thematic and methodological 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 should understand that these are not pieces of a single narrative, but multiple narratives for different locations and classes. For the cities of Rome and Pompeii, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (Chapter 2) examines house tombs from the middle Republic, the late Republic-Early Empire, and the High Empire. Like Roman houses with their dual function of inward-looking familial space and outward-looking assertion of status to the public, house-tombs had a dual function that shifted in emphasis through the three periods from inward-looking in the third – second centuries B.C.E. to outward-looking at the turn of the era and back to inward-looking in the mid-second century C.E. Other types of burials from the same region and centuries are analyzed in an entirely different narrative in Bodel’s account of the rise of columbaria at the end of the Republic and the transition to catacombs two centuries later. The reason for the entirely different narratives lies in the fact that Bodel’s study is based on larger collective burial groups of more modest economic strata on average than Wallace-Hadrill’s. Columbaria were first built as a way to accommodate the ashes of slave familiae of aristocratic Romans in structures separate from the aristocrats’ own monumental graves. The columbarium form then spread to serve modest Romans more broadly. Bodel points out that columbaria came to be associated with collegia, which provided the infrastructure for the “autonomous self-regulation” needed to organize and maintain a “condominium” of burials over time on a scale larger than the family. In the late second and third centuries C.E. the spatial arrangement of extended groups of burials shifted from the columbarium to the catacomb. The same period also saw the spread of Christianity and the shift from cremation to inhumation, but Bodel stresses that these were three separate developments and not causally related. Indeed, as Deborah Green notes in Chapter 5, Jewish burials in Rome went through a comparable shift from family (or “familial” burials) to catacombs, and did

Introduction

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so earlier than in the Christian community. The fact that catacombs are strongly associated in the modern mind with the early Christians to the neglect of Jewish catacombs is a result, as Amy Hirschfeld shows in Chapter One, of the charged implications that Christian catacombs have had in modern religious debates. Susan Stevens’s analysis of five late antique cemeteries around Carthage (Chapter 3) takes us to the period after the establishment of Christianity and beyond the collapse of Roman rule. None of these burial grounds extended the use of a classical Roman cemetery. Stevens contrasts the spatial arrangements of the two wealthier cemeteries with the other three: whereas the latter graves were largely anonymous and spatially difficult to visit, the former were laid out in a hierarchy of privilege and in a fashion to accommodate visits from the living (for purposes described in Robin Jensen’s contribution in Chapter 4). Alongside the spatial development of Roman burials went a sociopolitical development described in the chapters of Jensen and Carolyn Osiek (Chapter 7). In the classical era, burial and the rites associated with it were largely a private matter, based in part on Roman law, especially the law of property. Tombs and columbaria were private property allocated to members of the familia and other dependents by the property owner. As Osiek points out, a proper burial space was one of the favors (beneficia) in the arsenal of a Roman patron, and that patron could be a female property owner, just as well as a male. The provision of burial spaces for early church members by propertied women, Osiek suggests, explains why some of the major catacombs in Rome bear the names of women (Domitilla, Priscilla, and Commodilla). This patronage gave women status and influence in the early church that gradually came to be monopolized by ecclesiastical authorities in the third and fourth centuries. The theme of assertion of Episcopal authority also motivates Jensen’s account of the transformation of funerary banquets in the third and fourth centuries in North Africa. With textual and archaeological evidence, Jensen documents the practice of meals (mensae) in the graveyards to maintain the links between the living and their deceased loved ones. This pre-Christian practice was so entrenched that it continued among Christians through the fourth century, despite the efforts of church authorities to suppress it and the accompanying drunken excesses. Bishops sought to change the rites to bring them under the control of the church in the form of celebration of the Eucharist.

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The funerary mensa is one of several examples in this volume of the early Christian community drawing on the classical cultural repertoire and transforming it. As another illustration, David Balch in Chapter 8 traces the transformation of the artistic representation of Endymion into Jonah, who became the most common figure by far in early Christian art found in funerary and other contexts. Endymion, represented as a handsome, nude youth, might seem to be a less than obvious choice, but Balch makes the case for the aesthetic and spiritual reasons to settle on his figure. And the Christians were not the only ones to adopt Endymion, Balch notes, because he “was a figure who would absorb many projected meanings.” Margaret Mitchell’s essay (Chapter 9) on Abercius’s epitaph explores with great subtlety the possibilities of the multiplicity of meanings 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 inscriptions to be accompanied by a later literary text explaining its origin. One would have thought that the text, the Vita Abercii, would clarify the meaning of the epitaph, in which Abercius speaks to the passerby/ reader in the first person, but Mitchell shows that the Vita attempts to delimit the meaning of the inscribed lines and thus to obscure the significant intentional ambiguities that allowed the earliest Christian readers to understand the meaning quite differently from non-Christian passersby. Mitchell’s argument raises major methodological issues in the interpretation of other monuments, to which I will return.

Methodological Issues The interactions among the participants in the volume during the tour of the sites and at the conference heightened everyone’s awareness of the methodological complexities of bringing textual and material evidence together in a historical argument. The extensive survival of funerary texts and artifacts makes it especially tempting to use evidence from burials to deduce something important about the society, culture, and economy of living Romans. But one might argue that the texts and artifacts 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 (London: Duckworth, 2001) has argued this position forcefully.

Introduction

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skepticism strikes me as a salutary contribution to the scholarly debate, but can be overstated. Every sort of evidence from every context requires sophisticated methodological care to avoid naïve inferences. The essays in this volume display the requisite sophistication as they explore various aspects of the symbols and rituals that connected the living to the dead. I would suggest several broad methodological points about that connection. First, both the funerary texts and the visual imagery of burial offer idealized representations of roles and relationships in living society (Bodel). Whether it be the epithet attached to the deceased (e.g., “most chaste wife”) or the architectural motifs on the outside and inside of the tomb (as described in Wallace-Hadrill’s chapter), the idealizations had their roots in the world of the living and can provide evidence for characteristic features and values of that world. In addition, there is the obvious point that the dead could not bury themselves: burials in all their ritual and material aspects were the creations of living social entities – whether they be familial (WallaceHadrill) or patronal relationships (Osiek) or collegia (Bodel) or Christian communities (Osiek and Jensen). Furthermore, several of the following chapters show vividly how the cultural practices and motifs associated with death drew on those of the living. Most obviously, Endymion was taken from the dining rooms of the living and transformed into Jonah for the burial sites of the Christians (Balch). The sanctity of burials was protected by the living through a legal framework of private property enforced by the living state apparatus (Osiek). Indeed, burial is one of the great collective action problems for societies, because the deceased cannot themselves perform the rites or protect 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). In sum, the living were linked to the dead by systems of meaning, of rituals and social practices, and of law. A second methodological point – indeed, the basis for the whole enterprise embodied in the volume – is the importance of context, emphasized explicitly by Mitchell. Her essay on the epitaph of Abercius shows that the more we know about a text or artifact, the more intricate the issues of context become. Even the particular form of display of this famous inscription in the Vatican Museum turns out to depend on modern religious ideology and has demonstrably affected scholarly interpretations of the text. The implication of Mitchell’s fundamental

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point might be thought a reason for despair, since historians rarely know the full story of how a particular text or artifact came to exist and then to survive to the present. The despair seems pointless, since historians and archaeologists always work on incomplete information about context. Rather, Mitchell shows the constructive path forward by reminding the reader that we need to reckon with the limits of our knowledge. A third, related methodological principle is the importance of cultural context for understanding burial practices. In the absence of cultural knowledge, there is a temptation to offer utilitarian explanations for artifacts and texts based on our own modern experience. In her contribution on perfume vials found in Jewish burials, Green argues convincingly against using a facile utilitarian approach. Despite the superficial plausibility of the idea that the perfume was intended to cover up the stench of the corpse, she shows that this explanation cannot account for all the material evidence. It is more likely that the perfume should be understood in the same way as the other personal artifacts found of sentimental value with the deceased. My fourth methodological point is that the context for any given artifact or text was not static. Mitchell notes that the reader’s response to the epitaph of Abercius may have changed over time as the surrounding graveyard changed to become a more definitively Christian context. Not only did the necropolis develop over time, but so also did many of the tombs. We need to imagine the house tombs, the columbaria, and the catacombs as works in progress, rather than the finished product left to posterity. And if the finished house-tomb or columbarium or catacomb was the result of a series of decisions over time, we often do not know which member of the family or community made each decision. Osiek shows how it is possible to draw on what is generically known about the social relations of patronage to sketch the development from private graveyards above ground to the underground catacombs controlled by the church. Often we cannot be more precise than these generic explanations. A fifth and related point is the risk of simplifying context by sharply separating ethnic and religious groups and reifying them with the historian’s hindsight. The ancient realities were more fluid. Green makes the 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 a result, she is very careful to specify the period and place she is studying. Bodel argues that the “Christian” catacombs are unlikely to

Introduction

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have been filled only by Christians, because that identification would imply that, of the 150,000 or so Roman burials about which something is known, an improbably high proportion would be Christian. A final methodological point is that the relevant context includes the history of scholarship on ancient burial leading to our current categories and understandings. Hirschfeld’s essay on the history of catacomb archaeology shows that not only does the past influence the present but also the present influences the treatment of the past. Some of the most famous figures associated with the excavation of the catacombs were driven more by the religious disputes of their era than by their time spent in excavation of the catacombs. Bodel demonstrates that some of the categories at the base of modern scholarship, such as “columbarium” and “catacomb,” are not ancient categories but modern constructs. And Mitchell describes how two interpretive circles, the Vita Abercii and the modern Vatican Museum, have framed the interpretation of Abercius’s funerary inscription. In sum, the methodological complexities require the crossing of disciplinary boundaries and chronological specialties to a degree beyond the capacity of most individual scholars. As a result, the cross-disciplinary discussions that inform the contributions to this volume are vital. The other participants and I are most grateful to the International Catacomb Society and Laurie Brink for making them possible.

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Archaeology and Artifacts

History of Catacomb Archaeology

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Amy K. Hirschfeld

Chapter 1 An Overview of the Intellectual History of Catacomb Archaeology The past is essential – and inescapable. Without it we would lack any identity, nothing would be familiar, and the present would make no sense. Yet the past is also a weighty burden that cripples innovation and forecloses the future. How do we recognize and cope with this heritage, which at the same time sustains and constrains us? What benefits does it provide, what costs does it exact?1 David Lowenthal

Introduction Archaeology, in the broadest sense of the study of the past through the material culture produced by peoples of the past, involves many disciplines (such as natural sciences, anthropology, history, religious studies, and art history) and many disciplines rely, in part, on archaeological evidence. Context is essential in archaeological research – not only the context of the past and its material remains as they are excavated but also the context of each present in which research has been

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David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). I am grateful to Laurie Brink for inviting me to participate in this project and to the International Catacomb Society for supporting my participation. I am also grateful to Carolyn Osiek for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. Sections of this paper are based on “Exploration of the Catacombs” in Vaults of Memory: The Roman Jewish Catacombs and Their Context in the Ancient Mediterranean World, Estelle S. Brettman, Amy K. Hirschfeld, and Florence Z. Wolsky. Forthcoming.

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conducted. For sites such as the Roman catacombs2 that have, for the most part, been continuously known instead of newly excavated or discovered, new information and insight is often gained from new approaches and from “excavating” the archives of previous study. Traditional questions such as “How does the past influence the present?” and “How has the present grown out of the past?” are increasingly being reversed as scholars in many disciplines have become more self-reflexive. The complimentary questions being asked are “How does the present influence the past?” and “How is the interpretation of the past affected, restricted, or prescribed by present social, political, and religious conditions?” Such questions can be productively examined from the perspective of the various “presents” in which the Roman catacombs have been studied. The study of the Roman catacombs has been an important part of a long-standing tradition of religious inquiry. The catacombs are somewhat unusual as a subject of archaeological study in their almost inextricable relationship to a living religion that has primarily been in control of their study and guardianship. The manner in which the catacombs have previously been studied and presented to academic audiences (in scholarly publications) and general audiences (in popular writing, tourist sites, and museum displays) forms an essential component of the evidence many later scholars have relied upon in their interpretations of the catacombs. The authors of much of the past academic and popular writing about the catacombs viewed them as sites of connection to a venerated religious past that could be used to legitimize the religious present. Many ancient Christians wanted to be buried in the catacombs near the graves of saints and martyrs to be close to the sacred, and this same desire likely motivated many later researchers to study these sites. Throughout the history of their study, the catacombs have often not been studied objectively in their own right but instead been used as a source of evidence to support established ideas (especially of religious history). Many of the main figures in the history of catacomb explora-

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Throughout this paper when I use the term “catacombs,” I am referring to the Christian catacombs of Rome. I also mention the Roman Jewish catacombs but will identify them explicitly as Jewish. I do not address the question of the accuracy of the identification of entire catacombs as “Christian” or “Jewish,” but follow the traditional identifications based on the presence of iconographic and epigraphic indicators.

History of Catacomb Archaeology

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tion did not pursue their research for the sake of objective science but rather for the sake of material documentation of already-known religious “facts.” In the following paper, I give an overview of some of the main figures and historical trends in the study of the catacombs to provide some context for research involving the catacombs.

The Catacombs from the Sixth Century through the Middle Ages The catacombs ceased to be actively used for burials in the fourth through sixth centuries C.E., having been gradually replaced by aboveground cemeteries. Even after active burial in the catacombs ceased, the catacombs continued to be regularly visited. Many of the catacombs were converted into martyrs’ shrines in the fourth and fifth centuries, and aboveground sanctuaries and cemeterial basilicas, sometimes linked to the catacombs by tunnels, were built for the veneration of the martyrs. Notably, Pope Damasus (366–384) enlarged and decorated sections of the catacombs that contained martyrs’ tombs, for example, the Crypt of the Popes in the catacomb of S. Callisto. The maintenance and renovation of these sacred areas by papal authorities continued until at least the eighth century, and they attracted both Roman Christians and pilgrims who visited the catacombs for prayer and devotion. After the last repairs to the catacombs and martyrial shrines made by Popes Hadrian and Leo III at the end of the eighth century and beginning of the ninth century, there was an extensive removal of relics of the saints from their shrines and burial places in the catacombs, which were all outside the city walls, to churches within the city walls. This large-scale removal may have been prompted by the presence of foreign invaders or could have resulted from gradual changes in ecclesiastical policy to allow the transportation of relics.3 Eventually, the catacombs were abandoned, with the exception of a few galleries in certain catacombs that continued to be visited, primarily those located below martyrial churches.4 Itinerari, 3

4

See Irina Taïssa Oryshkevich, “The History of the Roman Catacombs from the Age of Constantine to the Renaissance” (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2003). Especially the catacomb of S. Sebastiano, which became a center for the veneration of Peter and Paul by the end of the third century, as evidenced by pilgrims’

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written as guides for pilgrims, especially during the seventh and eighth centuries, and the Liber Pontificalis,5 begun in the late fifth–early sixth century, were consulted by later explorers attempting to discover and identify the catacombs. The common conception that the catacombs were entirely forgotten after the translation of relics to churches in the eight and ninth centuries until their supposed “rediscovery” in the sixteenth century is somewhat misleading. In addition to the few catacombs located below martyrial churches that were continuously visited, the Mirabilia urbis Romae, a popular guidebook for Rome begun in the twelfth century and enjoying popularity for several centuries, included several catacombs in most of its editions,6 and numerous visitors in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, including Renaissance humanists such as Petrarch, wrote about their visits to the catacombs.7 However, there was not much interest in the careful exploration, study, and recording of the catacombs until the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. By that time, the locations and even the names of some of the catacombs likely had, in fact, been forgotten.

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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 active churches were S. Lorenzo, S. Pancrazio, S. Agnese, and S. Valentino. Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, Fabrizio Bisconti, and Danilo Mazzoleni, The Christian Catacombs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 1999), 9. The “Book of the Popes” is a biographical history of the popes from St. Peter through the fifteenth century and includes information on their burial places. As a work written and compiled by many different individuals over a long period, its historical reliability has always been somewhat questionable. The reliability of the itinerari is also uncertain. Nonetheless, they were frequently used as sources of topographical information by later scholars. For example, the catacombs of Commodilla, S. Callisto, Praetestato, Priscilla, and Domitilla, among others. Francis Morgan Nichols, ed. and trans., The Marvels of Rome: Mirabilia Urbis Romae (2d ed.; New York: Italica Press, 1986). Oryshkevich, “History of the Roman Catacombs,” 67–73, 102–7. See this entire dissertation for evidence that the catacombs were never “forgotten.” For a discussion of the later history of the Christian catacombs, see J. Osborne, “The Roman Catacombs in the Middle Ages,” Papers of the British School at Rome 53 (1985): 278–328.

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The Catacombs in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are characterized by systematic exploration and study of the catacombs, the use of the evidence from the catacombs for contemporary religious purposes, and the creation of popular literature focused on the catacombs. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the renewed interest in and knowledge of the catacombs made them an important destination for many travelers to Rome who followed guidebooks such as the Mirabilia urbis Romae and who wrote about their impressions of the catacombs, although some of their descriptions seem to be copied from the guidebooks. The belief in purification and remission of sins in the presence of martyrs’ relics accounts for much of the appeal of the catacombs for visitors. Stories of getting lost in the catacombs and having a spiritual reawakening become a common literary theme in the following centuries.8 Some of the most notorious visitors to the catacombs in the late fifteenth century did not leave a written record of their visits to the catacombs, except in the graffiti they marked on the walls of the catacombs. The Accademia Romana degli antiquari, led by the flamboyant Pomponio Leto (1428–1498), wished to broaden their knowledge of classical antiquity. This unconventional group referred to themselves as unanimes perscrutatores antiquitatis (investigators of antiquity). They visited the catacombs of S. Callisto, Ss. Pietro and Marcellino, Praetestato, and Priscilla.9 Pope Paul II considered their actions heretical, and members of the Accademia were prosecuted as pagans conspiring against the pope. Leto and other members of the Accademia were imprisoned in the Castel Sant’Angelo for almost a year, but evidence against them could not be procured. Interestingly, the graffiti they left in the catacomb of S. Callisto, which would have provided the evidence the authorities needed but was not inscribed until after their imprisonment,

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Robert W. Gaston, “British Travellers and Scholars in the Roman Catacombs,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 46 (1983): 147. Pasquale Testini, Le catacombe e gli antichi cimiteri cristiani in Roma (Bologna: Cappelli Editore, 1966), 15–16; see also Ludwig Hertling and Engelbert Kirschbaum, The Roman Catacombs and Their Martyrs (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1956). Hertling and Kirschbaum disparagingly refer to the Accademia Romana as “half-pagan humanists [with] no interest in Christian antiquities” (p. 3).

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was not known until the nineteenth century, when it was discovered by Giovanni Battista de Rossi.10 Religiously oriented investigation of the catacombs during this period began with Onofrius Panvinius (1529–1568), an Augustinian monk who conducted a well-organized, methodical study of Christian cemeteries of the ancient world.11 Panvinius is credited with beginning a trend of scientific Christian archaeology and was renowned as a great church historian and archaeologist. He focused on the cemeteries of Rome and researched the then-available historical, ecclesiastical, and epigraphic resources. Panvinius was the first person to classify ancient Christian inscriptions, and his work indicates that he was aware of regions of 43 catacombs. He is not known to have explored them, however. Although Panvinius is known as an archaeologist, his work was almost entirely based on a survey of literary rather than material evidence, an approach followed by many other later scholars who are nevertheless also known for conducting “scientific” archaeology. St. Philip Neri (1515–1595) founded the Cenacolo Filippino, or Congregation of the Oratory, in his quest to promote the Counter-Reformation movement of the Roman Catholic Church, restore early Christian religious practices, and trace a history of Church events. He was known for spending long hours in the catacombs meditating and frequently preached to his followers on visits to the catacomb of S. Sebastiano. Neri’s devotional focus on the martyrs of the catacombs and their message of suffering and redemption set the stage for the intense interest in the exploration of the catacombs by Antonio Bosio and others in the sixteenth century and also set the devotional tone that would characterize much catacomb study. Neri appointed his closest follower, Cesare Baronius, to continue his work. Cardinal Cesare Baronius (1538–1607), who succeeded Philip Neri as leader of the Oratory, is credited with inaugurating the scientific study of Church history, much as Panvinius was credited with doing for Christian archaeology. By the second half of the sixteenth century, renewed interest in the archaeology of early Christianity was being supported by efforts on the part of both Catholics and Protestants 10

11

The graffiti included the phrases regnante pomponio pontifice maximo (when Pomponio reigned as Pontifex Maximus) and romanarum puparum delitiae (delights of Roman girls). Oryshkevich, “History of the Roman Catacombs,” 219–23. De ritu sepeliendi mortuos apud veteres christianos, et eorundem coemeteriis liber (Cologne, 1568).

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to trace early Church history. Protestant interests led to the production of the Magdeburg Centuries (1559–1574), a history that criticized the Roman Catholic Church. Baronius’s monumental work Annales ecclesiastici (1598–1607) was written as a response to the Magdeburg Centuries and made extensive use of previously ignored collections of Roman manuscripts. This publication earned Baronius the title “Father of Ecclesiastical History,” and he gained a reputation for thorough, penetrating research. Baronius’s quest for accuracy, as well as the regard for the catacombs instilled in him by Neri, led him to the catacombs as a frequent subject of study. His research was almost exclusively text-based and served the Roman Catholic Church and the Counter-Reformation. In 1578 an intact Christian catacomb containing frescoes, sarcophagi, and inscriptions was discovered on the Via Salaria Nuova. Previously known catacombs had been stripped of relics and artifacts and did not contain as extensive or detailed frescoes as the newly discovered catacomb contained. The discovery captured the imagination of the public 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 term Roma sotterranea.12 The discovery is heralded by later scholars as the event that marked the “rediscovery” of the catacombs and the “birth” of Christian archaeology.

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The catacomb on the Via Salaria Nuova was incorrectly identified as the catacomb of Priscilla by Baronius and as the Ostriano cemetery by Alfonso Chacon and later by Bosio. Soon after its discovery, the catacomb was buried by a landslide, 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 the diggers who were trapped in the collapse received just retribution. James Stevenson, The Catacombs: Life and Death in Early Christianity (Nashville: T. Nelson, 1985), 51. The cemetery was rediscovered in 1921 by Enrico Josi and again mistakenly identified, this time as the catacomb of the Giordani. The catacomb was recently identified as a private cemetery and is now called the Anonymous Cemetery of the Via Anapo. Philippe Pergola, Le catacombe romane: storia e topografia (Rome: Carocci editore, 1998), 125–30; Fabrizio Mancinelli, Catacombs and Basilicas: The Early Christians in Rome (Florence: Scala, 1981), 45–46. Various identifications of this catacomb have persisted, even in recent works, e.g., W. H. C. Frend, The Archaeology of Early Christianity (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1996); Stevenson, The Catacombs; and Gaston, “British Travellers,” 144–65.

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This “rediscovery of the catacombs” was presented as almost providential for the Roman Church, which now had a well-known, popular example in the catacomb frescoes of the early Christian use of images. The Council of Trent in 1563, just fifteen years earlier, had confirmed the value of the visual image, and the evidence from the catacombs often took center stage in Reformation debates about sacred imagery. The idea of a providential “rediscovery” and its impact was likely popularized by later scholars, especially de Rossi, who identified May 31, 1578, as the “birth date of Christian archaeology.” The first mention of the archaeological evidence from the catacombs in treatises dealing with images is in Baronius’s Annales ecclesiastici (1598–1607), twenty years after the discovery of the catacomb on the Via Salaria Nuova.13 Among those who kept alive the newly awakened interest in catacombs 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 “noble triumvirate”15 documented the catacomb on the Via Salaria Nuova as well as the catacombs of Priscilla, Ss. Pietro and Marcellino, S. Valentino, and S. Callisto, which was recorded at this time as Coemeterium Zephyrini. As scholars with antiquarian interests, their work focused on early Christian burial practices in a comparative perspective. Although Chacon’s annotated interpretations were not very accurate and often amusing in their misinformation, much of his work was incorporated in Bosio’s later work. His copyists frequently employed the artistic vernacular of the day, making entertaining images that were not particularly conducive to serious study.16 Chacon’s colleague Philip van Winghe, aware of the deficiencies in his friend’s work, reproduced and revised the material more accurately. Unfortunately, van Winghe died prematurely in 1592 without having completed his work, which was not preserved in its entirety.

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Gaston, “British Travellers,” 145, n. 4. See also Oryshkevich, “History of the Roman Catacombs.” See Cornelis Schuddeboom, Philips van Winghe (1560–1592) en het ontstaan van de Christelijke archeologie (Haren: Geldermalsen Publications, 1996). Giovanni Battista de Rossi, La Roma sotterranea cristiani descritta ed illustrate (Rome, 1864), vol. I, 14. See Anthony Grafton, ed., Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).

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

Antonio Bosio Antonio Bosio (1575–1629) is regarded as the “Columbus of Roma Sotterranea” – the first person to extensively explore the catacombs themselves as opposed to previous scholars who explored texts for catacomb references. He was enthusiastically devoted to the study of the catacombs and investigated them tirelessly, although he did not actually conduct excavations or explore obstructed passages. Bosio’s extensive explorations enabled him to amass a wealth of new information and earned him the tribute of numerous later scholars. Despite Bosio’s extensive investigations, he was able to identify only a very few Christian monuments by name and trace their history because of the lack of adequate topographical evidence. Although Bosio is considered by many to be the first to approach the study the catacombs “scientifically,” his main concern was for the spiritual value of the monuments he was investigating and this concern is apparent in his work. He considered the catacombs to be tangible evidence of the early Church of the martyrs and of Rome’s status as successor to the early Church. Bosio, as well as many scholars who followed him and emulated his example, considered textual sources almost exclusively in the interpretation of archaeological material, and curious omissions in his work indicate that he recorded only material that served his devotional purpose and affirmed the descent of the current Roman Catholic Church from the early Church of the martyrs. He did not record all of the paintings or sculptural fragments he surely saw. For example, he neglected to describe or copy in detail the famed frescoes and stuccoes of the orans figures, the Virgin with child and prophet, and the Good Shepherd in the catacomb of Priscilla, although he and his illustrator

17

Hagioglypta sive picturae et sculpturae sacrae antiquiores praesertim quae Romae reperiuntur explicatae a Joanne L’Heureux (Macario), edited by Raffaele Garrucci (Lutetiae Parisorum: J. A. Toulouse, 1856).

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“Toccafondo” clearly saw them, as evidenced by their autographs sprawled over the frescoes in the catacomb. Bosio had not completed his monumental work Roma sotterranea at the 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 the edits to the published version can be determined. A section that Bosio intended to include but that Severani cut clearly focused on Bosio’s intent to document the early Church as a means to justify contemporary practice.19 Severani also seems to have omitted or simplified sections that Bosio, in his zeal of completeness, had included but would likely have provided ammunition for Protestant polemicists.20 The Italian edition of Roma Sotterranea edited by Severani was not widely known. A Latin edition prepared by Paolo Aringhi and published in 1651 was widely disseminated throughout Europe. Aringhi made numerous changes to the work infusing it with a distinctly polemicist CounterReformation tone and anti-Jewish sentiment that were not consistent with Bosio’s original. Bosio’s work had a great influence on later scholars, and he was particularly admired by Giovanni Battista de Rossi, who is perhaps the most well known of all scholars who have studied the catacombs.

Giovanni Battista de Rossi The nineteenth century was witness to a veritable explosion of interest in the catacombs, both for the purposes of “scientific” study and for current religious debates being carried out in academic and popular literature. Giovanni Battista de Rossi (1822–1894) is renowned as the father of modern scientific Christian archaeology. De Rossi was appointed by his friend and teacher the Jesuit scholar Father Giuseppe Marchi

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The frontispiece is imprinted with the date 1632, the date that printing was initiated. Simon Ditchfield, “Text Before Trowel: Antonio Bosio’s Roma Sotterranea Revisited,” in The Church Retrospective (ed. R. N. Swanson; Studies in Church History 33; Woodbridge, Suffolk, U.K., Ecclesiastical History Society, 1997), 353. Ibid., 356.

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(1795–1860) to create a corpus of Christian monuments. This project entailed the systematic cataloging of Christian epigraphy, a project that de Rossi envisioned would, for the first time, partially reconcile it with topographical criteria. De Rossi contributed to more than two hundred publications, many of which have had a lasting influence on catacomb scholarship and are still consulted today. In collaboration with his brother Michele, a mathematician and geologist, de Rossi documented a detailed topographical study of the Roman catacombs published in three volumes entitled La Roma sotterranea cristiana (1864–1877), a name he likely selected in tribute to Bosio. De Rossi inspired and provided the prototype for further topographical study with the publication of his Bullettino di Archeologia Cristiana, which documented the fruits of his many years of laborious research and was published in a simultaneous French edition, which contributed to the internationalization of catacomb studies at this time. De Rossi figured largely in the establishment of the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology on January 6, 1852, by Pope Pius IX, who supported and favored de Rossi. The commission instituted strong measures to control exploration of the Christian cemeteries and to end violations of the catacombs, and sponsored continued study and excavation by de Rossi and others. De Rossi’s extraordinary popularity in Rome and among international scholars, his extensive publications, and his labors in the service of Christian archaeology stimulated great interest in the subject. He befriended, mentored, and inspired the work of many, including J. Spencer Northcote and W. P. Brownlow, who first made de Rossi’s Roma sotterranea available in English.21 De Rossi’s protégé Orazio Marucchi popularized archaeology in the later nineteenth century with his prolific writing on the catacombs,22 and another distinguished follower of de Rossi, Mariano Armellini

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J. Spencer Northcote and W. P. Brownlow, Roma Sotterranea or Some Account of the Roman Catacombs, Especially of the Cemetery of San Callisto, Complied from the Works of Commendatore de Rossi with the Consent of the Author (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1869). Orazio Marucchi, Le catacombe romane secondo gli ultimi studi e le piu recenti scoperte: compendio della Roma Sotterranea con molte piante parziali dei cimiteri e riproduzioni di monumenti. (Rome: Desclee, Lefebvre, 1903); Le catacombe romane. Opera postuma. Preface and biography by Enrico Josi (Rome, 1933).

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

The Nineteen-Century Early Christian Novel In addition to being the focus of intense scholarly attention in Italy and abroad during the nineteenth century, the catacombs were also the focus of popular interest and made appearances in much popular religious literature of the period, especially in Victorian England. Religious authors used the wealth of archaeological information obtained from the prolific discoveries and research of the nineteenth century for polemical purposes. They viewed the Early Church of the catacombs as a legitimizing predecessor to their own doctrines and practices.25 The catacombs easily captured the attention of a Victorian public fascinated with death and pleasurable terror, and several religious novels based on the early Christians of the catacombs and the catacomb martyrs became extremely popular. The authors of these novels, almost all clergymen themselves, were intentional participants in serious current theological debates, and at the same time, they appealed to general readers with detailed, sensationalized descriptions of death and torture. These novels address religious and social issues of great importance at a time when there existed a major rift in the English Catholic church between those who favored the Roman Catholic tradition and ritual and those who supported Liberal Catholicism. The novels are also examples of the vehemence of religious polemic and the 23

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Mariano Armellini, Gli antichi cimiteri cristiani di Roma e d’Italia (Rome: Tipografia Poliglotta, 1893). Josef Wilpert, Die Malereien der Katakomben Roms (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herdersche Verlagshandlung, 1903). See Reiner Sörries, “De Rossi, Wilpert und die christliche 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. Wendel W. Meyer, “The Phial of Blood Controversy and the Decline of the Liberal Catholic Movement,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46, no. 1 (1995): 76–77.

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“blatant rhetorical strategies by which paper opponents were demolished”26 that characterize most of the popular religious press of this period. The three most important and popular novels in this category are Hypatia, or New Foes With an Old Face (1852–1853), by Charles Kingsley; Fabiola, or The Church of the Catacombs (1854), by Nicholas Wiseman; and Callista: A Tale of the Third Century, by John Henry Newman (1855). These three novels are similar in their use of a historical setting of martyrdom and the Early Church and their distinctly polemical, propagandist tone.27 Charles Kingsley28 used a different approach than most of the authors of Early Christian novels. He used the example of history in his novel not to recall a venerable past but rather as a negative example of the corruption of the past to compel his readers to find their own justifications for their faith in the present instead of looking to the past. His heroine, Hypatia, is murdered after her acceptance of Christ in fifth-century Alexandria (when Christianity was already the state religion). Kingsley used the death of Hypatia to question the value the Roman Catholic Church placed on the patristic past, which Kingsley believed to be corrupt.29 Nicholas Wiseman claimed that the nineteenth-century Roman Church was consistent with the Church of the catacombs.30 Fabiola was published in the series the Catholic Popular Library, which may 26

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David J. DeLaura, Review of Gains and Losses: Novels of Faith and Doubt in Victorian England, by Robert Lee Wolfe, Nineteenth-Century Fiction 33, no. 2 (1978): 251–55. Leon B. Litvack, “Callista, Martyrdom, and the Early Christian Novel in the Victorian Age,” Nineteen-Century Contexts 17, no. 2 (1993): 164. When Kingsley wrote Hypatia, he was the Rector of Eversley Church and was committed to social reform and the Christian Socialist movement. He later became Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge (1859–1869), was appointed chaplain to Queen Victoria in 1859, became the private tutor to the future Edward VII in 1861, and was appointed the canon of Westminster Abbey in 1873. Litvack, “Callista,” 164–65. It has been suggested that the murder of the historical Hypatia of Alexandria, a mathametician and Platonic philosopher, may have been a political assassination as much as it was the work of a Christian mob acting against a well-known pagan. Maria Dzielska, Hypatia of Alexandria (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995). Kingsley’s fictionalization of Hypatia’s last-minute conversion has no known historical basis. At this time, it was commonly believed that the catacombs were monuments of the first century, an idea that has since been disproven.

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have been originated for the purpose of refuting Kingsley’s version of the early Church.31 Wiseman wrote Fabiola to respond to Kingsley’s negative portrayal of the early church in Hypatia and also to promote English Roman Catholicism. Wiseman had been made the Archbishop of Westminster in 1850 when the Roman Catholic hierarchy was restored in England. In the novel, Fabiola, a pagan in Rome, converts to Christianity after witnessing martyrdoms, which Wiseman describes in gruesome detail. Wiseman’s novel enjoyed immense popularity, probably due in large part to the graphic, sensationalized descriptions of the martyrdoms, and went through numerous editions, translations into other languages, and even an adaptation for the stage, The Youthful Martyrs of Rome by Frederick Oakeley.32 John Henry Newman believed that the sufferings of the martyrs were emblematic of the trials that all Christians must undergo to gain salvation, and some of the themes in Callista probably represented his own painful struggle in converting from Anglicanism.33 Newman wrote Callista (at Wiseman’s request and published anonymously in the Catholic Popular Library) in what seems to be almost direct response to Kingsley’s Hypatia.34 Newman details Callista’s spiritual struggle leading to her conversion and her eventual martyrdom. Callista also enjoyed great popularity and also was adapted for the stage in The Convert Martyr by Frederick Husenbeth.35

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Charlotte E. Crawford, “Newman’s Callista and the Catholic Popular Library,” Modern Language Review 45 (1950): 219, cited in Susann Dorman, “Hypatia and Callista: The Initial Skirmish between Kingsley and Newman,” NineteenthCentury Fiction, 34. no. 2 (1979): 173–93. Litvack, “Callista” 165–67. 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 1845 was shocking because he had been the central figure the Tractarian Movement (or Oxford Movement, 1833–1845), which sought to affirm the High Church of England 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 cardinal by Pope Leo XIII. See Dorman, “Hypatia and Callista”, for a comprehensive comparison of Hypatia and Callista. Litvack, “Callista” 167–70.

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Nineteenth-Century Popular Religious Press In addition to writing extraordinarily successful Early Christian novels, Newman and Wiseman played important roles in the popular religious press of the period. The Roman catacombs were the subject of many popular articles published between 1848 and the mid-1860s in The Rambler, a publication of the Liberal Catholic Movement (and of which Newman was briefly the editor in 1859); the Edinburgh Review; and the Dublin Review, founded by Wiseman.36 The debate between the Ultramontanes, who advocated traditional Roman devotions, centralized ecclesiastical authority, and veneration of saintly relics, and the Liberal Catholics, who advocated intellectual freedom and saw scholarly and scientific inquiry as independent of religious oversight, reached a height in the “Phial of Blood Controversy,”37 which was largely carried out in the pages of The Rambler and in which the principles of scientific inquiry were tested against the authority of the Church. Graves of the martyrs in the catacombs were officially identified by glass or ceramic containers of blood affixed to the plaster outside of the graves per a decree of 1668 issued by a commission appointed by Clement IX. A question emerged in the mid-nineteenth century about whether these containers held the actual blood of the martyr, collected at the time of the martyrdom, or instead contained eucharistic wine, as was commonly found in such containers in ordinary graves. The suggestion that the containers supposed to identify the graves of the martyrs held only eucharistic wine called into question the authenticity of the relics of the martyrs and sparked a vicious debate. In 1860, Richards Simpson, then editor of The Rambler, suggested that the question could be answered by a microscopic investigation of

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See Joseph Altholz, The Liberal Catholic Movement in England: The Rambler and Its Contributors, 1848–1864 (London: Burns & Oates, 1962); id., The Religious Press in Britain, 1760–1900 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1989), 99–102. Mary Heimann, Catholic Devotion in Victorian England (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) suggests that the most vocal proponents on each side of the debate between the Ultramontanes and Liberal Catholics likely viewed the debate in a larger context than that of England alone and were either foreign or outsiders in some other way. I am grateful to The Rev. Wendel W. Meyer, Ph.D., for providing me with an offprint of his article “The Phial of Blood Controversy and the Decline of the Liberal Catholic Movement,” which first introduced me to this fascinating debate and on which this discussion relies.

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the contents of the containers. Although this type of testing would not be given a second thought today, at the time, it was a daring suggestion that seemed to many people like “an attempt to test the Church’s authority by chemical analysis.”38 A chemical analysis of the contents of sixty of these containers from the catacombs was eventually published. All of the contents were found to be neither blood nor wine but instead iron rust deposits that had effloresced from the glass.39 In the continued debate that followed, many of the parties, which now included even de Rossi in Rome, were hesitant to overtly question the Church’s authority in the name of scientific inquiry.40 In 1863, despite the scientific evidence to the contrary, the 1668 decree was reaffirmed by the Roman Catholic Church and signaled in many ways the downfall of Liberal Catholicism in nineteenth-century England and the inability of scientific evidence to stand up to the power of the Church.

Replicas of the Catacombs at the Turn of the Twentieth Century The extraordinary popular interest in the catacombs during the nineteenth century makes it likely that knowledge of the catacombs was widespread both outside of Italy and outside of the academic world. This widespread popular interest is likely responsible in part for two interesting cases in which replicas of the Roman catacombs were produced at the turn of the twentieth century with the cooperation of the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology.41 In Valkenburg, The Netherlands, exact replicas of sections of the catacombs of Priscilla, Domitilla, and S. Sebastiano were created in 38 39 40

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Ibid., 86. Today, scholars commonly agree that the containers held perfume. Ibid., 89, 93. 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’s Roma Sotterranea, wrote a popular series of articles on the Roman catacombs for The Rambler in 1848–1849 and was initially a strong supporter of the publication. 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 the search for truth with concern for the beliefs of the faithful.” Ibid., 87–88. These instances of replication of the Roman catacombs in Valkenburg and in Reiman’s murals are the subject of a larger research project I am currently undertaking.

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abandoned limestone quarries. The creators of these replicas sought to evoke the religious experience of the Roman catacombs and had financial purposes as well in creating a tourist attraction and providing work for the unemployed. They went to much effort, in cooperation with Roman researchers, to make their replicas as exact as possible. Orazzio Marucchi, de Rossi’s protégé, was present at the opening of the Valkenburg catacombs in July 1910. The Valkenburg catacombs remain a popular tourist attraction to this day.42 Ivan Tsvetaev (1847–1913),43 founder of the Pushkin Museum, commissioned artist Fyodor Reiman in the last decade of the nineteenth century to make exact copies of paintings in the Christian catacombs for the founding collections of Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and possibly for a never-published atlas of early Christian frescoes.44 Reiman spent 12 years in the catacombs making his watercolor copies of the paintings and nearly lost his eyesight in the process. Interestingly, Reiman’s watercolors were never exhibited until 2000, when the exhibit “Under the Vaults of the Roman Catacombs” was shown at the Pushkin Museum in honor of the Papal Jubilee.45

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Joep Didden, “The Catacombs of Valkenburg in Limburg,” SOK-Mededelingen 26 (1996). See also the website of the Valkenburg catacombs, http://www. katakomben.nl/. 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 University and is considered the first Russian specialist in Latin epigraphy. Tsvetaev founded the Pushkin Museum (which opened in 1912 as the Moscow Museum of Fine Arts and was originally part of Moscow University) on the model of the Cabinet of Fine Arts and Antiquities of the Moscow University, which contained scientifically precise casts and copies of ancient sculpture and art for educational purposes. “Museum History,” The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, 1998, http://www.museum.ru/gmii/defengl.htm, viewed 20 March 2005. Reiman’s watercolors were not published, and I found mention of the fact that they were commissioned for an atlas of Christian frescoes only in the Bollettino di informazione of the Italian Embassy in Russia, 28 February 2000, http://www.ambrusital.mid.ru /AnbRusItal/it/bull8.htm#14, viewed 18 July 2001. Unfortunately, no catalog of this exhibition was published. Personal correspondence, M. Axenenko and T. Vorobjeva, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Art, March 7, 2001.

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The Study of the Jewish Catacombs I discuss the Roman Jewish catacombs separately rather than incorporate them into the previous discussion primarily to point out some differences in how they have been studied and because they have been treated separately in many ways by researchers, even up to the present day. There are only six known Jewish catacombs in Rome, and only one of those (the Monteverde catacomb) was known prior to the midnineteenth century. The Jewish catacombs are not well known outside of academia, and certainly never enjoyed the immense popular interest that the Christian catacombs did in the nineteenth century. Although the fact that there are so many fewer Jewish catacombs than Christian catacombs accounts in part for a seeming lack of attention to the Jewish catacombs, the fact that their investigation did not bear as heavily on modern Judaism as the Christian catacombs did on modern Roman Catholicism likely accounts for many of the differences in how they have been studied, perceived, and presented. There is no known documentation of pilgrimages to the Jewish catacombs after active burials cease,46 and they certainly did not enjoy the continued maintenance and refurbishing that the Christian catacombs did before the removal of the relics to city churches. Before the first discovery of a Jewish catacomb (that of Monteverde in 1602), Jewish epigraphy was recorded in the sixteenth century by van Winghe, Chacon, and Claude Menestrier.47 This epigraphy was 46

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However, the Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela seems to indicate that there was an awareness of the Monteverde catacomb in the twelfth century. Benjamin of Tudela was a rabbi from Spain who undertook extensive travels to southern Europe and Palestine in 1165–1173. He noted the existence of a “cave in a hill on the bank of the Tiber” in which the ten Jewish martyrs were buried. This observation could indicate that in 1166 Roman Jews knew of an ancient Jewish underground cemetery in this location. Marcus Nathan Adler, trans., The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela (London: Henry Frowde, 1907). Caution must be taken in viewing this itinerary (or any others) as historical “fact” as it is replete with miracle stories, legends, and embellishments. However, it is descended from a long tradition of rabbinic writing, an important feature of which is the affirmation or validation of the present by association with significant events of antiquity. Leonard Victor Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of Cultural Interaction in the Roman Diaspora (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 3–5. Cod. Vat. Lat. 10545, fol. 150, cited in H. J. Leon, “The Jewish Catacombs and Inscriptions of Rome: An Account of Their Discovery and Subsequent History,” Hebrew Union College Annual 5 (1928): 299–314

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probably found above ground and is no longer extant. Almost a century later, in 1685, Jacob Spon published the Miscellanea eruditae antiquitatis, which included three Jewish epitaphs from ancient Rome, two of which were those originally recorded by de Winghe. Bosio initially discovered the Monteverde catacomb in 1602, but he did not document it extensively, likely because it did not provide evidence consistent with his devotional purpose. In the few pages he does devote to a description of the catacomb, he states that he includes a description of a Jewish cemetery in a work on sacred cemeteries “so that it will be known that our cemeteries have never been profaned nor contaminated by the bodies of either Hebrews or Gentiles.”48 After Bosio’s discovery of the Monteverde catacomb, few efforts were later made to locate this first and only recorded Roman Jewish catacomb. It was not until the first half of the eighteenth century that interest in Monteverde was reawakened, when Giuseppe Bianchini claimed to have entered the necropolis with the archaeologist Cardinal Domenico Passionei.49 Subsequently, Gaetano Migliore, probably after the mid-eighteenth century, visited the catacomb but was forced to withdraw because of continuous rock slides. In an amusing, candid account, he divulges that in spite of the imminent danger, he explored the catacomb in order to ingratiate himself with scholars.50 For nearly the next one hundred years, interest in the Monteverde catacomb diminished to the point that even its location was unknown. In 1843, Father Giuseppe Marchi (one of de Rossi’s mentors) tried to locate the entrance to Monteverde, but his efforts proved fruitless. In 1879, the well-known Christian archaeologist Mariano Armellini declared that he had found the entrance to Monteverde but that it was blocked with soil, which had to be removed. Nikolaus Müller, who was later to become the principal investigator of Monteverde, failed to locate this burial ground in 1884 and again in 1888. M. Seymour de Ricci, a French archaeologist, also tried and failed in his efforts to locate Monteverde in 1900 and 1904.51 48 49

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Quoted in Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome, 10. Leon, “Jewish Catacombs,” 303, believes Passionei did not visit Monteverde and instead copied Bosio’s description and illustrations. Cod. Vat. Lat. 9143, fol. 127, quoted in H. J. Leon, Jews of Ancient Rome (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1960). Leon, “Jewish Catacombs,” 306–307. In his New Tales of Old Rome (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1901), Rodolfo Lanciani failed to distinguish this burial spot

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In the last half of the nineteenth century, in addition to investigating Christian cemeteries, the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology also supported the exploration of Jewish catacombs. These efforts were probably influenced by Marchi and his encouragement of the search to rediscover Monteverde. Marchi’s interest in Jewish catacombs was based in the desire to better understand early Christianity rather than to understand the Jewish community of ancient Rome.52 A second Jewish cemetery, the Vigna Randanini, was discovered in a vineyard in 1857.53 Excavations were made by the owner, Giuseppe Randanini, and later by his son, Ignazio Randanini. Raffaele Garrucci (1812–1885) explored and published a more detailed description of Vigna Randanini54 than did his predecessor E. Herzog.55 Almost threequarters of a century later, Father Jean Baptiste Frey explored this catacomb.56

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from a Christian cemetery because of the absence of ritual symbols on the fragments found in the earth and the presence of so many identified catacombs honeycombing the area. Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome, 32. Rutgers suggests that Marchi believed 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 abrogate the Law, but rather to perfect it. … [T]he architects of the Christain catacombs brought to perfection a mode of burial that had remained imperfect among the people who had invented it.” Orazio Marucchi, Breve guida del cimitero giudaico di Vigna Randanini (Rome, 1884) dates the discovery of the catacomb to 1857 but Leon, “Jewish Catacombs,” 309, gives the date May 1, 1859, for the discovery as does Jean Baptiste Frey, Corpus inscriptionum judiacarum (Vatican City, 1936–1952), 53. Marucchi gives 1859 as the date of the first excavations, likely referring to Garrucci’s work rather than the informal explorations of the owners after discovering the catacomb in 1857. Visconti mentions in his 1861 article on the excavations of the Vigna Randanini that the Jewish hypogeum had been “discovered in these last years.” “Scavi di Vigna Randanini,” Bulletino dell’instituto de corrispondenza archeologica (1861): 16. David Noy, Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe. Volume 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. Cimitero degli antichi Ebrei scoperto recentemente in Vigna Randanini (Rome, 1862); Dissertazioni archeologiche di vario argomento (Rome, 1864–1865). “Le catacombe degli Ebrei in Vigna Rondanini [sic],” Bulletino dell’instituto de corrispondenza archeologica 1861: 91–104. “Nouvelles inscriptions inédites de la catacombe juive de la via Appia,” Rivista di archeologia cristiana 10 (1933): 27–50. Frey’s monumental Corpus inscriptionum judiacarum was long considered the authoritative reference on the Jewish catacomb inscriptions. Harry Leon updated and corrected the Jewish catacomb

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The next unexpected discovery of a Jewish catacomb, that of the Via Labicana, now called Via Casilina, was made in late 1882 by Orazio Marucchi, who was just commencing his notable career. Aware that he had come upon an ancient Jewish cemetery because of the presence of a menorah, Marucchi apprized his mentor, de Rossi, of his discovery. After viewing the site, de Rossi realized the importance of the discovery and urged Marucchi to publish a report on this catacomb.57 The investigation of the Jewish cemetery of Via Labicana/Casilina was supported by the Pontifical Commission, as were the investigations of the small catacombs of the Vigna Cimarra and the Via Appia Pignatelli (which at that time was mistakenly considered to be Jewish), discovered by quarriers on the property of the Prince of Torlonia near the Cafarella58 and explored by Nikolaus Müller. Müller went on to become the major explorer of Jewish catacombs in Italy, and at the behest of the Commission investigated the Monteverde catacomb, which had been exposed by a landslide in the early years of the twentieth century. Because Müller considered the exploration of Monteverde to be of the utmost urgency, as did the Pontifical Commission, he conducted a series of excavations with the permission of the proprietors of the estate in 1904–1905 and in the spring and autumn of 1906. The 1906 excavations were funded by the Berlin Society for the Advancement of Knowledge of Judaism. Müller had to abandon excavations in 1909, and his death in 1912 prevented him from completing his publication of this catacomb and compiling a complete description of the artifacts retrieved during his explorations. Müller had given Marucchi his incomplete Italian manuscript in 1912 before his death so that Marucchi could record it in the Acts of the Papal Academy. He had left his other records and German manuscript to his brothers, his legal heirs, who turned the material over to a scholarly committee at the New Testament Seminars, at the Royal

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inscriptions from Frey’s corpus (and followed Frey’s numbering of the inscriptions) in the Jews of Ancient Rome, and more recently, David Noy’s Jewish Inscriptions of Western Europe has become a standard reference for Jewish catacomb inscriptions, updating and correcting previous work as well as supplying detailed bibliography for each inscription. 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. Frey, CIJ, 50.

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University of Berlin. The Berlin Society for the Advancement of Knowledge of Judaism, at the committee’s request, commissioned Nikos Bees, Müller’s assistant, to complete and publish Müller’s German manuscript.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 by chance. Baron Rodolfo Kanzler, Secretary of the Commission of Sacred Archeology, later wrote the official report61 on the investigation of this region by inspectors Enrico Josi and Giorgio Schneider Graziosi. Josi and Schneider Graziosi were requested by the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology, in agreement with the Rome Superintendency of Monuments, to remove all of the artifacts because this new section of the catacomb was in such imminent danger of collapse. One of the final important dates in the history of Monteverde was 1919, significant for the investigation of the last remaining section by Roberto Paribeni.62 The 24 inscriptions retrieved from this exploration raised the total number actually discovered in the Monteverde catacomb over the years to over 200.63 This is the largest number of definitely Jewish inscriptions retrieved from any Roman catacomb. On October 14, 1928, a devastating collapse occurred, destroying the catacomb completely for all practical purposes. The area is now covered with apartment buildings. In 1918 a Jewish catacomb was accidentally disclosed by laborers strengthening the foundations of the stables on the grounds of the Villa Torlonia on the Via Nomentana. De Rossi had predicted in 1865 such a discovery when he commented on the fact that if the agger with synagogue nearby mentioned in the Publius Corfidius Signinus

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Nikolaus Müller and Nikos Bees, Die Inschriften der jüdischen Katakombe am Monteverde (Leipzig: O. Harrasowitz, 1919). “Il cimitero degli antichi Ebrei posto sulla Via Portuense,” Dissertazioni della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, ser. II, 12 (1915): 205–318. Marucchi added to the end of Müller’s publication a note and an appendix of photos of inscriptions (which had been sent by Müller without instructions about where they should be included). “Scoperta di una nouva regione del cimitero giudaico della Via Portuense.” Nuovo bullettino di archeologia cristiana 21 (1915): 152–157. “Via Portuense. Inscrizioni del cimitero giudaico di Monteverde,” Notizie degli scavi di Antichità 46 (1919): 60–70. Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, 2: 1–172, includes 202 inscriptions and 56 fragments with letters or symbols. Leon, Jews, 74, recorded 206 inscriptions.

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inscription64 was the well-known Esquiline agger (as generally agreed upon by scholars), a search should be made for Jewish cemeteries on the Via Tiburtina or Via Nomentana. True to de Rossi’s prescience, more than fifty years later Jewish catacombs were discovered under the Villa Torlonia on the Via Nomentana. In 1919 the Prince of Torlonia,65 who was also a senator, financed excavations under the technical direction of engineer Agostino Valente, assisted by the Roman Soprintendenza of excavations, represented by Roberto Paribeni. Several years later, Hermann W. Beyer and Hans Lietzmann explored these burial grounds more fully and recorded in greater detail their findings.66 Many of the artifacts from the excavations of the Jewish catacombs sponsored by the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archeology were removed and placed in the Sala Giudaica, a specially designed room in the Museo Cristiano Lateranense.67 The documentation of an exhibition of the material in the Sala Giudaica concluded with the observation that “all the scholars would be grateful to the Prefecture of the Apostolic Palaces and to the administration of the museums for having added this very important epigraphic group to the notable Christian Lateran collection, an appropriate location because of the close relationships between the Jewish monuments and those of primitive Christianity.”68 This statement could be said to characterize much of the way that the Jewish catacombs have historically been studied – they have been primarily studied from the perspective of their relationship to early Christianity and not in their own right. The exploration of the Roman Jewish catacombs has often been closely tied to the efforts of 64

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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 Corfidius Signinus, who sold fruits in a stall near the proseucha (synagogue) next to the agger. This epitaph attests to the fact that a synagogue existed at that location and could have been that of the Siburesians (residents of the Subura), at least four members of which were buried in the Torlonia catacombs, the closest burial grounds for this congregation. The history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Roman archaeology appears to be closely interwoven with the Princes of Torlonia, particularly the excavations involving the burial finds of the Jews of ancient Rome. Hermann W. Beyer and Hans Lietzmann, Die jüdische Katacombe der Villa Torlonia in Rom, Jüdische Denkmäler, vol. 1 (Berlin: W. de Gruyter and Co., 1930). The Christian Museum was founded in 1854 by Pius IX in the Lateran Palace and was moved in 1963 to the Vatican Museum as the Museo Pio Cristiano. Giorgio Schneider-Graziosi, “La nuova sala giudaica nel Museo Lateranense,” Nuovo bullettino di archeologia christiana 21 (1915): 56.

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the individuals who owned the land under which the catacombs were found (e.g., the Randaninis69 and the Prince of Torlonia), a situation quite different from the Christian catacombs, which are often associated with martyrial churches and owned by the Church rather than by any individual.

The Catacombs in the Twentieth Century In 1929, the excavation and preservation of the catacombs of Rome and Italy were officially entrusted to the Vatican in accordance with Article 33 of the Concordat, one of the three sections of the Lateran Pacts of 1929 dealing with the Roman Catholic Church’s ecclesiastical relations with the Italian state. According to the Concordat, all of the catacombs of Rome and Italy were directly administered by the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archeology. In addition to extensive work on the Christian catacombs during the twentieth century, the Pontifical Commission, restored and systematized the Jewish catacomb of Randanini and cleared and thoroughly explored the catacombs under the Villa Torlonia. The discovery in 1955–1956 of a small pagan-Christian catacomb on the Via Latina was a complete surprise because its existence had never been documented, probably because it was privately owned and did not contain venerated tombs.70 The fact that the discovery of the Via Latina catacomb was so unexpected because it had not been documented is an indication of how heavily researchers relied on texts, to the virtual exclusion of all other methods, for the exploration of the catacombs. On February 18, 1984, a revision of the Concordat was signed that called for the administration of the extant Jewish catacombs to be handed over to the Italian government. This marks the first official, formal separation of the study of the Christian and Jewish catacombs and has had significant effects on the continued maintenance and study of the Jewish catacombs, in particular. 69

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Even today, the maintenance and limited accessibility to the Randanini catacomb is made possible by the dedication and generosity of the Del Gallo family, current owners of the land over the Randanini catacomb. Antonio Ferrua, La pitture della nuova catacomba di via Latina (Vatican City: Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology, 1960).

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The Present Study and Maintenance of the Catacombs The Christian catacombs continue to be studied and maintained by the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology and are an important destination for tourists and pilgrims visiting Rome. In a speech to the Pontifical Commission on 7 June 1996, Pope John Paul II indicated the significance of the Christian catacombs as destinations for modern pilgrims, in particular those visiting Rome for the Papal Jubilee in 2000: “By visiting these monuments, one comes into contact with the evocative traces of early Christianity and one can, so to speak, tangibly sense the faith that motivated those ancient Christian communities. … Visitors will be able to feel the atmosphere of the first conversions to the Gospel. … the catacombs should be a necessary destination for Holy Year pilgrims. … Thank you [members of the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology] for your efforts and for the professional contribution you are making to evangelization with your activities.”71 In another speech at a plenary assembly of the Pontifical Commission on 16 January 1998, the pope stated: “your attention is appropriately focused on the pastoral benefits of these famous monuments of Christian antiquity [the catacombs]. … In the silence of the catacombs, the pilgrim of the Year 2000 can rediscover or revive his religious identity on a sort of spiritual journey that, by starting from the first testimonies of the faith, brings him to the reasons for the new evangelization and to its demands.”72 Could this implicit mandate of the Pontifical Commission, the organization that grants permission for access to direct study of the Christian catacombs and is responsible for their presentation to the public, be a potential obstruction to certain types of research that might be perceived as contrary to the aims of the Church? A modern scholar can productively consider, especially in light of the history of catacomb studies, whether any tension might exist between pastoral appreciation of the catacombs and scholarly research. The Jewish catacombs remain under the administration of the Italian state, which has recently undertaken a highly controversial program of

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

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privatization of Italian cultural heritage, in which culturally significant sites have been sold to international investment firms and private investors to generate funds to reduce Italy’s budget deficit or finance public works.73 What effect might privatization have on the Jewish catacombs, which have received limited attention since they have been in the hands of the Italian state since the revision of the Concordat in 1984? A recent restoration project for the Villa Torlonia, which included the construction of an underground parking lot near the villa, did not include any consideration of the Jewish catacombs located under the villa. Only after the Jewish Community in Rome publicly denounced the government in a newspaper article and negotiated “on behalf of the catacombs” was money allocated to the study of the catacombs and the plans for the underground parking lot abandoned.74 The International Council on Museums and Sites recently reported on the risk to cultural heritage when some “sites are not given the same priority as other examples of archaeological heritage, because they are manifestations of particular historical periods or cultures. … This arises as a potential threat when one cultural group does not recognize a segment of the archaeological heritage as relating to their current society’s cultural tradition. As a result, alternative periods are given greater priority for research and conservation as they are deemed to be important to the dominant society’s cultural identity.”75 Italy is cited in this report as one of the countries where this risk is present. The recent reporting of radiocarbon dates from the Torlonia catacomb76 indicates that there is still much new data to be obtained from the study of the catacombs and is an interesting modern example of the 73

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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,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 10, no. 2 (2004): 369–89. Jessica Dello Russo, “500 Million Italian Lire to Finance Jewish Catacomb Study,” 3 February 2001, http://www.catacombsociety.org/nfr_2-3-2000.html. Heritage at Risk, ICOMOS World Report 2001/2002 on Monuments and Sites in Danger (Munich: K. G. Saur Verlag, 2001). Online. http://www.international. icomos.org/risk/2001/icahm2001.htm, viewed 4 May 2005. First reported in L. V. Rutgers, A. F. M. de Jong, and K. van der Borg, “Radiocarbon 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, “Jewish Inspiration of Christian Catacombs,” Nature 436 [21 July 2005]: 339) and subsequently being reported by international media outlets.

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intersection between scholarly study and the popular press. The radiocarbon dates for the Torlonia catacomb indicate that it was in use in the second century C.E., at least a hundred years before the earliest Christian catacombs. The authors of the study suggest that this could indicate that Jewish catacombs influenced the development of the Christian catacombs, contrary to the common belief that burial in catacombs was begun as a Christian practice. They caution that no final determination can be made without radiocarbon dating from the Christian catacombs. When this story was picked up by the international media after being reported in Nature, the headlines and related stories could give readers a range of different impressions. For example, in the article “Catacombs Had Jewish Origin, Not Christian,”77 under the heading “Bursting Bubbles?” the author reports that the Italian media were “disconcerted” by the study, and that Rome’s daily Il Messaggero wrote that “the last myth on the catacombs has fallen. … the Christians did not even invent them.” In “Catacomb Find Boosts Early Christian-Jewish Ties, Study Says,”78 the author presents the findings of the study in terms of the possibility of Jewish influence on Christian catacombs and gives some detail on the historical lack of attention to the Jewish catacombs in scholarship. He quotes a classical archaeologist as saying that the Jews were “treated extremely badly” in seventeen-century Catholic Rome when catacomb studies were first intensifying and “since the 17th century, it’s been traditional that catacomb archaeology is done by members of the Catholic Church and nobody else.” In the article, “Did Christains Copy Jewish Catacombs?”79 the author clearly mentions the study’s recommendation that radiocarbon tests must be conducted for the Christian catacombs before any definite conclusions can be drawn and concludes with the statement “Regardless of whether another catacomb is found to be older … the larger point is that Jews and Christians co-existed peacefully for centuries and clearly influenced each other’s culture.”

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Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News, 26 July 2005, http://www.abc.net.au/science/ news/ancient/AncientRepublish_1422611.htm, viewed 31 March 2006. James Owen, National Geographic News, 20 July 2005, http://news.nationalgeo graphic.com /news /2005/07/0720_050720_christianity.html, viewed 31 March 2006. Michael Schirber, LiveScience, 20 July 2005, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/ id/8644832, viewed 31 March 2006.

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Conclusion To return to the opening quote from David Lowenthal, “How do we recognize and cope with this heritage, which at the same time sustains and constrains us? What benefits does it provide, what costs does it exact?” The study of the Christian catacombs has been for the most part a text-based, devotional enterprise, from which the Jewish catacombs have been excluded or to which they have been subordinated. Periods of intense interest in the catacombs can often be attributed more to religious polemics than to objective scholarship. How does this intellectual history continue to influence the study of the catacombs today? Although scholars often cannot comprehensively review the historical and intellectual context of every piece of past scholarship that they consult, reflection on the history of a field such as catacomb studies and the place of current research in that historical trajectory can only serve to deepen and broaden scholarly inquiry.

Housing the Dead

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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 commonplace of imperial Latin literature. So Statius, poet of Domitian’s court, composed a suitable lament for the death of Priscilla, wife of the mighty imperial freedmen Abascantus (Silvae 5.1).1 By leaving the composition for a suitable interval, he was able to comment on her tomb. Its massive marble construction would defy the erosion of time. The statues of goddesses that graced it would not shame the divinities themselves. The household servants (famuli ) and the usual crowd of attendants are present for the obsequies, and for the regular rituals of celebratory 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 mausoleum, if the traditional identification is right with a monument on the 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 atten1

2

I am grateful to all my fellow participants for stimulation and discussion, and in particular to my discussants, Brandon Cline and Young-Ho Park. I also owe an especial debt to Regina Gee and Robert Coates-Stephens for sharing with me their own knowledge of Roman burials. For help with sourcing illustrations, I am indebted to Adam Gutteridge, Dr. Greta Stefani (Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei), Prof. Henner von Hesberg, Dr. Sylvia Diebner (German Archaeological Institute, Rome), and Prof. Filippo Coarelli. See A. La Regina, ed., Lexicon topographicum urbis Romae: suburbium, vol. 1 (Rome: Quasar, 2001), s.v. “Appia Via,” 101 with fig.83.

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dants, servants, and others, not to speak of the dignified company of the goddesses, mean that Priscilla is not left sadly on her own, but continues in death as in life to be in good company. Another freedman, this time fictional, Trimalchio, is famous for his reflections 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 put my 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: a hundred feet of street front, two hundred of depth – for I want every kind of fruit around my ashes, and a generous vineyard. Because it really is nonsense for a person to have a nice house when he’s alive and not to worry about the one in which 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 of early imperial burials, and above all, those of the freedman.4 Again, we cannot be quite sure of the form of the tomb. The standard formula for the dimensions (so many feet in fronte, so many in agro) refers of course to the entire plot, with its ample provision for vines and flowers as in many cepotaphia. But it sounds less like the form archaeologists call a “house-tomb,” and more like the freemen burials of the period outside the Herculaneum gate of Pompeii, with a larger enclosure around a monumental altar. Specifically, the tomb of Naevoleia Tyche and Munatius Faustus, Augustalis and paganus, honoured by the Council with a 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 a platform in full official dress with five gold rings dishing out cash to the people from a bag …5 3

4

5

Nicholas Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb” in Römische Gräberstraßen. Selbstdarstellung – Status – Standard. (eds. Henner von Hesberg and Paul Zanker; Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: in Kommission bei der C. H. Beck’schen Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1987), 25. The passage is discussed in detail by J. Whitehead, “The ‘Cena Trimalchionis’ and Biographical Narration in Roman Middle-Class Art,” in Narrative and Event in Ancient Art (ed. P. J. Holliday; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 299–325. On freedmen burials, P. Zanker, “Grabreliefs römischer Freigelassener,” Jahrbuch d.deutschen archäologischen Instituts 90 (1975): 267–315. On Trimalchio, G. Rowe, “Trimalchio’s World,” Scripta classica israelica 20 (2001): 225–45. For the parallel, see V. Kockel, Die Grabbauten vor dem Herkulaner Tor in Pompeji (Mainz: P. v. Zabern, 1983), 105f.

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2.1. Tomb of Naevoleia Tyche and Munatius Faustus at Herculaneum gate of Pompeii: (a) general view of side, with ship in sail; (b) inscription on façade, with scene of liberation distribution (Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompeii. Used with permission.)

a

b

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Again, what makes the tomb a house is not so much shape as the extension of the activities of lifetime, the commercial success, the popular benefactions, and the garden which ensured that the family could have regular festivals to celebrate around the tomb, the Parentalia, the Rosalia, and the Violaria that are specified in so many inscriptions.6 People, not walls, make a house as well as a city. The tomb-as-house metaphor continued to flourish throughout the empire, as the numerous passages cited by the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae show (TLL IV, 1979 s.v. “domus” 1B2c), and into late antiquity. The Codex Theodosianus shows the deep concerns about the destruction of tombs of the successors of Constantine (who of course destroyed tombs to build his basilica for St. Peter), and the language of houses strangely interweaves their protests. So Constantius II, from Milan in 356 or 357: Those who violate the habitations of the shades, the homes, so to speak, of the dead, appear to perpetrate a two-fold crime. For they both despoil the buried dead by the destruction of their tombs, and they contaminate the living by the use of this material in living (Codex Theodosianus 9.17.4).

So not only are tombs like homes, they specifically risk contamination by confusion with the homes of the living. We learn that some men too eager for gain destroy tombs, and transfer the building 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 the elements are in part interchangeable, a point reinforced by Julian: Some men even take away from the tombs ornaments for their dining rooms and porticoes (Codex Theodosianus 9.17.5).

The very fact that tombs were places for dining rendered them the more suitable for despoliation for the benefit of the houses of the living. Funerary epigraphy itself bears out the persistence in Latin epitaphs of the house/tomb analogy. Richmond Lattimore gathered a selection of the passages, noting the frequency of the expression aeterna domus.7 6

7

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 History 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 233. R. Lattimore, Themes in Greek and Roman Epitaphs (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1962), 165ff.

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The expression is ambiguous since sometimes it refers to the Greek concept of Hades as the eternal house of the dead, but often too the reference to the tomb is explicit: haec domus aeterna est, hic sum situs, hic ero semper Here 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 the dead 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 temporary lodging house, while the funerary monument becomes the true home, the domus. As Lattimore interestingly comments, the tomb/house figure seems to be a great deal more common in Latin epitaphs than Greek; indeed, the Greek passages are “late,” meaning from Greek areas under Roman rule, and “often look very much like translations.”10 Several scholars have recently pursued the house/tomb analogy, including Keith Hopkins, Nicholas Purcell, Richard Saller, and Valerie Hope.11 In particular, John Patterson’s interesting chapter on “Living and Dying in the City of Rome” looks in parallel at the houses and the tombs of rich and poor, and ends by concluding with the observation that the link goes back to the Villanovan hut-urns of the beginning of the first millennium.12 A visit to a modern Italian cemetery like the Campo Verano in Rome, with its characteristic house-like family 8

9

10 11

12

Lattimore, Themes, 168 = Carmina Latina Epigraphica (ed. F. Buecheler; Leipzig: Teubner, 1895–97), 434.15, Pisaurum. Lattimore, Themes, 168 = Carmina Latina Epigraphica (ed. F. Buecheler; Leipzig: Teubner, 1895–97), 1488.1–2, Rome. Lattimore, Themes, 165. K. Hopkins, Death and Renewal, 201–56; Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb”; R. P. Saller, Patriarchy, Property and Death in the Roman Family (Cambridge: Cambridge 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. J. R. Patterson, “Living and Dying in the City of Rome: Houses and Tombs” in Ancient Rome: The Archaeology of the Eternal City (eds. Hazel Dodge and Jon Coulson; Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology, 2000), 259–89.

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tombs, in stark contrast to the separate gravestones of the Acattolico cemetery reserved for non-Catholic foreigners, but above all northern European and American Protestants, might lead one to think that here is one of those great cultural continuities. Is it somehow specifically Italian to link burial to house and family? But to leap from a Villanovan hut-urn to the Campo Verano seems to me altogether too risky a project. If there is some degree of persistence of the tomb/house analogy even through the ancient Roman period, the apparent continuity masks some fairly fundamental shifts. Where does the analogy actually get us, or where did it get them? Metaphors are slippery, shifting things, which refuse to be pinned down at the moment you most need to push them. The Romans evidently enjoyed playing with the analogy, and so do modern scholars talking about the Romans, but it is one thing to use the comparison as a rhetorical trope or figure, another as an argument or hypothesis. Significantly, the majority of scholars mentioned above draw attention to the house-tomb link almost as an aside. Only Richard Saller, who has some investment in the potential of extracting information about the structure of the Roman family from tombs and their inscriptions, comes close to incorporating it in his argument (and even he is admirably cautious); as Valerie Hope suggested, tombs seem to tell us more about the role of the freemen and servile household in the family than about the nuclear family. To begin to assess the significance of the tomb/house link, we need also to understand its limits. Scholars can be curiously uncritical about this. In particular, the brick-built “house-tombs” that characterise the Vatican necropolis and the Isola Sacra have led to enthusiastic appropriation of the analogy. Saller well quotes Toynbee and Ward-Perkins’s evocative 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 which the dead, in some sense or at some times, resided. Hidden away behind stout doors and seen only by members of the owners’ families on anniversaries and feast-days, when sacrifices, ceremonial meals, and ritual washings took place, all this luxuriant internal ornament and art must have been designed as much to delight 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 Excavations (New York: Pantheon Books, 1957) 113f., cited by Saller, Patriarchy, 97.

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Here the ancient trope of the grave as the eternal house of the dead is put to work to explain an apparent paradox, the disproportionate investment in the artistic decoration of the invisible inside of the tomb (“behind stout doors”), rather than the visible outside. And yet the explanation contains its own visible contradiction. The authors are well aware that the family of the dead regularly penetrate behind those stout doors for festival celebrations, and yet it is assumed that the decoration is for the benefit of the dead not the living. Or at least the survivors are building “as much to delight the dead as to gratify” themselves. But the most spectacularly decorated of these house-tombs, that of Valerius Herma, as the inscriptions tell us, was built by Valerius in his lifetime. Are the survivors building for the dead Herma, or is the living Herma building for the living, and to ensure a continued presence of the survivors at his own tomb? The tomb/house analogy is partial. Even the house-like appearance of the façade is misleading.14 We are so used to suburban houses with pitched roofs, that we instantly recognise a house in the formula of a rectangular front with door and windows and a pitched roof. But did not Roman domus roofs pitch inwards to the impluvium? Then, what sort of a house opens inwards to a single chamber? Sometimes there is provision for the sloping couches of a triclinium, either inside the tomb as in the very interesting examples of the tombs outside the gates of Ostia studied by Boschung,15 or immediately outside as in the tomb, as in the case of the tomb of Verria Zosime at the Isola Sacra. But while the triclinium is an evident derivative of, and allusion to, domestic arrangements, there is no attempt to evoke the internal architectural arrangements of a Roman house. All of which is simply to say that the analogy is a partial one, and raises the question of its limits and effectiveness. Another set of questions about limits is raised by the very frequency of house-tombs in these locations. If the house form was effective, why is it only one among many?16 Look down the streets of tombs of Pompeii, with their carefree mixture of styles, circular mausolea, altars,

14 15

16

I owe this point, and stimulating discussion of the issue, to Regina Gee. D. Boschung, “Die republikanischen und frühkauserzeitlichen Nekropolen vor den Toren Ostias” in Römische Gräberstraßen, 111–124. 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 house form 89–92, one of the briefest sections.

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miniature temples, exhedrae, columns, enclosures with the semi-carved heads of columellae, all such splendid diversity, alongside a few examples that can reasonably be classified as house-tombs, and one is bound to ask what symbolic or other function was better performed by the house-tomb that was not also performed by the others? We have already 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 the pleasure of the rhetorical trope into pushing the analogy further than it can bear. Take the columbarium, the remarkable pigeon-loft form of the late republic and early empire, which in its most dramatic examples provided capacity for several hundred urns. Keith Hopkins, whose interest is in a crowded city and its forgotten masses, sees in the columbarium the analogue to the metropolitan insula, with its many floors and packed tenements.17 Nicholas Purcell by contrast, who observes that the most important examples were built for the servile households and dependants of the high aristocracy, says the analogy is rather with the domus “with its endless attics and tabernae and ramifications for the long and short-term stay of the dependents, not the insula.”18 But close though Purcell’s image of the domus is to my own, I cannot adjudicate here between Hopkins and Purcell, for the real architecture of domestic space (internal divisions and floors) is simply absent, and each 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 more thorough and critical survey of the linkage of house and tomb. Part of what 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 far until it can be incorporated into a hypothesis, and this is what I would like, in however provisional a form, to offer. In doing so I shall lean heavily on what I have already written about the Roman house. I then suggested that one way in which to understand the underlying dynamic of the Roman house was to see it as a tension between two different dimensions or “axes.” The house is Janus-like, looking in two directions, outwards and inwards. It looks outwards to the world beyond its doors, foris, and to those visitors from outside who penetrate its doors. In looking to the outsiders (strangers, clients, guests, friends, outsiders in varying degrees) it seeks to impress, and makes statements about the 17 18

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

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status and identity of the insiders. Simultaneously it looks inwards, domi, for it is a space also articulated for the insiders, who have their own crucial social distinctions: slave and free, men and women, adults and children. The complexity of reading Roman domestic space, I argued, derives the imperative for the same set of spaces to communicate in both directions at once, inside and outside.19 Similar considerations, I now suggest, are equally valid for the Roman tomb. It looks outward, to the passing visitor, the hospes often invoked by the epitaph, the unknown stranger who stands for everybody, since the tomb is deliberately placed (or at least in many cases is placed) close to the major thoroughfares leading into the city. Many tombs, not least that of Trimalchio, had their eye primarily to the passerby. Tombs are consequently major public declarations of identity and status, the assumption implicit in the subtitle of Römische Gräberstraßen – Selbstdarstellung-Status-Standard. But they also look inward, to a closed circle of the family, those who gather with their wine and roses and violets on the festal days, and gradually, one by one, take their resting places within. One of the fundamental functions of funerary rites is the reintegration of the family group, shattered by the brutality of loss.20 The family is not ruptured, but continues: funeral masks, portrait statues, inscriptions work to maintain the continuity. If Toynbee and Ward-Perkins are surprised that the art is inside behind closed doors, their surprise is that this function has taken precedence over the function of declarations of identity and status to the world outside. This might suggest a simple dichotomy: the exterior aspects of the tomb serve an outwards-looking function, the interior aspects serve an inward-looking function. But just as with the house, it is vital to appreciate that the outwards/inwards divide is more complex than that. In the case of the house, simplistic distinctions of “public” versus “private” areas are not helpful: the public penetrates the most private recesses of the house (the master’s bedroom, or the latrine by the kitchen), and the private penetrates the public (women and children are not kept away from the public area of the atrium but share it, and

19

20

A. Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 8–12. R. W. Chapman, I. Kinnes, K. Randesborg, eds, The Archaeology of Death (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); I. Morris, Death-Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 10.

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slaves are present at every point). In the case of the tomb, the gaze of the passerby may rest on the family united in its festivities, and to some extent (varying greatly from case to case) the tomb serves precisely as a public representation of the intimate unit of the family. Who is displayed is a critical decision. Trimalchio in a tantrum threatens Fortunata to exclude her statue from his tomb; he is confident he wants to display his own superabundant importance, and will commit himself on a puppy to be carved at his feet, but is less certain whether he 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 some extent put the family unit on public display that Saller and Shaw could make such telling use of their inscriptions.21 My hypothesis, then, proposes that both functions – external and internal – are simultaneously present in all Roman burials, but that the balance and relationship between them can vary substantially, and that we can detect changing patterns over time. To illustrate the concept, I offer one Pompeian example of what might be termed the Trimalchio syndrome, where the balance seems to be tipped strongly in favour of the external function, and yet the internal function is indeed present, despite a certain level of uncertainty. This is the tomb of Vesonius 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 a simple opening and pediment on a high podium, looking down on the street. Within the portico are three statues, two males flanking one female. The titulus identifies the characters: P(ublius) Vesonius Phileros, G(aiae) l(ibertus), Augustalis, his patrona, Vesonia P(ubli) f(ilia), and M(arcus) Ofellius Faustus M(arci) L(ibertus) amicus. Here is indeed a strange family grouping, the freedman and his female patron, and an unrelated man tied only by friendship. The monument belongs to the familiar type of one erected in the life of the commemorator/commemorated, vivos monument(um) fecit sibi et suis. Here is conspicuous self-display; the element of status display is only enhanced by the fact that 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

22

R. P. Saller and B. Shaw, “Tombstones and Roman Family Relations in the Principate: Civilians, Soldiers and Slaves.” JRS 74 (1984): 124–56. A. D’Ambrosio and S. De Caro, Un impegno per Pompei. Fotopiano e documentazione della necropoli di Porta Nocera (Milan, 1983), tomb number 23 OS.

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2.2. Tomb of Vesonius Phileros at Porta Nocera necropolis, Pompeii: (a) statues of Vesonius, Vesonia, and Orfellius; (b) inscription to three commemorated persons, with later inscription added below cursing Orfellius (Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompeii. Used with permission.)

a

b

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And yet his monument constitutes a pseudo-family, displays it, and then goes on in a second and longer inscription to display the despair at the breakdown of the group so constituted and displayed.23 Hospes paullisper morare si non est molestum (“Stranger, stay a while if 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 to be my friend! By him accusers were instigated against me and proceedings were started. I thank the gods and my own innocence, I am freed of all nuisance. The one of us who lies, him may neither the gods of the house nor the gods below receive.”24 The curse upon the false friend is eloquent of the expectations of the tomb. For the very act of including his 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 then is to facilitate that link. The display of those united around the di penates, the family gods of the living house, projects their unity into the underworld, the house of the dead. In the end, Vesonius stands stripped to eternity of his pseudo-family, uncertain what to display to the outside world, to the passing hospes. But we should not shed a tear for him too hastily. One of the most important features of Pompeian tombs is the survival within them of individual headstones, called columellae, which often bear the name of the buried (Fig. 2.3). There were no less than 18 such headstones within Vesonius’s tomb. Apart from himself and his patrona, Vesonia, we find a Vesonius Proculus, who died at age 13, a Vesonia Urbana, who lived to 20, and a (H)eliodorus, who lived to 18. At this point we can only guess the story. The patrona sounds to have been his partner as well as former owner. Presumably they are the parents of Vesonius Proculus and Vesonia Urbana. Heliodorus should be one of their slaves, as in all likelihood are the 13 other unnamed columellae, unless any of them were freedmen. At least we can be confident Marcus Ofellius was not 23

24

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. 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 subiecti et iudicia instaurata. Deis/ gratias ago et meae innocentiae: omni molestia liberatus 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.”

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2.3. Columellae within tomb of Vesonius Phileros at Porta Nocera necropolis, Pompeii: (a) general view of columellae in interior of tomb; (b) detail of columella of (H)eliodorus. (Upper photograph by William van Adringa. Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei. Used with permission.)

b

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among them. The interior of the tomb thus reconstitutes the family so partially glimpsed on the exterior.25 To explore in detail this two-faced internal/external aspect of the tomb throughout Roman Italy would strain the limits of space and time of this paper. Instead, I wish to illustrate what seem to be the substantial changes over time of Roman practice by exemplifying three moments: the first, a mid-Republican moment when Roman material culture still has palpable links to Etruscan practice, through the tomb of the Scipios; the second, a moment of late Republican/early imperial transition seen through the necropolis of the Porta Nocera at Pompeii; the third, the high imperial tradition of the “house-tombs” of the metropolis 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 as much as the continuities.

The Mid-Republic and the Tomb of the Scipios The dearth of evidence from Rome of either houses or tombs predating the late Republic, coupled with the sharp imbalance in evidence from Etruria in the same period between abundant tombs and scarce houses, has long meant that Etruscan tombs have had to work very heavily to supply the gaps in our knowledge of housing in both areas, and of tombs in Rome.26 Carandini’s excavations at the foot of the Palatine, coupled with the chance discovery of a suburban villa site beneath Renzo Piano’s new Auditorium, now mean we are on better ground in talking about Roman houses of the period between the sixth and second centuries. Even so, it is striking to observe how in the publication of the Palatine houses by Carandini and Carafa, Etruscan tombs are still put under heavy contribution to establish the development of the atrium houses.27 Just how plausible are their reconstructions of house plans of sixth-century Roman atriate houses with central impluvia is not a theme I wish to pursue here, though it must be said it takes cour25 26 27

For the inscriptions, D’Ambrosio and De Caro, Un impegno per Pompei. Hesberg, Monumenta, 29–32 for an overview of this early period. 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: Istituto poligrafico dello Stato 1995), esp. 237ff., 266 ff.

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age to reconstruct an entire atrium-house when the evidence is the odd disjointed fragment of walling. That Etruscan tombs have long seemed to offer a reflection of housing is scarcely surprising. Consider the striking transformation that takes places in the Banditaccia necropolis of Cerveteri in the late archaic period. In the seventh century the cemetery is characterised by circular tumuli, some very large, some quite modest. The burial chambers beneath them appear in plan rather like bacilli: long corridors with short side elements towards the end, and a culminating chamber. Then in the early sixth century the form of the burial chambers beneath the tumuli changes significantly. They become square in plan, with a characteristic three-fold division: short entrance flanked by two chambers lead to a wide central chamber, and at its back, a group of three equal cells. The formal links with the atrium house seem irresistible: fauces flanked by two rooms lead into atrium, leading to tablinum flanked by two rooms. Then in the late sixth century, the tumulus shell is dropped, to be replaced by neatly aligned streets of “cube tombs” (tombe a dado). We seem to be witnessing an urban revolution, a move from villages of huts to colonial cities laid out on a grid pattern. At the same period we find these neat streets of tombs at a number of other sites, including the necropolis at Crocifisso del Tufo at Orvieto, and the Monterozzi cemetery at Tarquinia. It seems quite reasonable to interpret these tombs as deliberately evoking a domestic parallel. This seems to be underlined by the evocation of domestic features like windows, doors, and pilasters, and particularly by the ceilings which often evoke a pitched roof, with central beam and downwards-sloping rafters. Yet these pitched roofs are as ambivalent as those of the Vatican “house tombs.” Colonna, followed by Carandini, argues strongly for the introduction of the compluviate roof and central impluvium from as early as the sixth century.28 That is the rereading of the fifth-century houses of Marzabotto, long supposed to have been covered by displuviate, outwardsloping, pitched roofs, but now argued on the basis of their internal drainage arrangements to have been compluviate. If it is the case that as early as the sixth and fifth centuries, the characteristic image of the atrium was the inwards sloping roof and impluvium, were the tombs with their outwards-sloping roofs really evoking atria? 28

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

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Short of substantial new evidence about early housing in both Rome and Etruria, this debate is liable to loop in circles. But for present purposes, it is enough to observe that Etruscan tombs persistently had features 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 furnishings which are at least partly domestic (though also partly ritual, pointing to sacrifice). But where the domestic imagery gains its relevance is in the function of such tombs in reconstituting and representing the family. The architecture in itself, by creating a series of beds, arranged with a strong sense of hierarchy, the preferred position being the central niche of the “tablinum,” and possibilities of subgroupings in the lateral chambers, points to the desire to represent the occupants as a structured group. The abundant epigraphic material confirms that the typical group was the multigenerational family. A classic example, from a period of close interaction with the middle Republican Roman aristocracy, is the tomb of the Volumnii at Perugia.29 Dating from the late third century, the tomb is located outside the town at the bottom of the hill. Externally it is unremarkable: steps lead down to an underground chamber hewn from the soft tufo. At the bottom is a large rectangular hall (“atrium”) with a pitched roof and rafters, with a main chamber (“tablinum”) on the central axis, and two lateral chambers (Fig. 2.4). The main chamber contains the remains of seven named members of the Volumnius/Velimna family. Arnth Velimnas, the founder of the tomb, dominates from his high couch with pillows and drapes, held aloft by two winged daemons. To the left, his daughter Veilia Velimnei is the one female of the group, the unmarried daughter of Arnth. Male descendants (Thefri, Avle, Larth, and Vel) stretch down to the last, early imperial, member of the group, Publius Volumnius Violens, Roman enough to Latinise his script and name, but still Etruscan enough to give his matronym. His elegantly carved ash urn is in the form of a rectangular building with a pitched and tiled roof, double doors, and Corinthian pilasters; a house, it is normally said, though the form is a great deal closer to a temple than a house. I linger over this Etruscan background in order to bring out a point relevant to the issue of the internal/external functions of the tomb. 29

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

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

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

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have descended the stairs does it make its impression, as is true of the famous frescoed tombs of Tarquinia.30 The internal function of all these tombs, on the other hand, is very strong. They go to considerable lengths to construct the family group as a living continuity. Architectural evocations of domestic structures, hierarchical disposition of multiple burial couches, decorative details, frequently evoking the theme of banqueting, figured representations of the dead, and extensive inscriptions underlining their relationships, all work together to ensure that the living visitor to the chamber will be impressed, and presumably identify strongly with the family group to which they by definition belong. These tombs, unlike those of the via Appia, were not designed for tourists. The tomb of the Scipios off the via Appia finds itself in an ambivalent role (Figs. 2.5–7). As one of the rare surviving examples of a burial place of a noble family from the middle Republic, it has to serve as the illustration of everything Polybius has to say about the vital importance of display of family continuity in the ritual of a noble Roman funeral.31 Certainly other families made impressive tombs, though it is from the literature that we hear how the tomb of the Marcelli at the Porta Capena had three statues with the notable inscription, “three Marcelli nine times consul”;32 and Cicero famously attests the impression made on one leaving the Porta Capena by the tombs of “Calatinus, the Scipiones, the Servilii and the Metelli” (Tusculan Disputations 1.7.13). Yet we know, and Cicero remarks on it, that the Cornelii were in some sense exceptions in their funerary practice: they continued to follow the old Roman practice of inhumation when cremation had become the standard Roman practice, the mos Romanus as Tacitus calls

30

31

32

For overviews, S. Haynes, Etruscan Civilization, 142–71; F. Prayon, “Architecture” in Etruscan Life and Afterlife (ed. L. Bonfante; Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1986), 174–93. The third-century tomb from the Esquiline with its historical paintings of the Fabii and Fannii, suggestive of Fabius Pictor, is another possible example: F. Coarelli, Roma medio repubblicana: aspetti culturali di Roma e del Lazio nei secoli IV e III a.C. (Rome, 1973), 200–208; E. La Rocca, “Linguaggio artistico e ideologia politica a Roma in età repubblicana,” in Roma e l’Italia: Radices Imperii (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. 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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2.5. Tomb of the Scipiones, Rome, tomb of Scipio Barbatus (Filippo Coarelli. Used with permission.)

it.33 Their sepulcrum may have been in some ways a deliberate display of a consciously maintained difference. As analysed by Coarelli, the tomb goes back in its earliest form to the 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 the founder, and like Arnth Velimnas, he dominates his family from the axial position at the center at the back of the tomb (Fig. 2.5). Unlike the tomb of the Volumnii, this is rather crudely hewn from the tufo. The main chamber is broadly square in plan, with four tufo pillars left

33

34

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. F. Coarelli, Il sepolcro degli Scipioni (1972), reprinted in Revixit Ars. Arte e ideologia 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.

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more of less symmetrically disposed (Fig. 2.6). The eventual capacity of the tomb was 30 couches, which, Coarelli points out, corresponds with the likely total of members of the family between the early third and mid-second centuries. This is to say that the interior of the tomb had already reached capacity in the mid-second century when its façade was rebuilt, as Coarelli hypothesizes, by Scipio Aemilianus himself (Fig. 2.7). Alternatively, one might argue that the interior was remodelled at this period to fit the existing burials. Only nine of the sarcophagi survive, each with an inscription, six in verse. All the verses are in Saturnians, except the last in the series, that for the praetor of 139 B.C.E., which is in elegiac couplets. Since Saturnians were standard in early Latin poetry (such as Livius Andronicus and Naevius), and the shift to Greek verse forms (elegiacs and hexameters) is linked with Ennius, it is particularly intriguing to know what the role of Ennius was in the reshaping of this tomb. For Cicero and others attest Ennius’s statue there (pro Archia 22), while Livy (38.56.4) reports that its façade carried statues of three men, Scipio Africanus, Scipio Asiaticus, and Ennius. The use by the Scipios of verse epitaphs evidently correlates with their persistent patronage of poets.35 We cannot draw comparisons or make contrasts between the Scipionic tomb and its Roman mid-republican rivals, for lack of evidence, but at least we can make some comparisons with the tomb of the Volumnii. Both are multigenerational family tombs, making much of the agnatic male descent line. As with the Volumnii, the Scipios have only one surviving female sarcophagus, that of Paulla Cornelia, wife of Hispallus, which is slipped behind that of the founder Barbatus. They stretch over at least five generations, though the total duration of usage of the tomb was extended by the fact that the Cornelii Lentuli used it in the early empire for the incineration burials. In so far as it underlines the importance of the agnatic descent group, it reflects perfectly Polybius’s account of the aristocratic funeral and its parade of impersonated ancestors. Like the Volumnii tomb, it originally contained portraits in peperino; one was stolen, another has been attributed to 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 in Roman 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.)

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dates.36 Like the Volumnii tomb, care is taken by the inscriptions to identify the name and relationships of the commemorated, but the verse inscriptions also allow the res gestae to be celebrated. It is not easy to imagine that the envisaged audience of the interior of the Scipio tomb was anyone other than the Scipios themselves. There were certainly parts of the noble funerary ritual that were designed to impress the public and consolidate the reputation and political clout of the family, particularly the parade and public speeches described by Polybius. But the sarcophagi and their verse inscriptions did not serve, even if they reflected, this external function. Rather we are in the world described by Sallust in the preface to the Jugurthine War: I have often heard that Q. (Fabius) Maximus and P. Scipio, among other leading figures in our city, used to say that when they looked at the images of their ancestors, they felt strongly inspired to virtue (Bellum Iugurthinum 4.5).

The visit to the tomb, like the viewing of ancestral portraits, serves to admonish and inspire new generations, consolidating the family, constructing it as a continuity over time.37 There was of course an external aspect to the tomb, in the façade which partly survives, but has to be reconstructed as it is by Coarelli as a more magnificent example of mid-second-century “hellenistic” architecture in order to accommodate the statues described by Cicero and Livy. Two points may be made here. The first is that the location of the tomb, set back from the main road and at an angle to it, seems illdesigned to catch the attention of passersby on the via Appia. Assuming it is right that Scipio Barbatus established its location, the implication is that in the early third century this external function of the tomb was not regarded as primary. Only in a second moment does it acquire an imposing façade, and by then it is too late to remedy the location. Possibly the monumental façade raised its visibility sufficiently to be seen from the junction where the via Appia and the via Latina part, though that would require the absence of competing structures on the intervening triangle of land. At least Cicero’s words suggest that it made 36

37

Note however that the supposed portrait of Ennius must be one of the earlier Scipiones,: Coarelli, Il sepolcro degli Scipioni, 232–37; L. Giuliani, Bildnis und Botschaft: hermeutische Untersuchungen zur Bildniskunst der römischen Republik (Frankfort: Suhrkamp,1986), 172–75. On noble funerary rituals, see J. Bodel, “Death on Display: Looking at Roman Funerals,” 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 point is to observe the misfit between the figures celebrated, as least as recounted to us by literary sources, and the inhabitants of the tomb itself. Scipio Africanus was buried at Liternum, and there is some doubt whether the poet Ennius was buried here or at his native Rudiae. The façade paraded a rather different view of the Scipiones from the multigenerational lesson contained within. It is, as we have already remarked, dangerous to generalise from a single instance. But it might be reasonable to hypothesize that the Roman tombs of the early to middle Republic were closer to those of contemporary Etruria than of the late Republic. The prominent display of eye-catching funerary monuments along the Appian and other ways presents itself to us as a feature of the late Republic, from the midsecond 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 of old traditions, a monumentalization of the popular impact of the funerary ritual.38 As the emphasis shifts from projecting the continuity of the household beyond death to display of magnificence, the architectural 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 century B.C.E. and the first C.E., as we meet them in Rome, Pompeii, Sarsina, Aquileia, and the locations assembled in Römische Gräberstraßen, is a formal diversity. Beyond doubt that diversity reflects a strong impulse to competitive display. But does it say more than that? The authors note the failure of their conference to establish a semantics of the diverse topologies.39 But did the variety have a semantic significance at all? If you chose an altar or a mini-temple, were you showing yourself more 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

39

Cf. von Hesberg and Zanker, Römische Gräberstraßen, 9; von Hesberg, Monumenta 32–38. Cf. von Hesberg and Zanker, Römische Gräberstraßen, 11. The typology is supplied by von Hesberg, Monumenta ch.4.

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house-façade, more domestic? What is surely most striking about this formal diversity is its indifference. The inscriptions follow the same formulae on all types of structure. There is no meaningful distinction of the burials of magistrates versus freedmen, or of Augustales versus ordinary freedmen, of men against women, of people of different ethnic origin, or even of period. As we move down the extraordinary clutter of the via Nocera necropolis, we can see the instinct to keep ringing the changes. We can see too the vast differences between rich and poor, from Eumachia’s gigantic semicircular exhedra construction at one extreme (11 OS), to the fragile little niche tomb of Castricia Prisca with its perished plaster decoration of garlands, cupids, and birds (25 OS). But can we say that they are making different statements about their identity, status, or family affiliations? For all the paraded difference, these tombs have in fact certain fundamental factors in common. The variety of the external aspects conceals a consistent relationship between the external and internal functions of the tomb. Architectural variety in the outward appearance of the monumentum reflects the common desire to catch the eye of the passersby and inform them about the identity of those who lie buried. Hospes, paullisper morare, si non tibi molestum est …There are so many others 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 out more explicitly than others, but they all have a tale to tell. In contrast to the homogeneous “cube tombs” of Cerveteri or Orvieto, which neither stand on the main road, nor seek to stand out architecturally, nor contain more than minimal inscriptional evidence about the occupants (maybe a family name incised above the lintel), inscriptions and portraits reward the stranger who tarries outside the Porta Nocera. We may be struck by how strong was the instinct to portray on the exterior of the tomb. Portraits are common in Etruscan cemeteries too, but they belong, together with the inscriptions, on the inside, within the family chamber. The typical Etruscan portrait is a full figure reclining, either at full length on the lid of the sarcophagus, or in abbreviated form above an ash-urn. Roman funerary portraiture shows as much variety as the architecture of the tombs: full-length standing figures, like Vesonius’s group, or Marcus Octavius and Vertia Philumina a few tombs down at 13 OS, or seated figures, like the couple on the far side of Eumachia’s tomb (9 OS), reduced to anonymity by the removal of their inscription, or simple portrait busts, most strikingly in the tomb of 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 asymmetrical positions to the right display the chunky busts of Flavius Philoxenus and Flavia Agathe (Fig. 2.8). The tomb within has two separate chambers; the western one contained the ollae, identified by labels in carbon, as Flavius Philoxenus and Flavia Agathe. The external portraits therefore correspond to the chamber within, in relation to which they are in fact symmetrically placed, rather than to the monument as a whole. The Flavii help to underline the vital point: that the external portraiture is a mirror of the internal function of the tomb, which consists in burial chamber, pots containing ashes, and further identifying labels. Thanks to the superb publication of the old excavations at Porta Nocera by Stefano De Caro and Antonio D’Ambrosio, and above all to their extension of the line of graves in a new excavation,40 we can restore the fragile traces of the internal aspects of these tombs which are concealed to the modern visitor as to the ancient passerby. The use of carbon to record the names of the Flavii within reminds us of how the numerous apparently anonymous burials in columbaria and chamber tombs must in fact have had labels in evanescent materials, carbon or red pigment on terracotta, plaster, and surely frequently wood. We accept far too easily the idea that naming was a privilege for the master of the house and his close family; it is the use of incised marble that is the privilege. What makes this point most forcefully at Pompeii is the use of columellae within the chamber to mark the burial place of the individual. These headstones, as we have seen with Vesonius’s tomb, evoke the shape of a head without attempting a portrait. The rear part is rounded, and in the case of females often sketches out a head of hair. Their front surface is always flat, and serves as a support for an inscription. It is these columellae, rather than the external inscriptions or portraits, which provide the evidence for the location of the buried. The most remarkable example is that of Munatius Faustus and Naevoleia Tyche (Fig. 2.9). We have already met this couple on the splendidly carved marble altar outside the Herculaneum gate, with their ship, like Trimalchio’s, in full sail. But that altar, it would appear, was a cenotaph, 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 di scavo 1983,” Römische Gräberstraßen, 199–228.

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a gabled roof. The fact that it is one of a pair adds to the vague impression of a row of houses. Externally, a marble inscription on the gable identifies C. Munatius Faustus Augustal(is) et pagan(us) d(ecreto) d(ecurionum) sibi et Naevoleiae Tyche coniugi. Internally, there are eight columellae, recording Munatius Faustus himself (misspelt as ‘Fausus’), one L. Naevoleius Eutrape(lus), taken to be the freedmen of Naevoleia, but perhaps more plausibly her father or patron, the freedwoman Munatia Euche, and five slaves, Helpis, Primigenia, Arsinoe, and Psyche, all of whom died at the age of 3 or less, and Atimetus who died at 26. The interesting absentee is Naevoleia Tyche; and though it has been assumed that the new tomb at the Herculaneum gate was a cenotaph, there is surely a chance that she is buried there, having outlived her husband; if indeed she was not still alive at the moment of the eruption, and still planning to transfer her husband’s remains to their fancy new tomb.41 I take one further illustration of the inward/outward rhythm of the Porta Nocera burials from the new excavations, where because of their freshness, the significance of the columellae is particularly visible. Tomb F north is formally similar to the tomb of Munatius Faustus: a rectangular enclosure with a gabled roof. In the gable, the inscription announces C. Veranius Rufus Q.f. IIvir. It is worth taking note that this city magistrate, a duumvir, has exactly the same tomb type as an Augustalis, and that in neither case is the tomb particularly eye-catching. The dedication is made by his father’s freedwoman and one may assume his partner: Verania Q.l. Clara optimo patrono sibi et suis. Inside 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 given not as duumvir but aedile, a usage which is paralleled in Pompeii (that is to say, the aediles described themselves, being a pair, as duumvirs, so creating a constructive confusion of their precise rank). The other four columellae are without inscriptions, or as I prefer to put it, without surviving legible labels. We have seen in the cases of Veranius and Verania, Munatius and Naevoleia, Flavius Philoxeus and Flavia Agathe, and Vesonius Phileros, that there is a close relationship between the external and internal aspects of the tomb. The essential feature of the tomb is in fact the enclosure 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.)

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and here too presumably that the ritual activities of the surviving family focused on the Parentalia and the days of roses and violets. But in comparison to the Etruscan tombs, they have been turned inside out. The columellae represent minimalist markers of the presence of the deceased; the portraits and detailed inscriptions are displayed for public consumption on the outside. The phenomenon is so marked that we run the risk of noticing only the external aspects and therefore the external function: we think of the Roman tomb as a monumentum to boast the status of the dead to the outside world. In truth, this is only the outwards face of a structure that still has a critical internal function in reconstituting the family. By my argument, then, these tombs are indeed parallel to the houses of the living. One notable feature of the Pompeian domus is that the external function (the desire to impress the visitor from outside) is so strong that it almost overwhelms the internal functions of a family structure. Women and children prove relatively elusive within the house. But of course the internal function is still there. The link between tombs and houses lies not in their typology (if the tomb of Munatius Faustus at the Porta Nocera is more house-like, his altar-tomb at the Porta Ercolano is less so), but in their management of the relationship of the external and internal function. Where the tombs of this late republican/early imperial period seem to be historically distinctive is in the extraordinary degree of importance attributed to the external function; and that, by no coincidence, is also true of the treatment of domestic space.

Valerius Herma and the High Imperial Necropolis My third and last moment is the mid-second century C.E. floruit of the street of the tombs beneath the Vatican (Fig. 2.10). That they were in some sense “representative” is suggested by the close typological parallels with the Isola Sacra necropolis with its tight chronological range from Trajanic to Severan.42 True, we are looking at burials overwhelmingly of freedmen, and not of the urban elite. Equally, the poor are 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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2.10. Vatican (St. Peter’s necropolis), plan and section. (German Archaeological Institute. Used with permission.)

equally important necropolis of the Vatican autopark. Thanks to Margareta Steinby’s careful publication, we can recover the full clutter of an ancient graveyard, where the neat rectangular structures of chamber tombs are surrounded by a dense spread of simpler burials, in urns, or capuchin tents of tiles, or simple wooden boxes that have rotted away.43 That is a vital reminder that brick-built chamber tombs were no universal 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, as we have seen, has its limits; but coming to this material from the Pompeian Porta Nocera, what must surely strike us is a sense of uniformity. It is because modern houses often come in rows of uniform brick structures that the image seems irrepressible. Although, as Eck has shown, there is a considerable range in size of recorded plots that follow the formula, so many feet in fronte, so many in agro, there is a notable cluster around a uniform size of around 10–12 feet wide and as many deep.45 To call these frontages homogeneous is not to say they are without individuality: the occasional scenes at the Isola Sacra representing the trade activities of the deceased are especially 43

44

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E. M. Steinby, C. Coletti, M. B. Carre, and M. T. Cipriano, 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). Toynbee and Ward-Perkins, Shrine of St. Peter, 132ff.; H. von Hesberg, “Planung und Ausgestaltung der Nekropolen Roms im 2. Jh. n. Chr,” Römische Gräberstraßen, 43–60. W. Eck, “Römische Grabinschriften. Aussageabsicht und Aussagefähigkeit im funerären Kontext,” Römische Gräberstraßen, 61–84.

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effective in this sense. Nevertheless, compared to the competitive diversity of the Pompeian streets, there seems little attempt to catch the eye of the passerby. The one pyramid at the Isola Sacra is not, like that 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 the relative importance of the external and internal function. Valerius Herma’s tomb is a powerful illustration because of the sheer richness of its internal decoration (Figs. 2.11–15).46 The magnificent stucco work enriches an internal architecture elegantly articulated with niches, and ranges statues of the gods and philosophers, and of Valerius Herma, his wife, daughter, son, and perhaps patron. As in Pompeii, there is a close relationship between the presentation outside, in the form of an inscription, and that inside. From outside, we meet the family: C Valerius Herma fecit et Flaviae T.f. Olympiadi coiugi et Valeriae Maximae filiae et C Valerio Olympiano filio et suis libertis libertabusque posterisque eorum.

The classic nuclear family grouping is extended, just as at Pompeii and across Italy, by the generic grouping of freedmen and freedwomen and their descendants. But it is only inside that we can get a grip on the family. Flavius Herma presents himself repeatedly, almost obsessively.47 The marble panel of his sarcophagus reintroduces himself and his wife: C Valerius Herma dum vivo mihi feci et Flaviae T.f. coiugi.

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47

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

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

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2.12. Tomb of Valerius Herma, necropolis of the Vatican, St. Peter’s, central section with sarcophagus of Herma. (German Archaeological Institute. Used with permission.)

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2.13. Tomb of Valerius Herma, necropolis of the Vatican, St. Peter’s, marble portrait of Herma (a), death mask (b) (German Archaeological Institute in Rome. Used with permission.)

a

b

71

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a

b

2.14. Tomb of Valerius Herma, necropolis of the Vatican, St. Peter’s, gilded stucco portrait of son Valerius Olympianus (a) and death mask (b). (German Archaeological Institute in Rome. Used with permission.)

2.15. Tomb of Valerius Herma, necropolis of the Vatican, St. Peter’s, death mask of infant. (German Archaeological Institute in Rome. Used with permission.)

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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 sarcophagus: C Valerio Olympiano qui vixit annis IIII menses V dies XIII C Valerius Herma pater.

The early loss of his four-year-old son could well be the occasion of his building of a tomb “dum vivo.” But it could equally have been on the loss of his 12-year-old daughter, Valeria Maxima, whose titulus can be reconstructed on the model of her brother’s: [Valeriae] C.f. M[aximae quae vixit an]nis XII [mens.? dieb. ? C Valerius Herma pater.]

Since both dead children figure on the titulus at the entrance, we can assume both children died before the tomb’s construction. Valerius also marked the loss of a foster-child of 3 years old, Valerius Asiaticus: C Valerio Asiatico alumno C Valerius Herma qui vixit an. III m. XI d. III.

Asiaticus must have become alumnus of Herma on the death of his mother, Asia, who is commemorated by her husband, Valerius Princeps, 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 manumission and fostership. But it also extends to another alumnus, an 8 year old from a different family: C Appaieni Cati qui vix. ann. VIII m. X d. XXVIII alumno dulc.cui locum optulit C Val. Herma in frontf (sic) ped. V sarcofaggo terra deposito.

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Finally, the family is extended to the wife of a freedman, Valerius Eutychas, though she was apparently a slave: Dynateni C Valerius Eutychas coiugi benemerenti fecit permissu C Valeri Hermaes patroni optimi.

The presence of Herma himself is felt massively in this epigraphic ensemble. So it is in the stucco decoration of the tomb. The figure of the god which occupies the central niche opposite the entrance is too damaged for certain identification, but Mielsch feels confident in seeing in him Hermes (rather than Guarducci’s Apollo/Harpocrates). Even more striking, columns are replaced in the decoration by the squared pilasters of Herms; of the original 23 Herms, 10 heads survive. Since these are a non-standard decorative form for a tomb, one infers that Herma is playing a deliberate game with his name. His self-representation goes far beyond punning. In the bearded figure in sacrificial pose on the west wall, Mielsch identifies the portrait of Valerius Herma (Guarducci had seen this implausibly as the emperor Marcus), in the female figures that flank him, his daughter Valeria Maxima, his wife Flavia Olympias. An older male figure is identified as his patron, C. Valerius. But these stucco representations (assuming that they do indeed consist in the family group) are backed up by two well-carved marble portraits, of a bearded man and an idealized woman wearing the turban-like hairnet that is typical of the second century. They are identified as Valerius Herma (Fig. 2.13a) and Flavia Olympias. Herma might be thought to have done well in terms of self-reproduction. But he is not finished. His wife seems to be subject of a further portrait, this time in stucco, looking older and more tight-lipped, but wearing the same turban-like hairnet. It is strange that these remarkable portraits have not attracted more attention from those concerned with “realism” and “idealism” in Roman portraiture. The stucco portrait series continues. A young woman with wavy hair, and a young boy with short-cut hair with a quiff at the back, are taken to be portraits of the prematurely dead Valeria Maxima and Valerius Olympianus. In the latter case, the portrait is gilded, indicating an especial importance. Even so, the portrait gallery is not complete. Three startling death masks complete the collection. One (surviving as a mould) shows a bearded figure so close to the bearded portrait as to make the choice of

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Valerius Herma seem inescapable (Fig. 2.13b). The final two, even more powerful, show a young boy with long eyelashes, hard not to take as the 4-year-old Valerius Olympianus (Fig. 2.14), and an even younger child, not identified by Mielsch, though the fosterchild Valerius Asiaticus might be a candidate (Fig. 2.15). After this extraordinary catalogue of self-representation, let us take stock. Without pushing any of the individual identifications too hard, it is fairly evident that Valerius Herma projects himself inside his tomb with an insistence that puts even a Trimalchio to shame. From outside we see him in the titulus; inside we see him in his own sarcophagus inscription, and in those of his many dependents. His face looks down on us from the stucco decoration, from a marble bust, and even from a death mask. He ensures that his wife is also represented multiply within, along with his children and possibly alumni. His theophoric name seems to play even into the decorative scheme of herms. But while we cannot mistake the urgency of his projection of himself and his family and dependents, it is only from within the tomb that we can pick up the message. Unlike Trimalchio, he is not interested in making an ostentatious statement about himself to the world: his trim brick façade speaks respectability but not vanity. It is for the benefit of himself and his close circle that he makes his not inconsiderable financial investment. We have seen Toynbee and Ward-Perkins comment with surprise on the richness of the internal decoration – indeed, the quality is quite remarkable. But we may find difficulty with their concept 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 the living, that is to say Valerius himself, who as he lost members of his family spent perhaps even more of his life than he would have welcomed in the tomb, amid the cycle of regular annual rituals; for the benefit of the survivors in his circle, who wished to remember their loved ones; and for the benefit of the future generations which Herma surely hoped would continue to remember and revere him. That is to say, the functions of the tomb are predominantly internal; the external function is present but subsidiary. This is perhaps the place to add a comment about portraiture in Roman funerary art. There is an uncomfortable misfit between archaeological reality on the one hand, and on the other the well-known accounts by Polybius of masks and impersonation in the Roman funerary ritual, and by Pliny of the atrium as a location for ancestral images with tituli linked by red thread. No archaeological evidence instanti-

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ates these descriptions: there is no known example of any sort of mask that might be used for impersonation at a funeral, nor of an atrium with a collection of portraits such as might be linked by red thread.48 These passages are so much cited because they are assumed to provide the key to what we actually do find: numerous portraits in connection with tombs. If the Scipio tomb originally included portraits, as we have suggested, it might make the tomb an evocation of the Plinian atrium. The best example of a collection of ancestral portraits are those from the tomb of the Licinii in Rome of the early first century C.E., which have made their way, including the famous portrait of Pompey, to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek – always supposing the finds are genuine, not a nineteenth-century fake assembled to order for the market by those who well knew their Pliny.49 The overwhelming assumption, apparently supported by Polybius and Pliny, is that Roman portraiture was all about status, that is to say about its external function, or advertising the image of the portrayed to the outside world. That is certainly borne out by the portraits on the tombs of Pompeii, not to speak of those on the via Appia and other streets of Rome, including the serried ranks of freemen solemnly framed in the windows from which they look out on the world.50 But portraits, like houses and tombs, have an internal as well as an external function. They are a mechanism whereby a family represents itself to itself and constructs its identity. That is also what Polybius and Pliny are saying. A tomb like that of Valerius Herma shows this function at work.

Conclusion In sum, my argument is that the analogy between tomb and house in Roman Italy is perhaps stronger than we suspected. I remain sceptical about the importance of the formal architectural evocations. These are present, but always partial. It seems to me risky to reconstruct the image of the Etruscan house on the basis of the Etruscan tomb, how48 49

50

Flower, Ancestor Masks, 36–40. P. Kragelund and M. Moltesen, The Licinian Tomb: Fact or Fiction? (Copenhagen: Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, 2003). D. Kleiner, Roman Group Portraiture: The Funerary Reliefs of the Late Republic and Early Empire (New York: Garland, 1977).

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ever plausible the links. But it is a game of allusion where one needs to know both sides of the equation to see how it works. On the other hand, I have argued that the tomb is a conscious extension of the twofold function of the house, internally to articulate the household, externally to present the household to the world. The tomb, like the house, is where two worlds intersect, the world of the family or household, and the world beyond. In providing a home in which the dead are reassembled with the family of the living, the tomb also invites the world beyond, the passing stranger, to take note, shed a tear, or gasp with astonishment. But the most interesting conclusion, I feel, is one about which we must be tentative without a more extensive examination of the evidence. It is that over time, there are significant shifts in the balance between this internal and external function.51 In the mid Republic and the high Empire, I have argued, the internal function is dominant. Tombs are about representing the family or household to itself. The main difference is that the mid-Republican family, like the Etruscan, is one with significant duration over time, across several generations, while that of the Empire is short-lived, and recruits the servile household to bolster its numbers. The high imperial model is by no means a return to the mid-republican one, but a new one suitable to the changed society of the empire. Hence I have deliberately characterised the late Republic/early Empire as a transitional period, to counter the impression it always creates as the classic and timeless expression of the true Roman way. The novelty lies in the vigorous and competitive interest in self-representation to the world outside; though I have tried to underline that the internal function persists and should never be overlooked. The tomb, like the house, enables this constant dialogue.

51

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

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Chapter 3 Commemorating the Dead in the Communal Cemeteries of Carthage1 Since Lantier’s 1922 landmark article “Notes de topographie carthaginoise,” burials at Carthage have been discussed mostly in the context of the city’s growth and transformation, reflections, in part, of changes in attitude toward the dead in Late Antiquity wrought by the beliefs and practices of Christianity.2 As a result, much emphasis has been given to the location of burials during the period and the typology of tombs, topics that tend to mask the distinctiveness of individual sites.3 Thus, fifth- through seventh-century burials at Carthage tend to be treated in one of two mutually exclusive categories: Christian, that is burials in and around Christian basilicas and other cult buildings, or “urban,” individual tombs or small groups of tombs, not specifically Christian, in and around buildings of the city or in cemeteries on its 1

2

3

I am grateful to Laurie Brink and my other colleagues in this volume for discussions of commemoration of the dead that have added a dimension to my study of cemeteries in a time and place where commemoration is often difficult to recognize. An early version of this paper was delivered as part of a panel, “Urbanism in North Africa: Beyond the Forum,” at the Archaeological Institute of America Annual Meeting, Montreal, January 2006. Raymond Lantier, “Notes de topographie carthaginoise. Cimitières romains et chrétiens de Carthage,” CRAI (1922): 22–28; Henry R. Hurst, “The Late Roman-Byzantine Defences of Carthage,” in Excavations at Carthage: The British Mission Vol.1.1: The Avenue du Président Habib Bourguiba, Salammbo: The Site 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 africaines; Paris: CNRS Éditions, 1997). A recent welcome exception is Naomi J. Norman, “Death and Burial of Roman Children: The Case of the Yasmina Cemetery at Carthage: Part 1: Setting the Stage,” Mortality 7.3 (2002): 302–23.

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periphery.4 These models leave out of discussion burial sites that do not fit comfortably. One example is the cemetery that includes mass graves at Falbe Point 90 on the north coastal periphery of Carthage. The diversity of practice at this site and others warns that traditional models of “urban” and Christian burial, developed from coarse-grained evidence when little specific archaeological data was available, may have been too broadly applied. The dichotomy implied by these models tends to obscure a shared ideology of communal burial in the cemeteries of this period.5 The overall aim of this paper is to explore the internal logic of recently excavated and published cemeteries of the fifth through seventh centuries by focusing, initially, on five cemeteries: two in and around the basilicas of Bir el Knissia and Bir Ftouha, two associated with the city wall, the Theodosian Wall and Circus cemeteries, and the seemingly anomalous burial site at Falbe Point 90.6 Each of these five sites 4

5

6

For the first category see Noël Duval, “L’inhumation privilégiée en Tunisie et en Tripolitaine,” in L’inhumation privilégiée du 4e au 7e siècle en Occident, (eds. Yvette Duval and Jean-Charles Picard: Paris, De Boccard, 1986), 13–42 and “Les nécropoles chrétiennes d’Afrique du Nord,” in Monuments funéraires, institutions autochtones en Afrique du Nord antique et médiévale, VIe colloque international sur l’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 known North African Christian sites. For the second category see Susan T. Stevens, “Sépultures tardives intra-muros à Carthage,” in Monuments funéraires, 207–17, id., “Transitional Neighborhoods and Suburban Frontiers in Late- and Post-Roman Carthage,” in Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity, (eds. Ralph W. Mathisen and Hagith Sivan; Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996), 187–200, and more recently, Anna Leone,“L’inumazione in ‘spazio urbano’ à Cartagine tra 5 e 7 secolo D.C.,” Antiquité Tardive 10 (2002): 233–48 which is especially useful for fig. 5, an updated plan of the later city, id., “Changing Urban Landscapes: Burials in North African Cities from the Late Antique to Byzantine periods,” in Mortuary Landscapes in North Africa (eds. David. Stone and Lea M. Stirling; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 164–203. The same author generously shared the manuscript of a book in progress, Transition Revisited: Decline and Ordered Evolution in North African Towns (Zeugitania, Byzacena, Tripolitania) from Late Antiquity to the Arab conquest that sets Carthage in the context of other North African cities. G. Cantino Wataghin, “The Ideology of Urban Burials,”in The Idea and Ideal of the Town between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, (eds. Gian P. Brogiolo and Bryan Ward-Perkins; Leiden: Brill, 1999), 147–63. 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, “KOIMHTHPION et COEMETERIUM: tombe, tombe sainte, nécropole,” MEFRA 105.2 (1993): 975–1001.

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has fixed limits in space and time, clear principles of spatial arrangement, and a burial koine in the consistency of tomb types, markers, and gifts. These features reflect a conformity to tradition at each site that can be taken as evidence of a distinctive collective identity, even if the specific nature of the community cannot be ascertained.7 The details of each cemetery reveal the importance of individual and group identity and landmarks of social status within each community, as well as between communities. Together, the sites, with a handful of other recently excavated cemeteries of the period, suggest a more nuanced picture of the fifth- through seventh-century cemeteries at Carthage. Rather than being a continuous zone of cemeteries,8 the urban periphery of Carthage may have been a fluid landscape in which distinct cemeteries within specific enclosures or clustered around landmarks came and went like alluvial islands. The basilica at Bir el Knissia was built just outside a gate in the late Roman city wall on Kardo 5 east in the late fifth-early sixth century. It is known from excavations in 1922–23 by Delattre and in 1990–92 by a team with access to Delattre’s field notes and excavation plan.9 Indications that the basilica was a cemetery church by design are its original beaten earth floor, an apsed structure attached to its west wall, and a presumed atrium at the north, all used for burials.10 The burial function of the complex was expanded in the later sixth and seventh centuries: porticoed courtyards were added to the east and west long sides of the basilica in the Justinianic period (540–566) and an east courtyard was attached 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 a large symmetrical building to its northeast, perhaps a second basilica.11 7

8 9

10 11

Ann Marie Yasin, “Funerary Monuments and Collective Identity: From Roman Family to Christian Community,” Art Bulletin 87.3 (September 2005): 433–57, esp. 442–45. Ennabli, Carthage, 56. Alfred-Louis Delattre, “Fouilles sur l’emplacement d’une basilique près de Douar-ech-Chott à Carthage,” CRAI (1922): 302–07, and “La basilique de Bir-el-Knissia à Carthage,” CRAI (1923): 449–51; Susan T. Stevens, Bir el Knissia at Carthage: A Rediscovered Cemetery Church: Report no. 1 (JRASup. 7; Ann Arbor, 1993). As at Demna, Sétif, and Uppenna, see Duval “Nécropoles chrétiennes,” 203. Stevens, Bir el Knissia, 303–8. In his review, Nöel Duval suggests that the symmetrical building might be a second basilica, “La basilique de Bir el Knissia à Carthage: une fouille du Père Delattre redécouverte et réétudiée,” Antiquité Tardive 3 (1995): 295.

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How far east the basilica’s burial area extended is unknown. Delattre’s excavation plan suggests that its structures extended to the north to within 10 meters of the rural extension of Kardo 5 east and to the west perhaps as far as a perpendicular rural road that may have confined the southwest annex. At the southern end of the complex, structures and burials appear to have extended as far as 15 meters southeast of the southwest corner of the basilica, an area that bears a remarkable similarity to the burial area that lay immediately outside the apse and southeast corner of the basilica. At the southern extent of the burial complex were one robbed burial, fragments of three Christian tomb inscriptions, and disarticulated human bone representing a minimum number of three individuals. The burial lay perpendicular to two phases of a SW-NE-aligned wall, and probably lay inside a structure, the alignment of which, while unlike that of the basilica proper, was similar to that of the southwest annex of the basilica. The burials associated with the basilica did not extend as far south as sondages 1 and 6 where typical domestic contexts roughly contemporary in date with the basilica marked 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 considered a kind of predecessor of the cemetery in and around the Christian basilica, although some 50 meters separate the Roman tombs from Bir el Knissia’s symmetrical building.13 Indeed, the paucity of Roman epitaphs at Bir el Knissia seems to argue against any real continuity: only nine of 89 small fragments of funerary inscription found in the complex are arguably Roman, most of which appear to have been reused as paving or cut for frames for other tomb markers. Only one retained evidence of attachment to the masonry of a Roman monument.14 Seventy-four tombs are known from inside the basilica and its annexes. Forty-seven were shown on the 1922–1923 excavation plan or in detailed sketches in the diary, though Delattre’s passing mentions of sépultures indicate that he encountered many more burials than he investigated or recorded. The 1990 excavations encountered the traces of another 27 tombs, though the minimum number of 55 individuals represented among the disarticulated bone suggests many more within 12 13

14

Stevens, Bir el Knissia, 4, fig. 3 and 67–71. Lantier,“Notes de topographie,” fig. 1, no. 10; Duval, “Nécropoles chrétiennes,” 193. L. Ennabli, “Inscriptions de Bir el Knissia,” in Stevens, Bir el Knissia, 257–88.

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the limited area excavation.15 Although the excavated tombs represent only a sampling of the cemetery, they appeared in every area of the complex, including some burials originally placed outside the basilica that were later incorporated into its annexes. The distribution of funerary inscriptions from 1990 suggests that tombs were most concentrated in the symmetrical building and in the basilica proper.16 The tombs probably belong to all phases of the basilica, from the late fifth to the late seventh century, though very few can be more specifically dated. In a pattern long recognized for churches, the tombs were arranged parallel to the walls of the complex.17 The vast majority of the tombs were aligned either with the NNW-SSE long walls or SSW-NNE short walls of the basilica, with five tombs in the southwest annex area aligned roughly WSW-ENE conforming to a later cross wall that was not perpendicular to the basilica’s long axis. Among the tombs where an orientation of the body was clear, no preference was obvious. Limited evidence from the east aisle suggests that the burials inside the basilica may have belonged to two sequences, arranged vertically. The relatively deep-shafted NNW-SSE graves cut from the beaten earth floor, including Delattre’s best-preserved burials, seem to date to the late fifth to mid-sixth century, while the comparatively shallow graves aligned SSW-NNE and cut from the level of the mosaic pavement belonged to the lates sixth and seventh centuries.18 The vast majority of graves were formae, shafts cut into the pavements of the complex at the bottom of which the deceased were placed simply in the earth or contained in cists of stone, masonry, or terracotta.19 The tops of many shafts were marked with an inscription in mosaic or stone, most frequently commemorating a single individual. However, four inscriptions from this site commemorated two and four individuals.20 15

16

17 18 19

20

Stevens, Bir el Knissia, after 24, 38, 47, 102–4, 121–27, 144–50, 183–86; Cherie K. Walth and Laura J. Miller, “Burials and Disarticulated Human Bone (1990),” in Stevens, Bir el Knissia, 191–92. Ennabli, “Inscriptions,” 257–88 catalogues 22 inscriptions from the NE annex and 14 from inside the basilica. Duval, “Nécropoles chrétiennes,” 206. Stevens, Bir el Knissia, 304–6. 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 against the east wall of the basilica. Stevens, Bir el Knissia, 35; Ennabli,“Inscriptions,” 272.

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Four group tombs stand out in the Bir el Knissia cemetery. These consisted of three to nine prefabricated tombs built side by side all at one time in a single masonry structure. Two group tombs lay inside the basilica, a structure with nine graves in the apse, and another with four tombs associated with a small cistern in the floor of the chancel. The other two group tombs were located in the western annexes of the basilica: eight tombs in a hypogeum under the west portico floor, three in the southwest annex. How or if these groups or their individual members were marked at floor level is not attested. While the group tombs conform to the larger community in that they are individual formae, the fact that they were built together all at once instead of being dug ad hoc defines them as a group apart from other tombs, asserting a smaller group identity within the larger cemetery community. However, because group tombs located inside the basilica were in areas ordinarily restricted to the clergy, clergy may have been the small community expressed here. Similarly, clergy were distinguished from laymen in the cemetery churches at Demna, Sétif, and Haïdra 1 by epitaphs that included the name and titles of clergymen, but only the names of laymen.21 The other two group tombs at Bir el Knissia may have been family monuments, and therefore like the numerous small masonry tomb groups (for two to five individuals) and even tomb monuments found in the large burial enclosure southeast of the basilica of Mçidfa, and outside that basilica’s north corner.22 Their location in comparatively informal and less privileged spaces of the basilica may have enabled families to assert their smaller group identity.23 The closest parallel to the hypogeum at Bir el Knissia may be the late-fourth- or earlyfifth-century hypogeum of Flavius Valens found by Delattre against the southwest corner of the basilica at Damous el Karita.24

21 22

23

24

Yasin,“Funerary Monuments,” 447. Liliane Ennabli, Les inscriptions funéraires chrétiennes II. La basilique de Mçidfa (Tunis and Rome: Institut national d’archeologie et d’art and École française de Rome, 1982), 11, fig. 5. The southwest annex at Bir el Knissia also included a highly unusual funerary monument for a single individual, a caisson shown in F4 of Delattre’s plan and p. 4 of his carnet, Stevens, Bir el Knissia, 40. Duval, “La basilique de Bir el Knissia,” 291, interprets this feature as the basin of an earlier Roman house. Heimo Dolenz, Damous el Karita: Die österreichisch-tunesischen Ausgrabungen der Jahre 1996 und 1997 im Saalbau und der Memoria des Pilgerheiligtums Damous el Karita in Karthago (Österreichisches Archäologisches Institut Sonderschriften 35; Vienna, 2001), Abb. 54, Beil.1/10.

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Delattre made no mention of any grave goods, and none were found among the surviving burials of the 1990 excavation, but the profound disturbance of the basilica by grave robbers suggests that enough tombs were furnished to make the practice profitable. Indeed, unintentional disturbance of tombs would have been unlikely because many formae were marked at floor level, a practice attested at Bir el Knissia by 89 recorded epitaphs. In fact, the elevation of the new mosaic floor some 0.5 meters above the original beaten earth surface sealed the layer of early tombs. This strategy to accommodate a new layer of burials cut from the new floor, without disturbing earlier ones, suggests the value placed on the integrity of tombs. The inscriptions were all in Latin except for two in Greek; most were on stone (marble, limestone, kadel, in descending order) with at least eight in mosaic. The epitaphs have a standard format: a single name followed by some or all of the fomula fidelis in pace vixit annis … depositus with a date and a limited range of familiar iconography. In this respect, the Bir el Knissia community conforms to the epigraphic traditions for this period in Carthage known from other basilica cemeteries.25 The cognomina, with the exception of Siricia (cat. no. 6), are well-attested, though no names of Germanic origin are recorded as they were at nearby Bir el Knissia 2 and other basilica cemeteries. This is surprising given the origin of the basilica in the late Vandal period, and it may be a clue to the ethnic identity and religious persuasion of the basilica community: Roman and Catholic as opposed to Vandal and Arian.26 Little other information can be gleaned about the cemetery population. The few preserved burials and disarticulated bone from the 1990 excavations suggested that immature individuals (16 of 55) were under-represented, perhaps because they were largely excluded from the area excavated inside the basilica.27 This pattern is discernable on the 1922–1923 excavation plan: the standardized adultsized shafts predominate, with only three very small tombs shown outside the basilica proper, probably representing the graves of children, to which may be added at least one of Delattre’s two amphora burials,

25

26 27

Ennabli, “Inscriptions,” 287–88 and id., Les inscriptions funéraires chrétiennes de la basilique dite de Sainte-Monique à Carthage (Tunis and Rome: Institut national d’archéologie et d’art and École française de Rome, 1975), 59–69, 77–82, 87. Stevens, Bir el Knissia, 1–6. Walth and Miller, “Burials,”192–93.

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the small globular amphora shown outside the east wall of the basilica. A similar imbalance is better documented at the so-called basilica of Sainte Monique where only 28 of 86 individuals identified by age on their epitaphs are classified as immature.28 Clearly, the defining feature of the Bir el Knissia community as a whole 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 and rather simple both in plan and adornment by comparison with other burial churches at Carthage. On the other hand, the basilica is unusual in being a new foundation in the late fifth or early sixth century with architectural ornament specially made for this structure rather than being composed of spolia.29 The probable density of burials at Bir el Knissia, in and around a basilica that expanded both horizontally and vertically to accommodate more burials, suggests a large and not particularly exclusive community. Within this community the abundance of inscriptions and the concern for the integrity of tombs attest to the value placed on the individual. The prevalence of forma-type tombs and the standard repertory of formulae, iconography, and nomenclature reflected on their markers suggest a deliberate conformity to tradition.30 Hierarchy within the Bir el Knissia cemetery is also expressed by the privilege attached to individual graves and tomb groups in the chancel and apse as opposed to burials in the rest of the basilica, to graves inside the basilica as compared with those in its annexes, to those in pre-fabricated group tombs compared to individual formae placed ad hoc. Beyond the notion of communal commemoration, what attracted the community to Bir el Knissia at the outset is not clear. While the answer usually given for suburban churches is the prospect of burial ad sanctos, no specific evidence at Bir el Knissia supports its origin as a martyrial church. In fact, of the suburban basilicas at Carthage only Basilica Maiorum (Mçidfa) produced circumstantial archaeological evidence, an inscription with the names of Perpetua and Felicitas and

28

29

30

Ennabli, Sainte-Monique, 91–92: five sub adults (13–17 years), 12 children (3–12 years), and one infant (fetal-2 years). Naïdé Ferchiou, “Les éléments architecturaux (1990),” in Stevens, Bir el Knissia, 254–55. Yasin, “Funerary Monuments,” 442–45.

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a crypt at the center of the basilica, suggesting it was martyrial in origin.31 The elaborate basilica complex at Bir Ftouha on the northwestern outskirts of Carthage was built approximately 1 kilometer outside the city wall, the most distant of the known surburban basilicas. Discovered in 1895 by A.-L. Delattre, the complex was partially exposed in 1897 by P. Gauckler in the process of lifting mosaics, but not extensively excavated until the 1994–1999 excavations.32 The origins of the basilica complex may have been four tombs around a column foundation that were cut through a beaten earth floor dating to the early sixth century, though the identity of these individuals cannot now be recovered. The four individual tombs of pre-basilica date were incorporated into the foundations of the Byzantine north building. One tomb was one of adult dimensions, aligned SE-NW. The other three were of dimensions appropriate for children. While the reason for their irregular alignments is unclear for the pre-basilica phase, such alignments are characteristic of tombs in centralized structures in the Byzantine complex. Two of the tomb shafts were sealed by a coarse gray mortar and cobble 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 of the shaft that otherwise contained no tomb structure. A concentration of 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 field for burial appears to be the early sixth century. The only traces of preChristian cemetery were three fragments of epitaph (cat. nos. 3–4, 7) and the only other pre-basilica structure was a single wall of anomalous alignment and unknown date beneath the south portico. An extensive site that Delattre explored in 1928–1929 some 50 meters to the northwest of the basilica complex, included a small bath complex, trefoil funerary chapel with sarcophagi, and a few Christian funerary in31

32

Ennabli, Mçidfa, 5–17 reproduces early excavation drawings, plans, and photographs. 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 (Tunisie) (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1910), 263–64; Susan T. Stevens, Angela V. Kalinowski and Hans vanderLeest, Bir Ftouha: A Pilgrimage Church Complex at Carthage, (JRASup 59; Portsmouth, R.I., 2005).

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scriptions. While the full extent of the Bir Ftouha basilica complex and its cemetery is not known, the results of a magnetometer survey in 2000 and the marking of tombeaux between the two Bir Ftouha sites on an early-twentieth-century map of the field suggest that it extended some distance west of the recent excavations, perhaps as far as Delattre’s 1928–1929 site.33 The whole Byzantine basilica complex was built all at one time in the late 540s, its plan modified slightly in a second phase dating from the last third of the sixth through the last half of the seventh century. At Bir Ftouha 95 tombs belong to the basilica cemetery. Original to the construction of the basilica was a roughly cruciform masonry burial structure aligned E-W with the long axis of the complex. This was oriented to the cardinal compass points rather than with the rural cadastration. The tombs of this structure, described by Delattre as finely plastered auges,34 lay under the floor of the chancel and apse and accommodated 16 individual tombs in one layer or as many as 32 in two. The best-preserved tomb structure (tomb 1) was a rather narrow lower tomb revetted in marble about 0.5 meters deep with a ledge for a cover slab, above which was place for another deeper but wider tomb under the presumed marble-tiled floor of the basilica.35 The tombs were all of a standard adult size and were probably marked at floor level by tomb mosaics or inscriptions in stone, of which Delattre found fragments, one for a presbyter and one apparently for a monk. After the construction of the basilica floor two additional tombs (or four in two levels) appear to have been added, extending the burial structure by the length of two tombs end to end down the middle of the nave, perhaps under a prostoon in the fifth and sixth bays.36 Disarticulated human bone in the heavily robbed chancel amounted to a minimum number of three adults, with an additional two adults attested in the disturbed fill of the best preserved later tomb in the nave (tomb 4).37 33

34

35 36 37

P. J. Bordy, Carte archéologique et topographique des ruines de Carthage (1897); Alfred-Louis Delattre, “Séance du 27 juillet,” CRAI (1928): 252–54 and “Les fouilles de Bir Ftouha,” CRAI (1929): 23–29; Stevens, Kalinowski, and vanderLeest, Bir Ftouha, 21–26, 580–82. Ibid., 15–34, esp. 20–21. The recent excavation found another three fragments of stone inscription in the chancel area. Ibid., 35–114, esp. 44, fig. 2.7 and 45, fig. 2.8. Ibid., 53, fig 2.14. Cherie K. Walth,“Human Bone,” in Stevens, Kalinowski, and vanderLeest, Bir Ftouha, 482–83.

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Beginning in the last third of the sixth century 26 individual tombs were cut through the mosaic floor of the west building and an attached southwest external room, though only one burial of two adults in a single shaft escaped tomb robbing. In the west building the burials were concentrated in the eastern part of the ambulatory nearest the basilica’s narthex, in a variety of alignments, generally parallel or perpendicular to the polygonal outer walls of the building. In the building’s central space the tombs seem to have been aligned with column foundations. The 16 tombs with some surviving structure were of a size appropriate for 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 in situ fragments of different mosaic inscriptions were found (tombs 16–17), as well as several examples of cobble bedding for tomb markers near floor level in other tombs. One of the tomb mosaics was a small rectangular marker (0.50 × 0.15 meter) for Be … or Ve … rudus;38 the other was probably a tomb-sized marker incorporating a multiple-line inscription panel. Four fragments of inscription suggest that other tombs may have been marked with marble slabs. The absence of tomb intercutting and the pattern of targeted tomb robbing suggest that all the tombs were clearly marked. The centralized north building yielded 18 individual tombs inserted ad hoc into its flagged floor in phase 2 of the basilica complex, though there are likely to have been many more tombs in the unexcavated two thirds of the structure. The principle behind the placement of the tombs, while less clear than in the west building, appears similar: five tombs were aligned parallel to the south wall of the building, the reused column foundation, and each other; the rest apparently were aligned with paving stones that seem to have been laid in a pattern radiating from the center of the building. As in the west building the tombs are of a size and shape appropriate for adults. Only tomb 26 yielded any indication of tomb structure: it was unusually large (2.4 × 0.75 meters), deep (1.8 meters), and nicely plastered on the interior. The north end of the tomb was marked at floor level by a frame enclosing a firm cobble and mortar bedding, in which a new or reused paving stone once lay.39 The pattern of targeted tomb robbing and the 38

39

Henry Maguire, “Mosaics,” in Stevens, Kalinowski, and vanderLeest, Bir Ftouha, 332–33, fig. 6.25. Stevens, Kalinowski, and vanderLeest, Bir Ftouha, 109–112, fig. 2.55 and more generally 574–76.

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absence of tomb intercutting suggest that the other tombs in the north building were also clearly marked, like those in the west building. In fact, disturbance of the pre-basilica-phase tombs was likely to have been prevented by markers, albeit anonymous ones, in the Byzantine floor: the paving stones over the early tombs were aligned with the grave beneath instead of conforming to the radiating pattern of the rest of the floor. An additional 15 tombs (alone or in pairs) were inserted ad hoc into the floors outside the monumental center of the complex or outside the complex altogether, varying in alignment according to nearby walls or features. One sub-adult tomb consisted of a shaft without any structure 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 long walls of the room. Another, evidently for a child, was also aligned N-S and lay inside an adjacent structure to the west of the north hall of the ambulatory. Two side-by-side graves, marked by fragmentary but in situ tomb-sized mosaic panels, were aligned roughly parallel to the curving northeast wall of the north peristyle. Of these two tombs, the more northerly was definitely child-sized. The better preserved of the two, for Gaudiosa, was oriented W-E, its child-sized panel enclosed in an unusually wide border.40 Another tomb was probably located under the floor of northeast room 2, aligned with its walls. The nineteenthcentury excavators recovered two other tomb mosaics for the children Adeodatus and Redibibus or Redibiba, laid end to end, probably in the south peristyle. Recent excavations found two other child-sized simple shaft tombs: one in the ambulatory of the baptistery, aligned locally roughly NE-SW with the outside wall of the building and centralized at its entrance, and another single tomb outside the southwest curving wall of the south peristyle, aligned roughly E-W, not quite either parallel or perpendicular to the walls of the area. One tomb was cut into the courtyard floor north of the west building, and two in the south yard: one adult-sized tomb against the polygonal wall of the west building and one child-sized, locally centralized and aligned N-S, parallel to the west wall of the narthex.41 Finally a cluster of three individual tombs, aligned E-W, lay against the outside south wall of southeast room 2, one of these, tomb 7, consisted of a stone cist. Although no identifiable tombs were found in the south courtyard or portico, the 40 41

Maguire, “Mosaics,” 325, fig. 6.18. Stevens, Kalinowski, and vanderLeest, Bir Ftouha, 105–109, fig. 2.50.

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five inscription fragments found there may have been redeposited from tombs outside the south portico wall. Ninety-five excavated tombs is a surprisingly low number for this large and extensively excavated a complex with well-preserved floors. The pattern of distribution of these tombs is striking. Just over a third of the tombs are in the masonry structure at the core of the basilica, a group tomb that differs significantly from the group tombs in the Bir el Knissia basilica because of its size, its central location, and the fact that it was original to the construction of the monument. This group burial appears to have been designed as a kind of internal martyrium around which the rest of the basilica was built. The Bir Ftouha basilica, rather than housing the cemetery, was a basilica ad corpus, in the vicinity of which some privileged individuals were buried. Even privileged tombs were excluded from the basilica proper, its narthex, apse ambulatory, and south courtyard area. The real communal burial monuments at Bir Ftouha were the west building, southwest external room, and the north building which housed nearly half of the attested tombs in the basilica cemetery, arranged according to the logic of each space. While the west and north buildings were probably entrance buildings by design, the former had higher status as an elaborately decorated main entrance on the long axis of the basilica than the latter, a subsidiary entrance on the minor axis of the complex. The cemetery population of both buildings appears to have consisted of adults who enjoyed the status of a smaller group identity associated with a functioning basilica complex. The least privileged members of the Bir Ftouha community, perhaps those not yet full members, appear to have been buried singly or in pairs in the less important, outlying buildings, outdoor spaces of the complex, or adjacent to but outside the complex. Of these 15 tombs, as many as nine were for children, an indication that children in the Bir Ftouha community were differentially treated, sometimes deferentially, as in the case of the single tomb in the baptistery ambulatory. It is also worth noting, in reflecting on the possible status of this community, that only formae were found at Bir Ftouha, by contrast with Bir el Knissia which also had amphora burials. Both the Bir el Knissia and Bir Ftouha cemeteries were separate from other cemeteries of the city. Their communal monuments, the basilicas, were visible and easily accessible by suburban roads, though not located on the main roads from the city. The organization of the cemeteries was local, conforming to the buildings with which they were associated that were themselves not aligned with the Roman rural cad-

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astration. Both cemeteries, with their individual graves indicated by tomb markers and lack of intercutting, appear to have preserved the identity of individuals within the community. The cemeteries also reflect a clear hierarchy with the greatest privilege granted to group tombs closest to the core of the basilica and to group and individual tombs inside the basilica and its annexes. Single tombs in outside spaces probably represented the least privileged members of the basilica community. Both cemetery populations appear to reflect a differential treatment of children and adults, perhaps reflecting a prohibition against the unbaptised being buried inside the church.42 If architectural elaboration, obvious hierarchy, and strict control of the type and arrangement of tombs reflect privilege, then Bir Ftouha’s community appears the more privileged of the two. The Theodosian Wall cemetery was located in the northwest quadrant of the city, approximately 200 meters west of the main north gate (on the Kardo maximus).43 It occupied a long narrow area about 5 × 30 meters between the city wall and a ditch outside it, an area that had once been part of the urban grid of streets at the intersection of Decumanus 5 north with Kardines 5 and 6 west. The 213 primary inhumation burials of the cemetery are dated to the period between the construction of the city wall ca. 430 and the mid-sixth century. This cemetery 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 density of graves closest to the wall, and thinning out further from it. While the plan of the complete cemetery gives the impression of being organized in serried rows, its chronological development suggests rather that 42

43

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. Andrea Carandini, Lucilla Anselmino, Clementina Panella, et al., “Gli scavi italiani a Cartagine: Rapporto preliminare delle campagne 1973–1977,” Quaderni di Archeologia della Libia 13 (1983): 7–61; Lucilla Anselmino, “Le secteur nordouest de la ville,” in Pour Sauver Carthage (ed. Abdelmajid Ennabli; Paris and Tunis: 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 de Théodose,” in Pour Sauver Carthage, 131–34; Susan T. Stevens, “A Late Roman Urban Population in a Cemetery of Vandalic Date at Carthage,” JRA 8 (1995): 263–70 with a final report in preparation.

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tombs of roughly the same date may have been clustered. Much clearer is the vertical arrangement of graves with burials over one another in irregular stacks or overlapping end to end, a system that was consistent over time and was probably intentional. This vertical arrangement of tombs, the precedent for which may have been set by two early cist burials, one over the other sealed under the same marker, may have been devised in the absence of grave markers to avoid disturbing recent graves. It appears likely that some vertical stacks are family plots. Except for a handful of double burials of siblings or mothers and infants buried at the same time in the same grave, the burials were for single individuals. The vast majority of the graves (142) were simple pit inhumations in which the bodies were covered only with earth, though some graves were also lined with stones or covered by large pieces of amphora. In the 71 most elaborate grave structures, bodies were contained in amphoras, stone, or mud-brick cists. The only discernible grave goods were a coin or coins in 36 of the graves, and a few personal items (earrings, a pair of tweezers). The differential treatment of infants is attested in this cemetery both in a rather isolated infant section, and by the fact that elsewhere only infants were buried in amphorae. The cemetery population was made up of 63 percent adults, 37 percent infants-sub adults, an expected proportion for a pre-industrial population. The cemetery contained one possible monument, an enclosure wall that may have set off two tombs, albeit temporarily. Eleven tombs had inscribed tomb mosaics, of which two were iconographically identifiable as Christian. Nine of these markers were laid against each other, a small group distinguished from the larger community by their orientation. The mosaic-marked burials in the eastern part of the cemetery were unusually deep, in sturdy cists, suggesting intent to protect them from disturbance. The intensity of later burials around and cut through this mosaic group suggests their perceived importance. The mosaics originally enhanced the sense of smaller-group identity and later may have served as a kind of communal monument for this part of the cemetery. Indeed, the other two mosaic-covered tombs in the cemetery lay isolated in other parts of the cemetery and did not attract later tombs. Another homogeneous group of burials set somewhat apart from the larger community included six young infants. All the tombs of the cemetery are for individuals except where members of same nuclear family were buried at the same time, or in two cases,

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apparently in sequence (one over the other in the bisomum of Codbuldeus, or side by side inside the enclosure wall). While some tomb clusters appeared to be family plots, other individuals were grouped by age (infant section) or commemorative status (graves marked with mosaics). The off-the-beaten-path location of the cemetery and absence of functional buildings or streets in the vicinity would not have promoted visitation. Furthermore, there were no recognizable paths between graves, few monuments and markers, and no evidence for ritual activity, the usual indicators of a continuing association of the living with the dead. While a few cases of bone reburials suggest some management of the cemetery and a certain respect for earlier burials, the abundance of bone dumps and disarticulated bones indicate that disturbance of earlier graves by later ones was routine. The cemetery’s users could not have ascribed much importance either to the physical commemoration of the individual or the integrity of the grave. The cemetery nevertheless expresses a communal identity in the limited range of simple tomb types and the prevalence of coins as grave goods. The chronology of the cemetery, that is, its beginning with the building of the Theodosian city wall and its end with the destruction of the wall, the arrangement of tombs parallel to the city wall and the concentration of tombs against it suggests that the city wall acted as the collective marker of the cemetery. Within the cemetery a smaller community may have been formed by the interlocking of mosaic markers, subsequently destroyed by later burials, making them their collective marker. The Circus cemetery is located in the southwest quadrant of the city close to the circus’s northwest end, near the carceres, between the long southwest wall of the circus and the Theodosian city wall.44 The use of the area before the construction of the city wall is unknown. After its construction the slope up to the north was gradually filled in with debris and flattened out. Access to the cemetery is unknown, though it may have been from the area of the circus, the bays of which were occupied for domestic habitation after the circus no longer func-

44

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

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tioned.45 The earliest human burial in the area was of three adults in a shallow pit probably dating to the late sixth century, a burial stratigraphically linked to a large dump of partially articulated equids, including at least 14 individuals.46 The formal burial area that followed, dating to the first half of the seventh century, included 50 inhumations (27 primary and 23 disturbed burials), although the cemetery was more extensive than the excavated area.47 The excavated portion of the cemetery was approximately 20 meters wide and 30 meters long, with all but two graves oriented NW-SE, aligned roughly parallel to the city wall, with the greatest density of graves close to the wall, and thinning out to the northeast. The Circus cemetery was newly founded, probably in the late sixth century, in quite a remote and probably poor area of the city. It included no enclosures or paths, only one obvious mud-brick marker (though other markers may have been removed in the leveling of the area), and no inscriptions either in situ or in fragments. The majority of the graves were in well-defined rectangular pits, most had some kind of solid tomb structure, a stone or mud-brick cist or an amphora, and at least three graves (possibly as many as six) contained evidence for a coffin. Grave goods were found only in three burials: a complete cooking pot placed in the west end of the shaft (above the head) over the cover slabs of two cist burials and coins scattered in the shaft fill of one grave. The extensive intercutting of tombs suggests that the location of graves was rarely known, and a concomitant opportunistic robbing and reuse of stone from earlier graves is well attested. Although the numbers are small the cemetery population consisted of approximately 60 percent adults and 40 percent infants-sub adults and the ratio of sexable skeletons was 1:1. The Circus cemetery contrasts with the Theodosian Wall cemetery in its lack of small groups or other suggestions of differential treatment of some individuals in the community. 45

46

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The circus seems to have functioned into the sixth century but not into the seventh, Naomi J. Norman, “Le cirque romain,” in Pour Sauver Carthage, 162. Five additional burials were found within the confines of the ruined circus. Kevin Rielly, “A Collection of Equid Skeletons from the Cemetery,” in The Circus and a Byzantine Cemetery, 297–300. A minimum of 30 individuals were represented among the redeposited bone and the excavators remark that many rectangular pits from which no bones were recovered may have been robbed graves. Ellis and Humphrey, “Interpretation,” 330.

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The cemetery at Falbe Point 90, now dated to the mid-fifth through sixth 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 the vaulted substructures of a fourth-century Roman villa which were returned to domestic use after burial activity ceased in the sixth century. Although the cemetery includes mass burials, one of only two sites with mass graves known at Carthage in this period,49 the general interpretation of the cemetery as a burial site for victims of epidemic or famine masks other characteristics highlighted in the latest excavation report.50 In AO, the southernmost room, the excavators report 30 skeletons laid in three shallow horizons. The earliest layer of burials included 14 individuals: seven (mostly infants under 1 year) that lay both under and on the feet of seven W-E-oriented adults aligned with the walls of the structure. Ten centimeters above these in the same sandy fill were six S-N-oriented adults, again aligned with the walls of the vault. A third group burial, including three adults and two infants less than two years old, was in the SE corner of the room, though both the original orientation of these individuals and their chronological relationship to the other two groups was uncertain. The plan suggests, however, that this last group contained the jumbled remains of five individuals cut into a seventh adult burial in the horizon of six N-S-oriented adults for a total of 26 individuals.51 The room is interpreted as a mass grave of individuals who died and were buried at the same time, identified by

48

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50 51

Søren Dietz and S. Trolle, “Premier rapport préliminaire sur les fouilles danoises à Carthage: les campagnes de 1975 et 1977,” National Museum of Denmark Working 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. Søren Dietz, “Fouilles danoises à Carthage 1975–1984,” Cahiers des études anciennes 16 (1984): 107–18; Erik Poulsen, “Tombs of the 4th–5th centuries A.D. in the Danish 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 not reflected in its title. The latter was most recently discussed by Norman, “Roman Children,” 42–44. The other possible mass burial dates to the first half of the sixth century and was found in the Italian Taglio 3A of the Theodosian Wall cemetery, Carandini et al., “Gli scavi italiani a Cartagine,” 46. Poulsen, “Tombs,” 141–159. Poulsen, “Tombs,” 152, fig. 1a.

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pottery and coins in the sandy fill of the room to be after the second half of the fifth century. The assemblage of at least one complete vessel and many broken ones concentrated in the northwest corner of the room near the head and torso of skeleton AO 19, the two complete jugs at the right shoulder of skeleton AO 20 (or perhaps at the feet of skeleton AO 28) near the center of the west wall as well as the three complete jugs at the feet of skeleton AO 22 against the east wall of the room, are interpreted as a collective offering.52 However, with two such clearly delineated strata of perpendicularly oriented burials, it is tempting to refine the excavator’s interpretation of a single mass grave, into two (or perhaps three) different group tombs for individuals who died at the same time. Indeed, it is not unusual to find only ten centimeters of fill between individuals buried sequentially, as in the uneven stacks of burials at the Theodosian Wall cemetery. There individuals buried together in the same tomb had no dirt between them and layers of cemetery earth laid down at what must have been different times were virtually impossible to distinguish at the time of excavation. In the central room (AG), two groups of adults were buried in the same horizon and interpreted by the anthropologists as parts of a mass grave, collectively commemorated by the two whole jugs against the west wall of the room. The stratigraphy indicates, however, that there were at least two and perhaps three phases of burial in the room. Two well-preserved adults oriented roughly N-S, and aligned with the walls, were buried together (AG 8 supine and AG 9 on its right side facing AG 8) in the west end of the room, accompanied by a series of vessels that lay along the right side of AG 8, from shoulder to knee, and perhaps two whole jugs.53 Pottery suggests a mid-fifth-century terminus post quem for the burial of these two individuals. The second and slightly later group (with a terminus post quem from pottery of the mid- to late fifth century) consisted of three adults (AG 5–7), oriented roughly west-east. A close examination of the plan invites a further complication to the sequence of burial in the room: skeleton AG 5 appears 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 question about whether it was a single burial or part of a group of three. Poulsen himself suggests that a very disturbed but partially articulated skeleton 52 53

Ibid., 155–56, figs. 2–3. Ibid., 157, fig. 4.

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between the two groups may represent the remains of a single individual buried on a N-S alignment, presumably earlier than the two identified group tombs in the room.54 Finally, the remains of numerous infants or small children were found in three groups in the northern room (CL):55 CL 5 consisted of three burials in the northwest corner of the room; CL 6 included at least eight individuals, two amphora burials, a skeleton in the northeast corner of the room and the disturbed remains of at least five other individuals against the north wall. CL 7 had at least two burials that occupied the southeast quadrant of the room. The burials within these groups, as well as the groups themselves, cut one another and were therefore not contemporaneous. Coin evidence suggests that the burials began in the early fifth century and continued at least into the early sixth. The burials, in amphoras or covered with a combination of amphora sherds and stones, appear to have been disturbed because they were placed ad hoc, in a variety of alignments that did not follow the walls of the room. The cemetery had a distinctive and consistently applied burial practice. Adults, buried singly or in groups side by side, were buried supine with the right arm under the right side, aligned with the walls of the structure. 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 a pair buried together. The same flexibility characterizes the treatment of children who, perhaps in the circumstances of famine or epidemic, were buried with adults in AO who died at the same time. In less stressful circumstances they were buried sequentially with other children in CL, in varied alignments that seem to have little to do with the vault that 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 children from the adult population of the cemetery. This cemetery demonstrates not only that groups, pairs, and individuals were differentially treated, but also that the grouping and placement of individuals in distinct parts of the cemetery in rooms AO, AG, and CL, may have been determined by the circumstances of their deaths. On the strength of this survey of fifth- through seventh-century cemeteries at Carthage some general observations are warranted, although 54 55

Ibid., 146. Ibid., 148, fig. 1b.

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they are hardly conclusive in the absence of final site reports. Each of the five cemeteries was identified by a shared burial practice and a collective marker, a building or structure, in use or reuse. Within each cemetery individuals or small groups of individuals with a distinctive identity within the community were commemorated to a greater or lesser degree by tomb enclosures or markers. The feature that most clearly distinguishes the Bir el Knissia and Bir Ftouha cemeteries from the Theodosian Wall, Circus, and Falbe Point 90 cemeteries is the character and degree of commemoration of the dead. At Bir el Knissia and Bir Ftouha the dead were commemorated not only by their basilica as the overarching collective monument of their community, but also by individual markers and group monuments for small groups of individuals within the larger community. The endurance of individuals, groups, and the whole community of the dead was ensured by the forma-type tomb which was principally designed for a single individual, and also was usually marked. The dead, in a collective sense, were also incorporated into the community of the living. In comparison, the dead in the Theodosian Wall, Circus, and Falbe Point 90 cemeteries seem to have been separated from the living, in largely anonymous and ephemeral tombs, in cemeteries in peripheral or uninhabited areas of the city. In two cases, however, they were closely associated with the functioning city wall. The general absence of individual markers in these cemeteries and the extensive intercutting of graves suggest a tacit acknowledgement of the impermanence of burial and a recognition of the temporal limits of the community. Finally, the social stratification implied by the presence of small groups of graves in some cemeteries suggests higher social status than in cemeteries where distinctions between members are not apparent. In other words, commemoration of the dead in this period at Carthage, as in earlier periods and elsewhere, appears more pronounced among the privileged, and this elite expressed itself by affiliation to a church and a living community. The less privileged may have been imitating the elite by developing a distinctive burial koine of their own and adapting earlier structures as collective monuments. None of the five cemeteries featured here appears to extend the life of a Roman necropolis, either chronologically or spatially. A similar discontinuity characterizes two other recently excavated sites. At Yasmina on the southwestern outskirts of the Roman city, an elite necropolis that included a second-century three-story stucco monument for M.Vibius Tertullus, possibly of consular family, and the mausoleum of

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a circus sparsor and his wife, dating to the first quarter of the third century. This necropolis was abandoned by its original users by the early fourth century when burial activity ceased.56 A new inhumation cemetery, apparently for individuals of lower social status, developed in the fifth and sixth centuries and may have continued later. The late cemetery included 60 tombs, approximately a third of which were for children under the age of seven, the only tombs which had associated grave goods. Burials in the cemetery were in a variety of structures: simple pits, stone-lined trenches, occasional sandstone cists, covered by broken amphoras and cobbles, or pitched stone or tiles. The unmarked tombs, some of which were stacked on top of each other, were clustered around and were cut into the still-standing early tomb monuments that may have acted as collective markers for the later cemetery. A Roman necropolis along Kardo 2 east included high-status monuments of the third century, a hypogeum of the late fourth or early fifth century, and six individual late-fifth- or early-sixth-century inhumation graves aligned with the hypogeum entrance. All were leveled in the second third of the sixth century to make room for a Christian memoria, associated with the basilica of Damous el Karita. The side chambers of the new memoria may have been designed for high-status burials.57 At the still-poorly-understood Christian basilica, the pattern of burial may also have changed. Formae (excavated by Delattre in the nineteenth century) cut through the floor of the basilica’s nave, aisles, and great hemicycle atrium in the later fourth and fifth centuries (phase 1) may have become less frequent in the early sixth century. In their place more exclusive burial rooms were incorporated into the basilica’s phase 2 annexes and perhaps into its later sixth-century, phase 3, funerary hall.58 The establishment of new cemeteries in this period and the concomitant loss of older ones should be read, at the very least, as part of the same social fragmentation of the city’s population evinced by the small

56

57 58

Naomi Norman and Anne Haeckl “The Jasmina Necropolis at Carthage,” JRA 6 (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 Association of the Midwest and South, Southern Section, Birmingham, Ala., Nov. 2002, access 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. Dolenz, Damous el Karita, 43–51. Ibid., 21–39.

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groups of burials in the buildings of the former urban center.59 Perhaps, in addition to enclosing and protecting the dead, the reuse of Classical buildings for burial provided a communal identity for the graves and means of collective commemoration similar to that found in cemeteries on the periphery. Another recently excavated cemetery site, Bir el Jebanna, suggests first that the two phenomena, the insertion of burials in Classical buildings and the establishment of new communal cemeteries, may be contemporaneous. Second, the two phenomena suggest a similar communal ideology. A second-century public bathhouse on the periphery of the city fell into disuse in the fourth century. The use of Bir el Jebanna for burials began in the fourth century, before it could have been transformed by being excluded from the urban fabric by the construction of the Theodosian city wall in the early fifth. By the mid-fourth century a series of NE-SW-oriented graves, aligned with the walls of the bathhouse, were first cut into the floor of the original 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 the fill representing the collapse of the bathhouse, though probably also aligned with its ruined walls. A small group of shallow masonry tombs oriented NE-SW, outside the bath complex to the northeast, and a stack of burials in an adjacent room also dated to the fourth century. Burial in and around the ruined bathhouse appears to have continued into the mid- to late sixth century, the date of the latest burial, a neonate in a shallow amphora tomb.60 By the sixth century a new cemetery had established itself behind an enclosure wall that may have been built as early as the late fourth century at the eastern extent of the ruined bathhouse. Among the more than 30 tombs recently excavated in this cemetery were some marked 59 60

Leone, “L’inumazione,” 233–48. 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 international sur l’histoire et l’archéologie de l’Afrique du nord, Tabarka (Tunisie) 8–13 Mai 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 el Jebbana, Carthage,” delivered to the Société d’Étude du Maghreb Préhistorique, Antique et Médiévale.

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with architectural fragments from the bathhouse, fragmentary inscriptions, and tomb mosaics. Limited finds from the tombs fall within the standard repertory of grave goods of the period, coins and a few items of personal adornment (worked bone objects, bronze rings, and bracelets) dated to the fourth through the sixth century. As in the Theodosian Wall cemetery, Christian tomb mosaics were found at Bir el Jebanna without an attested Christian cult building. This cemetery included the mosaic-covered cupola tomb for the child Theodora excavated by Delattre in the nineteenth century. Despite their similarity in date, the burials in and around the bathhouse and the cemetery behind the enclosure wall were not specifically connected to each other. Furthermore, neither group of burials can be considered a continuation of the extensive first through third century necropolis known as the Cemetery des officiales, that lay on the line of the Decumanus maximus adjacent to the west gate of the city.61 Together the featured cemeteries demonstrate a shared burial ideology expressed in (mostly) individual tombs placed ad hoc in horizontal and vertical relation to each other that is strikingly different from that lying behind the familial monuments of Roman necropoleis of first–third-century Carthage. The chronology of these sites suggests a recognizable development of that communal ideology. Bir el Jebanna is a reminder that this development was already underway in the fourth century, at least in the periphery of Carthage. The Bir el Knissia, Theodosian Wall, and Falbe Point 90 cemeteries were all founded in the fifth century and, despite the differences in social status of their communities, demonstrate a communal burial ideology that is quite inclusive. At Bir el Knissia, the social hierarchy of the community is expressed in two ways, familial, with group tombs outside the core of the basilica and clerical, with group tombs inside it. At the Theodosian Wall cemetery some groups of tombs stood out, such as the possible family enclosure, and the cluster of tombs marked by mosaics. The latter, rather than being honored as grave markers for individuals, were destroyed in the process of being transformed into a collective marker for later graves. The flexibility of burial practice at the Falbe Point 90 cemetery is most obviously demonstrated by the 61

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

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presence of mass graves together with burials in pairs or as individuals. The variety of orientation of graves, abundance of grave gifts of a limited variety, and even possible collective markers in some rooms, can be interpreted as other indicators. Some of the gifts, unusual by the standard 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 in the Byzantine sixth century and later. The Circus cemetery, as the presence of amphora burials and absence of inscriptions probably indicate, is lower in social status than the Bir Ftouha cemetery. Nevertheless, these two cemeteries look similar in that individuals with few gifts were buried in a limited number of tomb types strictly arranged within the cemetery. This austere pattern is confirmed by the sixth- and seventh-century cemetery at Le Kram that lay approximately 200 meters outside a southern stretch of the Theodosian city wall, and was arranged and governed by principles similar to those at the Circus cemetery.62 The Le Kram cemetery consisted of 50 unmarked tombs of two simple types, invariably oriented NW-SE. Seventy percent of the graves were for adults in stone cists that lay deep (between 1.5 and 3 meters) and thirty percent of the graves were burials for infants and children (except for one anomalous adult) either in large African cylindrical or small eastern globular amphoras. Both the Circus and Le Kram cemeteries have less variation in tomb type and orientation and fewer grave goods than the Theodosian Wall cemetery. Thus, the relatively expansive and fluid burial practice seen in cemeteries originating in the Vandal fifth century seems to have given way to the rather austere and tightly controlled system in cemeteries originating in the Byzantine sixth century and later that are more homogenous and egalitarian in appearance. However, the differential treatment of children in cemeteries,63 though manifested in various ways, continued unabated from the fifth through the seventh century at Carthage, perhaps an indication of the strength of the African and Roman roots of its inhabitants.

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Mohammed K. Annabi, “Deux nécropoles au sud de la ville,” in Ennabli, Pour Sauver Carthage, 186–87. Norman, “Roman Children,” 37–45, explores the pattern in Africa proconsularis.

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Ritual and Religious Rites

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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 the dead. Family members and friends came to graves at regular intervals in order to honor the departed by sharing a meal with them. Since tombs, then as now, displayed the wealth or social status of the deceased and their heirs, more elaborate private family enclosures included furnishings and facilities for pouring libations, and preparing and sharing simple food offerings with the shades (manes) of the dead. Cemeteries featured communal banqueting tables that might be used by visitors to collective grave areas. Grave goods included drinking cups, bowls, and other dishware. Consolation, convivium, and nourishment were thus offered to mourners as well as to their departed loved ones, and social contact was established at least briefly, between the upper and lower worlds. Visual and epigraphic artifacts as well as textual evidence offer both concrete and verbal testimony to this funerary practice and demonstrate that it was continued by converts to the Christian religion, who also adapted it for the feasts of their martyrs and saints despite the often vehement disapproval of church officials. Gradually, the tradition of eating a meal with the dead was also transformed into the practice of celebrating a eucharist at an “ordinary” funeral. First at the tomb, then at the altar, the church family gathered to hear the tales of heroism and to eat a meal – celebrating the lives of their spiritual as well as blood ancestors. Funerals and food, then as now, are a natural combination. Pictorial representations of the deceased reclining on a couch (kline) and enjoying a banquet are nearly ubiquitous in Greek and Roman fu-

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nerary sculpture from the fifth century B.C.E to the fourth century C.E.1 Art historians traditionally refer to this iconographic motif as “Totenmahl” or “meal of the dead.” Most of these were crafted for non-Christian clients and show a reclining figure (usually male) holding a drinking cup. Spouses, children, and servants often appear in the composition, wives usually seated next to their reclining husbands. Other details, such as pets, flowers, birds, and small tables or trays of food may be included (Fig. 4.1). The images are sometimes carved in the round, but also carved in relief on sarcophagus fronts or on freestanding monuments. Funerary meal scenes appear also on a few polychrome mosaic tomb coverings from Roman Africa.2 Although most of the surviving examples of these tomb covers were produced for Christian clients (and do not portray meals), a small group of pagan tomb covers demonstrates that non-Christians occasionally ordered such decorative sepulchral embellishments. A few, from the area of Thina and now in the Musée Archéologique de Sfax, specifically represent the deceased on a dining couch, holding a drinking cup as if toasting the viewer. A small tripod table stands in front of the couch, laid with delicacies appropriate for an underworld repast (Fig. 4.2). In a matched set made for a husband and wife, eroti (naked and winged children) bring baskets of red roses, and small winged musicians play on stringed instruments (panduria). Along with bird and garlands, the

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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 au IVe siècle avant J.-C. (Rome: École française de Rome, 1982). Among the many volumes 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 Funerary Sculpture: Catalogue of the Collections (Malibu, Calif.: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1988); and Susan Walker, Memorials to the Roman Dead (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1985). Many catalogues of Roman African mosaics contain examples of these tomb pavements. The most comprehensive works on Christian funerary mosaics, however, are the as-yet-unpublished dissertations of Margaret Alexander “Early Christian Tomb Mosaics of North Africa” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1958), and James Terry, “Christian Tomb Mosaics of Late Roman, Vandalic and Byzantine Byzacenal Mosaics, Tunisia” (Ph.D. diss., University of Missouri Columbia, 1998), as well as Noël Duval, La mosaïque funéraire dans l’art paléochretien (Ravenna: Longo, 1976). See also Paul-Albert Fèvrier, “Mosaïques funéraires Chrètiennes datées d’Afrique du nord,” ACIAC 6 (1965): 433–56.

4.1. Front panel from a sarcophagus in the J. Paul Getty Museum. (The J. Paul Getty Museum, Villa Collection, Malibu, California. Used with Permission.)

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4.2. Mosaic tomb cover from Thina. Musée Archéologique de Sfax. (author’s photo.)

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iconography portrays the pleasures of a luxurious earthly life, or perhaps a hoped-for blissful afterlife (Fig. 4.3).3 A different type of image – one that portrays a group of diners (rather than a couple or small family gathering), reclining at a semicircular table (stibadium) and sharing a convivial banquet – is frequently seen on both Christian and pagan monuments from third- and fourth-century Rome. In these, like the others, a small tripod table usually stands in front of the couch. Wine cups are visible on the table or in raised hands.4 This banquet motif appears on both pagan and Christian sarcophagi, as well as painted on walls of pagan and Christian hypogea in the Roman catacombs (Figs. 4.4–5).5 In both pagan and Christian examples the assembly consists of seven (but sometimes five or twelve) diners reclining around a table set with wine, bread, and fish. In one well-known fresco, from the (pagan) Hypogeum of Vibia, the Good Angel (Angelus Bonus) guides the deceased (Vibia) through the gate of Paradise 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. Whether the iconography alludes to some aspect of funerary practice, represents the deceased’s past life, or offers an optimistic view of the afterlife is a matter of debate. Katharine Dunbabin has recently argued that all are possibilities – that the scene probably denoted different things in

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A fourth-century mosaic from Antioch gives a different, notable example from another region. See the depiction of a funeral banquet now in the Worcester Art Museum, showing women reclining on couches or serving the meal. Illustration in Christine Kondoleon, ed., Antioch: The Lost Ancient City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 121–2. 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,” in Dining in a Classical Context (ed. William J. Slater; Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), 1991. For discussion of these images, typological categorization, and the iconographical distinction between pagan and Christian examples see Friedrich Gerke, Die christlichen Sarkophage der vorkonstantinischen Zeit (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1940), 123–42. On the Christian images see Josef Engemann, “Der Ehrenplatz beim antiken Sigmamahl” in JAC 9 (1982): 239–49; Elisabeth Jastrz˛ebowska, “Iconographie des banquets aux IIIe–IVe siècles,” RecAug, 19 (1979): 3–90; and Robin Jensen, “Dining in Heaven,” BRev 14 (1998): 32–39, 48.

4.3. Mosaic tomb cover from Thina. Musée Archéologique de Sfax. (author’s photo.)

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4.4. Painting from catacomb of St. Sebastiano, Rome. Tomb of M. Clodius Hermes. (Photo: Estelle S. Brettman, International Catacomb Society. Used with permission.)

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4.5. Painting from catacomb of Callixtus, Rome. (Photo: Estelle S. Brettman, International Catacomb Society. Used with permission.)

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4.6. Painting from Hypogeum of Vibia, Rome. (Photo: Estelle S. Brettman, International Catacomb Society. Used with permission.)

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different places and times, and also that it may have been intentionally ambivalent and lacked any clear or definable content, allowing different viewers to read whatever meaning they chose into the image – a flexibility that could have added to the theme’s popularity.7 Accompanying inscriptions sometimes provide explanations, many of them being of the “eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you may be dead” type, written in the first-person “voice” of the deceased, who advises the passerby to enjoy the transitory pleasures of life, or asks the visitor to pour him a drink. One monument, that of Flavius Agricola, today in the Indianapolis Museum of Art, puts words into the deceased’s mouth, advising his friends to mix up wine and drink and keep pretty girls handy since death comes all too quickly.8 Another, the sarcophagus of Titus Aelius Euangelus and his wife Gaudenia Nicene, now in Malibu’s Getty Museum, includes an inscription that asks the reader to pour unmixed wine for him – a “patient man.”9 Others, like an inscription from the city of Rome, expressed the expectation that the deceased couple would attend the funeral feast and enjoy themselves along with everyone there.10 Descriptions of funeral banquets also appear in literature. Petronius’s fictional comic freedman, Trimalchio, solicits a promise that his friends would erect a lavish monument to decorate his tomb, which would include a sculpted representation of dining couches (triclinia) with a gathering of people enjoying themselves at a banquet. He requests the image of his pet dog to be placed at the feet of his portrait statue, along with some banqueting wreaths, a sun dial (a kind of memento mori to remind the visitor of life’s brevity), and the fights of a champion gladiator. He further asks that large jars filled with wine be placed at his right hand so that the libations poured over his bones might do him as much good dead as when he was alive.11 Taken at face value, these pleas suggest that many ancient Romans believed that even after death, disembodied spirits could partake in some kind of nourishment. But the nourishment likely was intended as much for the surviving as for the dead. According to documentary evi7 8 9 10

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Dunbabin, Roman Banquet, 109, 126, 140. This monument described at length by Dunbabin, Roman Banquet, 103–4. See Koch, Roman Funerary Sculpture: Catalogue of the Collections, 24–27. CIL 6.26554. See the discussion of this and other texts in Keith Hopkins, Death and Renewal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 233–34. Petronius, Satyr. 71. See also Apuleius, Metam. 8.9. Note the sundial on the Christian sarcophagus fragment (Fig. 4.11).

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dence, entertaining at the tomb was a fairly common practice and gatherings, although intended to be solemn, could sometimes get a bit rowdy, especially when mourners ate and drank to excess. Leftovers, once the party had broken up, might be gathered later by the destitute.12 Thus the living honored the dead by dining with them, a ritual that obliged them also to confront (and perhaps boldly laugh in the face of) the transitory nature of life and its ephemeral pleasures. Traditional Romans celebrated funeral banquets at the graves of family and friends, first on the day of burial (silicernium) and then again on the ninth day after the funeral (cena novendialis) which indicated the end of the official mourning period.13 Very little data exists to indicate 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, and a joint of beef. Both archaeological and textual evidence indicate that grain, wine, oil, incense and flowers were brought as offerings for the dead, either scattered or poured on and into the tomb itself.14 Ovid recommends that the gifts left for the dead be modest (a little scattered grain, some salt, bread soaked in wine, loose violets, or flower garlands) but added that neglecting the festival would court disaster. Another 12

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See Dennis Smith, From Symposium to Eucharist: The Banquet in the Early Christian World (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 40–1; Jocelyn M. C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971; repr., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) 51; and Jon Davies, Death, Burial and Rebirth in the Religions of Antiquity (London: Routledge, 1999), 139–54. In the Greek-speaking part of the ancient world, a common practice was to celebrate the meal on the third day after death. See discussion of the Roman festivals in Toynbee, Death and Burial, 50–51, 61–4. In regard to the types of food consumed see Cyrille Vogel, “Le poisson, aliment du repas funéraire chrètien?” in Paganisme, Judaïsme, Christianisme: influences et affrontements dans le monde antique, mélanges offers à Marcel Simon (Paris: Éditions E. de Boccard, 1978), 233–43. Vogel argues that fish is the special food of the funeral banquet, especially for Christians as it holds both eschatological and eucharistic signficiance. See also Andrew McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists: Food and 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) in which fish, along with wine and bread, are part of a ritual meal. Cf. Johannes Quasten, Patrology (Utrecht: Spectrum Publishers, 1966) I.171–75 for translation. Platters of fowl (chickens?) appear on a late-third-century sarcophagus in the Museo Gregoriano Profano in the Vatican, and the leg of a calf on a fragment in 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 subsequent years on the deceased’s birthday (dies natalis), and on the annual festival set aside for commemoration of ancestors (the parentalia), from February 13 to 21. Furthermore, during those days, marriages were prohibited, the family hearth kept unkindled, business suspended, and the temples closed with altars incense-free.15 Another festival known as dies rosationis or rosalia in May or June, when family members brought roses to the graves of their kinfolk, may be the reason for these flowers to appear in fresco or mosaic on tomb walls or coverings.16 As Ovid warns, neglecting these rituals could be perilous.17 At least some ancients tried to observe these festivals with decorum and reverence – 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 memorial verses to honor deceased ancestors, the Parentalia. The respectful but grief-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 unmixed wine and sweet-scented oil of nard” and to bring balsam and roses to his “tearless urn.”19 Such libations were accommodated by providing tombs with holes or pipes for pouring liquids (Fig. 4.7). These feeding tubes projected above graves, often made from the necks of broken or even buried amphorae which held the remains (both cremated and inhumed) of the deceased. Grave markers (cippi) often had attached platforms for food offerings sometimes with indentations in the shapes of the foods themselves (bread or fish, especially), which suggest a representative as well as actual offering (Fig. 4.8). Archaeologists also have found permanent tables, either semicircular (stibadia), biclinia, or triclinia forms, attached to a family mausoleum or in a common area of the cemetery, to facilitate the meal shared by the liv15 16

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Ovid, Fasti 2.533–70. 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 Hermann Dessau, ILS, 7213, 7258, 8369, 8370, 8371, 8372, 8373, and 8374 (“et rosas suo termpore deducerent”). This is also clear in Porphyry (on Horace) Ep. 2.2.209 and in Apuleius, Metam. 8.9. Ausonius, Parent. passim. Ausonius, Epit. 31; cited also in Toynbee, Death and Burial, 63.

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

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

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ing (Fig. 4.9).20 Elaborate vessels, dishware, and other furniture could be provided both as grave goods and as utensils to be used by visiting relatives, or even painted onto the walls of very important tombs (Fig. 4.10). Some burial sites included hearths for cooking, and cemeteries even provided water fountains and channeling systems for purification and post-meal washing up.21 The diversity of funerary banquet facilities or equipment is paralleled by the variety of iconography depicting or pertaining to the practice. The kind and quality of the monuments or furnishings differs according to date and geography, but also reflects the social status and wealth of the patron. Similarly, the Roman sarcophagi bearing the most elaborate banquet scenes have been shown to come from the middle classes or – like Trimalchio – freedmen or their descendents, a case well demonstrated by the graves discovered in the necropolis under the Vatican car park.22 Dunbabin astutely argues that wealthy freedmen, unable to “exploit the ancestral images that played so great a part in the Roman upper class funeral” chose to portray themselves as enjoying a luxurious 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 – probably because they did not view giving honors to their dead relations as having anything to do with the pagan god, religion, or idols. Meanwhile, church leaders were attempting to transfer these customary practices from cemetery to the church by encouraging mourners to observe the anniversary of a loved one’s death with alms and eucharistic offerings rather than food shared at a tomb. In his treatise On Monogamy, Tertullian remarks on the duties of a wife to her dead husband and makes passing reference to the tradi20

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The semicircular shaped table was especially associated with dining al fresco according to Dunbabin, “Triclinium and Stibadium,” 132–5. On water in cemeteries see also the discussion of tombs at Isola Sacra in Toynbee, Death and Burial, 136; also in Tipasa, Paul-Albert Février, “A propos du repas funéraire: culte et sociabilité,” CahArch 26 (1977): 29–45. An inscription from Rome records the transfer of rights in a tomb that included 24 urns, the use of a kitchen, and a well for drawing water, CIL 6.14614. On the issue of social class and representations of actual feasts, see Andrew Wallace-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; Portsmouth, R.I., 2004), 109–26. Dunbabin, Roman Banquet, 112–13.

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

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

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

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Tertullian, Mon. 10.4, author’s translation. The verb here (offert) does not make it clear, however, what or where she “offers.” See also Uxor. 2.8. Tertullian, Exh. cast. 11 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 repose. In early Christian texts it probably referred to the time of waiting before the general resurrection, e.g., the term refrigerium interim which seems to have been coined by Tertullian. See also Tertullian, Test. 4 where he describes the pagan customs of wishing the bones and ashes a bene refrigeria and bene requiescat. See Tertullian, Marc. 4.32.13, where interim refrigerium refers to the rest of 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 early Christian epitaphs. See Enrico Josi, “Refrigerium,” EC 10, 627–31; André Parrot, Le “refrigerium” dans l’au delà (Paris: Librairie E. Leroux, 1937); and Christine Mohrmann, Études sur le latin des chrètiens, II (Rome: Edizioni i storia e letteratura, 1961), 81–92. The idea that the refrigerium may refer specifically to the funeral meal (actual “refreshments”) or a heavenly banquet is suggested by 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 after death – and its reflection in the iconography of Christian burial places – see Alfred Stuiber, Refrigerium Interim: Die Vorstellungen vom Zwischenzustand und die frühchristliche Grabeskunst (Bonn: Peter Hanstein Verlag, 1957). Tertullian, Cor. 3 (oblations prodefunctis pro nataliciis annua die facimus).

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

ill of the dead, since they are thought to be, in some manner, present at the party.28 On the other hand, Tertullian also condemns those who do these things, since they are associated with idolatry and the feasts of the pagan gods. Citing the text from 1 Cor 10.21, he asserts that offering funeral oblations or partaking in what is offered at the banquet is akin to sitting down at the table of the demons.29 Paintings of banquet scenes, found on walls in the Christian catacombs of Rome or carved on early Christian sarcophagi demonstrate that Christians continued to share the traditional meals with the dead (Fig. 4.11). Although historians of the past have attempted to find a specifically Christian significance – either a liturgical reference or a representation of a biblical scene in these images – their obvious similarities to parallel pagan paintings counter their being interpreted as portraying a Christian agape or eucharist, Christ and his disciples at the Last Supper, or referring to the gospel story of the multiplication of the loaves and fish. The more straightforward conclusion, that these are scenes of actual funeral banquets, or evocations of the future paradisiacal banquet like that of Vibia (Fig. 4.6), better explains the compositions in any case, which either display or lack key details necessary for those identifications (e.g., the fish on the table as well as the seating arrangement argues against these as representations of a late-third- or early-fourth-century 28

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Tertullian, Test. 4. Here he comments on the inconsistency of believing that the dead are beyond feeling, but at the same time making them offerings and worrying about their opinion. See also Res. 1. Tertullian, Spec. 13. See also Apol. 13.

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eucharist; the number of diners makes no sense for a scene of the Last Supper).30 Some particularly well-known images, from the catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus even give captions to some of the diners, calling evocatively named women servants (Irene and Agape) to bring them more warm, mixed wine (Fig. 4.12). The group in this painting looks anything but solemn or mournful, as they raise their glasses and order refills.31 Certain graffiti from the triclia under S. Sebastiano at the Memoria Apostolorum (site of the translation of relics of both Peter and Paul) specifically use the term refrigeria to mean either a funerary meal or heavenly banquet, in either case perhaps hoped to have been shared with the saints (Peter and Paul) as well as with deceased family members.32 In addition to evidence from the paintings in the Christian catacombs in Rome are funerary inscriptions. For example, an epitaph of a Christian woman named Aelia Secundula, dated to 299 C.E. from the African province of Mauretania Sitifensis, gives insight into how these funeral meals might have been observed, in this region; it describes the placing of a stone table, laying out of food and drink, reciting of eulogies 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 matrI Lapideam 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 saeuuM Libentur fabul[as] dum sera redimus horA Castae matri bonae laudesq[ue], vetula dormiT Ipas, q[uae] nutri[i]t, iaces et sobriae semper. V[ixit] a[nnis] LXXV a[nno] p[rovinciae] CCLX, Statulenia Iulia fecit.

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Identifications of these images as portraying eucharists or agape meals – or alternately of the Last Supper or the multiplication of loaves – are commonplace. For instance see Graydon Snyder, Ante Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life before Constantine (Rev. ed.; Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2003), 124–26; Such identifications have been used to argue that certain Christians were still celebrating agape meals into the early fourth century, or that women were celebrating the eucharist in certain instances. For example see Dorothy Irvin, “The Ministry of Women in the Early Church,” Duke Divinity School Review 45.2 (1980): 76–86. See also the articles noted above, fn. 6. See Février, “A propos du repas funéraire: culte et sociabilité,” which considers the message of conviviality imparted by these particular images. See examples, discussion, and bibliography in Snyder, Ante Pacem, 251–58.

4.12. Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, banquet with Irene and Agape. (Photo: Estelle S. Brettman, International Catacomb Society. Used with permission.)

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To the memory of Aelia Secundula We all sent many worthy things for her funeral. Further near the altar dedicated to Mother Secundula, It pleases us to place a stone table On 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 the province. Made by Statulenia Julia.33

Mensae in cemeteries are found throughout the Roman world. In addition to Italy and Africa, examples can be seen Spain, Dalmatia, Germany, and in the catacombs of Malta (Fig. 4.13).34 Somewhat to the west of Aelia’s tomb is the ancient site of Tipasa in Mauretania Caesariensis, which includes two huge cemetery areas outside the eastern and western city walls. These areas were equipped with tables for memorial feasts, many of them in very good condition and covered with mosaic decoration, along with cisterns and systems for drawing water and channeling it onto the tombs. In addition to open-air burials, these areas included a martyr’s shrine (Sta. Salsa), and a basilica built primarily to house funeral banquets and private memorial services. One of these, built around 400 C.E. by the bishop Alexander to provide a place for his own tomb, also contained the burials of his nine predecessors as well as a number of other, probably more ordinary, burials. A structure roughly 23 by 14 meters in size, this basilica’s nave and aisles are filled with graves and feature several semicircular stone couches for the celebration of funeral meals (Fig. 4.14).35 A stone mosaic mensa cover from the late fourth century, recovered from an nearby area known as the necropolis of Matares, contains a

33

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Diehl, ILCV 1. 1570; CIL 8.20.277. This inscription cited also by Johannes Quasten in his very helpful article, “Vetus Superstitio et Nova Religio: The Problem of Refrigerium in the Ancient Church of North Africa,” HTR 33 (1940): 253–66. See the article by X. Barral i Altet, “Mensae et repas funéraires dans la pèninsule ibérique,” ACIAC 9.2 (1978): 49–69, for discussion of funerary menase in Spain. On the site of Tipasa and these cemeteries see Paul-Albert Février, “Le culte des martyrs en Afrique et ses plus anciens monuments,” Corso di cultura sull’arte Ravennate e Bizantina 17 (1970): 191–215.

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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)

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legend embodying the optimistic spirit of such banquets. In addition to images of fish, typical of North African mosaics, is a legend that reads: 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 funerary practices to honor deceased clergy (bishops in particular) and incorporated them into the cult of the saints – individuals who were members of the extended church family, but who also functioned as patrons and intercessors.36 Oral reading of the martyr’s heroic deeds (acta), singing songs of praise, and sharing food on a saint’s “birthday” (natalacius) into heaven was a kind of communion with that holy person. Cyprian of Carthage urges his congregants to record the days of martyrs’ deaths, so that they might celebrate them afterwards with offerings and sacrifices as well as festive meals.37 Thus the martyrs’ celebrations were noted on the church calendar and commemorated with sacrifices (presumably a eucharist), offerings, and a banquet. Such adaptation of the funerary banquet allowed a special kind of communion with holy men and women. Saints’ shrines came to be augmented with banqueting facilities that could accommodate pilgrims bringing food offerings to 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. Januarius. The text, which is difficult to interpret, indicates that it might have been placed in a church (basilica dominica) and used for the eucharistic liturgy.38 The same evolution of ritual action, space, and table characterized those other places in the Roman milieu where the practice of holding banquets at the tomb was ancient and entrenched. As noted above, the triclia in the Memoria Apostolorum on Rome’s Via Appia Antica displays graffiti produced by ancient pilgrims which invoke the blessings of Peter and Paul on the funerary banquets (here “refrigeria”) celebrated at

36

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Tertullian, Cor. 3, mentions making annual offering for the dead as birthday honors. Cyprian, Epp. 12.2.1; 39.3.1; see also Tertullian, Scorp. 7.2 on the singing of songs in honor of the martyrs. 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. Mensa from region of Matares (near Tipasa). (author’s photo)

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that place.39 Another well-known example, excavated in an ancient pagan and Christian cemetery beneath the Cathedral of Bonn, gives a clear example of a matryrium equipped with a mensa. An enclosure had been built around or near the sarcophagi of what were presumed to be four saints, and funerary mensae and benches were discovered, probably those used by late-third- or early-fourth-century pilgrims.40 The transformation of burial places into pilgrimage sites required architectural modifications, gathering spaces, and mensae. These eventually became chapels with eucharistic altars.41 Such arrangements still exist today as Christian visitors continue to hold services in the catacombs of Rome. The area around these shrines became desirable for burials ad sanctos. Thus burial continued in the proximity to the saints’ tombs well after they were set apart as holy places. In the late fourth century Pope Damasus began to identify the tombs and promote the cult of the martyrs in the catacombs of Rome, even composing epigrams which he had inscribed on marble plaques and placed near the saints’ remains.42 Presumably many of these places also included mensae that later would have been used as small eucharistic altars for occasional celebrations. For instance, the catacomb of Domitilla’s crypt of Veneranda features a sarcophagus that appears to have been appropriated as a mensa dedicated to the cult of St. Petronilla. The fresco in the arcosolium over this sarcophagus shows Petronilla escorting Veneranda into paradise (Fig. 4.16). Presumably, family members commemorating their “ordi39

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The Memoria Apostolorum (part of the catacomb of St. Sebastian) probably dates to the mid-third century. For general discussion and bibliography see Antonio Ferrua, La basilica e la catacombe di S. Sebastiano (Vatican City: Pontificia Commissione di Archeologia Sacra, 1990); and Elisabeth Jastrz˛ebowska, Untersuchengen zum christlichen Totenmahl auf Grund der Monumente des 3. und 4. Jarhhunderts unter der Basilika des hl. Sebastian in Rom (Frankfurt am Main: P.D. Lang, 1981). See bibliography in G. Snyder, Ante Pacem, 164. See also discussion of Salona in Snyder, and bibliography. For a (dated but traditional and illuminatingly pious) study of this phenomenon see Ludwig Hertling and Englebert Kirshbaum, Die römische Katakomben und ihre Martyrer (Vienna: Verlag Herter, 1950); trans.: The Roman Catacombs and Their Martyrs (Milwaukee, Wis.: Bruce Publishing, 1956), esp. chap. 3, “The Tombs of the Martyrs,” 49–86. Epigrammata Damasiana. On Damasus’s activities see Jean Guyon, “Damase et l’illustration des martyrs: les accents de la devotion et l’enjeu d’un pastorale,” in Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective (eds. Mathijs Lamberigts and Peter van Deun; Louvaine: Peters, 1995), 157–77; and Victor Saxr, “Damase et le calendrier des fêtes de martyrs de l’église romaine,” Saecularia Damasiana (Rome: Pontificial Institute of Christian Archaeology, 1986), 59–88.

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

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nary dead” sometimes had to share tight spaces with pilgrims arriving to honor a saint. Monumental examples this complex of tomb, dining room, and martyr’s shrine, include the extra-urban Roman cemetery basilicas of St. Agnes, Ss. Peter and Marcellinus, and St. Lawrence. Large funerary banquet halls erected at these sites, near to (but not on top of) the martyrium, housed those who came to honor family members buried within (or nearby) and provided a venue for the saint’s commemoration – a time when crowds would fill the hall, celebrating with songs and drink, sometimes to bawdy and inebriated excess.43 This adaptation of the funerary banquet created certain new problems that church officials needed to resolve. The structures built to serve these festivities were not regular parish churches like those built inside the walls of the city for regular Sunday eucharistic celebrations. Although many were equipped with altars and baptismal fonts along with mensae and couches for the purpose of serving both private funeral banquets and public saint’s feasts, they neither had resident clergy, nor were the seat of a bishop. The presence of an altar in the large hall as well as one inside the small shrine enclosure indicates that a eucharist could be held either place, perhaps moved to the hall when the size of the gathering required a larger space. At the same time, this larger and more removed space could accommodate the (sometimes rowdy) activities associated with the vigil. Jerome complained to one of his correspondents that night-watches in the basilicas of the martyrs were spoiled by young men and women of bad reputations who behaved scandalously.44 Before long, church officials attempted to put a stop to these practices, which they saw as disrespectful, disorderly, and fundamentally profane. St. Peter’s, undoubtedly the most popular pilgrimage church in Rome, was likely built originally to serve as a funeral hall (rather than as the papal basilica that it appears today).45 Augustine decries the regular spectacle of inebriated pilgrims coming to visit the saint. Al43

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See Richard Krautheimer, “Mensa-Coemeterium-Martyrium,” CahArch 11 (1960): 15–40 reprinted in Studies in Early Christian, Medieval, and Renaissance Art (New York: New York University Press, 1969), 35–58. Vig. 9. 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 del ministero per i beni culturali e ambientali 81 (1996): 1–84.

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though such behavior was forbidden, he explained, the prohibition was hard to enforce because the place was “distant from the residence of the bishop and in so large a city of people living according to the flesh.”46 Simultaneously, however, St. Peter’s shrine served as a venue for banquets honoring dead members of prominent Christian families. Paulinus of Nola, in a condolence letter to the Roman senator Pammachius upon the death of his wife, mentions the funerary feast in the “basilica of the apostle” and commends his friend for using the occasion for a charitable act. For, instead of only inviting members of his own social class, Pammachius had opened the doors to a large crowd of the hungry poor. This, Paulinus approvingly comments, recalled the story of the multiplication of the loaves and fish. By “feeding bodies in need,” Pammachius has garnered God’s good will and also “refreshed the soul of his dead wife.”47 An earlier effort to turn rowdy or exclusive funeral feasts either into more sober occasions, or into opportunities to show charity, are recorded in the Apostolic Constitutions, which instructs Christians on how to conduct decorous and charitable funeral banquets: “Let the third day of the departed be celebrated with psalms, and lessons, and prayers, on account of him who rose within the space of three days; and let the ninth day be celebrated in remembrance of the living, and of the departed, and the fortieth day according to the ancient pattern: for so did the people lament Moses, and the anniversary day in memory of him. And let alms be given to the poor out of his goods for a memorial of him.” The document further urges those who attend their memorials to feast with “good order” and refrain from drinking to excess.48 Dated to the early fourth century, Constantine’s Oration to the Assembly of the Saints contrasts the commemoration of a Christian martyr with pagan funerary festivities, pointing out that the Christian ceremonies include a sacrifice of thanksgiving in honor of the saint, “a bloodless, harmless sacrifice” with neither frankincense nor fire but only enough “pure light” (i.e., torches and candles at the tomb) to satisfy the assembled worshipers. The oration further praises Christians 46 47

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Augustine, Ep. 29.10–11. 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 a monastery and dedicated his life to aiding the poor. Ap. Const. 8.42–44, trans. ANF 7, 498.

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for transforming funeral feasts into occasions for a charitable display, while subtly acknowledging the tenaciousness of the old, more self-indulgent behaviors: “Many too there are whose charitable spirit leads them to prepare a temperate banquet for the comfort of the needy, and the relief of those who had been driven from their homes; a custom which can only be deemed burdensome by those whose thoughts are not accordant with the divine and sacred doctrine.”49 This kind of practice may have grown out of those earlier “agape meals” Tertullian refers to as those feasts “we give for the relief of the poor.”50 Gradually the memorial banquet function of the halls was repressed and abandoned, while the adjacent buildings that included the actual saint’s shrine were enlarged and transformed into basilicas dedicated to martyrs whose relics were placed under their main altars. In this way funeral mensae in cemeteries were adapted and moved inside of churches and funeral rites began to include a eucharistic celebration at the “table of the saint,” rather than a meal at the “table of the dead.” The practice of celebrating a eucharist at an actual funeral (rather than the traditional memorial feast at the grave) is not mentioned in the literary sources before the end of the fourth century and then only indirectly. A council of African bishops forbade the celebration of a eucharist in the presence of a corpse, specifically prohibiting the practice of putting the consecrated bread into its mouth.51 Other decrees allow the eucharist 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’s funeral, notes that the practice in Italy was different than that of Africa, in that they celebrated the “sacrifice of our redemption” at the tomb, 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

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Orat. Const. 12; trans. NPNF 1, 570–71. This oration, appended to Eusebius’s Vita Const. is not certainly an original work of the Emperor himself. Tertullian, Apol. 39 (siquidem inopes quosque refrigerio isto iuvamus). See Février, “A propos du repas funéraire,” 40–5, in which he argues that this transition from private banquet to occasion for almsgiving can be seen clearly at Tipasa. Con. Hippo A 393 c. 4, CCSL 149.21. Ibid. Augustine, Conf. 9.12.32 (cum offerretur pro ea sacrificium pretii nostri iam iuxta sepulchrum posito cadauere). See Krautheimer, “Mensa-Coemeterium-Martyrium,” passim.

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the early mensae were mostly made of stone may explain why stone altars began to replace wooden ones in the late fourth and early fifth centuries.55 A well-known effort to move a saint’s celebration “inside” a church where the memorial ritual would be conducted with decency and decorum is illustrated by the way the fore-mentioned Paulinus of Nola, managed his own pilgrimage site. Paulinus tries to discourage the rowdy revelers at Felix’s shrine in Nola by luring them inside the basilica proper by the “novel” addition of paintings on the walls. Addressing a visitor to the shrine, he outlines his problem: Now the greater number among the crowds here are country-folk, not without belief but unskilled in reading. For years they have been used to following profane cults in which their god was their belly, and at last they have turned as converts to Christ out of admiration for the undisputed achievements of the saints performed in Christ’s name. Notice in what numbers they assemble from all the country districts, and how they roam around, their unsophisticated minds beguiled in devotion … See how they now in great numbers keep vigil and prolong their joy throughout the night, dispelling sleep with joy and darkness with torchlight. I only wish they would channel this joy in sober prayer and not introduce their wine cups within the holy thresholds … Their naivety is unconscious of the extent of their guilt, and their sins arise from devotion, for they wrongly believe that the saints are delighted to have their tombs doused with reeking wine.

Paulinus then offers his solution – pictures on the walls as a competing attraction: This was why we thought it useful to enliven all the houses of Felix with paintings on sacred themes, in the hope that they would excite the interests of the rustics by their attractive appearance, for the sketches are painted in various co-

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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. Sigmashaped stone tables, found in churches (especially in Provence and Africa) and often referred to as “agape tables” may have been used as offering tables rather than as eucharistic altars. See W. Eugene Kleinbauer, “Table Top with Lobed Border,” in Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century (ed. Kurt Weitzmann; New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art 1979), 637–38. On the transformation of altars see Catherine Metzger, “Le mobilier 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 the theme outlined by the painter’s hand. So when all the country folk point out and read over to each other the subjects painted, they turn more slowly to thoughts of food, since the feast of fasting is so pleasant to the eye. In this way, as the paintings beguile their hunger, their astonishment may allow better behavior to develop in them … as they gape, their drink is sobriety, and they forget the longing for excessive wine.56

In his Confessions, Augustine recalls another campaign to bring the celebration of the saint “inside” the church proper (and the “proper church”) and to squelch the practice of Christians banqueting in cemeteries. Monica, carrying food to a martyr’s shrine in Milan (as was her former custom in Numidia), was stopped by the doorkeeper with orders from Ambrose to bar anyone from bringing in food and drink. Augustine comments on how hard it was for her to discontinue a custom which she had long practiced, one motivated by devotion rather than personal pleasure, and even seemed a little surprised at Ambrose’s influence over his mother (one her son apparently did not have). The bishop of Milan successfully admonished her to turn her “pagan” custom into a pious celebration inside the church where she would attend a eucharistic banquet rather than leave food at a grave. She “happily abstained,” offering her gifts instead to the needy and bringing a heart “full of purer vows” to the memorials of the martyrs.57 As in Nola, this incident illustrates a process that would eventually lead to saints’ relics being placed under the main sacramental altar – thereby joining all three feasts (memorial, martyr’s feast, and eucharistic sacrifice). Official attempts to transform the ancient practice of dining with the dead by converting boisterous and unruly celebrations at tombs into sober and respectful liturgies in churches may have underestimated the difficulty of such an undertaking. Such efforts met resistance, sometimes overt and riotous, and sometimes passive and merely stubborn. Augustine himself, attempting to curb the wild parties that characterized the feast of Cyprian in Carthage, or the feast of Leontius, the martyr saint of Hippo, realized that he might as well compromise and allow family memorial meals to continue, at least. Nevertheless, in his treat-

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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. Augustine, Conf. 6.2.

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ise, The City of God, Augustine praises those “better” families who had abandoned the practice.58 Documents recounting the progress of a more complicated case, that of the Mensa of Cyprian in Carthage, vividly show how difficult it was for church leaders (in this case Augustine of Hippo and Aurelius of Carthage) to gain control of the festival of a beloved local saint. Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, martyred in 258, was the perhaps the most important and revered martyr of African Christians – holy to Donatists and Catholics alike. His shrine was the destination of pilgrims from all parts of the region, and his feast day, September 14, was the occasion for a momentous – and sometimes riotous – celebration. In one of more than a dozen extant sermons he preached on the vigil or feast of Cyprian between 394 and 419,59 Augustine refers to the saint’s shrine in Carthage by its traditional name, the Mensa Cypriani. Although its location is no longer certain, it would have been well known to anyone who visited Carthage in Augustine’s time. This particular shrine, one of at least three dedicated to Cyprian, was constructed at the place known as the Ager Sexti, the site of Cyprian’s execution by the Roman governor, on grounds just behind his own residence. Cyprian’s beheading was witnessed by a throng of his followers, who rushed to dip cloths in his blood and who bore his body away in triumph for burial in the cemetery of Macrobius Candidianus on 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 because he had dined there: “And because by this very sacrifice of himself he prepared this table; not as one on which to feed or be fed, but as one on which sacrifice might be offered to God, to whom he offered his very self.” Therefore while it was called “Cyprian’s table,” this mensa 58

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Augustine, Civ. 7.26; much of the following discussion was covered more briefly in Quasten, “Vetus Superstitio.” Note, however, that some of Augustine’s sermons hint at a Christianized version of the Parentalia, oriented more toward a churchly celebration of “days for remembering the departed” on which sermons might be preached on Christian beliefs about death and resurrection. See Serm 172, 173.1 and possibly 361. Augustine, Serm. 308A, 309, 310, 311, 312, 313, 313A, 313B, 313C, 313D, 313E and 313F; Enarrat. Ps. 32.2, 323. 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 surrounded by his persecutors is now a table surrounded by worshipers.61 Such an explanation indicates that Augustine meant a eucharistic altar when he spoke of the mensa, a equation strengthened in two other (possibly earlier) sermons given at this same shrine where he identified an altar (altare) honoring Cyprian but raised up for God.62 He also instructed his listeners in the difference between the honor paid to martyr and that paid to God, and admonished them to be respectful by celebrating 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, but we have made an altar to the true God out of Cyprian.”63 Here Augustine tries to rein in certain aspects of the martyr cult by carefully redefining the purpose of this popular pilgrimage site as a basilica dedicated to the worship of God, not to “disrespectful” feasts in honor of a saint. The name of this particular shrine, however, must have given him some qualms since the word mensa never applied to place of sacrifice or the shedding of blood, but rather only used for an ordinary dining table, a funerary table, or some other ritual or cultic table.64 Augustine’s equation of the words mensa and altare suggests that he was eager to transform the cult through its ceremonial celebration in (God’s) eucharist rather than a festival banquet. Furthermore, when in other places Augustine applies the term “mensa Domini” (or mensa Dominica) to the eucharist, he contrasted it with “mensa diaboli,” a translation of “trapezes kuriou” found in 1 Cor 10.21.65 Augustine may have attempted to rename the shrine itself, referring to it elsewhere as the Domus Sancti Cypriani.66 The shrine known as the Mensa Cypriani had existed for more than a century by the time Augustine preached his sermons there, and must have been called by this name from the beginning. As noted above, the 61 62

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Augustine, Serm. 310.2. 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. Ibid., Serm. 313A.5. See Cicero, Leg. 2.26.66; Virgil, Aen. 2.995 “mensaeque deorum;” Cic. Har. resp. 57; Pliny, Nat Hist. 25.59, “Iovis mensa.” See Augustine, Peccat. Merit. 1.24.32; Ep. 149.16, Ser. 31.1.2 for example. 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. On the matter of terminology, mensa = altare, see R. Krautheimer, “Mensa-Coemeterium-Martyrium,” 49–50.

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terminology is puzzling, since the shrine commemorated the site where Cyprian was executed, not the place where he was buried. Located in the Ager Sexti (the Estate of Sextus), where the proconsul Galerius Maximus was temporarily residing for reasons of his health, it must have been built in an open field outside the city walls.67 Cyprian’s tomb was in another pilgrimage site, the basilica known as the Mappalia, also outside the city walls in the suburban cemetery of the Procurator Macrobius Candidianius, on the Mappalian way (near the fishponds).68 Based on traditional funerary practices, one would expect this shrine to have a funerary mensa, and perhaps it did, even though its name 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 feast of Cyprian. Based on textual evidence it seems likely that he preached more than a dozen sermons in Carthage, five at the Mappalia and at least eight at the Mensa Cypriani. The sermons at the Mappalia were likely preached on the evening of the feast (vigil), while the Mensa was his venue on the next day – thereby distinguishing the two shrines by the type of commemorative celebration held in each.69 The evening cel67

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Acta Proconsularia (Sancti Cypriani), 2 and 5, as noted above. The Mensa also is mentioned in Augustine, Enarrat. Ps. 80 (4, 23), which seem to have been preached there on Cyprian’s feast day. About the two basilicas, see Victor of Vita, Hist. Pers. Af. Prov. 1.16. Their present-day locations (ruins) are still debated; see Othmar Perler, Les Voyages de Saint Augustine (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1969), 420–21; Liliane Ennabli, Les inscriptions funéraires chrétiennes de la basilique dite de Sainte-Monique à Carthage (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. This corresponds to the identification of the place and time of his preaching of Serm. 308A (clearly preached on the vigil) and Enarrat. Ps. 32.2, and might be surmised of Serm. 311, 312, and 313C (if the definition of the dies natalis can be extended to include the evening vigil), and Serm. 313F (the latter identified as being preached in the evening). This pattern corresponds to the view of Maria Boulding, The Works of Saint Augustine: Expositions of the Psalms III/15 (Hyde Park, N.Y.: New City Press, 2000), that Enarrat Ps. 32.2 was preached in the vigil at the Mappalia and then the Enarrat. Ps. 32.3 the next day at the Mensa. See dating of the sermons by Edmund Hill, The Works of Saint Augustine, Sermons III/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 against this pattern – all three sermons being in the Mappalia: vigil, next morning, and next evening.

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ebration associated primarily with the Mappalia was particularly disorderly and included dancing, singing impious songs, and excessive eating 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 eradicate the practice of festival banquets on saints’ days or altogether. This was, no doubt, part of their larger program generally to contain and control the popular martyr cult in North Africa, and to distinguish their congregation from that of the Donatists with regard to the decorum by which they honored their saints. Augustine’s sermons allude to his desire to control the disorderly partying at the Mappalia, which in his mind more dishonored than honored the saint. He claims to have had some success. In a sermon probably preached in the year 405, he says “this place” (Mappalia) was once invaded by the pestilential rowdiness of dancers and resounded with the singing of impious songs.” But now, he says, based on the initiative 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 to Aurelius of Carthage, urging him to join him in reforming the martyrs’ feasts.72 Citing Paul’s letter to the Romans, “not in feasting and drunkenness, not in fornication and impurity, not in strife and jealousy; rather, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and do not provide for the flesh with its desires” (Rom. 13.13–14), Augustine laments the sacrilegious feasting, drinking, and general “foulness” at the tombs of saints and the “places for the sacraments.”73 Grudgingly tolerating such misbehavior in private funerals, Augustine concentrates on eliminating such practices in public, religious spaces and official saints’ commemorations. He adds that the churches of Africa were lagging behind churches elsewhere, and is thus shamed by the relative laxity in correcting these moral failures.74 70 71

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Augustine, Serm. 311.5. 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). Augustine, Ep. 22. 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 converted him. He may be referring, in particular, to Ambrose’s suppression of the funerary cult at Milan, see above.

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Although he believed that the remedy required the authority of a council, he advises Aurelius to begin at home, since, he argues, other churches will be embarrassed to retain what the church at Carthage had corrected. Reminding Aurelius that as a deacon he had condemned such practices, he encourages him now to take firm, but not harsh steps to follow up. Once these depraved celebrations in the martyrs’ shrines were eliminated, Augustine optimistically expects that the dissolute funeral banquets held for the ordinary dead would also gradually come to an end, and that mourners would voluntarily replace the feasts with almsgiving to the poor and commemorate their “dear ones” inside the church, rather than at the tomb.75 Augustine thus reveals his larger program – to transform “ordinary” funerals into charitable and pious celebrations within churches, and to get out of the cemeteries. Augustine was satisfied in his desire for this matter to come before a council of African bishops. Canon 29 of the council held at Hippo in 393 probably represents a follow-up to Augustine’s letter to Aurelius: “Neither bishops nor clergy shall dine in the church, except when necessary for the hospitality shown to travelers, but then the people shall be prohibited from this kind of banquet as much as possible.”76 Although this canon offers no prohibition of banquets at family tombs, it nearly caused that above-mentioned riot when it was imposed on the church at Hippo during the feast of the martyr Leontius in 394. Augustine describes his success in suppressing the protest in a letter to Alypius of Thagaste, and summarizes the arguments of the opposition. Having preached a few days earlier on the Gospel passage “do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not cast your pearls before swine,” Augustine believes he had made his point – but unfortunately to only the few who came out to hear the sermon. Trying again, he preached the next day on the story of Jesus driving the money changers from the Temple, and paralleled the “den of thieves” with drunken revelers. On the next day, the feast day itself, people still complained about the suppression of their celebration, asking “why now?” when others before Augustine had allowed the parties to go on. Augustine responds that in earlier times, church officials had to tolerate certain pagan practices because of the weakness of the

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newly converted, who were used to their long-standing pleasures.77 But by now, he points out, Christians ought to be ready to live as true Christians, and moreover no less pious than members of those other churches across the sea. Apparently his words had good effect, and the crisis was averted and the celebration was marked with both modesty and piety – and, as Augustine asserts – kept quite differently from the heretics (Donatists) in their basilica, where the customary carnal feasting and drinking took place.78 This exchange reveals Augustine’s motives for this reform, which includes his desire to show up the Donatists as immoral in comparison with the pious Catholics.79 Augustine’s position against the feasts of the martyrs was a compromise, however. As he explains in his letter to Aurelius, the practice of ordinary funeral feasts was much more entrenched and almost impossible to stamp out. Toleration for certain kinds of private celebrations was probably politically wise and although he disapproved, Augustine probably turned a blind eye to those long-cherished traditions, especially 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 prohibited the giving of the eucharist to a corpse, and even the celebration of the eucharist in the presence of a corpse. Legislation further forbade the eucharist as part of a funeral ritual that took place after midday (since mourners could not be assumed to have fasted before receiving the sacrament).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

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In roughly contemporary exchanges with the Manichees, Augustine had to acknowledge that many ignorant or still-superstitious Catholic Christians had forgotten their vows to abstain from pagan practices and still drink to excess over the dead and “bury themselves over the buried” in gluttonous funeral feasts in 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 is even worse than impiety.” Here Augustine also insists that Christians distinguish between sacrificing to the martyrs and sacrificing to God in memory of the martyrs. Worship, he proclaims, is due to God alone. Augustine, Ep. 29 See also Optatus of Milevis, Donat. 3.4, where he mentions the multiplication of martyrs’ altars and tables. Augustine, Civ. 7.26 Council of Hippo 393, canon 4 (CCSL 149, 21); Brev. Hipp. 160.28 (CCSL 149, 41).

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grave – must have become part of the ritual surrounding most Christian funerals, and that certain practices – like the feeding of the consecrated elements of the sacrament to a corpse (viaticum) – have a long tradition.82 And, finally, the eucharist itself never really ceased to be a certain kind of funeral meal – a meal at which a once-dead host is now living and present. Archaeological evidence also shows how entrenched the funerary cult was. Given its antiquity it could not be eradicated. In fact, church officials even today try to bring the saint’s festival into the church from off the street, and admonish their parishioners to respect the dead with proper funeral etiquette. Nevertheless ordinary people still eat and drink at wakes, and they still get a little boisterous at festivals in honor of their saints.

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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 the altar during the prayer of the bishop.

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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 (unguentaria) – both glass and ceramic – found at Jewish burial sites in Palestine in the early centuries C.E.?1 A few years ago, scholars thought these might be lacrimaria (“tear bottles”), brought to burial sites by mourners,2 or balsamaria (“balsam bottles”), so named for the scented oil the bottles were thought to have contained. Others considered the bottles to be part of food and other offerings either buried with the dead for use in the afterlife or brought to the dead for ancestor worship. Both of these theories rely upon the persistence of customs that may be traced back to the First Temple and earlier periods.3 Today, 1

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I would like to thank Laurie Brink for including me in this exciting project. I would also like to extend my appreciation to Annal Frenz and Karen Stern for their responses to my paper at the May 2005 conference. 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 Zissou, The Necropolis of Jerusalem in the Second Temple Period (in Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi; The Israel Exploration Society, 2003), 59. Kloner and Zissou, The Necropolis of Jerusalem, 59. For a discussion of Iron Age ancestor worship and needs and nourishment in the afterlife, see Elizabeth BlochSmith, Judahite Burial Practices and Beliefs about the Dead (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992). For the Roman period in the land of Israel, see Byron McCane, 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 the Kidron Valley tomb as reported by N. Avigad, “A Depository of Inscribed Ossuaries in the Kidron Valley,” IEJ 12 (1962): 1–12. McCane also discusses in detail the 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 is forbidden in the Hebrew Bible (Lev 19:28) and is also referred to in m. Mak. 3:5.

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several archaeologists and historians believe that the perfume in the bottles was employed to mask the scent of the decomposing corpse.4 This conjecture, seemingly sound on its surface, is often derived either from contemporary western cultural attitudes toward decomposing corpses or from a literal reading of a single line from the Babylonian Talmud. However, when analyzed critically and comprehensively, the archaeological, textual, and biological evidence point to reasons other than the utilitarian for burying the dead with spices and perfume. This study examines relevant rabbinic texts and compares them to the material remains of perfume bottles in order to elucidate the three phases of Jewish burial in which spices, in the form of either perfume or incense, may have been used; the phase of burial in which scent may have been employed to mask the stench of a decomposing corpse; and the reason, if not to cover odors, perfume bottles may have been interred with the dead.5

The Problem of Evidence Before launching into this task, an overview of Jewish burial practices would seem to be in order. However, such an endeavor can be an allconsuming, perhaps even futile, enterprise. As Ian Morris has pointed out, the material remains of ancient burials are simply the remnants of funerals – ritual acts steeped in meaning, tradition, and emotion. As such, the miscellany of physical evidence cannot adequately illuminate the process of the rituals or the significance attached to burials. In addition, archaeological remains, along with studies of epigraphic and other literary evidence, provide only singular or fractionalized snapshots of burials and their attendant rituals located in a specific place and period, making the inexact science of extrapolation a necessary means for surmising anything about ancient burials.6 These problems are aptly demonstrated in the study of ancient Jewish burials in the land of Israel, where we can describe the evolution of

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For example, McCane, Roll Back the Stone, 15, 48. This initial study is also part of a larger project on the metaphors and interpretations concerning scent, spices, perfume, and incense in the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic midrash and their connection to realia. Ian Morris, Death-Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 1–15.

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particular practices but are left with many unresolved questions. For example, in the First Temple period, rock-cut tombs appear to reflect family burials with benches or beds cut into the rock in order to accommodate decomposing corpses. A compartment under one of the benches or a separate repository would be located in the tomb to house the collected bones of ancestors.7 In such cases, the bones were piled together.8 During the late Second Temple period, although most tombs continued to be family structures, bodies were either buried directly in rock-cut niches or placed in coffins which were then placed into niches. When the bones were collected, they were placed individually or with one or two other skeletal remains (often women with children) into separate boxes called ossuaries.9 Although we can see the change over time in these burial practices, the surviving evidence represents only a small portion of the buried populace – most likely the richest members of the community. We have no method to determine how or in what manner the majority of the population were buried, nor do we know the procedures or rituals leading up to the burial for those entombed in the structures or for the rest of the population. Finally, although scholars have conjectured as to the meaning and significance of the collection of bones into ossuaries, no primary text exists that explains plainly why Jews performed such a rite.10 By the third century C.E., most tombs are no longer family structures; instead, several families and those without familial neighbors are buried together. Some tomb caves, such as those at Beth She‘arim, 7

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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 First Temple,” BAR 12 (1986): 22–39. Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, 146–149. 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 the Collections of the State of Israel (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994), 16, 21; Gideon Avni and Zvi Greenhut, The Akeldama Tombs: Three Burial Caves in the Kidron Valley, Jerusalem (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 1996), 118–120; Rachel Hachlili and Ann E. Killebrew, Jericho: The Jewish Cemetery of the Second Temple Period, (Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 1999), 192–95; Jodi Magness, “The Burials of Jesus and James,” JBL 124/1 (2005): 132; Rachel Hachlili, Jewish Funerary Customs, Practices and Rites in the Second Temple Period (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 94, 322–24, 483. This fact has not deterred scholars from trying. For a recent discussion and review of opinions, see Magness, “Burials,” 129.

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are quite large, were in use for several centuries (making the dating of individual burials difficult), and include burials of both local and Diasporic Jews.11 Similar to the earlier burials, it is likely that only wealthy or high status individuals are buried in these tombs.12 However, either because of changes in style or variations in tradition possibly related to the different cities of origin of the mourners, a wide variety of burial practices is attested in the caves. In Beth She‘arim we see 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 to the wall with an arched top).13 Different types of sarcophagi (Fig. 5.4) and some ossuaries are also present; the former becoming more prevalent during the third century C.E. (the period of greatest expansion of the tombs) and the latter becoming less common. The decorations and epigraphy on the tomb walls, markers, and sarcophagi are quite varied. 11

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For the dating of Beth She‘arim, see Benjamin Mazar, Beth She‘arim: Report on the Excavations during 1936–1940 (vol. 1; New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1973), 22; Nahman Avigad, Beth She‘arim: Report on the Excavations during 1953–1958 (vol. 3; New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1971), 260; Fanny Vitto, “Byzantine Mosaics at Bet She‘arim: New Evidence for the History of the Site,” ‘Atiqot 28 (1996): 137–41. Although five periods of building are found at the necropolis (Herodian through Arab), Avigad and Mazar viewed the most significant as Periods I through III. Avigad outlines these as Period I (from the Herodian through the first half of the second century C.E.), Period II (from the 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 Beth She‘arim in 352 C.E.). However, Vitto demonstrates that “ … the city continued to be inhabited and the necropolis to be used after the mid-fourth century. In the Byzantine period, Bet She‘arim apparently enjoyed a second period of prosperity …”, Vitto, “Byzantine Mosaics,” p. 138. For information on the local and Diasporic Jews buried there, see Avigad, Beth She‘arim, 259–61. Moshe Schwabe and Baruch Lifshitz, Beth She‘arim: The Greek Inscriptions (vol. 2. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1974), 219–221. Of note, the arcosolia in Beth She‘arim often hold more than one body. In several cases these receptacles are large enough to accommodate the burial of three bodies placed perpendicularly to the wall and another body placed horizontally at the back of the niche. For more precise information on the dating of these niche types at Beth She‘arim, see Avigad, Beth She‘arim, 259. In several sites throughout Palestine, the kokh is the most common type of burial niche. The kokhim are often dug at ground level deep into the wall of the cave, and the body is placed perpendicular to the surface of the wall so the feet are facing toward the room.

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As mentioned, some of these differences may be the result of changing practices, but others may simply reflect differences in custom (local vs. foreign, familial, or fashion). Therefore, even though we may describe general changes in burial customs over time, the account remains prohibitively sparse, as it concerns only the wealthiest or highest status of the population and gives no insights into the processes or motivations behind such practices. Further problems are reflected in previous scholarship. The study of ancient Jewish burials reflects biases similar to those apparent in other areas of Jewish studies. To a large degree, most of these notions have been corrected over time, but their fallout may nevertheless unconsciously influence or consciously stymie the researcher. The first is the preconception that Diasporic Jews who lived across the expanse of the Roman Empire were isolated, either by choice or by force, from their host cultures. Leonard Rutgers, among others, has gone a long way to disprove this misconception.14 In his thorough study of the Late Roman period Jewish catacombs in Rome, Rutgers assesses the material remains and epigraphy in relation to their Christian and widerRoman counterparts. In addition, he touches on burials throughout the Diaspora and Palestine in order to draw inner-Jewish comparisons. Although there is great similarity between the Christian and Jewish catacombs in Rome, there is a wide divergence in burial customs found throughout Jewish communities of this time period. In the cases of other Diasporic communities, Rutgers finds that local Jewish practices have much in common with their host cultures.15 He further finds that in several instances in Rome, the decorative art found on sarcophagi and tomb walls appears to have been crafted in Roman shops, most likely by Roman craftsman.16 These findings indicate that the Jews of Rome had regular commercial contact with their Roman neighbors. Therefore, it should not be a surprise that the type of Jewish burial most common in Rome in the Late Roman period is the catacomb, an 14

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Leonard Victor Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of Cultural Interaction in the Roman Diaspora, (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995). Particularly for the case of Rome, see also Harry J. Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1960; repr., Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995). For Rome and other areas of the Diaspora, see the early groundbreaking work of Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, vol 2. Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome, 65–67. 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)

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

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

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underground tunnel complex built and in use for approximately 300 years,17 and which has several features in common with evolving Roman tomb types. The catacombs contain columns of horizontal niches (loculi) cut into the tunnel walls. Corpses were laid into these niches which were then sealed with a mixture of rubble and brick and marked with marble or other types of inscribed markers. The catacomb complexes are exceedingly large and appear to have contained a large portion of the Jewish community.18 These underground cemeteries reflect a similar development in tomb structure in the wider Roman community; that is, the move from hypogea (small underground rooms in which the remains of families are found) to larger burial complexes supported by membership in particular subgroups of the population. Only in a few cases in the Jewish catacombs of Rome do we find the kokh type of niche so popular in Palestine.19 Although not in abundance, there are also several examples of distinctly Jewish (and in some cases, non-Jewish) hypogea in the catacombs which contain only a few loculi and arcosolia – indicating that these may have been family tombs.20 Unfortunately, very few grave goods survive from the Jewish catacombs and virtually none of these goods have been recorded in situ, making comparisons with those of Palestinian or other Diasporic burials almost impossible.21

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Very recent scholarship suggests dating the Villa Torlonia catacomb to the second century C.E. The entrance to the lower catacomb level may have been dug as early as 50 B.C.E., while the upper level of the catacomb dates to 400 C.E. These estimates derive from radiocarbon dating recently completed and published by 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. This suggestion is derived from, among other points, the poor quality of many of the inscriptions and artistic details; that is, the mix of wealthy and poor community members suggests the desire to bury as much of the community population as possible. Rugters, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome, 56; Leon, The Jews of Ancient Rome, 257–59. Except for the Vigna Randanini catacomb, which contains several kokhim; Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome, 62–64. 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 these rooms were separate hypogea, possibly pagan, that were later connected as the distinctly Jewish catacomb was expanded. However, Rutgers does discuss parallels in artistic production between Jewish burials in Rome and in Palestine, 88–92. For evidence of the grave goods (particularly glass), see Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, vol. 3.

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According to Rutgers, the surviving evidence of the catacombs themselves, the inscriptions (which are predominantly in Greek and Latin), the onomastic data from the inscriptions, and the decorative art found within the complexes does shed some light on the Late Roman Jewish community. On the basis of this evidence, Rutgers concludes that this community not only had extensive contact with the wider Roman community but felt perfectly at ease in adopting or transforming some Roman styles (e.g., highly decorated sarcophagi with images of victorae, tomb paintings of vines, etc.) just as they rejected other Roman burial customs or rituals (e.g., cremation and pictorial representations of the deceased).22 The Jews of Rome, therefore, appear to be free to imitate the Roman iconography and other practices they admire as well as to develop their own styles in burial without complete assimilation into the general culture. At the same time, although the Jews of Rome do 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 in other 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 was that from the period of 70 C.E. (the destruction of the Second Temple) onward, the rabbis maintained a hegemony over the Jewish community writ large. This notion derives in part from the uncritical reliance scholars placed on meticulous study of rabbinic texts for historical information and in part from a lack of material evidence.23 However, as Jewish studies became increasingly integrated into Humanities programs, scholars began to adopt methods and practices from other disciplines (e.g., history, anthropology, and literary studies) and to reassess the textual data. Likewise, as numerous archaeological excavations were completed and published, this new brand of scholars was also required to account for the seeming disparities between text and artifact. Several scholars attempted to address these issues via a synthesis of the data, thereby indicating that the rabbis did not have the power they asserted in their texts or that other Jews either maintained their own customs and traditions or adopted Hellenistic morés contrary 22 23

Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome, 92–99. 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 the problems of writing Jewish history that the studies of such scholars as George Foote Moore and Ephraim Urbach highlight.

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to the desires of the rabbis.24 Often attendant to this view was the opinion 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 of rabbis wielded at any specific time or place is still being hypothesized but remains unknown and is relatively unimportant for this study.25 Of great importance is the recent work of several scholars which demonstrates that the textual and material evidence often reveal the rabbis26 to be just as Hellenized and influenced by Roman culture as other local and Diasporic Jews. In addition, more than a few scholars, through careful textual and philological study, have determined that the rabbis lived in a society that was both Roman and Jewish just as their counterparts did across the Roman empire.27 These Palestinian rabbis seem to have been comfortable with, and adopted as their own, those customs that did not run contrary to other rabbinic norms or observances. For example, it was Hellenistic custom to light incense after meals, and evidence of this practice in rabbinic households is described in the

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Goodenough, Jewish Symbols, vols. 1–3. See also Jacob Neusner, “Notes on Goodenough’s Jewish Symbols, I–VIII,” Conservative Judaism 17, nos. 3–4 (1963): 77–92. One exception to the notion of the limited influence of any group of rabbis may be the role of Judah Ha-nasi (the Prince) as Patriarch in the late second century and early third century C.E. 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 disagree or appear to threaten them (e.g., other Jews, women, and “pagans”), but also at odds with each other. In addition, the literature represents redaction and editing of several hundred years of interpretation, and therefore may not reflect accurately the views of the various generations. To avoid confusion, scholars often use the term “class of rabbis”; however, this term presents other obvious problems. For example, see Steven Fine, Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Archaeology. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Seth Schwartz, “Gamliel in Aphrodite’s Bath: Palestinian Judaism and Urban Culture in the Third and Fourth Centuries,” Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture (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); Morton Smith, “The Image of God: Notes on the Hellenization of Judaism, with Especial Reference to Goodenough’s Work on Jewish Symbols,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library Manchester 40, no. 2 (1958): 473–512.

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Talmud.28 Surprisingly, room fumigation after meals was so popular that the description includes methods for fumigating during the Sabbath when one is not allowed to kindle fire. Similarly, at the necropolis of Beth She‘arim, where both Diasporic Jews and rabbis are buried, ornate Hellenistic decorations appear on sarcophagi, grave goods, and the walls. Of special importance for the study is the fact that the rabbinic literature provides some of the only textual evidence extant on Jewish burial practices and customs in Palestine. In many instances, it provides the only descriptions of corpse preparation, funeral rites, and secondary bone collection. Because careful review of the material indicates that the rabbis are not necessarily legislating new or previously unknown rituals and certainly are not legislating against then current rituals, the textual evidence can be a valuable tool in the study of Jewish burials, particularly if we compare it where possible to the archaeological evidence. The methodology employed in this paper may be considered to be overly parochial and no doubt would run aground of comparativists. However, whenever possible, the paper attempts to consider only Palestinian textual evidence that can be compared with archaeological evidence from the same location and approximate time period in an attempt to uncover the rationale that either already existed or developed during the early rabbinic period for the employment of perfume in Jewish burials in the early centuries C.E. in Palestine. The goal is to decipher the texts and compare them to the material remains in order to understand how the rabbis justified these practices and to begin to consider why perfume bottles were buried with the dead. This study acknowledges as its starting point that the practice of burying the dead with perfume bottles was already ancient and widespread throughout Palestine and the Mediterranean at the time of the early rabbinic period (Fig. 5.5–8). Unfortunately, most of the material evidence from Jerusalem – the area containing the largest known quantity of Jewish burials – all but ceases in 70 C.E. For this study, the most useful evidence would be the burial remains from Sepphoris and Tiberias. These cities were among the largest Jewish urban centers in Palestine at the time, served at various times as the seat of the Patriarchate, 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.)

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5.7. Assorted glass artifacts including candlestick bottles (unguentaria), Carthage Museum, Tunisia. (Photo: Amy Hirschfeld, 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 cemeteries has yet been accomplished. Finally, the most abundant available evidence is at Beth She‘arim, the difficulty in dating of which has already been discussed.

An Overview of the Evidence of Rabbinic Texts The early rabbinic legal corpora are classified into tractates or units based on the various aspects of organized communal Jewish life as perceived by the early rabbis. In most cases, these are intimately linked to the laws and regulations of the Torah through interpretation. Therefore, the division of Zera’im (Seeds), contains such subunits as Berakhot (Blessings), Pe’ah (Gleanings), and Terumot (Heave Offerings). Although almost every conceivable situation may be addressed for certain legal issues, surprisingly, no division exists dedicated to the subjects of death, burial customs, or mourning. Only the Babylonian Talmud’s minor tractate of Semahot,29 which is generally dated to the eighth or ninth century C.E., refers to these customs.30 While the tractate includes issues and decisions regarding death, burial customs, and other post-burial events and questions, it is difficult to know whether the customs described therein reflect accurately the much earlier stratum of rabbinic practice in Palestine or whether they reflect the late period in Babylonia from which they derive. These issues apply to all tractates of the Babylonian Talmud which is parsimonious in its methodology and often so terse in its description as to require lengthy interpretation, conjecture, and outright speculation by the reader. Therefore, to obtain relevant data on burial practices for the early centuries C.E., we must first scour the early Palestinian Jewish texts and resort to the Babylonian Talmud’s comments on these earlier verses only where necessary. Two texts serve as the primary sources for such information: the Mishnah and the Tosefta. Until recently, the Mishnah, which serves as the basis for both the Jerusalem and Babylonian 29 30

Ironically, semahot means “happy occasions.” 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. Markus Bockmuehl; Edinburgh, T&T Clark, 1991), 249. David Kraemer dates Semahot to the Geonic period (ninth century). David Kraemer, The Meanings of Death in Rabbinic Judaism, (London: Routledge, 2000), 9.

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Talmuds, was considered to have been redacted in 200 C.E. and to represent the first rabbinic legal code. The Tosefta was thought to date approximately 100 years later than the Mishnah. Organized similarly to the Mishnah, the Tosefta includes much of the same material but also evidences several differences. Scholars accounted for these differences as changes, debating whether observance of the laws actually changed or whether the rabbis changed these laws in order to align them with popular practice or new customs. However, because recent scholarship has reopened the case for the primacy of the texts,31 these “changes” in law are also suspect. Regardless of their status as relevant codes of conduct, the Mishnah and Tosefta present elements of Jewish burial practices in the Roman period that may be pieced together by means of close textual study. Upon death, the corpse would be anointed with oil, rinsed, and wrapped in a linen shroud or other type of linen garment.32 As part of this dressing process, the chin would be tied, the eyes closed, and the orifices stopped up.33 The body was placed into a bier or coffin or onto some type of wooden structure, often referred to as a “bed” (hum). The bed was then carried in a funeral procession from the home of the deceased through the community to the outskirts of town and then to the burial site.34 During the procession, stops might be made for the hired wailers, often women, to sing or lament and clap their hands loudly.35 Frequently, the burial sites were man-made caves into which were carved deep recesses for the burial (kokhim).36 In the late second Temple and early rabbinic periods, a second form of burial, known as the “collection of bones,”37 often took place approximately 31

32 33 34 35

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Among others, see Judith Hauptman, Rereading the Mishnah: A New Approach to Ancient Jewish Texts (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005). Hauptman dates the Mishnah to the early third century C.E., but views it as “an amalgam of the two older texts, the ur-Mishnah and the Tosefta, and other materials …”, 21. m. Kil. 9:4; m. Sˇabb. 23:4, 5; m. Ma’a´s. Sˇ. 5:12. m. Sˇabb. 23:5 and t. Sˇabb. 17:18. m. Meg. 4:3; m. Ber. 3:1; m. B. Bat. 6:7; m. Sanh. 2:1 (2:3). 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. Sˇabb. 17 (also discusses the playing of instruments); m. Menah. 10:9. m. Mo’ed Qat. 1:6; m. B. Bat. 6:8. The term (kokh) arises from the rabbinic textual material. Archaeological evidence in the burial caves indicates other types of recesses in addition to kokhim (i.e., arcosolia, see note above), although it is also possible that kokh was a general term for “burial niche.” m. Sanh. 6:6; m. Mo’ed Qat. 1:5.

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one year after the initial burial. From the archaeological evidence, we find that these bones were placed into small stone boxes known as ossuaries (see above). For the most part, ossuaries were phased out after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E., although evidence of ossuary 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: corpse preparation, funeral procession, and interment.39 Sometimes the texts are clear about which phase is being discussed, but often this may be quite difficult to discern. For example, the Mishnah stipulates the following: No blessing may be said over the lamp or the spices of idolaters, or over the lamp or spices of the dead, or over the lamp or spices [placed] before the idols of idolaters. 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 injunctions focus on lamps and spices: those belonging to idolaters, those for the dead, and those for idolatry. The last section seems to be an addition to the foregoing; namely, that as for lights and occasions on which one does 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 wedged between the lamps and spices of the idolaters and idolatry. It would seem that the rabbinic voices want to stipulate a difference between those lamps and spices owned by idolaters and those actually used in idolatrous practices. One does not say a blessing for either, but nevertheless a distinction is made. The rabbis may wish to imply that other people, in addition to those who perform idolatry, are considered idolaters.41 The three injunctions together also imply that before one intones a blessing for a pleasant lamp-light or fragrance, one must first

38 39

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See Rahmani, A Catalogue, 21. 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 of Chicago Press, 1960). m. Ber. 8:6. This point is addressed below in the discussion on b. Ber. 53a.

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check the source and significance of such a light or scent; that is, who is the kindler of the light or incense (or person wearing the perfume) or for what purpose is the light kindled or the scent produced. These possibilities raise several questions about rabbinic attitudes toward the dead. Do the dead own the spices and lamps, or are they employed in honor of the dead, or are the practices associated with the dead related, in the perception of these anonymous rabbis, with the practices of idolatry? All these possibilities lay pregnant in the passage without further elucidation. If we focus on the portion of the passage that concerns only the lamps and spices of the dead, several other questions arise: What are the spices used for the dead? In which phase of burial are they used? How are they used? A close reading of other early rabbinic statements may help answer the questions this Mishnah raises. The first possibility concerns the anointing of the dead body. The washing, anointing, and wrapping of the body is discussed in m. Sˇabb. 23:5 in reference to the types of work one is allowed to perform during the Sabbath: They may make ready [on the Sabbath] all the needs of the dead, anoint and rinse it,42 only [provided that] they do not move any of its limbs.43 They may draw the mattress away from beneath it and let it lie on sand that it may be the longer preserved; they may bind up the chin … they may not close a corpse’s eyes on the Sabbath …

The first part of the passage refers directly to the first step of the burial: 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 orifices may leak before, during, or just after the event.44 Because typical bathing practices at this time involved anointment with scented oils,45

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This passage belies a fascinating problem; that is, “anointing” is mentioned before “rinsing” (or washing). However, with reference to bathing, usually “washing” occurs prior to “anointing.” See m. Ta’an. 1:6, where one is not allowed to “wash or anoint” (hkycbv hjyxrb) during a fast. Although “limb” could also refer to the genitals or penis, it is unlikely in this passage. For the “stopping up” of the orifices, see t. Sˇabb. 17:18. 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. Both sexes would apply aromatic oil to the head and hair. See Michal Dayagi-Mendels, Perfumes and Cosmetics in the Ancient World (Jerusalem: Keter Publishing House, 1991), 16–34; Andrew Dalby, Empire of Pleasures: Luxury and Indulgence 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 scented oils as well. It is worth noting that it is unlikely that scented oil was used to mask the stench of decomposition. It is possible that particular diseases may have caused early on-set decomposition but, for the most part, in temperate climes, the odor of decomposition is not detectible by the human nose until the second or third day. The burial of Jesus, as recounted in New Testament sources such as Mark and John, also provides evidence for anointment after death with scented oils. Mark 16:1, describes, “When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary, the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go and anoint him.”46 Similarly, in John 19:39–40 we learn, “Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews.” The books of Matthew and Mark also present a figurative account of this custom, as the anointing occurs before the death of Jesus. In these accounts, an unidentified woman comes to the house of Simon the leper, where Jesus and his disciples are eating dinner, and anoints Jesus with a “costly ointment” from an alabaster jar (Matt 26:6–7, Mark 14:3–8). The disciples become angry over the extravagance, but Jesus reminds them, “She has performed a good service for me. You will 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

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rence Dupont, Daily Life in Ancient Rome (trans. Christopher Woddall; Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1992), 264, 266. Men involved in wrestling or other exercise would also apply oil before bodily exertion and scrape off the oil using a metallic device (strigil) before bathing. Several of these have been recovered in areas of Roman period Jewish communities (Dayagi-Mendels, Perfumes and Cosmetics, 16–34. Of interest, as depicted in Dayagi-Mendels volume, The Israel Museum’s collection of alabaster bottles and other unguentaria dates back to pre-Israelite periods of the second millennium B.C.E). Cf. Saul Lieberman’s discussion on m. Sˇhabb. 22:6, which states, “They may oil and massage their stomach but not exercise (the body) and not scrape. They may not go down to the hmydrvq and may not use artificial emetics.” Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine, 93. See also Luke 23:55–24:1. 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.

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Although the employment of scented oil appears to have been a regular practice of burial preparation,48 other than this slim textual evidence, there is no direct proof about where this event took place. In the New Testament accounts it would seem that the spices are brought after the body is interred. However, this may be out of necessity because of the manner of Jesus’ death, the lateness of the day at the time he was buried, or the impending Sabbath. According to the Mishnaic passage, it seems that washing and anointing regularly occurred in the home before burial, and home preparation is the most likely arena for these activities.49 At home, proper attention, care, and respect for the loved one could be given before the public ceremony of burial. Private corpse preparation also accords well with the rabbinic sense of propriety, modesty, and public decorum stipulated throughout the rabbinic texts.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 burial cave, it seems likely that preparation of the body has already taken place before arrival at the grave. As to the question of whether the Mishnaic passage concerning the lamp and spices for the dead (m. Ber. 8:6) is referring to the oil used to anoint the dead before burial, it is unlikely. The “lamp and spices” passage specifies lamps and proscribes a blessing. The anointing passage (m. Sˇabb. 23:5), however, discusses neither lamps nor blessings. Therefore, it is unlikely that the first passage is referring to anointing oil when it intones that “no blessing should be said over the lamp or spices of the dead.” The second use of spices in the burial of the dead may be either incense that is lit during the procession to the burial cave or some kind of scented oil that was sprinkled on the bier during such a procession. Evidence of the funeral procession is found in several places through48

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It appears that in addition to regular bathing and burial practices, aromatics were also used after dining. Evidence in the Babylonian Talmud suggests that scented oil was employed to rid the hands of unwanted residue from eating (b. Ber. 53a) and that incense was lit after meals (see above). The fact that Jesus does not have a home in Jerusalem may also explain why his body is prepared in the burial cave. While this is generally the case for all men, the laws concerning modesty and public 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. 3:8 with direct reference to burial, as the bier of woman is not to be put down in public out of respect).

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out the Mishnah,51 but for the use of incense or perfume during the procession it is the Tosefta which contains two interesting passages. The first, t. Sˇeqalim 1.12, concerns funds that are collected for express purposes but are found to be surpluses: … the surplus [of money collected for] the poor, [must be used] for the poor. The surplus [of money collected for] the redemption of captives, [must be used] for the captives … The surplus [of money collected for] the dead, [must be used] for the dead. The surplus [of money collected for] a [particular] dead person, [must be given to] his heirs. Rabbi Meir says, ‘The surplus for a [particular] dead person will be left until Elijah will come.’ Rabbi Nathan says, ‘[With] the surplus for a [particular] dead person, they build a structure over his tomb, or he may sprinkle perfume52 for him before53 his bier …’54

The last two lines of this series of instructions are of particular interest. Rabbi Meir insists that the surplus monies from burials should be kept until the prophet Elijah comes to decide what shall be done with them. Rabbi Nathan disagrees and mentions two appropriate uses: erection of a marker or some other structure over the gravesite or expenditure of the money on perfumed oil to sprinkle before the bier during the funeral procession. Although this passage indicates clearly that the spices were used in the procession (i.e., “before the bier”), it does not explain the rationale or motivation underlying such practice. The next passage, from t. Nid. 9:16, explains the use of spices in the funeral procession:

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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. xlz; that is, “sprinkled fluid,” or “perfume.” However, this is not the regular word for perfume or spices (,ymsb). Zuckermandel has ynpb (“in front of ”), M. S. Zuckermandel, Tosephta: Based on the Erfurt and Vienna Codices (Jerusalem: Wahrmann Books, 1970), 651. Lieberman has ynpl (“before” or “in front of ”), Saul Lieberman, Tosefta Ki-Fshutah (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary 1992), 204. t. Sˇeqal. 1:12. Lieberman also cites the y. Sˇeqal. 10:2 and b. Sem. 12:9, Tosefta Ki-Fshutah, 673. However, the issue in b. Sem. 12:9 is whether one should sprinkle wine and oil onto the bodies at the time of burial (or on the bones at the time of secondary burial, as Kloner reads – see below), as instructed by Rabbi Akiba. R. Simeon ben Nanos disagrees and states that oil but not wine should be sprinkled, and the later sages affirm that neither wine nor oil should be sprinkled.

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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 of women. At first they brought out incense55 before those [who died] of sickness of the bowels.56 Subsequently, they brought out [incense] before every one of them on account of the honor of the dead.57

Because Niddah is the tractate concerning the condition of uncleanness, particularly with respect to menstruating women, the beginning of this passage focuses on the immersion of objects that come in contact with menstruating women who die. However, as we move through the passage, we can see that the focus is on the change in burial customs over time. The word “subsequently” (vrzx) is literally translated as “they returned.” This may imply either that the custom changed or that the rabbis “returned” to the issue and changed their earlier ruling. One might reasonably infer that the rabbis changed their earlier ruling to align the law with widespread practice. More importantly, the passage imparts valuable information with respect to spices – namely that their use was widespread as part of the burial process in the early centuries C.E. At one point, only those who died from intestinal problems had incense lit before their biers,58 but by the time of the Tosefta, incense was lit before everyone’s bier. Further, it appears from this passage that the burial phase during which the burning of incense took place was the funeral procession, since the term “before every one” is similar to the term “before his bier” as seen in the Sˇheqalim passage. In addition, we do not find references to incense in any of the passages concerning corpse preparation nor is there any significant archaeological evidence of incense burners at burial 55

rmgvm. These are spices or perfume placed on hot coals (i.e., incense).

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Or, “intestines.” 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 in a box (Xbylk, i.e., coffin or bier). Subsequently, they would bring out some in a bed and some in a box on account of the honor of the poor. (17)At first they would bring [food] to the house of mourning of the poor in a colored glass vessel but to the rich in a white glass vessel. Subsequently, they brought out some in colored [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 their dead and flee. Rabban Gamliel set the example of disregard for the custom himself, [and then] everyone acted according to Rabban Gamliel.” Or, as might be the case, rabbinic law allowed incense to be lit before the biers only of those who died of intestinal illness.

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sites – from which we may deduce that incense was not employed as part of either the preparation or the interment phases.59 This passage raises additional questions: Why was incense lit for those who died of intestinal disease and, if this passage represents more than a mere change in rabbinic legislation, for what reasons was the practice changed? Is it possible that in the beginning, incense was needed to mask the odor of those who died from intestinal illness?60 If so, then it is possible that incense was later employed to mask the odors of 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 of everyone, as the stench of decomposition would not be so bad so soon after death. As already mentioned, decomposition does not usually have a scent for the first few days, but these effects can obtain more rapidly due to either increased heat or humidity or decomposition that begins before death. Incense might be necessary, though, if the funeral was delayed for a day or two. We have already seen that one may not bury a corpse on the Sabbath. Further, even though Jewish law requires burial as soon as possible, the Mishnah cites a qualification under which it is permissible to delay a funeral for a day in order to honor the 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 of decomposition, it is just as possible that the Tosefta has explained exactly why incense was lit for everyone: in order to “honor the dead.” As obvious as the concept of “honoring the dead” may be, the reference to “honor” (dvbk) might be the key to unlocking the mystery of the first Mishnaic passage regarding the “lights and spices of the dead.” The Talmudic discussion of this Mishnaic passage also includes the term “honor,” but instead of coupling “honor” with spices, this text 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 to remove 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 during the night, no blessing is said over it. But wherever it is found that [a lamp would be carried] before him only during the night, then a blessing is said.” Rab 59

60

Only Goodenough mentions incense burners with reference to the city of Gezer, Jewish Symbols, 1:165. This might explain why the incense passage follows the immersion passage, as both concern the removal of something – either contamination or contaminating scent.

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Huna said, “Spices of the privy and oil used to remove filth, we do not say blessings over.” [Is this] to say that wherever [a spice] is not used for scent no blessing is 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 experiences (,ynhn tvkrb), assumes that a blessing is regularly said both when one smells a pleasant fragrance and when lights are kindled. For the lamps 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 decomposing body – neither use honors God. These are new pieces of information not seen in the earliest sources. To review, the only occurrence of lights in those texts is the m. Ber. passage on the “lights and spices for the dead,” and the purpose of the lights does not appear in that passage. As for spices, the only information we see in the early sources is from the Toseftan passage that describes their purpose as honoring the dead. Therefore, the Babylonian rationale given here (to mask the odor) clearly contradicts the Tosefta.62 However, because the Tosefta passage and this Talmudic passage both cite “honoring the dead” during the funeral procession as the reason and time for these rituals, one might surmise that our first Mishnaic passage which discusses the “lamps and spices for the dead” is referring to the incense and lights used in the funeral procession. This accords with y. Ber. 8.6. As for b. Talmud’s rationale that the spices mask the odor of the decomposing corpse, three possibilities corresponding to the three phases of burial must be addressed. While it is possible that the corpse is malodorous during preparation for burial or during the funeral procession, it is unlikely that the odor was so bad as to require camouflage.63 The odor from putrefaction is strongest 10 to 20 days after

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b. Ber. 53a. For comparison, see also y. Ber. 8.7 and “honor of the living.” 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.” 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 evaluation of whether an odor is fragrant or foul is entirely culture-specific. See William Ian Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 15–18. For example, in the West today certain body odors connected to perspiration or vaginal discharge are considered by society to be offensive, and therefore the market is flooded with perfumes, antiperspirants, deodorants, and douches. Similarly, in cultures where decomposition represents

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death;64 therefore, masking an unpleasant odor would be most necessary during interment.65 The “spices” in the Talmudic passage could refer either to perfume or to incense left at the burial cave for the use of those who must enter the cave during corpse decomposition. However, perfume sitting in a bottle is not an effective means of masking the odor of an area, as the scent does not spread efficiently. It is much more likely that mourners or others who needed to come to the burial caves during this period would light incense to mask the stench rather than employ perfume.66 The flaw in this theory is that incense burners are not found at the burial sites.67

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rebirth or sacrifice to the deity, it is entirely possible that these scents would not only be tolerable but pleasant. The Berawan of north-central Borneo store the decomposing 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 body in order to ensure it is not reanimated by evil spirits. They may also collect the decomposition liquids in sacred vessels. The neighbors of the Berawan, who have similar customs, may consume the liquids with rice. See Peter Metcalf, “Death Be Not Strange,” in Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion: An Anthropological Study of the Supernatural (ed. Arthur I. Lehmann and James E. Myers; Mountain View, Calif.: Mayfield Publishing Company, 1993), 325. Beyond the issue of cultural construct, we find in the faunal realm that animal decomposition actually attracts certain animals. See for example Steven A. Smith and Richard A. Paselk, “Olfactory Sensitivity of the Turkey Vulture (Cathartes Aura) to Three CarrionAssociated Odorants,” The Auk 103 (1986): 586–92. Although these researchers dispute the generally accepted scholarship on response to particular odorants, they allow that response to several other odorants relative to decomposition may trigger responses in turkey vultures. This could be later for those corpses in cool caves. In addition, it is questionable how strong the scent of the decomposing corpses was considering that they were sealed and inaccessible to several types of carnivorous organisms whose feasting and other activities (e.g., laying eggs and attracting other organisms) at the corpse site often increase the rate and odor of decomposition by increasing the body temperature. Of note, Arpad A. Vass, Senior Staff Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Tennessee in Forensic Anthropology, has indicated (via email communication) that he does not believe even unsealed corpses would have smelled so bad that people would not have been able to eat nearby – an interesting point considering that some ancient peoples included feasting or commemorative meals at the graveside. As already mentioned, incense was regularly used after meals either to cover the scent of the meal or for pure enjoyment, so the Jews of the early Roman period in Israel would be familiar with its other potential uses. While it is possible that extensive looting of the tombs might account for the lack of incense burners, one might still expect to see remnants of at least a few broken

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It would seem then that the Talmud presents its own interpretation of the spices for the dead – perhaps evaluating them anachronistically as a custom that has gone out of favor or as a rite with which the later Babylonian rabbis are unfamiliar. It is also quite likely that the Talmud employs this comment on the spices of the dead simply to introduce the predominant themes of the passage; that is, the subject of the incense of idolatry, its connection to Jewish women who regularly fumigate their garments with incense, and rabbinic ambivalence toward these feminine customs.68 I have written extensively on this passage elsewhere.69 As such, it seems inherently dangerous to base the analysis of perfume bottles 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 bottles evidenced in the archaeological data? According to Amos Kloner, because far fewer lamps are found at Second Temple burial sites than

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burners recorded in excavation reports. It is also possible that incense or other fragrant materials were burned in bowls or other receptacles (as depicted on the walls of the Hellenistic tomb at Marisa, which is not a Jewish site), but recorded evidence does not so indicate. The Talmudic passage continues as follows: “[If] he goes in and out and in and out, he says a blessing each time. And this is a case in which it is not used for scent, and yet he makes a blessing. Indeed [it is] too [used] for smell! [Its use is that] 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, “Even if the majority are Israelites, he does not say a blessing, because the daughters of Israel 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 greater part is not used for making scent, a blessing is not said over it. Rab Hiya bar Abba said, “Rabbi Yohannan said, ‘If one is walking on the Sabbath evenings in Tiberias or at the end of Sabbath in Sepphoris and smells a [pleasant] scent, he should not say a blessing because the presumption is that it is only the scenting of garments.’” Our rabbis taught: If one is walking in a market of idolaters and enjoys smelling [the pleasant scent of spices], this is a sin.” b. Ber. 53a. See Deborah A. Green, “Soothing Odors: The Transformation of Scent in Ancient Israelite and Ancient Jewish Literature” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 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 coincident with those discussed by the rabbis since we determined that the references to lamps describe those used in the funeral procession. As for the perfume bottles, the occasional evidence of these bottles in ossuaries suggests to Kloner that perfume and other precious liquids, such as wine, were used to sprinkle on the bones during collection.71 Since bone-gathering is described in the Mishnah, without reference to the sprinkling of oil, this argument does not seem persuasive. As mentioned earlier, many scholars assume from the New Testament sources that corpse preparation occurred in the caves, and that the bottles were left behind because of contamination from the dead.72 While corpse contamination is a persuasive argument for both perfume bottles and lamps being left in the caves, we have already seen that corpse preparation probably occurred in the home (m. Sˇabb. 23:5).73 In addition, the disparity between lamps and perfume bottles is not accounted for in this theory, as many more lamps would have been needed in order to see what one was doing in these very dark caves. There are also those scholars who believe the perfume bottles were brought by mourners simply to cover the odor of the decomposing corpses.74 Although it is possible that some of the bottles may have been used for this purpose, as already mentioned, incense would have been the preferred method of odor masking. Further, how might one explain the many perfume bottles that are sealed within the kokhim?75 70 71 72

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See Kloner and Zissou, The Necropolis, 59–60. Ibid., 60, wherein Kloner and Zissou cite b. Sem. 12:9. Ibid., 60. On the problems of ethnographic interpretation of funerary remains by archaeologists and anthropologists, see Peter J. Ucko, “Ethnography and Archaeological Interpretation of Funerary Remains,” World Archaeology 1 (1969): 262–80. On the surprising rites and customs that seem counterintuitive to ethnographers, anthropologists, and archaeologists whose frame of reference is Western culture, see Metcalf, “Death Be Not Strange,” in Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion. See also McCane, Roll Back the Stone, 48. Ibid., 15, 48. See Elena Kogan-Zehavi, “Settlement Remains and Tombs at Khirbet Tabaliya” (in Hebrew), ‘Atiqot 40 (2000): 53–79; Fanny Vito, “Burial Caves from the Second Temple Period in Jerusalem (Mount Scopus, Giv‘at Hamivtar, Neveh Ya‘aqov),” ‘Atiqot 40 (2000): 65–121; Hachlili and Killebrew, Jericho, 176–91; Mazar, Beth She‘arim, 173; Avigad, Beth She‘arim, 68, 201 (in arcosolium). However, these bottles may date to the Late Roman period. See also the Akeldama tombs for

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These cannot be explained as being for use by mourners. Rather, two suggestions present themselves as most reasonable. The first is that the bottles are the personal effects of the deceased similar to cosmetic bottles,76 spindle whorls, rings, jewelry and other precious personal items also found in sealed kokhim.77 Even the late tractate of b. Semahot describes bridegrooms being buried with their pens, inkwells, and marriage documents. Samuel, the Small, a scribe, is buried with his writing 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 fulfill this desire, the perfume bottles would have been buried in the sealed kokh or arcosolium with the deceased. Occasionally, the bottles may have been transported to the ossuary with the bones. Because thieves were unlikely to find much use in the bottles, robbers would have thrown them out into the chamber of the cave when hunting for jewelry and other precious effects. This would explain the broken bottles found in open chambers. Other suggestions are that the vessels were broken on purpose to “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 storage jars. Similar to much of this household pottery, the glass perfume bottles of the Roman period are not well-made, which may indicate that they were not personal items but were specifically produced for burials.81 Further, almost all of the unguentaria from the Second

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examples of perfume bottles used in non-Jewish burials in the Late Roman period (first through third centries C. E.); Gideon Avni and Zvi Greenhut, The Akeldama Tombs. For example, glass containers for kohl (used for eye make-up), see Dayagi-Mendels, Perfumes and Cosmetics, 36–58. Ibid. and Uza Zevulun and Yael Olienik, Function and Design in the Talmudic Period (Tel Aviv: Haaretz Museum, 1978), 96–105 (in Hebrew), 51–57 (in English). For evidence from the First Temple period see Bloch-Smith, Judahite Burial Practices, 90. 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. This might explain why bottles are found more often buried with the bones of women. For a more expansive list of possibilities, see Hachlili, Jewish Funerary Customs, 390. Virginia Anderson-Stojanovi´c, “The Chronology and Function of Ceramic Unguentaria,” AJA 91, no. 1 (1987): 120. Although Anderson-Stojanovi´c’s main

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Temple period were made from pottery similar to these other household items. Rachel Hachlili has identified storage jars as being located most often at the entrance to tombs, whereas cooking pots may be found inside tombs on shelves, in pits, or even in kokhim.82 This is in contrast to Kloner who argues that cooking pots are not usually found in kokhim.83 A definite connection between the placement of perfume bottles and cooking pots has yet to be determined.84 And, although several scholars have speculated on the meaning of cooking pots – as a vestige of the rite of meal offerings or as a symbol of the commemorative meals executed in the Greco-Roman world – they have not tied the significance of the unguentaria to these food-oriented theories. In essence, the perfume bottles, cooking pots, and other grave goods are 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 the mourners or for the dead that the loved one is not completely alone or uncared for. Or, as Saul Lieberman indicates, these Jews may under-

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concern is the Hellenistic and early Roman funerary unguentaria from Stobi in Yugoslavian Macedonia, the presence of these bottles is so widespread that Hachlili cites this article in her discussions on Second Temple burials in Israel; Hachlili, Jewish Funerary Customs, 383–84. Alabastra bottles are also found at these 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. Ibid., 386; Ann E. Killebrew, “The Pottery,” Jericho: The Jewish Cemetery in the Second 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 Second Temple Period (eds. Rachel Hachlili and Ann E. Killebrew; Jerusalem: Israel Antiquities Authority, 1999), 168. Kloner and Zissou, The Necropolis, 60–62, in which cooking pots are located in the outer rooms (or tomb areas) and perfume bottles may be sealed in the kokhim or deposited in ossuaries. In the Akeldama tombs, for example, the perfume bottles are all found near and around the coffins and bones – particularly those burials of the later Roman period – while the cooking pots and other jars are found in other areas of the larger chambers. Avni and Greenhut, The Akeldama Tombs, 123–29. Unfortunately, many archaeologists in the past did not record the precise placement of such items, and there is ample evidence of tomb robbing and secondary use of tombs. As a result, we may never be able to determine whether there is a connection between the placement of unguentaria and cooking pots.

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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 orient and comfort the dead or be necessary items for resurrection.86 Another possibility is that these items mark a liminal or ambiguous stage in the lifecycle of both participant and family members. The personal effects that “travel” with the individual may be symbolic of this transitory stage in which the individual is still a member of the family or community but not in the same manner as before.87 Any of these reasons could either be vestiges of ancient customs that then became regular rites performed in honor and memory of the dead or the continuation of an emotionally and ritually significant embodiment of then-current belief. In sum, if we consider that each stage in the burial process reflects love, honor, and respect for the dead, as demonstrated by washing and care for the body, the lighting of incense and lights before the bier, and interment with personal effects or grave goods, then it seems reasonable that the spices at each stage are a symbol in some manner of the esteem felt for the dead by those who grieved for them. And, while it is possible that perfume bottles found in graves or at burial sites had other purposes as well, the simplest reason for their presence seems to be that they belonged to the dead and, as such, were valued by the living.

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Saul Lieberman, “Some Aspects of After Life in Early Rabbinic Literature,” Harry Austryn Wolfson Jubilee Volume (vol. 2; Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1965). David Kraemer, The Meanings of Death, also addresses this issue at some length. “The Babylonian and some of the Palestinian rabbis maintained that at the time of resurrection, the dead would arise in the same clothes which they wore when they were buried,” according to Lieberman, “Some Aspects of After Life in Early Rabbinic Literature,” 510–11. I thank Annal Frenz and her keen insights on the similarities between marriage and death for this point.

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Patronal Relations and Changes in Burial Practices

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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 Christianity have not always seen eye to eye, nor do historians and archaeologists invariably agree. More than a century and a half ago, two of the greatest, Theodor Mommsen and Giovanni Battisa de Rossi, found mutual inspiration and took equal pleasure in debating the role of Roman associations (collegia) in burial at Rome during the first three centuries of the common era; together they set a high standard for productive and amicable disagreement on a subject central to our con1 Louis Duchesne, Director of the École française de Rome, in a letter to Giovanni ** Battista De Rossi from Paris, 13 November 1892, quoted by Jonathan S. Perry, The Roman Collegia: The Modern Evolution of an Ancient Concept (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006), 56. My thanks are due to many: first, to the editors and especially to Laurie Brink, for the inspiration and dedication needed not only to produce this volume but to arrange the splendid study tour and conference that preceded it; to Patricia Duncan and Bradley Peper, my learned and tactful respondents in Chicago; to my fellow participant Carolyn Osiek, who provided detailed criticism on a subsequent written draft; to Simonetta Serra, whose probing skepticism and generously shared knowledge helped to make the argument less vulnerable; to Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, for valuable conversation and expert opinion at a late stage; and to responsive audiences in Chicago, New York, New Haven, Cologne, Bonn, Munich, and Rome, who improved individual points in more ways than can be mentioned. For all the help given, the essay ought to be better than it is; remaining errors of judgment and fact are the author’s responsibility alone.

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cerns.1 This chapter (to compare small things to great), the product of an equally amicable and stimulating collaboration and debate, hopes to cultivate the more useful elements of that example without wreaking unnecessary havoc in the vineyard.

Burial at Rome: Problems of Evidence and Interpretation Burial space in ancient Rome was always limited and frequently contested. 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 became the Roman Forum began to be intermingled with inhumation burials of the sort found among the indigenous peoples of the Apennine hills, to the fourth century C.E., when Constantine destroyed an early imperial necropolis along the Via Triumphalis in order to build an imposing funerary basilica above the spot on the Vatican hill believed to mark the tomb of St. Peter.2 During the three and a half cen1

2

On this rivalry, see the illuminating discussion of Perry, Roman Collegia, 23–60. For the early Iron Age culture in Latium, see Timothy J. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome (London: Routledge, 1995), 48–53. The discovery in early 2006 of a few late Bronze Age pit inhumation burials in the Forum of Caesar on the lower slopes of the Campidoglio has pushed back by about a century the earliest known 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) shrine to St. Peter: see Jocelyn Toynbee and John Ward Perkins, The Shrine of St. Peter and the Vatican Excavations (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1956), 12–13 for the destruction of existing tombs; further on the Via Triumphalis necropolis, Eva Margareta Steinby, Caterina Coletti, M.-B. Carre, and Maria Teresa Cipriano, 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 Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 268–69 (shrine of the 170s), 368–69 (Constantine’s basilica), 376–77 (subsequent building), with further bibliography. It was not until 563 C.E., when the First Council of Braga reversed the longstanding Roman prohibition against intramural graves by allowing burials around the walls of churches, that the competition for burial space in the suburban zone began to ease: see R. Naz, Dictionnaire de Droit Canonique, vol. 3 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1942), col. 730; cf. Orma Robinson, “The Roman Law on Burials and Burial Grounds,” The Irish Jurist 10 (1975): 186.

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turies of pre-Christian imperial Rome between the reigns of Augustus and Constantine, when the population of the city numbered between 750,000 and 1,000,000 inhabitants, the suburbs of the city must have accommodated between 10,500,000 and 14,000,000 burials.3 Of these we 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 documented periods, we should not forget how little we know. Nor does the surviving evidence provide a representative selection of all Roman burials; our sample is biased by the chances of survival and recovery and inherently tends to favor commemorative monuments and epitaphs over unmarked and anonymous graves and thus tells us mainly about comparatively privileged segments of the population.

Columbaria and Collegia If the state of our evidence raises one set of problems, our explanations of it raise another. Major changes in Roman funerary behavior have traditionally been linked to changes in the social or cultural order – mass migrations to the city in one scenario, the arrival of a new religion in another – but the conventional hermeneutical strategy of interpreting historical outcomes in light of their presumed historical causes in this case meets an impasse in the evidence. The invention of a new form of burial monument (the columbarium) around 25 B.C.E. and the emergence in the management of funerary rites at about the

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Estimates of the population of early imperial Rome and Italy continue to spark controversy, in part because the confines of “the city” are variously defined (or presumed), but scholarly consensus seems to have settled on a figure between 750,000 and 1,000,000 for Rome and its surrounding suburbium during the first three centuries C.E.: see recently, Geofrey Kron, “The Augustan Census Figures and 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 recensus dalla tarda repubblica al tardo antico e il calcolo dela popolazione di Rome,” in La Rome impériale: démographie et logistique (Collection de l’École Française de Rome 230) (ed. Catherine Virlouvet; Rome: École française de Rome, 1997), 3–76. For ancient mortality rates, see John Bodel, “Dealing with the Dead,” in Death and Disease in the Ancient City (eds. Valerie M. Hope and Eireann Marshall; London: Routledge, 2000), 128–29. See the Appendix.

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same time of a social institution previously unconnected with them (the collegium) have usually been linked together and explained as the result of the demographic pressures created by a large influx of new residents to the capital following the Augustan peace.5 According to this view, as the city expanded beyond the capacity of the traditional social support network of families and private patrons to meet the burial needs of an increasingly heterogeneous and rootless urban poor, new mechanisms sprang up to fill the void. Social upheaval exposed gaps in the system, which the organism then evolved in order to fill. There is much of value in such an analysis, but columbaria were expensive structures and served no-less-privileged groups – indeed, in many respects, no different groups – than traditional tomb monuments of the same period.6 Nor, as several recent studies have shown, did the collegia replace the family in caring for the burial of the dead. What evidence we have in fact shows families operating in their customary roles within the framework (both administrative and architectural) of the collegia and columbaria.7 What these institutions represented in 5

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So, e.g., Keith Hopkins, Death and Renewal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 215–17; Nicholas Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb,” in Römische Gräberstraßen: Selbstdarstellung, Status, Standard: Kolloquium in München vom 28 bis 30. Oktober 1985 (eds. Henner von Hesberg and Paul Zanker; Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: in Kommission bei der C. H. Beck’schen Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1987), 38–39; John Patterson, “Patronage, Collegia and Burial in Imperial Rome,” in Death in Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100–1600 (ed. Steven Bassett; Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992), 22–23. Columbaria represented a substantial financial outlay: Ian Morris, Death-Ritual and Social Structure in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 42–47. For the commercial trade and speculation in tomb monuments, see also Stefan Schrumpf, Bestattung und Bestattungswesen im römischen Reich: Ablauf, soziale Dimension und ökonomische Bedeutung der Totenfürsorge im lateinischen Western (Götingen: V+R unipress/Bonn University Press, 2006), 162–72, discussing (inter alia) CIL 6.9189 and the dossier of texts relating to columbaria and attesting transactions involving large numbers of burial niches, often in 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. See, e.g., Patterson, “Patronage, Collegia and Burial,” 23; Hopkins, Death and Renewal, 213–14; Kinuko Hasegawa, “The collegia domestica in the Elite Roman Households: The Evidence of Domestic Funeral Clubs for Slaves and Freedmen,” in Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History XII (ed. Carl Deroux; Collection Latomus 287; Brussels: Latomus, 2005), 260; Onno Van Nijf, The Civic 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 support but overarching structures that enabled the family and individual patrons to perform their conventional roles within newly defined social and physical contexts. Demographic change necessitated new solutions to traditional problems but did not fundamentally alter the social channels through which they were addressed.

Christian Catacombs? The situation is similar with the advent of Christianity, the early imperial shift from cremation to inhumation, and the invention of catacombs. Despite repeated attempts to prove otherwise, what has rightly been called “the biggest single event in ancient burial” – the change in practice of tens of millions of people across the western empire from burning to interring their dead, which transformed the suburban landscape of Rome – has persistently defied both theological and sociohistorical explanation.8 That the main period of transition, from the late first century C.E. to the late second century, roughly coincides with the beginning of the spread of Christianity across the western empire no doubt helps to explain the appeal of linking these two major cultural shifts, one involving practice, the other belief, but no plausible causal relationship between the two has ever been found.9 As for catacombs, a

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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 nuclear family as the primary social unit represented in epitaphs is demonstrated by Richard Saller and Brent Shaw, “Tombstones and Roman Family Relations in the Principate: Civilians, Soldiers, and Slaves,” JRS 74 (1984): 124–56. Quote from Morris, Death-Ritual and Social Structure, 31, who ultimately favors a modified version of the demographic explanation: it was not people carrying the idea but the idea itself that came from the east and percolated from the top down, through the diffusion of Hellenistic culture among the upper classes, rather than from the bottom up, via proselytic immigrants from Palestine and Judaea. The rate of growth of the early Christian community must have varied widely over 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 first century, and grew by the end of the third century, on one widely accepted estimate, to perhaps 10 percent of the population of the empire, or roughly six million: see Keith Hopkins, “Christian Number and Its Implications,” JECS 6, no. 2 (1998): 185–226, esp. 192–95. The popular transition from cremation to inhumation 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 even fewer Christian bishops and apologists about particular circumstances at Carthage, Alexandria, and Rome has been taken to show that Christians of that era systematically segregated themselves in death in special Christian cemeteries under ground, but the evidentiary value of the testimony from such proselytizing polemicists is questionable, and the archaeological record, though regularly pressed into argument, remains equivocal.10 In fact, early Christian bishops seem to have taken little interest in the funerary behavior of contemporary Christians and evidently exercised only minimal control over cemeteries before the time of Constantine.11 Of the three texts regularly cited to demonstrate that Christians avoided burial with pagans, the only one dating to be-

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already then among the lower classes (slaves and freedmen): see Franca Taglietti, “Ancora su incinerazione e inumazione: la necropolis dell’Isola Sacra,” in Römischer Bestattungsbrauch und Beigabensiten in Rom, Norditalian, und den Nordwestprovinzen von der späten Republik bis in die Kaiserzeit (eds. Michael Heinzelmann, Jacopo Ortalli, Peter Fasold, and Marion Witteyer; Palila 8; Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2001), 149–58; cf. Steinby, La necropolis della Via Triumphalis, 29–30. 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 assessing the value of such testimony: see Hopkins, “Christian Number,” 186–87, expressing skepticism. For a good recent statement of the accepted view, see Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, “The Origin and Development of Roman Catacombs,” in The Christian Catacombs of Rome, History, Decoration, Inscriptions (eds. Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, Fabrizio Bisconti, and Danilo Mazzoleni; Regensburg: Schnell and Steiner, 1999), 13–17. The last point is controversial, but see Éric Rebillard, Religion et sepulture: l’église, les vivants, et les morts dans l’antiquité tardive (Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2003); Mark J. Johnson, “Pagan-Christian Burial 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 Death in Towns: Urban Responses to the Dying and the Dead, 100–1600 (ed. Steven Bassett: Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992), 61, all emphasizing the distinction between official concern for martyrs’ tombs and relics and the general lack of interest in the burial of ordinary Christians; see also Osiek, below in this volume; 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 cemeteries rather than in pagan tombs: see Charles Hefele, Histoire des Counciles d’après les documents originaux, vol. 3 (trans. Henri Leclerq; Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1910), 994.

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fore the time of Constantine shows exactly the opposite. In a letter of 251 C.E. to the clergy and Christians of Spain, Cyprian accuses two Spanish bishops, Basilides and Martial, of having accepted letters of idolatry during the persecutions of Decius and complains that Martial had long been frequenting the “disgraceful and filthy banquets” of a pagan collegium and “had placed his sons in the same collegium and, in the manner of foreign peoples, had buried them with strangers among profane graves.” At the time, Cyprian was quarrelling with Stephen, bishop at Rome, who had previously reinstated both Basilides and Martial to their sees, so his charges against the two Spaniards were hardly disinterested and must be seen as part of a larger polemic with his Roman rival. More importantly, Stephen’s actions show that, regardless of Cyprian’s opinion, when Martial as bishop had buried his sons according to the practices of a pagan funerary collegium, he did not violate any ecumenical principle serious enough to prevent his subsequent rehabilitation and moreover had done so openly and without fear of retribution. Whatever the currency of Cyprian’s views among the Christian community at Carthage, the attitude they represented was parochial and had no authority over or bearing on Christian burial practices in Spain and at Rome.12 This is not the place to review the remaining literary and archeological evidence in detail, but a simple demographic consideration may perhaps illustrate one problematic aspect of the current orthodoxy. If we accept the consensus opinion that the population of imperial Rome comprised between 750,000 and 1,000,000 residents during the third century, and if we further accept a reasonable estimate of the size of the Christian community at Rome of possibly as many as 7,000 at the beginning of that century and follow a plausible model of its projected growth across the empire of 40 percent per decade, then we must suppose that by the middle of the century the community counted some 37,000 members, and about the time that Diocletian began persecuting Christians 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 lutulenta convivia in collegio diu frequentata et filios in eodem collegio exterarum gentium more apud profana sepulcra depositos et alienigenis consepultos … The other two passages – Hilary of Poitiers, Mat. 7.11 and Theodoret, Graec. affect. curatio 8.29 – belong to the middle of the fourth century and to the first half of the fifth century respectively. On all three see Johnson, “Pagan-Christian Burial Practices,” 45–46.

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27 percent of the urban population.13 Those figures compare favorably with the most careful existing attempt to estimate the number of Christians at Rome from the literary sources, made originally more than a century ago, which arrived at a figure for the middle of the century of 30,000.14 (At the same rate of growth, the community of Roman Christians would have surpassed 750,000 by the year 340 and 1,000,000 by the year 350. Once Christians constituted nearly 100 percent of the urban population, then virtually all Roman burials, whether in catacombs or elsewhere, would naturally in some sense have been “Christian.” At this point, of course, the notion of purely “Christian” catacombs becomes unproblematic.15) 13

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Calculating the size of the early Christian community is fraught with difficulties, but one recent estimate for the entire empire places their number around 210,000 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 eastern Mediterranean: see Hopkins, “Christian Number,” 192 and Fig. 1. For the size of 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 across the empire). The actual (projected) number of Christians at Rome in 250 C.E. would be 37,647; in 300 C.E. 202,474. Adolf von Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, vol. 2 (4th ed.; Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1924), 806, relying primarily on a famous letter written by Cornelius, bishop at Rome in 251–253, to Fabius, bishop of Antioch, boasting of the diversity and number of episcopal personnel at the capital – 46 priests, 7 deacons, 7 subdeacons, 42 acolytes, 52 exorcists, and various lectors – and claiming that 1,500 widows and poor persons were supported by communal charity: Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.43.11. All such figures must be regarded with caution: see Hopkins, “Christian Number,” 187–92; cf. Luce Pietri, “Les resistances: de la polemique païenne à la persecution de Dioclétien,” in Histoire du Christianisme des origines à nos jours II. Naisance d’une Chrétienté (250–430) (ed. Luce Pietri: Paris: Desclée-Fayard, 1995), 134. The actual (projected) figures: in 340 C.E., 777,826 Christians at Rome; in 350 C.E., 1,088,956. Across the empire a rate of growth of 40 percent per decade would have resulted in some 33,880,000 Christians by 350 C.E., or 56.5 percent of 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 less static (if not actually declining) urban population, increased, the rate of growth would have slowed, but the contours of an exponential curve make it clear that by the middle of the fourth century virtually all those buried in catacombs were probably in some sense “Christian.” Who counted as “Christian,” of course, is problematic and largely a matter of perception: among early Christian writers,

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If we then compare this hypothetical number of urban Christians around the year 300 with the estimated number of individual burial spaces provided by the Roman catacombs before the time of Constantine – some 41,800 (see the Appendix) – we confront a notable paradox. If virtually all the spaces in these purpose-built catacombs were occupied by Christians, as is regularly maintained, and if Christians died at the same presumed rate as other Romans (roughly 40 per 1,000 per year), then, supposing that the rate of growth of the urban Christian community over the course of the century was constant (it almost certainly was not, but we are here interested only in a hypothetical model), some 234,500 Christians would have died at Rome over the course of the century. Bearing in mind the general figures proposed earlier for the percentage of burials of all types at Rome during the three and a half centuries before Constantine for which we have any evidence at all (less than 1.5 percent), we must then conclude that – remarkably – we have evidence for nearly 18 percent of all the Christian burials of the third century but only a minuscule portion – less than one hundredth of one percent – for the disposition of others who died at Rome during the same period. All of these figures are crude estimates and any could be disputed, but even if each were off by 50 percent we would still be left with a disproportionately high representation of Christian graves. That is possible, of course, but perhaps unlikely. Even if we grant the pious efforts of later generations of Christians to cultivate the tombs of their early brethren (to say nothing of the cult of the martyrs), and even if we note the general lack of Christian concern for the graves of non-believers (to say nothing of the willful destruction of them during the middle ages), a more plausible hypothesis might suppose that the evidence we have for Roman burial during the third century is more or less equally unrepresentative of all groups and that Christians and non-Christians filled the burial spaces of the catacombs, as well as the other sorts of graves in use during the period, in numbers more or less reflective of their numbers within the general population. If that is so, then not only did Christian dogma about the fate of the soul after death have little to do with the broad change in preferred the term was “a persuasive, hopeful and often porous category, used optimistically”: Hopkins, “Christian Number,” 186–87, quote from 187. Among lapsed believers 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 cemeteries underground may not have particularly distinguished them from their pagan and Jewish contemporaries.16 Two points, related but distinct, are relevant in this regard. First, and most easily demonstrated, the creation of private cemeteries by groups identified by a common religious bond was not peculiar to the Christians at Rome. In addition to half a dozen well-recognized Jewish catacombs , we may note, for instance, during the same periods and in the same regions in which the socalled Christian catacombs were being created and developed, collective cemeteries established by collegia of Aesculapius and Hygia and of Silvanus 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 is correct, Roman Christians will have learned the use of catacombs from the local Jewish community, who had developed their own subterranean burial grounds at Rome beginning already in the first century B.C.E., 16

17

The idea that Christian ideology influenced the change in preferred method of burial goes back to a misapprehension of Minucius Felix, Octavius 11.4, on the Christian 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. Zeph Stewart; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972), 277–307 and, on “Christian” imagery in funerary art of the same period, “Sarcophagi and Symbolism,” AJA 50 (1946): 140–70; repr. in Arthur Darby Nock: Essays, 606–41. For “pagan” catacombs, see Philippe Pergola, “Il ‘praedium Domitillae’ sulla via Ardeatina: analisi storicotopografica delle testimonianze pagane fino alla metà del III sec. d.C.,” RACrist 55 (1979): 313–35, hedging the argument, and the discussion among Pergola, Umberto Fasola, and Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, in Actes du XIe Congrès International d’Archéologie Chrétienne (Rome: École française de Rome and Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1989), 2:1207–10. For the Jewish catacombs of Rome, see Cinzia Vismara, “I cimiteri ebraici di Roma,” in Società romana e impero tardoantico II. Roma. Politica, economia, paesaggio urbano (ed. Andrea Giardina: Rome: Laterza, 1986), 351–92, 490–503 and (less reliably) Leonard V. Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of Cultural Interaction in the Roman Diaspora (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995). For collective cemeteries of other religious groups, see Lucrezia Spera, Il paesaggio suburbano di Roma dall’antichità al medioevo. Il comprensorio tra le vie Latina e Ardeatina 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 of the 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 third mile, 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 customs and organization of the local population.18 Second, and more importantly, not only is it obvious that not all followers of a particular religion were buried in such collective monuments, it is equally clear that burial in such places was not normally restricted to devotees of a particular religion. Occasionally one finds testators or the owners of tombs attempting to prescribe burial within them to followers of a specific sect – an epitaph of the third century from the catacombs of Domitilla, for example, declares that a certain M. Antonius Res(ti)tutus “made the hypogeum for himself and his household trusting in the Lord”; another (which may or may not be Christian) of late-second-century date from beside the Via Nomentana identifies a monument owned by a Valerius Mercurius and two other persons and intended for freedmen and descendants who “belong to my religion” – but these declarations, which (it may be noted) do not explicitly exclude burial to anyone but merely designate certain categories of persons welcomed, are the exceptions that prove the rule.19 More often with collective monuments established by groups linked with a specific religious identity we find envisaged the possibility if not the actual fact of the burial of others who do not belong to the same sect. So, for example, the foundation document of the collegium of Aesculapius and Hygia explicitly allows for a member to bequeath his place to “a son, or brother, or freedman,” without specifying any other qualification than payment of a funerary fee.20 18

19

20

Margaret H. Williams, “The Organisation of Jewish Burials in Ancient Rome in the Light of Evidence from Palestine and the Diaspora,” ZPE 101 (1994): 165–82, especially 175–82, arguing convincingly for the absence of control by synagogues over the burial arrangements of Jews at Rome. ILCV 1597 = ICUR 6555, M. Antonius Restutus fecit ypogeu(m) sibi et suis fidentibus in Domino; CIL 6.10412 = ILCV 3824 = ILS 8337, Monumentum Valeri Mercuri et Iulittes Iuliani et Quintilies Verecundes libertis libertabusque posterisque eorum ad religionem pertinentes meam …; cf. also ILCV 3681 = AE 1923, 66, Faltoniae Hilaritati dominae filiae carissimae quae hoc coemeterium a solo sua pecunia fecit et hu{h}ic religioni donavit with Éric Rebillard, “KOIMHTHRION et COEMETERIUM: tombe, tombe sainte, nécropole,” MEFRA 105 (1993): 979, Osiek, below, p. 247; CIL 6.10411 = ILCV 3826. CIL 6.10234: … si quis locum suum legare volet filio vel fratri vel liberto, dumtaxat ut inferat arkae n(ostrae) partem dimidiam funeratici. Exclusivity was not unknown in Roman collegia but was more characteristic of the associations organized 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 and fourth centuries many Christians continued to be buried in familial monuments of the traditional sort, long after catacombs came into widespread use; that the Christian ideology of egalitarianism, which the networked galleries supposedly promoted, is belied by their accommodation from the outset of privileged areas for monumental tombs set off from the other burial spaces both architecturally and decoratively; and that many of the so-called Christian catacombs originated from and regularly incorporated subterranean pagan burial areas.21 To these now generally conceded points, especially the last, we may add that unequivocal evidence exists not only for the incorporation within “Christian” catacombs of earlier pagan hypogea but for the contemporary burial side by side, throughout the third and fourth centuries, of Christians and pagans, not only within a single monument but in adjacent subterranean spaces connected by tunnels and galleries. Among the more striking examples of the latter are the catacombs of Agnese beside the Via Nomentana, where pagan hypogea were left intact and accessible after a Christian cemetery was installed on the site, and the socalled catacombs of Vibia next to the cemetery of Praetextatus at the second mile of the Via Appia, where the frescoes decorating certain arched inhumation niches (arcosolia) identify the burial spaces of three priests of Mithras, a devotee of Sabazius, and his pagan wife, while other inscriptions clearly mark the graves of Christians – all, it seems, dating from the second half of the fourth century.22 21

22

See recently, e.g., Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai and Jean Guyon, “Introduzione,” in Origine delle Catacombe Romane. Atti della giornata tematica dei Seminari di Archeologia Cristiana (Roma – 21 marzo 2005) (eds. Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai and 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 Rome of “Christian” catacombs originating from pagan hypogea include the so-called hypogeum of the Flavii in the cemetery of Domitilla and the hypogaeum of the Acilii 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 and Antonio Ferrua, “Iscrizioni pagane della Catacomba di Priscilla,” Archivio della società romana di storia patria 110 (1987): 5–19, both with further references. See Johnson, “Pagan-Christian Burial Practices,” 50–59, with examples from Rome and elsewhere. For S. Agnese, see also Umberto Fasola, “La ‘Regio IV’ del cimitero 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 = CLE 1317 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 qualifications have been duly noted, little remains at the foundation of the conventional view but the conviction that purpose-built catacombs must have been Christian from the outset because after Constantine the cult of the martyrs caused Christians to vie for burial in close proximity to the tombs of their saints and thus to expand the already existing networks of galleries into vast subterranean complexes, which Christians (numerically predominant now, in the urban population) naturally controlled and eventually monopolized. Whether the original underground cemeteries developed during the third century were exclusively Christian, on the other hand, is considerably less certain. Such a situation is demographically improbable and archaeologically dubious and, on the basis of the ambivalent literary sources available to us, must remain decidedly open.

Collective Burial The conventional explanations of these two major innovations in burial practices during the first three centuries C.E. – the invention of columbaria and the development of catacombs – fail to convince because the new funerary forms did not in fact respond to the social pressures that are thought to have given rise to them: columbaria and collegia did not replace families and patrons, and catacombs were not invented and designed to accommodate the particular ideological beliefs and religious behavior of early Christians. What columbaria and catacombs have in common, and what distinguishes them from other Roman monument types, is their capacity to accommodate burials in groupings larger than and different from the traditional units of the nuclear family (normally buried in so-called sepulchra hereditaria) and the extended household provided for in sepulchra familiaria, which included, in the well-known epitaphic phrase, “freedmen and freedwomen and their descendants” (libertis libertabusque posterisque eorum).23 If we start from this obser23

For the basic definition, see Dig. 11.7.5 (Gaius), Familiaria sepulchra dicuntur quae quis sibi familiaeque suae constituit, hereditaria autem quae quis sibi heredibusque suis constituit. The distinction was purely a matter of law: see Sergio Lazzarini, 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 droit des tombeaux romains (Milan: Giuffré Editore, 1963), 93–102. Architecturally there 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 new architectural forms encouraged and only then proceed to consider what social purposes they may have served, we may perhaps avoid some of the pitfalls that have impeded progress from the opposite direction. First, however, it will be necessary to establish one basic methodological point about the analysis of ancient burial practices and to dispel two common misconceptions about Roman funerary behavior that have led some otherwise valuable investigations astray.

Wild Geese and Red Herrings Method first. In considering the disposition of collective cemeteries we must resist the tendency to assume that burial arrangements for the dead corresponded directly to the social organization of the living, and in particular we must avoid succumbing to the “housing” fallacy according to which the internal configuration of columbaria and catacombs somehow reflected the distribution of space in contemporary domestic architecture.24 The social arrangements articulated within a columbarium or catacombs are unlike those ever lived out in a house or apartment block. Romans did not, in fact, live as they died, nor did they arrange themselves in death as they did in life: the easy analogies break down almost as soon as they begin to be examined, whether we

24

between them could become blurred in practice: see e.g., Valerie Hope, “A Roof over the Dead: Communal Tombs and Family Structure,” in Domestic Space in the Roman World: Pompeii and Beyond (eds. Ray Laurence and Andrew WallaceHadrill; Portsmouth, R.I.: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1997), 69–88; Mario Amelotti, “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. Feenstra, A. S. Hartkamp, J. E. Spruit, P. J. Sijpestein, L. C. Winkel; Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben, 1995), 4–5. Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb,” 39, for example, corrects Hopkins’s comparison of columbaria to insulae (Death and Renewal, 214) by arguing that “the housing which parallels it [the columbarium] is the domus,” Each view has something to recommend it, but both are fundamentally incorrect. More cautious (and more accurate) is the view of Hope, “A Roof over the Dead,” who likens familial and household structure to tomb configuration only to the extent that both were fluid and changed unpredictably. For the organization of space within the Roman house, see Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, “The Social Structure of the Roman House,” PBSR 56 (1988): 43–97 and, briefly, id., Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1994), 14–16.

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consider the positioning of sarcophagi within the tomb of the Scipios or the placement of grave markers in the familial tombs of imperial Romans of moderate means. A recent analysis of a selection of early imperial tombs from Isola Sacra and from the section of the Via Triumphalis necropolis under the Vatican parking lot, for example, shows that in many cases no particular burial place within a monument was marked out more than any other and that where a hierarchical arrangement privileging a central location is found, the principal focus was less often centered on the proprietor of the tomb or the paterfamilias than on the first person buried in the monument or on one whose principal claim seems to have been the affection in which he or she was held by the owner.25 It hardly requires observing that Romans of the empire grouped themselves socially according to various criteria, depending upon the context. Within the home, familial ties and hierarchies dominated, but outside the household, various criteria might dictate not only membership but rank within a group. Domestic collegia regularly and naturally subsumed familial structures in organizing the burial behavior of their members within collective monuments, but other formal or semiformal voluntary associations – for instance, those that channeled political activity or access to social services – bore more complex and variable relationships with the funerary activities of their constituents. The vici of Rome, for example, provided administrative structure and corporate organization for various political, social, and religious activities, but residency in a neighborhood played little, if any, role in determining funerary behavior.26 Similarly, at Pompeii neighborhood groups exhibited corporate organization and acted collectively at times in endorsing local politicians – as did professional collegia of dyers (infectores) and fruit-sellers (pomarii), religious associations such as the devotees of Isis (Isiaci universi), the inhab25

26

Francisca Feraudi-Gruénais, Inschriften und ‘Selbstdarstellung’ in stadtrömischen Grabbauten (Libitina 3; Rome: Quasar, 2003), 25–42, esp. 41– 42. Even when an original decorative scheme or arrangement of burial places seems designed to focus attention on a particular location, the practicalities of continued use of the monument frequently subvert the program, notably when subsequent graves intrude into the decorative framework: in brief, functionality trumped aesthetics in determining how burial spaces were used (42–54, esp. 43). See J. Bert Lott, The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 45–60, 106–17. For the mistaken idea that the region in which Jews in Rome were buried depended upon the location of their synagogues, see Williams, “Organisation of Jewish Burials,” 165–75.

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itants of a single residential block (the insula Satriorum), the patrons (it seems) of the baths of Venus (Veneri or Veneriosi), and informal groups waggishly identifying themselves as petty-thieves (furunculi), gladiatorial fans (spectaculi spectantes), sleepers (dormientes), and late-drinkers (seri bibi) – but none of these groups appears anywhere in the organization 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 endorsing a patron for political office might expect in return to have their burial arrangements provided for, and worshippers of a particular cult, as noted earlier, might band together in death in collective cemeteries. Professional associations sometimes projected their exclusivity into their funerary facilities: at Rome a collegium of cooks in the imperial household had a special burial complex between the second and third mile of the Via Appia, and an association of ivory and citron-wood workers, which probably provided burials as well as banquets, restricted membership to practitioners of those trades.28 Soldiers lived a highly regimented life and found in their military units a social institution that provided much of the structure traditionally associated with the family. Special units of them at Rome, such as the equites singulares and the detachment of sailors from the Misene fleet assigned to rigging the awnings above the Colosseum, segregated themselves in separate burial grounds, but others of no less specialized and even more élite status, such as the praetorian guards, preferred individual burial among civilians in the general necropoleis outside the city gates.29 Even with corporate institutions, the 27

28

29

For the topographical organization of Pompeii, see Paavo Castrén, Ordo Populusque Pompeianus: Polity and Society in Roman Pompeii (2nd ed.; Rome: Bardi Editori, 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. For the humorously named pseudo-collegia, Waltzing, Étude historique, vol. 1, 51 n. 2 aptly compares the jocular references in Horace (Serm. 1.2.1) and Apuleius (Metam. 7.7.4) to associations of Syrian flute-girls (ambubaiarum collegia) and bandits (latronis collegium) respectively. For the imperial cooks, see Spera, Paesaggio suburbano, 187–88 with CIL 6.7458, 8750, 8751, the last reused to cover a loculus in the nearby catacombs of Callistus, 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 citronwood workers, see CIL 6.33885 = ILS 7214. For the legion as a social institution, see Ramsay MacMullen, “The Legion as a Society,” Historia 33 (1984): 440–56. For the equites singulares, see Jean Guyon,

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correspondence between membership in life and community in death was variable and unpredictable. It stands to reason, then, that principles of organization and hierarchy recognizable in one are seldom found reflected in the other. Burial architecture in antiquity did not intend to replicate the circumstances of the living but instead enabled abstract expressions of ideal social orders that seldom, if ever, corresponded directly 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 the so-called sepulchra familiaria, those which provided for freedmen and freedwomen to be buried along with their patrons. First, it is not the case, as is sometimes maintained, that this type of monument, which was most characteristic of the second century C.E. and thus represents the principal alternative method of group burial to columbaria at the beginning of the century and to catacombs toward the end, first came into use during the latter half of the first century.31 Familial tombs existed already during the final decades of the Republic, when (it seems) it was ex-slaves themselves (often the innovators in commemorative funerary behavior) who favored the form.32 Whatever role familial tombs played in the changing face of collective burial during the

30

31

32

Le cimitière aux deux lauriers: recherches sur les catacombes romaines (Rome: École française de Rome, 1987), 30–33; for the Misene sailors, see Spera, Paesaggio suburbano, 158; for the praetorian guard, see Marcel Durry, Les Cohortes Prétoriennes (Paris: De Boccard, 1968), 60–63. For the basic methodological point, see, e.g., Bruno D’Agostino, “Società dei vivi, communità dei morti: Un rapporto difficile,” Dialoghi di archeologia 3,1 (1985): 47–58 and, more polemically, Rick Jones, “Rules for the Living and the Dead: Funerary Practices and Social Organization,” in Römerzeitliche Gräber als Quellen zu Religion, Bevölkerungsstruktur und Sozialgeschichte (ed. Manuela Struck: Mainz: Institut für Vor- und Frühgeschichte der Johannes GutenbergUniversität Mainz, 1993), 247–54. So, e.g., Francisca Feraudi-Gruénais, Ubi diutius nobis habitandum est. Die Innendekoration der kaiserzeitlichen Gräber Roms (Palilia 9; Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 2001), 152–53, and ead. Inschriften und ‘Selbstdarstellung,’ 36, apparently confusing the advent of the architectural form of the Kammergräber with the juridical capacity for familial burial, which clearly existed earlier. The clearest indication is provided by epitaphs that include the standard phrase libertis 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 needs first arising then. Second, we should not imagine that familial tombs, by including freedmen as well as family members within the monument, somehow reflect a growing magnanimity of patrons toward their households. Roman landowners establishing testamentary foundations and trusts to allow generations of ex-slaves to inherit their monuments were less interested in preserving landed property within their families than they were in perpetuating their own names by passing the properties on to their freedmen.33 In this respect, what familial tombs illustrate is not generosity but ego. Nor, on the other hand, should we imagine that during the Republic Roman slaves were normally deprived of formal burial and that columbaria first made this opportunity available to them. Since slaves did not have juridical personae, testamentary dispositions and the epitaphic formulae that reflect them naturally took no formal account of their ultimate fate in death. Although definitive physical evidence of the gravesites of slaves is difficult to identify, psychological plausibility and the apparently commonplace presence of unmarked or anonymous graves within tomb enclosures suggest that household slaves often found burial in familial and even hereditary monuments.34 Let us assume that the primary reason for the introduction of both the columbarium and catacombs was the simple demographic need created by a limited amount of land on the outskirts of Rome and the everaccumulating demands placed on it by successive generations of Romans united (whatever their religious beliefs or social circumstances) by a persistent desire to bury their dead in the suburban soil and a re33

34

David Johnston, “Trusts and Tombs,” ZPE 72 (1988): 81–87 and id. The Roman Law of Trusts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 77–97. Werner Eck, “Römische Grabinschriften. Aussageabsicht und Aussagefähigkeit im funerären Kontext,” in Römische Gräberstraßen: Selbstdarstellung, Status, Standard (eds. Henner von Hesberg and Paul Zanker; Munich: Verlag der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: in Kommission bei der C. H. Beck’schen Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1987), 73–74 argued the point persuasively for the second and third centuries C.E., and the same can be said for the period of the late Republic as well. Eck believes that during the Republic dead slaves were unceremoniously dumped in the Esquiline puticuli; I have argued elsewhere that disposal in these loca 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 Puteoli provides 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 supplices en 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 to local grave sites. It remains to investigate how these new burial forms accommodated those desires and what further possibilities for social expression they may have supported or imposed. Here we are hampered by some fundamental problems of definition, which we must now address, for it is clear that those who write about columbaria, catacombs, and cemeteries do not always mean the same things by the terms.

Problems of Definition Our problems of interpretation begin with terminology. Unfortunately they are acute, since each of the three principal terms used to describe collective burial spaces during the first three centuries C.E. – columbarium, catacombs, and cemetery (  or coemeterium) – is, in standard usage, a modern invention that remains elusively ambivalent or imprecise. Columbarium, in antiquity, meant “dovecote,” a nesting-box for a pair of pigeons, and then, in a transferred sense, “niche for an ash urn” or more precisely, since pigeons kept for breeding were (and are) normally kept in pairs, “bipartite niche for a pair of urns,” the most characteristic form.35 The word is never used in literary sources in this latter sense but is found in some forty inscriptions, all but two from Rome or Ostia.36 This extended usage, like the form itself, evidently originated at the capital and was virtually restricted to its environs. In modern usage, however, the term columbarium does not normally refer to the individual niches or cavities for urns but to the architectural 35

36

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 plurimi possunt a terra usque ad cameram; “Round nesting places are made for each pair (sc. of pigeons), close to each other in a row, and as many rows as possible are built from the ground up to the vaulted ceiling.” Cf. Thesaurus Linguae Latinae 3:1734, s.v. “columbarium.” Of the two texts found elsewhere, one is from Spain (CIL 2.2002); the other, from Antium, 30 miles 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). Other transferred uses applied to the niches in walls to hold beams and, in ships, to oarlocks (TLL). For the primary sense of dovecote, see also Pliny, Historia Naturalis 17.51 and Palladius 1.24.

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structures that housed them – large or small tomb buildings, built above or below ground (or sometimes both) and distinguishable from other monumental tombs mainly by their interior configuration, which is marked by plastered walls and pillars systematically lined, from floor to ceiling, with rows of niches accessible via wooden ladders or stairways and scaffolding (Fig. 6.1). Regimented order and symmetry are characteristic of the form. Each niche contained one or more cavities – ollae – normally a pair, sometimes as many as four or six, usually incorporating a terracotta funerary urn within the wall but occasionally allowing an urn to be inserted and removed independently. Individual niches sometimes received personal attention – small shelves built out of the wall to hold offerings, a painted border or marble frame surrounding the niche, personalized decoration, a terracotta or stone tablet cut to cover over the opening to the niche and inscribed with the name of the owner or of the person buried there – but the interior decoration of the chamber was normally uniform and sometimes divided the rows of niches by horizontal bands of thematically related motifs (Fig. 6.2).37 The architectural form flourished from the time of Augustus to that of Hadrian, little more than 150 years; as a funerary fashion, in other words, it was shortlived. The term columbarium first appears with this modern sense in the eighteenth century in reference to the very largest such structures, the ones originally intended for the massive households of the great families of Rome, and only became common in the nineteenth century.38 Today it 37

38

For the decorative program of the largest of the columbaria in the Doria Pamphilj necropolis (for which see below. n. 57), which exhibits themes similar to (but less systematicaly disposed than) those in the nearby columbarium of C. Scribonius Menophilus (see Fig 6.2), see Roger Ling, “The Paintings of the Columbarium of Villa Doria Pamphili in Rome,” in Functional and Spatial Analysis of Wall Painting (Proceedings of the Fifth International Congress on Ancient Wall Painting) (ed. Eric M. Moormann; Leiden: Stichting Bulletin Antieke Beschaving, 1993), 127–35, emphasizing the generic (non funerary) nature of the scenes represented, and esp. 129 on the uniformity of the design. Maria Letizia Caldelli and Cecilia Ricci, Monumentum familiae Statiliorum: Un Riesame (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 1999), 76 n. 93 cite an unpublished tesi di laurea by Simona Crea that traces the modern sense of the term to Antonio Francesco Gori’s publication of the largest known columbarium, that of the household of the empress Livia, under the title Monumentum sive columbarium libertorum et servorum Liviae Augustae et Caesarum Romae detectum in Via Appia anno MDCCXXVI (Florence, 1727). For this work and for Gori’s unstated rivalry with Francesco Bianchini, who published first, under the title Camera ed inscrizioni sepolcrali de’ liberti, servi, ed ufficiali della casa di Augusto scoperte nella Via Appia (Rome 1727), the same excavations of 1726 that un-

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6.1. Drawing by Antonio Buonamici of the long wall of the first room of the columbarium of the household of Livia beside the Via Appia (reproduced from Francesco Bianchini, Camera ed inscrizioni sepulcrali de’liberti, servi, ed ufficiali della casa di Augusto scoperte nella Via Appia, ed illustrate con le annotazioni di Monsignor Francesco Bianchini Veronese, l’anno MDCCXXVI (Rome: Giovanni Maria Salvioni, nell’archiginnasio della Sapienza, 1727), tav. IV [BAV Cicognara VIII 3617A], after Maria Raina Fehl, “Archaeologists at Work in 1726: The Columbarium of the Household of Livia Augusta,” in Ultra Terminum Vagari. Scritti in onore di Carl Nylander (eds. Börje Magnusson, Stefania Renzetti, Paolo Vian, and Sever J. Voicu: Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 1997), fig. 2.

has grown in application to encompass almost any tomb monument with niches for cremation burials in the walls. In contrast to the origin of the term columbarium, “catacombs” has no basis whatsoever in ancient terminology (the singular noun is a lexical 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 Vagari. Scritti in onore di Carl Nylander (eds. Börje Magnusson, Stefania Renzetti, Paolo Vian, and Sever J. Voicu; Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 1997), 89–92.

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6.2. Columbarium of C. Scribonius C.l. Menophilus on the Janiculum hill beside the Via Aurelia, main room, long wall, showing rows of niches with painted tabulae ansatae beneath each niche. The rows are divided systematically by painted bands of (from bottom to top): garlands; flowers, fruits, birds, and Dionysiac motifs; sacro-idyllic landscapes; and narrative scenes with human figures. Several of the niches are sealed with mortar or with stone or terracotta plaques; two, one of which had been enlarged and enhanced with a marble tablet bearing an epitaph (in situ), have had marble frames removed. (author’s photo)

(“near the hollows”) in reference to the abandoned quarries, sandpits, and cisterns from which, later in the fourth and fifth centuries, professional gravediggers (fossores) often started digging the networks of burial tunnels to which the term nowadays regularly applies.39 In an39

So, convincingly, Bruno Luiselli, “Il toponimo ‘Catacumbas’ e Odilone di San Medardo,” MEFRA 98 (1986): 852–54, finding a Latin parallel for the usage in

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tiquity the phrase occurs specifically, and for a long time only, in the topographical designation cimiterium ad catacumbas, in reference to the subterranean Christian cemetery excavated out from the pozzolana quarries near the third mile of the Via Appia in the vicinity of S. Sebastiano, where already by the middle of the third century there was an important memorial cult of the apostles Peter and Paul.40 Colloquial and vague, the original topographical designation leaves open the question of a typological distinction between the purposebuilt networks of tunnels designed to accommodate hundreds of inhumation burials, and other linked hypogaea and underground cemeteries, which are occasionally found beside the Via Appia and elsewhere

40

the Passion of Saint Sebastian in the phrase ad arenas used to describe the place where the martyrs Marcus and Marcellianus were buried (Act. Sanct., Ian. II:642). The neologism “catacumbas” is first attested in the Chronica Urbis Romae inserted in the register of the Chronographer of 354 and edited some twenty years previously in reference to building activity in the region by the emperor Maxentius (fecit et circum in catecumbas). Otherwise in antiquity it occurs only and always in reference to the Christian cemetery on the site (see the next note). Giuseppe Marchi, Monumenti delle arti cristiane primitive nella metropoli del cristianesimo (Rome: Tip. di C. Puccinelli, 1844), 209 and De Rossi, Roma sotterranea 3:427, interpreted kymbas as deriving from Latin cubare, “to sleep”. More recently, Antonio Ferrua, La basilica e la catacomba di S. Sebastiano (2nd ed.; Vatican City: Pontificia Commisione di Archeologia Sacra, 1990), 11, has associated it with cumba, “ship,” in reference to a hypothetical sign or relief in the area advertising an inn and depicting two or more ships. Kata in the phrase means “in the vicinity of ” (a late usage), so that, strictly, the construction ad catacumbas in the phrase cimiterium ad catacumbas is redundant. Such bilingual tautologies are not uncommon in late Latin topographical designations. Petrological explorations during the early 1940s showed that understanding of the geophysical properties of the tufa quarries outside Rome was greater among gravediggers during the first and second centuries than later during the third and fourth, which explains why later diggers often built new complexes off of the older networks: see Gioacchino De Angelis D’Ossat, La geologia delle catacombe 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 spaces in the catacombs, see Jean Guyon, “La vente des tombes à travers l’épigraphie de la Rome chrétienne (IIIe – VIIe siècles): le role des fossores, mansionarii, praepositi, et prètres,” MEFRA 86 (1974): 549–96. For the site and its designation, see Anna Maria Nieddu, “Catacumbas ad,” in Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae. Suburbium (ed. Adriano La Regina; vol. 2; Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2004), 79–82, on the name and “Catacumbas coemeterium. Cimitero sopratterra,” ibid., 82–86; Rafaella Giuliani, “Cimitero sotterraneo,” ibid., 86–93.

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outside Rome already during the second century.41 Whereas the label columbarium aims to characterize an architectural form, the term “catacombs” merely identifies a place. What is more, the burial mode primarily associated with the phrase can only be inferred from developments of a later period than that when the expression was originally employed. In reference to the earliest underground cemetery on the site – a concentrated grouping of columbaria and familial mausolea, three of them disposed around a sunken “piazzola” with niches for inhumations excavated out of the sides – the term is not only anachronistic but misapplied.42 The only distinctive architectural features universally recognized are columns and rows of large niches for inhumation burials (loculi) lining the walls (Fig. 6.3). Since many catacombs incorporated or originated from earlier hypogea, and since the developed versions regularly included quadrilateral burial chambers (cubicula) similar in form to the earlier and independent subterranean monuments, the question naturally arises when a series of linked hypogea becomes a catacomb. The solution most commonly proposed is to identify as proper catacombs only those that could be entered directly from the ground and were designed from the outset to offer as many spaces for inhumation burials as possible, but typological distinctions are difficult to draw when one considers closely the various architectural configurations of underground burial complexes outside Rome during the second and third centuries, and in practice the term catacombs has come to be reserved for those that are presumed to have been controlled by official religious authorities and therefore to be characterized by exclusive religious affiliations (“Christian,” “Jewish”), whereas those of indeterminate or private status are labeled hypogea. A spurious semantic precision in this case does not conceal the circularity of the reasoning, nor does it resolve the basic terminological problem.43 41

42 43

For an overview of various types of subterranean burial complexes dating from the second century, see Spera, Paesaggio suburbano, 355–62. See Spera, Paesaggio suburbano, 209–25; Nieddu, “Cimitero sopratterra,” 82–83. For the standard distinction between “Christian” catacombs and “pagan” hypogea, see, e.g., Fiocchi Nicolai, “Origin and Development,” 16–17 and Leonard V. Rutgers, Subterranean Rome: In Search of the Roots of Christianity in the Catacombs of the Eternal City (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), 64. For a typically problematic case, compare the discussions of the so-called “Catacombs of Vibia” by Spera, Paesaggio suburbano, 172–76 and Palmira Maria Barbini, in Philippe Pergola, Le catacombe romane: storia e topografia (Rome: La Nuova Italia Scientifica, 1997), 177–80.

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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 of the third century, when it referred to the final “resting place” of a dead person.44 The classical Greek term, based on a verb used metaphorically of the sleep of death already in the Iliad and attested in its denominative form, both in a literal sense (“sleeping room”) and metaphorically of a burial chamber, already by the third century B.C.E., had an obvious appeal to those who imagined death as a transitional sleeping period (the refrigerium interim) between life and the resurrection.45 By the end of antiquity this metaphorical usage had been extended and transferred, by a process of pars pro toto similar to that which created the modern concept of the columbarium, to our concept of “cemetery,” that is a collection of individual tombs or “resting places”; but “cemeterium” and   continued to be regularly used also in the literal sense in reference to sleeping places (individual and collective, that is, dormitories) down into medieval and Byzantine times.46 The philological crux lies in determining at what point this later, extended usage first came into currency, but the more important historical question is what, precisely, our earliest literary sources mean when they refer to coemeteria – or rather what one source meant in using the Greek term   , since all the earliest Latin attestations of coemeterium, both pagan and Christian, clearly refer to individual tombs. In a poorly transmitted passage of an anonymous pamphlet written against the election of Callistus as bishop at Rome in 217 and attributed to Hippolytus, the author claims that Zephyrinus, bishop at Rome in 198, in the following year recalled Callistus from exile and as-

44

45

46

Tert. Anima 5.17 (of 197 C.E.) appears to be the earliest attestation of the term in a Christian context, but note also CIL 8.7543; 11.1700 = ILCV 2171; ILCV 3681. It first appears in Greek in [Hippolytus], Philosoph. 9.12.14 (below n. 48). E.g., Homer, Il. 11.241; “sleeping room”: IG 7.235.43;“burial chamber”: IG 3.3545. For the Christian “sleep of death,” see Marbury B. Ogle, “The Sleep of Death,” MAAR 11 (1933): 81–117, esp. 85–86 and Alfred C. Rush, Death and Burial in Christian Antiquity (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1941), 12–22. Both rightly trace the Christian (and Jewish) usage to the long classical tradition of figuring death as sleep in funerary epigraphy and art. Rebillard, Religion et sepulture, 14 n. 11 cites Philippe Gauthier, Revue des Études Byzantines 43 (1985): 5–165, for a typicon of Theotokos Kecharitomene (twelfth century) in which   is applied both to a dormitory and to a cemetery.

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signed him « μ   .47 In attempting to deduce the meaning of this appointment, de Rossi, through a series of possible but by no means inevitable suppositions, arrived at the conclusion that Zephyrinus had placed Callistus as deacon in charge of a Christian funerary society and had given him management over the first official Christian cemetery in Rome.48 Subsequent scholarship has long since discarded important elements of de Rossi’s formulation – there were no official Christian funerary societies or indeed specifically funerary collegia of any sort, and the notion of a central “Church” at this date, let alone of an official cemetery “owned” by a church, is doubtful – but only recently has a careful study of the Greek and Latin terms by Éric Rebillard shown there to be no firm evidence for the use of either to mean “cemetery” in a general sense before the beginning of the sixth century; in earlier Christian texts the words seem always to refer to martyrs’ tombs or to the shrines surrounding them (martyria).49 That

47

48

49

[Hippolytus], Philosoph. 9.12.14, M ’    Z φ  «

()   ( ) 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 of the clergy, honored him to his own detriment and, transferring him for his sake from Antium (?), appointed him to the koimeterion.” Giovanni Battista de Rossi, “Esame archeologico e critico della storia di s. Callisto narrata nel libro nono dei Filosofumene,” Bulletino di Archeologia Cristiana 4 (1866): 1–14, 17–33; and La Roma sotterranea cristiana (Rome: Cromo-litografia Pontificia, 1864), 1:197–204. The syllogistic argument is carried 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 alcun grande cimitero commune …” (197). Rebillard, “KOIMHTHPION et COEMETERIUM,” summarized in Religion et sepulture, 11–23. Hippolytus himself uses   to mean tomb in his commentary on Daniel 11, 36–46 (4.51). For the long-standing legal restriction on corporate ownership of property, especially as regards Christian cemeteries, see, e.g., Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries (ed. Marshall D. Johnson; trans. Michael Steinhauser; Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 2003), 369–72, assembling also the supposed evidence – none of it unequivocal – for a change in legal situation around the time of Fabian’s pontificate (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 Reiches (Kallmünz: M. Lassleb, 1982); cf. John S. Kloppenborg, “Collegia and Thiasoi: Issues in Function, Taxonomy, and Membership,” in Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World (eds. John S. Kloppenborg and Stephen G. Wilson; Lon-

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Callistus himself, according to the Liber Pontificalis, was ultimately buried in the catacombs of Calepodius on the Via Aurelia proves nothing but lends little support to de Rossi’s view that he was appointed by the Church as official overseer of the first or most important Christian cemetery of Rome.50 The position held by Callistus was in any case not a regular post but an ad hoc assignment, probably coincident with the end of the practice of burying high-ranking clergy near the tomb of St. Peter on the Vatican, specifically, perhaps, in order to oversee the arrangement of a new collective tomb for Rome’s bishops on Zephyrinus’s private plot.51 The custom of appointing overseers to manage private tomb properties was common in Roman society, and there is no reason to suspect that Callistus’s role departed in any fundamental way from that tradition.52 The same charge of overreading can be levelled against de Rossi’s interpretation of the burial enclosures used by Christians in North Africa. Tertullian’s accusation of local hostility toward Christians and the areae of their burials (areae sepulturarum nostrarum) at Carthage, like several similar references to Christian burial enclosures elsewhere in his writings, says nothing about official ownership or administration of these cemeteries by the church.53 Individual Christians could

50

51

52

53

don and New York: Routledge, 1996), 20–23; and Rebillard, Religion et sepulture, 51–71. Lib. Pontif. I:62, cymiterio Calepodi, via Aurelia. Extraordinary efforts to explain the burial of Callistus elsewhere than in the catacombs that bear his name – recently, for example, by invoking the tumultuous circumstances of his death in Trastevere (Acta Sanctorum octobris, V [Paris 1868], 430): see Roberto Giordiani, “‘Et sepultus est iuxta corpus beati Petri in Vaticano’: qualche considerazione sul problema delle sepolture dei papi nell’antichità,” Vetera Christianorum 40 (2003): 304–5 – betray discomfort with the inconvenience of the circumstantial evidence for the conventional view. Rebillard, “KOIMHTHRION et COEMETERIUM,” 988–91. For the likelihood that Zephyrinus personally owned the property, see Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus, 26–27. 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.), custos martyrum. More often in inscriptions the revenue-producing properties attached to tomb monuments custodiae causa are explicitly recorded, whereas the managers of the properties themselves go unmentioned: see Diz. Epigr. 2:1426 s.v. “Custodia” (Ettore De Ruggiero). Tert. Ad Scapulam 3.1, addressed to the proconsul of Africa in 212 but invoking an 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 within Christian families) and may well have been inclined toward a form of euergetism that favored burial of the poor over more traditional distributions of public largesse, but the areae to which Tertullian refers fit comfortably into a long pagan tradition of private donations by individuals of cemetery plots for public use (sometimes with restrictions imposed on those who could be buried in them) and have no precedent or likelihood of precedent in official sponsorship by a corporate entity such as a church.54

54

ariano praeside, cum de areis sepulturarum nostrarum acclamassent: ‘Areae non sint!’ Areae ipsorum non fuerunt: messes enim suas non egerunt. Rebillard, Religion et sepulture, 17–22, notes the double entendre in Tertullian’s phrase (areae = “threshing floors” and “burial enclosures”) and rightly dismisses the notion of a technical, specifically Christian, application of the term in the present context. For areae as burial enclosures in non-Christian texts, see below, n. 55. Christian concern for the nourishment and burial of the poor (egeni) is touted by Tertullian 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 and probably 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 iscrizioni paleocristiane del Lazio,” in Historiam pictura refert: miscellanea in onore di Padre Alejandro Recio Veganzones (Vatican City: Pontifico Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1994), 243–45 (on ILCV 3681A) and Carolyn Osiek, below in this volume. For traditional Roman precedent, note the late Republican donation of a private cemetery at Sarsina by a certain Horatius Balbus for individual burials of “his fellow townsmen and residents, except those who pledge themselves as gladiators, or commit suicide by hanging, or practice a dirty profession” (municipibus [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,” Studi Romagnoli 20 (1969): 333–39; id. Sarsina. Studi di anitichità (S. Giovanni in Persiceto: F.A.R.A.P, 1982), 263–69; a similar donation at Tolentinum in the first century C.E. “to the townspeople of Tolentinum” (municipibu[s] Tolentinatibu[s]) (CIL 9.5570 = ILS 7847) with Gianfranco Paci, “Tolentinum,” in Supplementa Italica, nuova serie 11 (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1993), 65–67; and the early imperial funeral subsidy of Marius Lupercianus at Bergomum (CIL 5.5128 = ILS 6726), with John Bodel, Graveyards and Groves: A Study of the Lex Lucerina (American Journal of Ancient History 11) (Cambridge Mass.: E. Badian, 1994), 18–19 and 34 n. 137. For the long-standing legal prohibition against corporate ownership of property, especially in reference to burial sites, see above, n. 49.

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The terms   and coemeterium, which say nothing about any particular form of burial arrangement, raise a semantic problem of a different sort from the challenges posed by the ambiguities inherent in “columbaria” and “catacombs.” Areae, surface enclosures for burial, present no particular interpretive difficulties of any sort, since neither the name nor the significance of the term is in dispute, and both are found already in earlier non-Christian sources.55 What remains in doubt is merely the question of the supervision of individual Christian areae, which can only be determined, if at all, in individual cases. The key to understanding the significance of the major innovations in collective burial arrangements during the first three centuries of the common era – the rise of the columbarium during the first century and then, accompanying a widespread change in method of disposal during the second, the proliferation of catacombs in the third – lies in interpreting the form and function of these two ostensibly similar and yet fundamentally different modes of burial. It is to that question that we now turn.

Form and Function Two related tendencies have characterized, and impeded, recent study of the historical significance of columbaria and catacombs. The first is a failure to distinguish clearly between formal and functional criteria in classifying and analyzing the archaeological evidence; the second is an assumption that, because the two modes of collective burial share superficial 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 a purely formal designation to describe any monumental tomb characterized by rows of cremation niches lining the walls. Recently, however, the usefulness of such a broad application of the term has begun to be questioned: as currently employed, the word is appropriately applied to most of the tombs of first-century date found in the outskirts of Rome, which housed the remains of nuclear families and their immediate 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 columbaria of Rome, that of the familia of the Statilii near the Porta Maggiore, advocate a return to the more restricted usage of the eighteenth century, when it applied only to the largest such monuments, those of the households of the most prominent senatorial families of Rome, and suggest that the identification of a niche tomb as a columbarium not be based merely on size.56 Although they do not specify what other criteria might be relevant to distinguish columbaria from other monuments designed for cremation burials, a helpful distinction emerges from their discussion between those intended to house the remains of family members and household staff together (traditional familial tombs), which tend to be smaller, and those exclusively devoted to the burial of members of a slave household or of a mixed group not defined by ties of kinship. According to these criteria only nine monuments from the city of Rome – and none from elsewhere – qualify as columbaria in the proper sense, the smallest of which accommodated more than 200 burials.57 According to this typology, the total number of niches is a characteristic but incidental feature of the classification. Whether or not such a restrictive definition is of use to archaeologists interested in categorizing different types of tomb monuments, it is helpful for our

56 57

Caldelli and Ricci, Monumentum familiae Statiliorum, 60. 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 Liviae, 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 comprising some 700 loculi, of which only 381 were used, from the Augustan or early Tiberian era until 53 C.E., the other two first opened in 66 C.E. and in use until end of the first century; two columbaria discovered beneath the Villa Doria Pamphilj, 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 more than 500 burials of the Julio-Claudian era; three from the Vigna Codini between the Via Appia and Via Latina: one, possibly of late Tiberian date, containing 500 niches, another (late Augustan?) with some 150 niches, each comprising two cavities for urns for some 300 burials, and the third of unknown capacity but yielding some 180 inscriptions (of Tiberian date but in use, perhaps, until the second century); the monumentum familiae Volusiorum Saturninorum, with some 200 burials (and over 190 inscriptions) (ca. 20–97 C.E., most ca. 50 C.E.); and a monument of Augustan date unearthed outside the porta Praenestina in the same region as the monument of the familia of the Statilii, with 118 niches for double 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 arbitrary number to a social use, which usefully highlights the area in which the new funerary facilities (an outgrowth, precisely, of the familial monuments favored by the more prominent families of the late Republic) marked a change in the organization of burial at Rome: for the first time, it seems, collective tombs housed together, on the one hand, slaves and freedmen of particular households apart from their freeborn owners and patrons and, on the other, miscellaneous groups of persons (sometimes in familial groupings, but not exclusively so) not related to each other by blood or ownership. The separation of form and function is not so clear in current discussions of subterranean cemeteries and graves. As noted above, the primary criteria used to identify proper “catacombs” are purely formal: independent entrances from ground level, intensive use of available space for inhumation burials, and “open” design intended to allow expansion through the extension of existing galleries or the creation of new ones, normally according to a regular plan. In an effort further to distinguish purpose-built communal catacombs from private underground burial complexes, Hugo Brandenburg draws a functional distinction between smaller hypogaea comprising up to a dozen or so clearly “mixed,” pagan and Christian burials and larger catacombs accommodating hundreds and thousands, in which religious distinctions are less apparent; but he then compromises the categorization by extrapolating from it a formal rule that correlates size with religious exclusivity.58 As it happens, and as he notes, intermediate numbers are rare, 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 expanded and made more uniform haphazardly or when they were extended by original design, nor indeed can we presume to know in most cases what considerations may have motivated the development of private hypo-

58

Hugo Brandenburg, “Überlegungen zu Ursprung und Entstehung der Katakomben Roms,” in Vivarium. Festschrift Theodor Klauser zum 90. Geburtstag (eds. Ernst Dassmann and Klaus Thraede; Münster: Aschendorff, 1984), 39 and 44–45. The idea that pagans disdained the use of larger catacombs because they provided little opportunity for those of greater wealth and status to display it (45) is disproved by the abundant evidence of funerary “self-representation” in cubicula already at an early date: see Fiocchi Nicolai, “Origin and Development,” 22–23 and above, n. 21.

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gea into larger funerary complexes.59 Recent analysis of the architectural and decorative program of the controversial Via Latina cemetery, for example, a supposedly private hypogeum complex of the third quarter of the fourth century that provided burial for up to 400 persons (and thus approaches the size of proper “catacombs”), where indisputably “pagan” figured scenes are intermingled with Christian iconography throughout a series of luxurious cubicula joined by galleries with loculi, shows that all the spaces were designed, constructed, and (variously) decorated according to a single homogeneous plan.60 Philippe Pergola proposes an ostensibly more clear formal distinction between “closed” and “open” underground cemeteries, the former being those intended to house a predetermined and fixed number of burials, the latter those capable of expansion through existing galleries and along the principal axes, but then complicates it by drawing a secondary distinction within the “open” type between those centered on and systematized according to a monumental presentation of the family of the owner and those which, though not entirely unreflective of distinctions of status, nonetheless present a more uniform and homogeneous aspect.61 He would have done better to stop with the categories “open” and “closed” – a useful polarity for typological analysis – or to begin with “familial” and “communal” (or perhaps better “collective”), concepts useful for evaluating purpose and use, than to have mixed together the two types of criteria, so that form and function become confused. It is clear that in Roman funerary architecture the two categories are indeed related, but we will not be able to

59

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61

The dating of catacombs is fraught with difficulties and often hangs precariously on the stylistic dating of frescoes: see, e.g., J. G. Deckers, “Wie genau ist eine Katakombe zu datieren? Das Bespiel SS. Marcellino e Pietro,” in Memoriam Sanctorum Venerantes. Miscellanea in onore di Monsignor Victor Saxer (Studi di Antichità Cristiana 48; Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1992), 217–38, and Norbert Zimmermann, Werkstattgruppen römischer Katakombenmalerei (Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum Ergänzungsband 35; Münster Westfalen: Aschendorff Verlag, 2002), who advocates a more scientific approach through analysis by workshops and iconography together. See Zimmermann, Werkstattgruppen, 61–125; cf. Johnson, “Pagan-Christian Burial Practices,” 56–58. Pergola, Le catacombe romane, 60–62. The division into classes (60) inevitably allows for a variety of indeterminate intermediate types.

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recognize either for what it is if we fail to distinguish each clearly from the other in our initial analysis.62 Apart from this categorical confusion of design and purpose, nothing has clouded the picture more thoroughly than a repeated insistence on the obvious but superficial points of formal similarity between columbaria and catacombs and a failure to recognize their less striking but more fundamental formal differences. To observe that catacombs, like columbaria, feature multiple rows of niches and were designed to accommodate numerous burials within a minimum amount of space says no more than that both offered an economical response to the (demographically predictable and socially inevitable) ever-increasing demand for burial space in the neighborhood of Rome. But to claim that “[columbaria] were not the only solution: the catacomb works in the same way” is, I think, to misrepresent their essential differences in orientation.63 The question of how these two modes of collective burial channeled that demand must now be addressed.

Columbaria: Members Only With columbaria, the architectural form, though capable of housing large numbers of burials, remains closed (if we may borrow Pergola’s formulation for the classification of catacombs). In this respect the largest of the collective monuments is essentially no different from the smallest familial tombs restricting entry to named family members and, in the formulaic phrase, “freedmen and freedwomen and their descendants.” The possibilities for membership within the community are finite, even if, in principle, they extend (with the inclusion of all possible descendants) indefinitely into the future. The largest of the columbaria, ironically – those devoted to the slave and freed staff of the great houses of Rome – provide the clearest indications of the limitations of the form, and the very largest of them, that of the household of Livia, offers the most unequivocal evidence of all (see Fig. 6.1, 62

63

In fact, one can point to individual examples of the “closed” type of hypogeum which present a largely uniform appearance and do not privilege any one burial space or chamber – which is simply to say that Roman hypogea are equally susceptible to formal and functional analysis: see, e.g., Feraudi-Gruénais, Inschriften und ‘Selbstdarstellung’, for examples from the Vatican necropolis: 29–30 (mausoleum F), 33–34 (Tomb of the Octavii), 39–41 (Tomb XXX). Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb,” 39.

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p. 197).64 Among some 140 surviving epitaphs from the first room of the monument, which was in use from the end of the Augustan era down to the time of Claudius, more than 50 were inscribed more than once and another 40 record two independent names in the nominative.65 The implication is that individual ollae were used for more than one burial and, despite a no doubt already-existing legal prohibition against defacing or erasing epitaphs, were being reused – and this within the space of a few decades. Evidently the nearly 1,100 spaces set aside for Livia’s staff and their dependents were insufficient to house the remains of those eligible for burial in the monument, and the desire to be included among that group apparently outweighed fear of the consequences of violating the burial of another.66 Nothing could illustrate more clearly the comparative pull on funerary behavior of the competing social forces of solidarity with fellow members of a corporate group (the staff of Livia) and social ambition for individual representation within a privileged community. At the same time, the monument, which was evidently administered by a collegium of Livia’s slaves and freedmen, housed burials also of the servants of Livia’s husband, son, daughter-in-law Antonia, and grandchildren, as well as persons with no obvious connection to the imperial house.67 Furthermore, other of Livia’s slaves and freedmen were buried in columbaria primarily devoted to different households (such as those of the children of Drusus or the younger Marcella) or in 64

65 66

67

For the monument, its discovery, and interpretation, see Helke Kammerer Grothaus, “Camere sepolcrali de’ liberti e liberte di Livia Augusta ed altri Caesari,” MEFRA 91 (1979): 315–42; Fehl, “Archaeologists at Work.” Double burials in a single olla: e.g., CIL 6.3945, 3946, 3992, 8944. See Caldelli and Ricci, Monumentum familiae Statiliorum, 60–61, aptly citing Paulus, Sententiae 5.1.21.8, qui monumento inscriptos titulos eraserit … sepulchrum violasse videtur. 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 (Cornelius Chius); 6.4057 (Fuscus, slave of a freedwoman of Antonia, the mother of Claudius); etc. Jukka Korpela, “Die Grabinschriften des Kolumbariiums Libertorum Liviae Augustae: eine Quellenkritische Untersuchung,” Arctos 15 (1981): 53–66 analyzes onomastic aspects of the 670 names recorded on the 376 surviving inscriptions from the monument: 137 are certain slaves, 184 freedmen (55); two thirds are men; of the 114 identifiable persons who erected epitaphs, only 30 are women (57). No system seems to have controlled the elements of nomenclature used, and the names of those who erected the monuments were evidently less 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 the group of those admitted to Livia’s monument was not strictly defined according to membership in the group for which it was intended. Personal associations, marital relationships in some cases but clearly not in all, evidently determined who sought access to this limited resource; deciding who was to be included and where apparently fell to the administrators of the collegium, probably with the necessary approval of the aristocratic patron.69 Normally the problem of overcrowding did not arise. Three of the largest columbaria in Rome were evidently never used to capacity, but even in more modest familial tombs, the invitations to “freedmen and freedwomen and their descendants” to be buried within the family monument may never have been taken up by more than a few.70 Many ex-slaves and, a fortiori, their descendants preferred to advertise their names on their own monuments. Indeed, if we accept the implications of Lily Ross Taylor’s classic discussion of the number of urban residents of the first and second centuries carrying some mixture of servile blood in their veins, most people in Rome would have had their burial assured several times over by the pervasive opportunities held out by these largely underactivated formulae.71 Accordingly, many of those advertising such magnanimity on their tombstones must have counted on the limits of their generosity not being put to the test.72 The promise 68

69

70 71

72

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 the Statilii, at least 39 slaves and freedmen were buried outside the household columbarium: Caldelli and Ricci, Monumentum familiae Statiliorum, 135–40. See Kammerer Grothaus, “Camere sepolcrali,” 326, on the collegium libertorum et servorum Liviae and the collegium magnum tribunorum divae Liviae; in general, Hasegawa “Collegia domestica,” 252–56, for the administrative organization of the collegia domestica, and 261–65 for the role of patrons in granting permission for burial within the columbarium; see also below, n. 98. Caldelli and Ricci, Monumentum familiae Statiliorum, 57. Lily Ross Taylor, “Freedmen and Freeborn in the Epitaphs of Imperial Rome,” AJP 82 (1961): 113–32, esp. 128. A striking illustration of this confidence is found in an epitaph of perhaps Flavian date from the section of the Via Triumphalis necropolis under the Vatican parking lot dedicated by a husband to himself, his wife, and their descendants – and inscribed on a single stele marking (it seems) an individual burial! See Veikko Väänänen et al., Le iscrizioni della necropoli dell’autoparco Vaticano (Rome: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, 1973), 40–41 n. 27, with Steinby, La necropolis 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, at the beginning of the third century, the jurist Papinian expressing the opinion that “freedmen can neither be buried nor bury others [in a familial monument] unless they are heirs to their patron, although some people have inscribed on their tomb that they have built it for themselves and their freedmen.”73 For the patron, it was the idea of representing oneself publicly as a beneficent dominus or domina that made the gesture worth making, despite the potential cost. In the same fashion, for slaves and ex-slaves of the empress Livia (who were in a better position than most to control independent financial resources in a peculium), obtaining even ephemeral recognition in a prestigious burial location was evidently preferable to securing a more permanent memorial elsewhere. What mattered was to be on the inside, no matter how futile the hope for lasting commemoration. This emphasis on the right to be included finds its counterpart in exclusionary expressions prohibiting one or more persons by name from burial in a familial tomb or monument.74 More stridently, if vainly, since such privately (and posthumously) imposed penalties had no legal force, impressively large fines were threatened against any who introduced alien burials into the tomb.75 With columbaria and the later

73

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Dig. 11.7.6.pr. (Ulpian 25 ad ed.), liberti autem nec sepeliri nec alios inferre potuerunt, nisi heredes extiterunt patrono, quamvis quidam inscripserint monumentum sibi libertisque suis fecisse. After citing Papinian, Ulpian goes on to say that “there has very often been a ruling to this effect,” et ita Papinianus respondit et saepissime idem constitutum est. E.g., ILS 7602, 7660, 8283–8286, and many examples of more specific formulae of inclusion and exclusion, often used in combination, in ILS 8259–8282. See now also Silvia Orlandi, “Heredes, alieni, ingrati, ceteri. Ammisione ed esclusioni,” in Libitina e dintorni (Libitina 3; ed. Silvio Panciera; Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2004), 359–84. For the legal aspects, see also de Visscher, Droit des tombeaux, 103–6. On the increasingly extravagant (if idle) threats to exact monetary fines, see Gian Luca Gregori, “Si quis contra legem sepulcri fecerit: violazioni e pene pecuniare,” in Libitina e dintorni (Libitina 3; ed. Silvio Panciera; Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2004), 391–404, esp. 402–3: fines ranged from HS 1,000 to HS 350,000 during the second and early third centuries, with HS 50,000 evidently representing a standard amount; beginning in the third century amounts of HS 100,000 and 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. Defining the space physically, with a perimeter barrier (maceria) enclosing the plot and an imposing monumental structure designed to impress those viewing it from the outside, and verbally, with a titulus declaring the size of the plot (pedes tot in fronte, tot in agro) and specifying persons and categories of persons eligible to be included within the monument, served to segregate the members of that circumscribed community from the rest of society.76 So deeply did this impulse penetrate into the mentality of those who chose this form of burial that we sometimes find miniature family tombs erected within columbaria and epitaphs marking individual ollae that include the standard formulae promising 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, little attention is devoted to distinguishing individuals: small uniform headstones line the rear and side walls of familial tombs at Pompeii, and columbaria, as noted earlier (above, p. 196) generally exhibit uniform decoration across rows of niches if not entire walls.78 In the columbarium of C. Scribonius Menophilus in the Villa Doria Pamphilj, the olla identified by Menophilus’s epitaph is unobtrusively located in the second row from the bottom next to a door into a secondary room. In the monument of Livia’s household, the draftsmanship and carving of some of the small placards found in front of individual ollae are so poor that it is difficult to imagine the broken and reused stones as even temporary markers of actual graves rather than mere place holders,

76

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78

For the practice of staking out the dimensions of tomb plots with declarative inscriptions, see Giovannella Cresci Marrone and Margherita Tirelli, eds., “Terminavit sepulcrum.” I recinti funerari nelle necropoli di Altino (Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2005), especially the article by Gian Luca Gregori, “Definizione e misurazione dello spazio funerario nell’epigrafia repubblicana e protoimperiale di Roma. Un’indagine campione,” 77–126. For miniature family tombs, see Hanne Sigismund Nielsen, “The Physical Context 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 dedicated libertis libertabusque posterisque eorum, see, e.g., CIL 6.5678, 7729, 8100, and especially 6823, for a plot measuring 2 × 3.5 Roman feet. For the rarity of central focus in a sample of familial monuments of the first and second 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, evidently, was much care taken in columbaria to preserve groupings of close kin, perhaps of necessity. A detailed study of familial relationships represented in the largest of the Vigna Codini catacombs excavated by Pietro Campana in 1840, with some 198 epitaphs in situ and another hundred found loose inside, failed to reveal any strong evidence of nuclear families buried together but did find numerous instances of families being split up among individual ollae located in different parts of the monument.80 Indeed, the grouping of ollae in pairs within a single niche, the configuration which seems to have suggested to the Romans the designation columbarium, although it would have served well for couples, is singularly ill-suited to the unified commemoration of nuclear families. Inscriptions sometimes mention multiple ollae acquired by a single person in different rows of a columbarium allotted during different rounds of a lottery or selection process, or the resale of ollae acquired on speculation by entrepreneurs.81 Consider79

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See Caldelli and Ricci, Monumentum familiae Statiliorum, 60–61. Conversely, in some columbaria not all unmarked ollae were unused. In the first of the two columbaria discovered on the property of the Villa Doria Pamphilj, for example, all of the ollae contained ashes, but not all were marked with inscribed or (apparently) painted inscriptions. In the nearby columbarium of Scribonius Menophilus, where both inscribed and painted inscriptions are found (the latter normally in the painted tabulae ansatae provided beneath each niche in the uniform decorative scheme) and both occasionally bear the same name, it seems that the painted tituli may have identified the owners of the niches, whereas the inscribed placards recorded the epitaphs of those buried in them. Nielsen, “Physical Context,” 43–44 noting that both of the (only) two certain close-kin groupings found in the columbarium also reflected ties to patrons outside 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 an entrepreneur who sold spaces in it to any who wanted. For other columbaria found in the Vigna Codini constructed for professional collegia or slave households, see Lucia Parri, “Iscrizioni funerarie, colombari, e liberti: il terzo ipogeo di Vigna Codini ed alcuni dei suoi epitaffi,” Atene e Roma 43 (1998): 54–60, esp. 55–57. Cf. e.g., ILS 7892 (five individual ollae acquired in five consecutive rounds of a 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, ollas habet continentes VI; further Maria Laetizia Caldelli, Simona Crea, and Claudia Ricci, “Donare, emere, vendere, ius habere, possidere, concedere similia: donazione e compravendita, proprietà, possesso, diritto sul sepolcro e diritti di sepoltura,” in Libitina e dintorni (Libitina 3; ed. Silvio Panciera; Rome: Edizioni Quasar, 2004), 311 (Ricci), noting that some of the large columbaria evidently

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ation of the bipartite columbarium slabs from Rome – those which record two epitaphs side by side on a single marble tablet – although it reveals a sizeable number of associations that might reflect relationships of intimacy in life, equally clearly preserves a number of pairings that do not. The overwhelming impression is of fragmentation at an initial distribution of burial places within the monument and frequent redistribution of individual ollae or niches by subsequent gift or sale. In this respect, Purcell’s analysis is fully on target in characterizing the nature of such monuments as expressing “neither individuality nor membership of a mass society but incorporation in a group a few hundred or a few thousand strong.”82 But if we wish to pursue the housing analogy, we should observe that the most appropriate model for the columbarium is neither the apartment block (insula), as Hopkins would have it, nor the domus, as Purcell maintains, but rather the divided households with separate lararia for kin and slave familiae, such as in the House of the Vettii at Pompeii.83 For what is truly novel about the largest of the columbaria is neither their sheer size nor even their essential presentation, which, like the familial tombs, is exclusionary and extroverted, but rather the segregation of the slave household from the kinship group – a rupture that shattered the fiction of the paterfamilias treating his household slaves in loco filiorum (“as if they were his children”) and opened the way for the broader bipartite division of society that would emerge more formally a century later with the segregation of the privileged

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did not allow this: already Brizio observed that none of the more than 400 inscriptions from the columbarium of the Statilii mentions sale, donation, or acquisition. Note also Giuseppe Gatti, “Singolari iscrizioni dell’aedificium XXXVI sociorum sulla Via Latina,” BCAR 10 (1882): 3–28, esp. 3–8; Schrumpf, Bestattung und Bestattungswesen, above n. 6. Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb,” 39. The claim that the internal configuration of columbaria expresses “hierarchies within the group” and that variations in the size and décor of individual niches and ollae indicate “minute gradations of status” (38), on the other hand, is difficult to sustain (no examples are cited): certain niches were indeed more lavishly decorated or more advantageously located than others, but we have no idea what criteria determined who occupied them. If, as several indications suggest, distribution by lottery was the norm, hierarchies of status would have been difficult to support, even if desired. For household lararia as markers of separate households of servile familiae and freeborn proprietors, see John Bodel, “Cicero’s Minerva,” forthcoming in Household and Family Religion in Antiquity: Contextual and Comparative Perspectives (eds. John Bodel and Saul Olyan; Oxford: Blackwell, 2008).

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elite from the more humble free population, or, in Roman terms, with the discrimination of honestiores and humiliores.84 At another level, the most suitable analogy to the columbarium within the sphere of domestic housing is the modern condominium complex, a cooperative organization created and designed less to provide a minimum necessary service than to cater to those with sufficient resources to expend on amenity and willing to forego individual preference on a small scale in favor of more lavish accommodation and guaranteed care within a collectivity. It remains to consider briefly the administration of these monuments. The earliest of the large columbaria were those constructed for the household staffs of the senatorial families of Rome. In creating separate tombs for a group that, by definition, had no legally recognized kinship relations and thus no familial hierarchy to govern the distribution of burial spaces within a collective monument, the aristocratic slave owners who provided (or at least allowed) these structures made possible the creation of a new system of “tomb management” based upon other principles than those that governed the administration of familial monuments.85 In theory slave-owner patrons might have controlled admission into these structures and determined the internal arrangement of burials within them, but in practice, it seems, they exercised their prerogative only seldom and with discretion. Nor, it seems, did the informal (but nonetheless real) families of slave partners (contubernales) and their offspring exert their familial identity sufficiently to maintain kinship groupings within the collective spaces. Instead, a 84

85

For the concept of honestiores and humiliores and its implications for the division of Roman society, see Peter Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 221–33. 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 (Cambridge: The University Press, 1908), 76–79. In addition to the few surviving columbaria devoted to the households of senatorial families (above, n. 57), inscriptions dedicated “to the freedmen and familia” of various prominent persons (two from Aquileia, the rest from Rome) attest another sixteen examples of burial 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 the inscriptions originally adorned; some of the plots were fairly small: cf. e.g., ILS 7850 (15 × 16 Roman feet), 7857 (10.5 × 12 feet), 7862 (12 × 24 feet); but others were clearly large enough to have accommodated large columbaria of the sort that occasionally survive: e.g., ILS 7585 (13 × 45 Roman feet), 7854 (35 × 35 feet), 7860 (32 × 32 feet, at Aquileia).

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loose corporate structure seems generally to have furnished the organizing principle of tomb administration. The flexibility of this model of self-government lent itself readily to other groups who wished to consolidate resources in the interest of providing more lavish communal facilities for the regular commemorative rituals that Roman funerary custom required than individual members could finance independently, whether the groups were held together by a common interest, such as a shared religion or occupation, or were defined merely by a mutual desire to share in the services and amenities that collective membership offered. An inscription set up in 16 C.E. by two freedmen administrators of a familial columbarium beside the Via Labicana outside Rome illustrates well the sorts of communal amenity that membership in a columbarium might provide, as well as the subtle blend of autonomous corporate self-government and collective dependence upon a patron that the management of such properties seems often to have entailed. Titus Cocceius Gaa and Titus Cocceius Patiens, quaestors for the third time (of the domestic funerary collegium), according to the will of the decurions (of the collegium) 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-work above the wall of the middle path with the tiled roof, the little travertine column beneath the sundial, the projecting roof in front of the portico, the scales and weights. And, thanks to the kindness and generosity of their patron Titus, they undertook the clearing of a place behind the further perimeter wall and the transferring of the crematories from the furthest fence to there and the construction of a path there and a doorway. And the same men with public money decorated those places which their patron Titus had granted to his decurions with the seeds of vines and fruits and flowers and all sorts of greenery, in the consulship of Sisenna Taurus and L. Scribonius Libo.

The inscription goes on in hexameters to urge readers to recognize in the expense incurred the just observance of piety and, for peace of mind, to follow the example of those who created and tended the funerary garden during their lifetimes, so as to be remembered and cared for 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 Patiens quaest(ores) III mensam quadratam in trichil(a), abacum cum basi, horologium, labrum cum fulmentis, marmor putiale, crustas supra parietem itineris medi cum tegulis, columellam sub horologio Tiburtina(m?) 7 (sic) protectum ante porticum, trutinam et pondera d(e) d(ecurionum) s(ententia) posuerunt; et locum post maceriam ulteriorem emendum ustrinasque de consaepto ultimo in eum locum trai-

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no less clearly, is one of exclusivity: the garden appurtenances catalogued in detail, the reference to worthy expenditure (impensae causam … et iustam … curam), and the appeal to successors to reciprocate the commemorative care bestowed, are designed not only to encourage imitation among future members of the society but to call attention to the privileges from which others were excluded.

Catacombs: World without End? Catacombs, by contrast, were open, ill-defined spaces, infinitely expandable (or at least creating the impression of being so) and offering little or no external public aspect. Upon entering a columbarium, one recognized 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, catacombs too, or rather their central areas, were often marked out at the surface by perimeter walls and boundary stones and later, after the time of Constantine, by large funerary basilicas that provided monumental focus on the tombs of martyrs and formed the locus of concentrated burials both above and below ground.87 At certain entrances some had outposts for caretakers, who monitored and perhaps restricted visits to the subterranean galleries. But most eventually could be entered from any of several different stairwells, many of which seem to have allowed free access, and the circumscribed surface burials sub divo gave little

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ciendas et iter ad eum locum ianuamque beneficio et liberalitate T. patroni facienda curaverunt; idemque vitium pomorumq(ue) et florum viridiumque omnium generum seminibus ea loca quae T. p(atronus) decurionibus suis adtribuerat ex pecunia publica adornaverunt, Sisenna Tauro L. Scribonio Libone co(n)s(ulibus). See further Bodel “Roman Tomb Gardens,” forthcoming in Gardens of the Roman Empire (ed. Wilhelmina Jashemski; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). For an overview, see Umberto M. Fasola and Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, “Le necropoli durante la formazione della città cristiana,” in Actes du XIe Congrès International d’Archeologie Chrétienne. Volume II. La Topographie Chrétienne des Grandes Capitales (Rome: École française de Rome, 1989), 1170–79. For earlier surface cemeteries overyling the site of catacombs, see also Osiek, below, 248–50. For funerary basilicas, which often took the shape of a racecourse, see Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, “La nuova basilica circiforme della Via Ardeatina,” RendPontAcc 68 (1995–1996) [1999]: 69–233, esp., on burials, 145–75 (by Maria Paola Del Moro), with further bibliography.

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hint of the extensive galleries and networked cubicula that opened out below.88 Once inside, moreover, the visitor to a Roman catacomb experienced a sensation of having entered an alien, somewhat disorienting world, in which each tunnel and gallery connected with other tunnels or galleries, so that there was no sense of center and periphery and no clear demarcation of finite limits. In some early catacombs, such as the first floor of the catacombs of Priscilla, datable to the first decades of the third century, the galleries meandered unpredictably along the more easily excavated seams of the tufa beds, so that anyone attempting to 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 earliest phase (around 200 C.E.), the main galleries of a regular plan laid out in correspondence with a clearly demarcated surface plot, originally dug only as far as the boundaries of the area, were designed to allow subsequent extension underground beyond the confines of the surface cemetery (Fig. 6.5).90 Even where systematic planning produced a regular grid of networked tunnels, as in a second, lower level of the catacombs of Priscilla dug out beneath the first in a characteristic “fishbone” pattern several decades later, near the beginning of the fourth century, one gets the impression of construction by module, 88

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At Rome caretakers’ quarters have been identified securely only at the catacombs of Praetextatus: see Antonio Ferrua, “Un vestibolo della catacomba di Prestestato,” RACrist 40 (1964): 146–65. Other possible examples may have existed at the so-called “Villa piccola” of S. Sebastiano and perhaps at the upper level 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 entrances have left no evidence of being guarded. See Francesco Tolotti, Il Cimitero di Priscilla: Studio di topografia e architettura (Vatican City: Società amici delle catacombe presso Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1970), 63–106, 171–89. For the large surface plot (100 × 250 Roman feet, ca. 30 × 75 meters,) circumscribed by a fence and developed already as a burial area during the first and second centuries, see Spera, Paesaggio suburbano, 109–23. For the main subterranean galleries of the so-called “Area I” (Regio A), which were entered by separate staircases at the corners of the surface plot, and the transverse orthogonal 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.

6.4. Plan of the central section of the first floor of the catacombs of Priscilla beside the Via Salaria Nova, after Tolotti, Cimitero di Priscilla, pl. II.

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6.5. Plan of the so-called “Area I” (Regio A) of the catacombs of Callistus beside the Via Appia as developed by the middle of the third century, after Styger, “Cimitero di S. Callisto,” 103 fig. 7.

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 traditional topographical points of reference and a plan designed from the start to accommodate expansion created a sense of openness and inclusiveness, in the sense that membership in the collectivity of those sharing the cemetery was never finite but always potentially available. At the same time, the subterranean setting provided an ambience not only appropriate to the world of dead, who according to a deep-seated tradition of Greco-Roman culture were to be returned at death to mother earth, but conducive to the sort of oblique expression of an ideal social order divorced from the compromising realities of life that funerary architecture in antiquity normally aimed to represent.92 Removed from the natural light and freed from the contours of the surface topography, the interior space of the catacombs was a world of its own, without normal parameters. Accordingly, the iconography of the scenes from daily life frequently found on tombstones and in painted 91 92

For the date, see Tolotti, Cimitero di Priscilla, 322–40. 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.

From Columbaria to Catacombs

6.6. Plan of the lower level of the catacombs of Priscilla, after Fiocchi Nicolai, “Origin and Development,” 25 figure 20.

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frescoes decorating the walls, although it superficially resembles the naturalistic depictions of occupations and leisure activities familiar from traditional Roman funerary art, seems always to have been to a certain extent symbolic and over time grew more detached from reality and increasingly ideological and abstract.93 Within the catacombs different regions of the underground cemeteries were characterized by different configurations of space: in addition to the networked galleries uniformly lined with loculi, certain areas were topographically distinguished by individual rooms and cubicula carved out of the tufa and opening at irregular intervals off of the 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 intended to accommodate multiple burials in the floors and walls; “window” tombs, which gave access to small groups of loculi via rectangular “windows” in the walls of the galleries; “a mensa” tombs, in which trench graves running parallel to the walls were sunk into the floors of niches and covered with slabs; “a cappuccina” tombs, simple trench graves covered by gabled roof tiles; and so on.94 Contrary to the once popular view that the uniform simplicity of catacomb burials reflected and promoted an egalitarian ideology within the early Christian community, the variety of architectural spaces and the multiplicity of grave types, even in the early phases of development of some of the first large catacombs, suggest rather a heterogeneous mixture of persons of different wealth and status with no distinctively unifying beliefs about the representation of privilege in burial. In the earliest phases of development of the catacombs of Praetextatus, Domitilla, and Callistus, for example, one can recognize two distinct modes of use, which correspond to topographically distinct types of regions within the cemeteries: in certain sections one finds series of “prefabricated” graves, with uniform columns and rows of loculi systematically carved out for undifferentiated use; other zones, marked by less intensive exploitation, are characterized by individual cubicula and graves

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See Fabrizio Bisconti, Mestieri nelle catacombe Romane: Appunti sul declino dell’iconografia del reale nei cimiteri cristiani di Roma (Vatican City: Pontificia Commissione di Archeologia Sacra, 2000). See Nuzzo, Tipologia sepolcrale, 199–204, for topographically distinct zones within the catacombs, and 163–76 for a typology of the graves found within them.

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of different types apparently made to order and exhibiting greater eclecticism and elaboration in their decoration.95 The first correspond in certain respects (uniformity, systematization, economy of space) to the prefabricated niches for ash urns, many with built-in ollae, found in the columbaria, where doctrinal unanimity and religious separatism have never been suspected; the latter, in many others, recall the freestanding hereditary and familial tombs of the visible suburban landscape. The novelty in the catacombs is that the two forms of burial are integrated with each other and housed within the same undefined space: not only were the galleries lined with loculi able to be extended, but the cubicula set aside for more prestigious burials, even if they resembled the traditional familial tombs of the surface topography, opened intermittently off of spaces that were themselves the site of burials and were evidently accessible to any who passed them. We have few intact catacombs like the monument of the household of Livia or the Vigna Codini columbarium excavated by Campana, with hundreds of grave markers preserved in place, and even where we do, the inscriptions provide little hope of identifying familial groupings among the undifferentiated loculi or, indeed, in the era before Constantine, of the religious affiliation of those buried within them. That is partly because the catacombs have been stripped of most of their original grave goods and portable appointments, but also because most loculi were not marked with epitaphs, and the epitaphs that are found tend to identify a single individual with a single name, normally a cognomen, the least distinctive element of the nomenclature then in use; very few provide any hint of religious belief.96 As with the colum95

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Nuzzo, Tipologia sepolcrale, 203. The development of specific regions devoted to ever more elaborate “architectural” cubicula intensified during the reign of Constantine and the pontifcates of Julius (337–352 C.E.) and Laberius (352–366 C.E.), when élite members of Roman society (notably senators: ICUR 5.14016, 14132, 14155, 14445) began to install expensively carved marble sarcophagi within their familial cubicula: see Fiocchi Nicolai, “Origin and Development,” 37–43. The most serious plundering of the catacombs, by specialists known as corpisantari during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, was systematic and was virtually 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 sviluppo del formulario epigraphico cristiano: Prassi e ideologia,” in Inscriptiones Sanctae Sedis 2. Le iscrizioni dei cristiani in Vaticano (ed. Ivan Di Stefano Manzella; 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 undifferentiated areas to accommodate family units in groups. Here it is not the epigraphy that points to this conclusion but the architecture, in the distribution of the loculi of varying size throughout the galleries, where narrow columns of small niches for infant or child burials intermittently interrupt the regular series of columns and layers of adult-sized loculi – all in the interest of maximizing the use of burial space (Fig. 6.7).97 With such schematically imposed imbalances in the configuration of niches, few families will have been able to bury young children next to, or even near, their parents in their own spaces. As in the columbaria, the regimentation of niches in rows imparted uniformity, but, unlike in the columbaria, the openness of the architectural form suggested the possibility of infinite expansion and growth.

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the catacombs of Priscilla, which preserves the most coherent and complete collection of catacomb inscriptions before Constantine and where some 1500 loculi were in use before the middle of the third century (see below, pp. 238–39), de Rossi found only 303 epitaphs in place: 206 Latin, 93 Greek, 4 anepigraphic. At the catacombs of of Saints Marcellinus and Peter beside the Via Labicana, the largest of the pre-Constantinian era, fewer than 10 percent of the (ultimately) 22,500 burial spaces seem to have had inscriptions: Jean Guyon, “Dal praedium imperiale al santuario dei martiri. Il territorio ‘ad duas lauros,’” in Società romana e impero tardoantico II. Roma. Politica, economia, paesaggio urbano (ed. Andrea Giardina; Rome: Laterza, 1986), 479 n. 63. The Latin single-name system became common among all Romans after Caracalla’s extension of Roman citizienship to all the free: see Iiro Kajanto, “The Emergence of the Late Single Name System,” in L’onomastique latine. Paris 13–15 octobre 1975 (ed. Noël Duval; Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1977), 421–28. In the catacombs of Priscilla in the period before Constantine, 83 percent of the epitaphs provide no hint of religious orientation; of the some 100 epitaphs preserved in the so-called “Area A” of the catacombs of Callistus, 75 present a single name and 76 give no indication of religious belief; similar figures obtain for the earliest sections of the catacombs of Praetextatus and Domitilla: see Carletti, “Formulario epigraphico cristiano.” Cf., e.g., rooms 56, 57, 58, and 64 in region Y of the catacombs of Saints Marcellinus and Peter (ca. 295–320 C.E.), where the architectural innovation was accompanied by the development of a new decorative design similar to that found in the columbarium of C. Scribonius Menophilus (above, Fig. 6.2), in which a 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: see below n. 119, on bisoma and trisoma.

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6.7. Cross-section showing the distribution of long (adult-sized) and short (child or infant) loculi in gallery D of the so-called “Area I” (Regio A) of the catacombs of Callistus (see above, Fig. 6.5), after Styger, “Cimitero di S. Callisto,” 118 fig. 17.

Collegia: A Flexible Tool The grease that oiled the funerary machine throughout the first three centuries of the common era and enabled the major shifting of gears in collective burial from columbaria to catacombs was the collegium. Once the sheer size of elite familiae outgrew the capacity of traditional funerary architecture to reconcile the principles of providing for all members of the household and suitably distinguishing the proprietor and his close kin, some other mechanism than familial hierarchy, which began with the paterfamilias and was directionless without his authoritative presence at the top of the pyramid, was needed to control and regulate the distribution of burial space. As noted above (pp. 217–18), a loose corporate structure emerged in the earliest household columbaria, occasionally beside acknowledgment of the permission of an aristocatic patron, to control access to the monument and the distribution of burial places within it, as can be seen from references in inscriptions to decuriones, curatores, magistri, quaestores, and, occasionaly, to a collegium itself.98 Even where a formally incorporated collegium did not exist, however, as must have been the case with those burial associations comprised entirely of slaves, the administrative apparatus of the professional collegia that first surfaced formally during

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See Hasegawa, “Collegia Domestica,” 252–56, 262–63, with references; cf. Waltzing, Étude historique, 1:380–83. For “permission” of a patron, the monument 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 (columbarium of the Statilii), 6.7282 (columbarium of the Volusii).

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the Ciceronian age provided a model for autonomous self-regulation that filled a gap left by the relinquishing of control by a paterfamilias.99 Collegia thus filled an administrative need and, once implicated in funerary responsibilities, quickly evolved into administrative organisms capable, owing to the virtually ubiquitous human desire to secure a respectable burial, of infiltrating numerous walks of Roman life. This is the main reason why the funerary responsibilities of the collegia were misunderstood for so long as being the distinctive purpose of one particular type: when one looks for a common denominator that unifies the various disparate organizations grouped together under the general rubric of voluntary associations, provision for burial of the members is often the most conspicuous feature and, when further grounds for characterizing a particular association more precisely are not apparent, that function can seem to be a defining characteristic. The vexed question of the date and scope of a so-called senatus consultum de collegiis tenuiorum, a measure of the Augustan or Julio-Claudian period relaxing the restrictions imposed by a Caesarian lex Iulia de collegiis (which applied only to Roman citizens) by permitting voluntary associations of humbler persons that served the public interest (propter utilitatem publicam) and intending specifically, it seems, under that rubric to allow associations that ensured the burial of their members, need not concern us here. It is clear that the proper burial of dead members of the community (whether or not Roman citizens) was regarded by the jurists as a public good; that voluntary associations of various sorts flourished during the empire; and that providing funerals for their members, whether or not their raison d’être, was one of the principal functions they served.100 Securing a proper burial – a goal common to humanity Waltzing, Étude historique, 1:42–56 (followed by many) described as private collegia avant la lettre a number of types of voluntary associations well attested already during the Republic, such as religious cells (of Bacchus, e.g.), political factions (called sodalitates, sodalicia or factiones – never collegia: 49), and social clubs (see above, n. 27). By these standards professional collegia defined by particular trades (cf. Dig. 50.6.5.12) had existed since the regal period, when, according to legend, Numa divided the people into groups on the basis of their occupations: 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 (Marcianus). For the (copious) modern discussion, see recently Wendy Cotter, “The Collegia and Roman Law: State Restrictions on Voluntary Associations,” in Voluntary Associations in the Graeco-Roman World (eds. John S. Kloppenborg and Stephen G. Wilson; New York and London: Routledge, 1996), 74–89; Luuk de Ligt, “Governmental Attitudes towards Markets and Collegia,” in Mercati per99

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and socially beyond reproach (and thus effectively immune to interference from the imperial authority) – enabled the collegium to adapt and survive, even after the official conversion of the empire to Christianity eliminated or subverted other Roman social institutions of much longer standing.101 The funerary role of the collegium, ironically, was born to meet one social need – the proper burial of groups too large or too amorphous and heterogeneous to be accommodated directly by the traditional familial and patronal mechanisms of support – but grew up to address another, the desire for self-defining communities to express solidarity and corporate unity within a recognized and acceptable (if always to a certain extent controversial) institutional framework.102 The flexibility of the form has also enabled scholars to shape their conception of the purpose and nature of the institution to suit their own predilections and circumstances. Three of the greatest, whose pioneering studies during the nineteenth century have formed the basis (sometimes unquestioned) of most modern discussions, poured into the empty container of the collegium very different mixtures of the social and political thought that percolated through their times. For Mommsen collegia were secular organizations devoid of religious orientation that served mainly social funtions. For de Rossi they furnished the mechanism by which the early Christian community organized itself and exerted its property rights over communal cemeteries. For Waltzing they were beneficial labor organizations, the prototypes of the Christian Democratic professional associations that formed the backbone of a well-run imperial society.103 For our purposes it is only de Rossi’s thesis that requires attention.

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manenti e mercati periodici nel mondo romano (ed. Elio Lo Cascio; Bari: Edipuglia, 2000), 242–52; id. “D. 47,22,1,pr.-1 and the Formation of Semi-Public Collegia,” Latomus 60 (2001): 345–58. For the basic principle that the burial of corpses 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. See the remarks of Carolyn Osiek, below p. 269, on the eventual usurpation of the private patronage of collegia by Christian bishops during the fourth and fifth centuries. See Francesco Maria De Robertis, “Causa funeris – causa religionis: le communità cristiane tra normativa statale e messaggio evangelico (a proposito di D. 47,22,1),” SDHI 54 (1988): 239–49. For the ideological currents of late-nineteenth-century European social thought that informed the divergent theories of Mommsen, de Rossi, Waltzing, and lesser scholars writing on the subject of funerary collegia during the same period, 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 and formally recognized medium for Christians to congregate legally but also a legitimate means for them to own communal property, particularly burial grounds, corporately.104 As Carolyn Osiek observes, however (below, p. 266), there is a significant difference between regarding early Christian congregations as adapting the administrative apparatus of communal voluntary associations to ensure the burial of their members, as they surely did, and seeing “the Church” as a formally constituted legal collegium which in that capacity corporately owned collective cemeteries reserved for the burial of Christians. In fact, as is well known, Roman law did not recognize corporate ownership of property but regarded private communal funds, real estate, and commodities as belonging collectively but individually to the persons who came together for the purpose of owning them. Thus, in the case of collegia, a person illegally enrolled in two associations and therefore required to withdraw from one of them would receive from the collegium he left the share of the common fund (ratio communis) due him, and those who belonged to collegia judged illegal and therefore dissolved were permitted to divide among themselves the common funds (pecunias communes) of the association upon its dissolution.105 The analogy sometimes drawn by those who argue that corporate ownership of property (notably cemeteries) by communities of Christians was recognized in practice even before Constantine in 321 C.E. formally established Christian churches as juridical entities with property rights between collegia and collective entities such as cities and colonies fails to recognize the difference between communal property of this sort, which belonged collectively to the several individual owners, and public property owned by public bodies such as cities and colo-

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In a letter of 19 June 1882 to his friend Louis Duchesne, Director of the École française de Rome, de Rossi referred explicitly to “le droit du corpus christianorum, come possesseur de cimetières”: see Patrick Saint-Roch, ed. Correspondance de Giovanni Battitsta de Rossi et Louis Duchesne, 1873–1894 (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1995), 221 (letter 174) with the analysis of Perry, The Roman Collegia, 49–58. Dig. 47.22.1.2 (Marcianus), Non licet autem amplius quam unum collegium licitum habere … et si quis in duobus fuerit, rescriptum est eligere eum oportere, in quo magis essse velit, accepturum ex eo collegio a quo recedit id quod ei competit ex ratione quae communis fuit. Dig. 47.22.3. pr (Marcianus), Collegia si qua fuerint illicita … disolvuntur: sed permittitur eis, cum dissolvuntur, pecunias communes si quas habent dividere pecuniamque inter se partiri.

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nies, which belonged to no one individual (res nullius) but was set aside for the common use of all (res publica).106 A second objection concerns the common assimilation by advocates of de Rossi’s view of the tenuiores identified in the senatus consultum with the Christian “poor” (egeni ), whose proper burial the Apostolic Tradition and Tertullian claim was the general responsibility of the community.107 The supposed equivalency of the two categories rests on a misunderstanding of the Latin terms. Egenus, in classical and ecclesiastical 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 substantively by jurists in its comparative form it acquires almost the status of a technical term and in the plural defines a category equivalent to that of the humiliores; specificallly it describes those who do not belong to one of the legally recognized higher ordines (senators, knights, and in some contexts municipal magistrates), many of whom certainly possessed sufficient financial means to pay for their own burials and those of their families.108 It is evident that those whom the Christian writers refer to as “the poor” in such contexts – Christian poor, it may be noted: there is no hint that Christians shared the broader Roman conception of a public interest in the burial of all who died in Roman territory – were indeed tenuiores, but not all tenuiores were poor, let alone indigent. Indeed, those who belonged to collegia tended to be more prosperous than the average urban and municipal resident and regularly received portions of higher value than common

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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 the analogy, see, e.g., de Visscher, Droit des tombeaux, 265–71, cited by Osiek, below, p. 264 n. 44. See above, n. 54, especially Tert. Apol. 38–39. 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 et idéologie politique dans les discours “optimates” de Cicéron (Mnemosyne Supplement 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 (see above, n. 84); 50.6.6.12, where the category is explicity contrasted with that of those 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 public and private largesse.109 Collegia were indeed important in the history of the early Christian community at Rome, but not in the way that de Rossi imagined. Rather than forming the administrative apparatus by which a unified Christian church exercised its legitimate property rights, they provided a flexible model for urban Christians to organize themselves in groups (sometimes, but by no mean always, congregations) to express a common interest in collective burial. In this they differed in particulars but not in kind from other collegia that found convenience and solidarity in uniting for a common purpose. So, for example, even after churches became recognized juridical entities capable of owning (and thus of controlling) collective cemeteries, we find particular groups of Christians, such as workmen involved in the public distribution of grain (mensores frumentarii), for whom Christianity may or may not have been an important element of identity, organizing themselves into collegia (in this case a professional association) and providing separate and independent burial accommodation for their members – within the large collective catacombs.110 Behind the collegia stand individual proprietors of funerary properties – purpose-built columbaria and catacombs – private patrons in some cases but also entrepreneurs and developers. Enterprising businessmen in the death trade, it seems, inspired the major developments in Roman burial architecture over the first three centuries of empire. They operated, often, behind the scenes, but their role in the process was fundamental. Investigating their involvement in the funerary industry, however, is beyond the scope of this essay.

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See, e.g., Patterson, “Patronage, Collegia, and Burial,” 21; id. “The Collegia and the 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. For the distinctively decorated cubiculum established by a collegium of mensores frumentarii around the middle of the fourth century in a region of specially designed architectural cubicula within the catacombs of Domitilla, see Phillipe Pergola, “Mensores frumentarii christiani et annone à la fin de l’antiquité (relecture 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 by Christians or were originally exploited by Christians to serve their peculiar socio-religious ends. The form grew naturally out of developments in the design, and probably the economics, of funerary space introduced with the columbarium during the last decades B.C.E. and seems to have been inspired mainly by the irresistible press of a population that continued growing – and dying – beyond the capacity of the suburban landscape to house the bodies. An independently inspired (and, for the thesis advanced here, irrelevant) change in preferred method of disposal from cremation to inhumation beginning in the latter first century exacerbated but did not itself create a demand that had by then been growing for nearly 200 years, when the introduction of columbaria first signaled a problem. Once discovered, however, and put into use by the mixed population of Rome, the catacomb form quickly recommended itself to the Christian community for its open design and otherworldly ambience, which made possible a radical reformulation of the theological order as expressed through the relationship between the divinity and the dead.111 The model of the underground cemetery was moreover well suited to enabling the early Christian community to express its conception of an ideal society through its burial customs, in the same oblique but culturally specific way that earlier Romans had expressed theirs. By honoring their dead communally as brothers and sisters in Christ, Christians expanded their “family” to a size that soon dwarfed even the largest of the imperial households.112 The catacombs enabled them to maintain the familial model of traditional Roman funerary commemoration without incurring the risk of running out of space, as even the familia of the empress Livia had done. In that subterranean world without horizons and poles, new centers of gravity naturally formed around those with the greatest weight in the new world order, which, increasingly, meant those most closely connected with the church and its origins. If the archaeological dating of the early development of the catacombs is correct, however, the cult of relics and the competitive 111

112

The analysis of this fundamental change by Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981) is too well known to require further explication. 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 sanctos) merely intensified but did not cause the expansion of the subterranean 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 the vast complexes, but at their periphery.113 Thus grew up the cult of martyrs, saints, and bishops that first burst to the surface with Constantine’s basilica over the grave of Peter and then erupted repeatedly above ground later in the fourth and fifth centuries in a series of funerary basilicas, chapels, and burial areae that ringed the city in a constellation of mega-tombs (the great centers of Christian pilgrimage) – all communally shared by the ever-growing Christian familia. The graves visited now were no longer those of biological relatives but of the new Christian saints, kin to all in the ecumenical family. The familial model of Roman funerary commemoration thus endured, even as the concept of the family grew to encompass all who shared the Christian faith. The traditional family endured also, of course, and continued to assert its cohesiveness in burial through the device of the cubiculum. The difference now was that the family unit (whatever its precise composition) no longer isolated itself in independent structures designed to segregate the chosen few from outsiders but rather established itself within the broader community, in the communal subterranean spaces shared by all. Tombs in this new age were no longer final destinations but mere way-stations, places for resting – refrigerium, in the contemporary Christian parlance – on the way to salvation and resurrection. The significant changes in this two-stage process, I have tried to argue, are not in fact found where they have traditionally been located – in the growth in monument-size, from small familial tombs to large columbaria, and in the switch from cremation to inhumation – but rather in the separation of the slave household from the biological family, which opened the way for new, extra-familial expressions of allegiance and social order, now increasingly articulated through the infinitely adaptable instrument of the collegium, and in the movement from above ground to beneath the surface, which enabled the development 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 certainly correct that the cult of the saints provided new focus and impetus to the expansion of the vast complexes.

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otherworldly, and capable (seemingly) of universal expansion and growth. By the time the Christian cemeteries around Rome returned to the surface of the land during the later fourth and fifth centuries, and areae replaced catacombs as the preferred loca of commemoration, the ideological foundation of the imperium Romanum had fundamentally changed, and the traditional Roman tendency toward assertions of privilege and rank projected itself against a new backdrop of the Christian faith. If the arguments presented in the preceding pages have any merit, in the momentous shift that this new orientation ultimately effected in the history of European civilization, the developments in collective burial practices that took place during the first three centuries of the new Christian era played a significant part. The transition in burial architecture from columbaria to catacombs, which replaced a closed, isolating system of commemorative expression with an open, inclusive form suggesting commonality and community, was exploited to excellent effect by Christians during the century and a half after Constantine. Whether the extensive underground cemeteries developed already during the third century belonged originally and exclusively to that separatist community is considerably less certain.

Appendix Known Burials at Rome, 25 B.C.E.–325 C.E. No one knows how many burials from the three and a half centuries of pre-Christian imperial Rome have been reported, let alone discovered, but by combining the figures derived from some obvious and well-represented sources with plausible estimates of the uncalculated numbers from some recognized categories of evidence, one can arrive at an approximate total not likely, perhaps, to be off by more than 20 to 30 percent – a margin of error unacceptable for many purposes but useful enough for ours, as long as the uncertainties on which it is based are kept firmly in mind and the arguments to which it is harnessed remain candidly tentative and exploratory. The suggested total of 150,000 known 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 which we have any evidence at all. Calculations that overrepresent the actual numbers known and estimates 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 concerning the likely burials in the vicinity of Rome is exceedingly meager and not necessarily representative. The estimate of 150,000, which represents just such a figure, is rounded up from a calculated total (149,700) derived from adding to the number of surviving epitaphs registered in volume six of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum devoted to the city of Rome (some 26,000); the number of funerary insciptions destined for the new supplement to be edited by Silvio Panciera (around 10,000); an estimate of the number of unmarked cremation graves (mainly in columbaria) found in the suburban regions of the city (some 11,000); a guess as to the number of simple, often (but not always) unmarked, inhumation burials in shallow individual graves in suburban necropoleis (perhaps 20,000); a very rough estimate of the number of bodies interred in loculi or inhumed in associated surface cemeteries of the catacombs in use prior to the time of Constantine (as many as 62,700); and acknowledgment of the existence – in what quantities we cannot know – of mass graves, some in catacombs and not only for the indigent, that sometimes comprised as many as 1,000 corpses (possibly 15,000–20,000?). It will be useful to summarize briefly what little evidence we have for each of these categories in turn. Inscribed epitaphs: the folly of relying on published inscriptions for useful biometrical information about ancient populations is well known, and the sources of bias in our sample need not be rehearsed.114 The numbers that are known, however, can be counted and provide a minimum baseline for individual graves. Many epitaphs, of course, are dedicated to more than one person, often to three or four persons by name (to say nothing of the collective formulae sibi et suis, etc.). But since we cannot be certain that those included in an inscribed dedication were in fact buried where the epitaph was posted (in certain cases they demonstrably were not), it seems safer, in order to avoid double counting, to reckon their numbers among the anonymous graves and to count a single epitaph as attesting a single burial. In many instances, of course, the epitaph is detached from the grave itself and 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 Keith Hopkins, in François Hinard, ed., La mort, les morts, et l’au delà dans le monde romain (Caen: Université de Caen, 1987); Timothy Parkin, Demography and Roman 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 intended burial (whether or not realized in the manner attested) seems justified. The 26,000 epitaphs recorded in CIL 6 furnish numerous illustrations of the situations mentioned; the estimate of 10,000 unpublished epitaphs from the environs of Rome derives from Professor Silvio Panciera and is based upon the archive of schede compiled and preserved at the Department of Latin Epigraphy at the University of Rome, “La Sapienza,” from which he is preparing the new supplement to CIL 6. Unmarked cremation graves: perhaps as many as three quarters of the some 5,500 burials accommodated in the ten largest known columbaria are anonymous: see above, n. 57 [N = 4,125]. If we allow the same percentage of unmarked burials in another 45 smaller columbaria uncovered between 1700 and 1920 and registered in CIL 6, each comprising no more than 100 ollae (for a total, in other words, of no more than 3,375), and also in as many as have been uncovered between 1920 and today, then the number of known but unmarked cremation graves in the 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 least likely to have survived the ravages of time, since the suburban topsoil around Rome over the last two millennia has been so frequently tilled, excavated, and built over that most of the burials originally consigned to it have certainly vanished, but in recent years closer attention to chance discoveries made in the course of construction work in the environs of the city has revealed concentrations of simple surface burials sufficient to suggest the scale of their original numbers. Hydraulic works at Isola Sacra during the late 1980s, for example, uncovered among the monumental tombs of the well-known necropolis outside Portus some 650 a cappuccina graves and simple formae dating to the second and third centuries.115 And in 2004 construction work on a high-speed rail line beside the Via Collatina outside Rome revealed some 2,000 unmarked simple inhumation graves in a vast surface cemetery tentatively dated to the second century.116 There is no telling how

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See Sergio Angelucci, Ida Baldassarre, Irene Bragantini, Maria Giuseppina Lauro, Vanni Mannucci, Alberto Mazzoleni, Chiara Morselli, and Franca Taglietti, “Sepolture e riti nella necropolis dell’Isola Sacra,” Bollettino di Archeologia 5–6 (1990): 49–113. The Via Collatina graves have not yet been published but will form the subject of 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 many similar necropoleis, if they existed in large numbers outside Rome, have disappeared without a trace. The figure of some 20,000 such simple inhumations therefore represents a generous estimate of the number that might one day be discovered, rather than the number that once existed, which cannot even be guessed. Catacombs: The total number of loculi in the excavated catacombs is not known, let alone the total number of those that might have been in use before the time of Constantine, but approximate figures for the larger cemeteries can be hazarded. The most serious attempt to estimate the number of burials accommodated in a single large pre-Constantinian complex, that of Marcellinus and Peter at the imperial property ad duas lauros beside the Via Labicana, arrived at a total of 11,000 loculi distributed throughout two kilometers of tunnels during the first fifty 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 plot overlying the subterranean tunnels.117 Three other large catacombs in use 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 catacombs of Callistus beside the Via Appia (c. 230–240), and the catacombs of Novatianus beside the Via Tiburtina (c. 260–270) – each housed between 1,200 and 1,500 loculi. Three others in use during the first half of the third century – those of Domitilla beside the Via Ardeatina (the Area of the Flavii, c. 200–230?), of Praetextatus beside the Via Appia (c. 200–230), and of Calepodius beside the Via Aurelia Vetus (c. 230–250) – may each have included between 500 and 1,000 subterranean burial spaces. During the second half of the third century the existing cemeteries were expanded and new catacombs were opened: in addition to that of Marcellinus and Peter, these included the so-called Coemeterium Maius on the Via Nomentana (c. 250), the nucleus of Agnese (“Regio 1,” c. 250), the lower levels of the catacombs of Pamphilus (c. 260–300) and Priscilla (c. 300–310), and those of the Villa Doria Pamphilj on the Via Aurelia Vetus. These are said to have contained “thousands” of burials, but the actual figures are unknown. If we allow a generous 2,000 to each, add another 2,000 for the total number of loculi in a half dozen much smaller complexes dated to the second half of the third century, and imagine every catacomb to have 117

Guyon, “Dal praedium imperiale,” 315; cf. 478 n. 52 “probabilmente stime essagerate”; id. Le cimitière aux deux lauriers, 101.

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included burials sub divo in the surface soil overlying the tunnels in the same (generous) ratio as that estimated for the catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter (that is, approximately 1:2, or a range of 600–1000 for the larger complexes and 250–500 for the smaller ones), the total number of burial spaces in the catacombs in use before Constantine would 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 to mistrust any such calculation of numbers of loculi as a basis for estimating the number of Romans buried in the catacombs during the third century. Many loculi could, and some in fact did, house more than a single burial. Not only were infants sometimes interred along with (one presumes) a parent or parents in a single niche, but some loculi, when found, contained two or even three adult skeletons, lying side by side next to each other on the tufa shelves. Some of these double and triple burials were explicitly identified in accompanying epitaphs, but others, apparently, were not, and since no systematic records of such multi-person loculi seem to have been kept, there is no telling how common the practice was.119 Nor can we guess how often a single loculus might have been cleaned out and reused for new burials altogether, as was certainly the case with the original burial sites of some 800(?) corpses stacked in an old pozzolana quarry converted into an ossuary beneath “Area A” of the catacombs of Callistus.120 Medi-

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For figures, see Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, “L’organizzazione dello spazio funerario,” in Christiana Loca: lo spazio cristiano nella Roma del primo millennio (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. For double burials indicated in epitaphs by the word “bisomum”, cf., e.g., from the catacombs of Commodilla, ICUR 2.6030 (370 C.E.), 6110, 6128, 6183, 8680; from the Callistus, ICUR 3.3235, 9076, 9143, 9876, 10146; from the Domitilla, 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 the fourth and fifth centuries, when the practice flourished, but the lack of explicit epigraphic testimony for double and triple burials during the third century cannot be taken as proof that the practice did not occur. 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 evidently been removed from loculi and cubicula near the so-called “Crypt of the Popes,” were laid out in rows and stacks, four meters high, with a thin layer of dirt between each layer. After consulting a local physician, Wilpert reported that the

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eval itineraries report similar discoveries of ossuaries in the catacombs “filled with martyrs,” but provide little useful information about numbers or precise locations.121 Mass graves: Equally problematic is the recognition that the open spaces of certain catacombs were used for mass burials in ways that defy precise calculation of the numbers of bodies buried there. In the catacombs of S. Thecla beside the Via Ostiense, for example, some of the large rooms (“cameroni”) opening off the galleries, each of which provided some 70 to 100 burial spaces in narrow loculi lining the walls from floor to ceiling and in formae sunk into the floors, were filled to capacity with layers of corpses stacked one on top of another, each layer separated by roof tiles or large bricks covering a corpse below.122 Similarly, in “Regio A” of the catacombs of Commodilla, near the martyr’s tomb, some 45 funerary wells, 1 by 1.7–1.9 meters in area and 6–7 meters deep, were sunk into the floor, each of which accommodated 10–15 loculi cut in two facing columns into the walls; the centers

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bodies had been deposited as skeletons, but a recent reconsideration of the evidence (reported by Rafaella Giuliani in an oral communication: see below, n. 125) suggests that the corpses were arranged in stacks before decomposing. Intact skeletons are seldom moved without becoming disarticulated. The number 800 seems to be derived from an itinerary compiled from a report by William of Malmesbury (twelfth century) (Notitia portarum viarum eclesiarum circa urbem Romam e Willelmo Malmesburgensi): DCCC martyres ibidem requiescunt. Four hundred years earlier the Itinerarium Salisburgense recorded that “eighty martyrs rest there down below (sc. the tomb of S. Cecilia)” (LXXX martyres ibi requiescunt deorsum). One suspects that perhaps a sribal error or lapsus memoriae accounts for the expansion tenfold of the number of skeletons reported. The Epitome libri De locis sanctorum marturum e codicibus Salisburgeni puro, Wirgeburgensi puro, et Salisburgeni interpolato speaks vaguely of “a countless number” (innumerabilis multitudo martyrum): for all these texts, see De Rossi, Roma Sotterranea, 1:180. At the catacombs of Pontianus (fourth–fifth century) beside the Via Portuense ad ursum pilleatum, for example, according to the Epitome libri De locis sanctorum marturum e codicibus Salisburgensi puro, Wirgeburgensi puro, et Salisburgensi interpolato, “you will find the church of S. Candida, a virgin and martyr, whose body rests there. You descend into a cavern and you will find there a countless number of martyrs … and that whole cavern is filled with the bones of martyrs” (invenies ecclesiam s. Candidae virginis et martyris, cuius corpus ibi quiescit. Descendis in antrum et invenies ibi innumerabiliem multitudinem martyrum … et omnis illa spelunca impleta est ossibus martyrum): De Rossi, Roma Sotterranea, 1.182 no. II. Umberto M. Fasola, “La basilica sotterranea di S. Tecla e le regioni cimiteriali vicine,” RACrist 46 (1970): 238–52.

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of the wells were filled with a cappuccina tombs laid one on top of another, as in the catacombs of S. Thecla; collectively they housed more than 1,700 inhumations.123 At the so-called Coemeterium Maius on the Via Nomentana nearly a hundred corpses of adults and children were found in 1956 laid in two layers in the bare soil.124 These mass burials belong to the fourth century after Constantine, but in 2003 a series of rooms and galleries in a network of subterranean burial chambers at the catacombs of Marcellinus and Peter were found to be filled with some 1,200 corpses, said to be well dressed and dating (on the basis of coins, jewelry, and fabric found with the remains) to between 150 and 250 C.E.125 How many similar such finds may yet be made, or were once made but not reported, or were reported only vaguely (as in the medieval itineraries) is difficult to say, but there is little reason to think that these discoveries are unique. There is therefore no point in pretending that we can estimate with any confidence the numbers of Romans buried in the catacombs before the time of Constantine, but if we take our generous calculation of the total number of loculi (41,800), guess that no more than half of them could have been used for double burials (+ 20,900) and allow for perhaps as many as 15,000–20,000 burials in mass graves and loculi used for more than two adults, we may not seem to underestimate the total. If we think that we may have a rough idea of how some 150,000 Romans were buried during the three and a half centuries between 25 B.C.E. and 325 C.E., we can only guess by what means and where the other 98.5 percent of the presumed numbers who died during that period were buried, but it is unlikely that wholly different and unrecognized means of disposal could account for any significant number of them. Of the methods surveyed above, simple surface burials (whether of cremations or inhumations) are perhaps the most likely to have left

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Nuzzo, Tipologia sepolcrale, 25–26. Umberto M. Fasola, “Le recenti scoperte agiografiche nel Coemeterium Majus,” Rend. Pont. Acc. 28 (1955–56): 85–86 (Fig. 7). This spectacular find has been published in preliminary fashion by Philippe Blanchard and Dominique Castex, with Michaël Coquerelle, Raffaela Giuliani, and Monica Ricciardi, “A mass grave from the catacomb of Saints Peter and Marcellinus in Rome, second-third century AD,” Antiquity 81 (2007): 989–98. Initial excavations focused on a series of rooms in regio X of the complex, of which numbers 16, 78, and 80 were reportedly filled with stacks of bodies up to twelve layers high.

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no trace in the archaeological record, but we must admit that our ignorance is profound and that our best calculations barely scratch the surface of a significant problem for any study of mortuary practices during the early Empire. The question remains: where were the bodies buried?126

126

According to one recent estimate, some 30,000 tombs are known from a comparable period of early Chinese history, during the Qin (221–206 B.C.E.) and Han (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.) dynasties (Michael Loewe, in lecture, Brown University, October 2005).

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Chapter 7 Roman and Christian Burial Practices and the Patronage of Women1 We have much to learn from interdisciplinary cooperation. One of the academic divides has been between Roman historians and Christian historians; this project happily spans the gap between them.2 Another divide has been between Christian archaeologists who study material remains and Christian historians who study texts. This chapter aims to help bridge that gap as well. Early in the third century, several Christian texts seem to indicate that Christians are burying their dead in common areas. In North Africa, Tertullian refers to animosity on the part of others towards Christians and the areae supulturarum nostrarum, our burial fields (Ad Scapulam 3.1). He also refers to a Christian practice of taking up a collection once a month for a variety of charitable practices, among them the feeding and burial of the poor (Apol. 39.5–6). Elsewhere in the Apology he refers to an incident of nocturnal mob violation of Christian burials, but this does not necessarily indicate common burial of an entire Christian community together (Apol. 37). The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus refers to assuring the burial of the poor in the  ; the Sahidic translation uses the Greek loanword (Trad. AP. 40).3 Pos-

1

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3

Thanks to my two respondents at the May 2005 conference, Annette Huizenga and Matthew Perry, some of whose suggestions have been incorporated here. Basic terminology and setting for this chapter are contained in John Bodel’s previous chapter, which should be read before this one. An earlier conference in 1999 with the same aim culminated in Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, ed. David L. Balch and Carolyn Osiek (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003). Paul Bradshaw, Maxwell E. Johnson, and L. Edward Phillips, The Apostolic Tradition (Hermeneia; Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Fortress, 2002), 191.

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sibly a few years later, Origen homilizes in Caesarea about the “good old days” of the great martyrs, when the whole church gathered together in assembly coming $μ %   , from the cemetery (ies) (Hom. Jer. 4.3.16). Still a few years later, at the time of the Augusti Valerian and Gallienus (253–259 C.E.), Dionysius of Alexandria relates, as preserved by Eusebius, that Christians there were forbidden by the sub-prefect Aemilianus to hold assemblies or to go to the so-called cemeteries ( «     ) (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 7.11.10).4 All of these references could be to familial tombs owned by Christians and perhaps extended to needy members of the same congregation, rather than common or community-owned cemeteries. The most famous of these passages, and possibly the earliest, comes from the beginning of the third century, from Hippolytus’s denunciation of his rival, Callistus, who, he relates, was placed by Zephyrinus, bishop of Rome 198–217, over the   , commonly understood to be the catacomb that now bears his name (Refutatio 9.12.14). This burial complex, identified and explored in 1850 by the great nineteenth-century explorer of the catacombs Giovanni Battista de Rossi, would later contain the tombs of nine bishops of Rome from 230 to 274 in the so-called Crypt of the Popes. The generic reference to “the” cemetery without a specific name, at a time when there were surely multiple burial complexes around the city of Rome being used by Christians, led de Rossi to the conclusion that this was the first cemetery to be administered, if not owned outright, directly by church authorities. Little further evidence has come to light since de Rossi to change that judgment. But oddly, Callistus himself, according to tradition later bishop of Rome 217–222, was buried elsewhere, in the catacomb of Calepodius on the Via Aurelia, which relativizes the claim that the catacomb of Callistus was, at the time of the eponymous figure’s death, any kind of official burial place of the church of Rome. A century later, most of the Christian burial complexes around Rome were probably coming rapidly under administration by church 4

Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, Fabrizio Bisconti, and Danilo Mazzoleni, The Christian Catacombs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions (trans. Cristina Carlo Stella and Lori-Ann Touchette; 2d ed.; Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2002), 13–15; Éric Rebillard, Religion et sépulture: l’Église, les vivants et les morts dans l’Antiquité tardive (Paris: Éditions de l’École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 2003), 15–20. Rebillard argues that the word   did not refer in general to burials, but to the tombs of martyrs, but his evidence is mostly fourth century, by which time every Christian cemetery had its martyrs.

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officials, if not by a central administration, then at least by that of local assemblies. Yet at the same time, there is another noticeable trend: among the names that emerge, those of some of the most prominent of these complexes are women. By the middle of the fourth century, the cult of the martyrs was in full swing, every major catacomb had its memoria of its own martyrs, and pilgrimage to their tombs was becoming a major enterprise, leading to the creation of underground cemeterial basilicas over or near the tombs of the martyrs, accessible by staircases from ground level, roofs sometimes protruding above the ground, as is the case, for example, in the late-fourth-century basilica of Sts. Nereus and Achilleus in the catacomb of Domitilla. The original use intended for these basilicas was family and eventually community funerary banquets, leading to the all-night excesses discussed by Robin Jensen elsewhere in this volume. The faithful continued for about another century to want to be buried in the great underground complexes ad sanctos and also above ground in the same area, as close as possible to the holy places. The fossores (diggers) of the fourth and fifth centuries had full-time jobs not only doing the actual digging but serving as agents in the sale of burial space, the clergy having little to do with the whole business transaction.5 Yet there is today common agreement that all of the burial areas that were to become Christian catacombs began as private property and private burial areas, in most cases at a time before any Christian identity can be documented. Even most of the references given above need not refer to common church ownership of burial property. Tertullian’s allusions could be not to cemeteries reserved to Christian use, but to private burial plots known to belong to Christian owners.6 The same could be true of situations referred to by Origen and the Apostolic Tradition. Tertullian’s burials of the poor from the common fund could 5

6

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 other parts of the world, however, the clergy may have been more involved in the sale of burials: witness the role of Flavia Vitalia, presbytera, in the sale of a property in Solin, Croatia, in 425 (CIL 3:14900; Ute Eisen, Women Officeholders in Early Christianity: Epigraphical and Literary Studies [Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2000], 131–32; Kevin Madigan and Carolyn Osiek, Ordained Women in the Early Church [Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005], 196). De Rossi thought that the Roman fossores were in some way members of the clergy, but there is no convincing evidence to that effect. Rebillard, Religion et sépulture, 20.

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still be in ground owned by generous Christian benefactors. Even the involvement of Callistus in Christian burial practices during the episcopate of Zephyrinus could have been in land owned by Zephyrinus’s family and given over to community use.7 Two centuries earlier, Cicero had spoken of sepulchra communia when he must have meant burials of those who held common blood ties and family relationships, not common ownership of burial ground (De Off. 1.17.54–55). But sometime by the early to mid-fourth century, the transition from private to some kind of centralized church administration had largely taken place, and the common assumption is that centralized church ownership followed. How did these burial complexes evolve from private property to massive common cemeteries, and under what legal auspices? How did ownership shift from private to communal? What does “communal” mean here – central administration by a single bishop and his staff, or administration of each burial complex by a specific “titulus” church center? What was the role of family members and patrons in this process? Is there any special connection that can be traced between burial patronage and the patronage and euergetism of women? These questions are the focus of the present 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., Julius Caesar’s body was brought in and burned at the base of the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the Forum in 44 B.C.E., and Trajan’s ashes were buried at the base of the column in his forum in 117 C.E. (but Hadrian 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 for the one who violates this principle: whoever reveals to the sun a buried body, “si honestior sit, in insulam, si humilior, in metallum dari solet” (Sent. Paul. 1.21.4). A funerary monument, once a body had been placed in it, became a locus religiosus protected by law, not the body 7

Suggested by Bradshaw et al., Apostolic Tradition, 191; Peter Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2003), 25–28, 369–72.

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itself, but the place because of the presence of the corpse and the wider associations of contact with divinity. Because of their religious nature, the sale, construction, and repair of tombs were regulated by the pontiffs, 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. The second type excluded non-related household members and was exclusively for the use of agnates and potential heirs, whether descendants or otherwise. At the end of the line of inheritance, the last successors could continue to designate others. In either case, the founder of a tomb had a right to specify both inclusively and exclusively exceptions to the normal pattern, e.g., CIL 6.11027 and 14672, which exclude a specific freedman (One wonders what stories are behind them!), or a thirdcentury hypogeum in the catacomb of Domitilla in which the founder of a cubiculum says that he set up the tomb “sibi et suis fidentibus in Domino,” probably thereby restricting burials to family members who were Christian.9 Such specific exclusions had no legal force, but the one who set up the restrictions would have hoped that his/her wishes were followed. The overwhelming number of surviving tombs in Italy are of the familial kind, intended for members of a household, not a vertical family, with the familiar phrase sibi et suis, libertis libertabusque posterisque eorum. Often the inscription actually forbids the burial of heirs outside the familia with the abbreviation HMHNS: Hoc monumentum heredem non sequetur. Many tomb inscriptions forbid the burial of anyone not specified, or alienation of the tomb from the familia, with threats of legal sanction and fines. In the Christian era, this fear of tomb misuse sometimes takes on eschatological fervor: the deacon Tetradia in Byzantine Thessaly threatens anyone who opens her tomb with “the punishment of eternal fire,” while the deaconess Athanasia in fifth-century Delphi threatens anyone who dares open 8

9

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: Shared Tombs?” JECS 5, no. 1 (1997): 37–59, at p. 39. 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 Lord Jesus Christ.”10 The familial tomb that gathered together members of a household in several generations was a normal exercise of patronage for heads of households. Besides members of the familia, others could be specifically included; thus the exercise of patronage could extend beyond the household. A tomb could also be owned by more than one private person; several owners could together hold the property and the right of burial. In this case, all the owners had to agree on the acceptance of anyone 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, perhaps consisting of a walled-in piece of property in which both incinerations and inhumations could be placed directly in the ground. When more burial space was needed, underground areas were excavated under the surface property. The simplest inhumations were of bodies placed into the ground with tiles covering the grave in an inverted V pattern, or of incinerated ashes in urns that were buried up to their necks and filled in with earth or sand. Such burials were still to be seen at the cemetery of Isola Sacra in the 1970s, but have since disappeared (Fig. 7.1). For the more well to do, a mausoleum surrounded by open property enclosed by a low wall allowed for burials both inside the mausoleum and of dependents in the open ground. In some cases, the mausoleum itself covered the entire burial space. Such dedicated spaces can still be seen, for example, in the cemeteries lining the approaches to Pompeii (Fig. 7.2). When more space was required, digging went underground within the private property and then extended beyond it. This kind of underground extension can be seen, for example, in the three private hypogea that are today within the catacomb of S. Sebastiano, or the Hypogeum of the Aurelii on Viale Manzoni in Rome. Laws regarding ownership of space below ground are not clear, but the principle of superficies solo cedit may have applied: whoever owned an

10

Tetradia: N. I. Giannapoulos, “Palaiochristianike epigraphe,” Epeterias etaireias Byzantinon spoudon 12 (1935): 26; Athanasia: J. Laurent, “Delphes chrétien,” BCH 23 (1899): 206–79, at pp. 272–78; G. H. R. Horsley, ed., New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity (9 vols.; North Ryde, NSW: Ancient History Documentary Centre, Macquarie University/Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981–), 4.122.3, p. 240; Madigan and Osiek, Ordained Women, 72–73, 91–92.

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7.1. Isola Sacra Cemetery, surface burials in 1973. (author’s photo)

upper story of a building owned the whole building and the land on which it stood.11 Surface burials continued where possible, even while underground burial areas were expanding, and even after martyrs’ tombs had been established below ground, which, in the fourth century, encouraged further burials as nearby as possible. Surface burial was less expensive if one already owned the property, and more easily accessible. Unfortunately, these aboveground burials did not stand as well the test of time. In the land surrounding Rome, the surface has been so disturbed over the centuries that little of the aboveground burial area is left intact except in the case of stone mausolea that are still standing, and they, of course, no longer hold intact contents. During excavation of the cata-

11

Suggested during conference discussion by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, based on information given in Felix Pirson, Mietwohnungen in Pompeji und Herkulaneum: Untersuchungen zur Architektur, zum Wohnen und zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte der Vesuvstädte (Munich: F. Pfeil, 1999), 68–69, citing relevant passage in 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.

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7.2. Familial compound, cemetery outside Pompeii. (Photo: L. Brink, O.P.)

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 was an original area of the catacomb of Domitilla, the so-called Praedium Domitillae, an aboveground area of sixty-two by seventeen meters surrounded by a wall of opus reticulatum, where burial activity began in the Julian or Augustan period. Ownership of the field by one or a succession of the Flaviae Domitillae was attested by inscriptions found there: CIL 6.948, 949, 8942, and 16246 (the last a grant of funerary land to P. Calvisius from Flavia Domitilla, thus indication of extended relationships), discovered below ground, having fallen through from the surface. A large mausoleum was placed there in the second century, and the surface cemetery continued in heavy use through the fourth century. When subterranean burials began, the staircase built to accommodate them disturbed some of the surface burials, mausolea, and

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columbaria.12 Presumably by that time, the disturbed surface burials were from past generations and no longer maintained. The burial complex eventually grew so large that it was originally thought to be part of the catacomb of Callistus. Its independent existence was clarified by de Rossi in 1852. Other original areas later absorbed into the catacomb of Domitilla include two independent hypogea built before the end of the second century, the so-called Hypogeum of the Flavii Aurelii A to the south and of the Flavii Aurelii B forty meters north of it, discovered by de Rossi in 1864. The preserved underground cubicula were excavated below aboveground burial complexes that are no longer extant. The evidence for Christian origins of the two complexes is scant: only one inscription, and that not until the third century.13 Once horizontal underground extension began, the two were quickly joined, and by the fourth century they were linked to the larger complex and the underground basilica of Saints Nereus and Achilleus. The third-century non-Christian Hypogeum of Ampliatus had similar beginnings and shared the same eventual fate. Expansion of the complex by the end of the third century made access to these hypogea difficult. Below the floor surface of the subterranean basilica of Saints Nereus and Achilleus are several pagan sarcophagi in reuse. The usual argument is that they were robbed from older mausolea and moved there, but in fact they may be reused in situ, where they were originally placed 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 is the case, it indicates the presence of another private burial complex above ground, destroyed when the basilica was built through the same space.14 12

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The area was excavated by Antonio Ferrua in 1960, then covered up again: Philippe Pergola, “Il ‘praedium Domitillae’ sulla via Ardeatina: analisi storico-topografica delle testimonianze pagane fino alla metà del III sec. d. C.,” RACrist 55 (1979): 313–35, at 318–24. Philippe Pergola, “La region dite des ‘Flavii Aurelii’ dans la catacombe de Domitille,” MEFRA 95 (1983): 183–248. Argued by Philippe Pergola, “Les sarcophages païens réemployés dans la basilique des Sts. Nérée et Achillées dans la catacombe de Domitille à Rome: Réflexions autour d’une pratique,” Historiam pictura refert: Miscellanea in onore di Padre Alejandro Recio Veganzones, O.F.M. (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1994), 439–50.

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There were many women named Flavia Domitilla in the Flavian family. Cassius Dio recounts the ill fate of one, the first-century wife of Flavius Clemens, exiled to the island of Pandateria after the execution of her husband for “judaizing” (67.14). By the fourth century, her “judaizing” was understood as conversion to Christianity, which could well have been confused with Judaism by a first- or second-century Roman. For Eusebius, however, she had become the niece, not wife, of Flavius Clemens, exiled as a Christian to the island of Ponza (Hist. eccl. 3.18.3), where the late-fourth-century Paula of Rome went on pilgrimage to visit her cell, as to the sanctuary of a saint (Jerome, Ep. 108.7). Whether these were one or two women, whether attracted to Judaism or to Christianity, has never been clarified, nor whether the inscriptions associated with their name and found in the catacomb of Domitilla referred to either of them or to other women of the same name.15 The catacomb of Priscilla on the Via Salaria poses no fewer challenges. As with the Praedium Domitillae, here too there were many burials on the surface, neglected in excavations in favor of the catacomb complex. Several originally independent components formed part of it: a nymphaeum, a cryptoporticus, the “Greek Chapel” (Capella Greca) with its unique artwork, and the so-called Hypogeum of the Acilii. By the fourth century, a martyr cult of Saints Felix and Philip made the catacomb a popular place for burials. The Hypogeum of the Acilii, so named by de Rossi, was originally a cistern on the east side of the complex. Only two inscriptions related to the Acilius family were found there, and they may have fallen through from the surface. One of them connects the names M. Acilius and Priscilla. Some other inscriptions in Greek (A -, A «, A ) were found elsewhere nearby in the complex, and could be freedpersons of the same family. The hypogeum was not originally connected to other galleries, 15

When Dio Cassius’s Flavia Domitilla was exiled, her land was presumably confiscated. Therefore, any continuity of the Praedium Domitillae may be in question. Most modern historians have assumed Eusebius was confused and turned the 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 political rather than religious reasons. For the entire history and a review of scholarship, also see Philippe Pergola, “La condamnation des Flaviens ‘chrétiens’ sous Domitien: persécution religieuse ou repression à charactère politique?” MEFRA 90 (1978): 407–23.

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though, but was a simple space designed to receive a large sarcophagus, connected to ground level by an independent staircase. Members of the Acilius Glabrio family were consuls in 91, 152, and 186, and an Acilius Rufus in 106. The wife of the consul of 152 was thought to be Arria L f Plaria Vera Priscilla (PIR2 A 1120; CIL 11.6333; ILCV 1073).16 Thus a mid-second-century origin of part of the area is possible. De Rossi went to great pains to connect the senatorial family Acilius with the origins of the complex, but as usual, provable connections are tenuous. Yet the name Priscilla persevered in connection with the catacomb. To the south of the Hypogeum of the Acilii lay the Cryptoporticus and Capella Greca, probably neither originally intended as burial areas, but part of a large villa overhead that was never excavated. Toward the end of the second century or early in the third, the Capella Greca became a private burial place, probably for residents of the villa or their familia. Burials adjacent to residential areas seem never to have been a problem outside the city walls. North of the Capella Greca and west of the Acilii area later lay large burial galleries, called arenaria by de Rossi. None of these areas was originally joined to any other, but at a late date expansion of the burial areas brought them all together into one large complex.17 Another smaller and later burial complex on Via Ostiense is less well known, the catacomb of Commodilla. Discovered in 1595, it was thought by Bosio to be the Crypt of Lucina, mentioned in early texts and later discovered in the Callistus complex, about a mile further east. There is no evidence of use before the fourth century. Again, apparently no attention was paid to the terrain above ground during excavation. In the mid-fourth century, Pope Damasus “discovered” there the burial of two martyrs, Saints Felix and Adauctus, probably killed under Diocletian and buried in a privately owned area. The Depositio martyrum of 354 does not mention the name, but the fifth-century Martyrologium Hieronymianum commemorates Roma via Ostiensi (in cimiterio) Commodellae Felicis et Adaucti. At first objects of only a private cult, they had caused the area to become another favorite 16 17

See also PIR2 P 950; CIL 6.31681; ILCV 127; ICUR 24837. 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 Acilius Glabrio-Priscilla connection, “L’ipogeo degli Acilii Glabrioni nel cimitero di Priscilla,” 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 female martyrs, the Passion of Saints Digna and Merita, places their burial in coemeterio Commodillae eadem via (Ostiense). The two cults in the same cemetery therefore would seem to be independent. An unusual feature of this catacomb is its large collective pit or shaft tombs dug beneath galleries, lined with loculi along the sides, and when they were full, stacked with other burials separated with tiles. This is thought to indicate a larger concentration of poorer people buried there who could not afford anything more individual. The relative lack of painting and the many uninscribed tombs also support the impression of large numbers of burials from modest circumstances. Burials continued into the late fourth and early fifth centuries.18 This is probably an example of a catacomb with a single origin that was expanded as the need grew. The identity of the eponymous founder is unknown, but she is likely to have been a mid- to late-fourth-century benefactor who developed an extensive burial area for the poor, beginning from a private complex, by acquiring the bodies of martyrs and then expanding the cemetery as needed. This would not be unusual even in a preChristian context: the custom of wealthy urban dwellers exercising benefaction by donating land outside the city for burial of the general population 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 of Balbina. The third center is probably that witnessed by Hippolytus, a complex that, even if it was originally in private ownership, perhaps 18

19

B. Bagatti, Il cimitero di Commodilla o dei martiri Felice ed Adautto presso la via Ostiense (Vatican City, 1936) 3–6; Carlo Carletti, “Storia e topografia della catacomba di Commodilla,” in Die Katakombe “Commodilla.” Repertorium der Malereien (eds. J. G. Deckers, G. Mietke, A. Weiland; Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana 1994), 3–27; V. Fiocchi Nicolai et al., The Christian Catacombs of Rome, 54–56; photo of a shaft burial on p. 56, fig. 63. Nicholas Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb,” in Römische Gräberstraßen: Selbstdarstellung, 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 townspeople 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 for the same purpose (ILS 7847; see also ILS 6726). Exactly what kind of people were buried in such arrangements is not clear. Presumably, those who could afford their own burials chose to go elsewhere.

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that of the family of Zephyrinus, was quickly turned into a common burial area under the supervision of Callistus. It cannot have been Callistus’s own property: both the text of Hippolytus and the fact that Callistus 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 Roman Christian catacombs, the names of a number of women have surfaced: Domitilla, Priscilla, Commodilla, Lucina, and Balbina. There are many other women’s names associated with catacombs: Thecla, Basilla, Agnes, Felicitas, and others. Of course there are also male names associated 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 lists of martyr burials is that they endured as the way to designate a particular catacomb, even when the catacomb was most famous as a place of pilgrimage for its martyr tombs. The name of the catacomb of Domitilla did not change to Saints Nereus and Achilleus, the catacomb of Priscilla did not change to Saints Felix and Philip, the catacomb of Commodilla was occasionally called that of Saints Felix and Adauctus, but the name that stuck was that of Commodilla. Nor did the original names associated with the catacombs acquire the title of “saint.” Other catacombs did acquire the names of saints, the most famous being those of Saints Agnes and Lawrence, the most beloved Roman martyrs of the early fourth century. Much later, of course, some of the names connected with the catacombs did assume the title of saint, when their urban churches became centers of pilgrimage, e.g., Santa Prisca on the Aventine (but was this supposed to be Prisca the wife of Aquila or Priscilla of the catacomb, or another?). The names connected to some of the principal Christian burial places are early and persistent, and a good number of these names are of women. We have seen that the most likely scenario for the beginnings of most of these burial complexes is a group of unrelated walled-in surface burial areas containing inhumation and/or incineration graves. If set up by a wealthy benefactor, they would also probably contain mausolea. For want of space and because the popularity of inhumation over incineration by the end of the second century created 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 below their own property and eventually expand the underground area. When the cult of martyrs’ tombs developed in the fourth century, the desire of Christians to be buried as close as possible to the martyrs created the need for extensive burial development, both above and especially below ground. During this expansion, many previously independent private burial complexes became joined underground, culminating by the late fourth and early fifth centuries in the vast labyrinths that the major Christian catacombs are today. This development is 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 in this book that Christians did not invent “catacombs,” a method of burial also used by Jews and others, but the cult of the martyrs in the fourth century caused the formation of the vast underground networks that are the major Roman Christian catacombs, and these enormous complexes are not equaled in use by any other group. In addition, because of the concentration of devotion in Rome and well-kept records of martyrs’ tombs and their feast days, we have more information about this phenomenon among Christians particularly in Rome than anywhere else. The historical and social link between the small private burial groupings and the large communal complexes of the fourth century is private patronage. This foundation of social relations in ancient Roman society has been well studied, including the major cross-cultural studies of Gellner and Waterbury, Eisenstadt and Roniger, and Elliott,20 and of its function in ancient Rome by Saller, Wallace-Hadrill, and others.21 While most of the examples that have been preserved are from elite classes, this is not true of all. The same social structures

20

21

Ernest Gellner and John Waterbury, eds., Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies (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, “Patronage and Clientage,” in The Social Sciences and New Testament Interpretation (ed. Richard Rohrbaugh; Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1996), 144–56, with extensive further bibliography. Richard P. Saller, Personal Patronage under the Early Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, ed., Patronage in Ancient Society (London: Routledge, 1989); Jens-Uwe Krause, Spätantike Patronatsformen im Westen des Römischen Reiches (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1987).

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can be expected to have been replicated as closely as possible at nonelite levels. Some of the actual persons involved in the creation of the Christian burial sites may have been elites, such as a Flavia Domitilla or a Priscilla married into the Acilii Glabriones. But whether elite or less than elite, those Christians who functioned as patrons and clients presumably replicated the same social structures in their own use of power to achieve their ends. Patronage in early Christianity is now beginning to be studied.22 Women participated heavily in the patronage system on both sides, as patrons and clients, and were deeply involved in both private and public patronage. They could attend the morning salutatio of client to patron (Juvenal, Sat. 1.120–16). They participated fully in business activities. Women who were sui iuris could conduct their own transactions, though there were some legal limitations imposed. The earlier institution of tutela, male guardianship requiring permission to alienate property, was mostly inactive by the Augustan age, though former owners could still exercise considerable control over the property of a liberta. Other legislation prevented women from taking on liability for the debts of others, which may have been primarily aimed to protect women from unscrupulous husbands.23 As is often the case with Roman law, what is on the books is not necessarily what is done,

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Beginning early with E. A. Judge, The Social Pattern of Christian Groups in the First Century (London: Tyndale Press, 1960); “The Early Christians as a Scholastic Community,” Journal of Religious History (1960): 4–15; (1961): 125–37; “Paul as a Radical Critic of Society,” Interchange 16 (1974): 191–203; “Cultural Conformity and Innovation in Paul: Some Clues from Contemporary Documents,” Tyndale Bulletin 35 (1984): 3–24; continuing with Frederick W. Danker, Benefactor: Epigraphic Study of a Graeco-Roman and New Testament Semantic Field (St. Louis, Mo.: Clayton, 1982); more recently, John K. Chow, Patronage and Power: A Study of Social Networks in Corinth (JSNTSup 75; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992); David A. deSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 2000); Stephan J. Joubert, “One Form of Social Exchange or Two? ‘Euergetism,’ 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). Jane F. Gardner, Women in Roman Law and Society (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 233–36.

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and there were perhaps more exceptions than strict applications of the law. Women often served as patrons for other women. Cratia, the wife of M. Cornelius Fronto, tutor of Marcus Aurelius, is called in one of his letters to the emperor a clienta of Domitia Lucilla, the emperor’s mother. As such, she visited the imperial family, staying with them in Naples without her husband to celebrate her patron’s birthday.24 An otherwise unknown woman named Valatta on the British frontier writes to the commanding officer of the Vindolanda outpost, Flavius Cerialis, about a favor mediated by his wife, Sulpicia Lepidina.25 The epitaph of Epiphania, a second- or third-century benefactor, the welltraveled daughter and wife of ship owners, reports that she was generous with her wealth, motivated by eusebeia, especially to abandoned friends ³« ' κ ' ,, woman to women.26 But women’s patronage was not limited to women. Women could not vote or hold elective office, yet the influence of powerful women in the palace and the law court through their exercise of patronage, amicitiae muliebres, was always present.27 Roscius of Ameria, who was later defended by Cicero in a parricide case involving political machinations against Sulla, fled for protection in Rome to the aristocrat Caecilia Metella, not to any of her abundant male relatives or her husband, because of her amicitia with his deceased father. It was recognized that she was his patron, not one of the male members of her family.28 Augustus’s wife Livia had her own following and client loyalties; as a widow, she even received the Senate in her house. Josephus recounts her benefactions to the Herodian family, including marriage advice to

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25

26 27

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Marcus Cornelius Fronto (trans. C. R. Haines; vol. 1; LCL; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962), 145–51; Edward Champlin, Fronto and Antonine Rome (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 25. Alan K. Bowman and J. David Thomas, eds., “Per Lepidinam”: The Vindolanda Writing-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.. NewDocs 2.16, pp. 55–56. Champlin, Fronto and Antonine Rome, 109, 171 n. 87; Richard A. Bauman, Women and Politics in Ancient Rome (London: Routledge, 1992); Suzanne Dixon, “A Family Business: Women’s Role in Patronage and Politics at Rome 80–44 B.C.,” Classica et Mediaevalia 34 (1983): 91–124, at p. 91. Ibid., 94, with other examples.

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Salome (Ant. 17.10).29 Upon her death, the grateful Senate voted the erection of an arch in her honor. This had never before been done for a woman, and Tiberius would never allow it to be built. The senators’ gratitude was abundant because she had saved the lives of some Senate members, sustained their orphaned children, and helped many by paying their daughters’ dowries. She was so loved that she was titled informally, in parallel to Augustus’s title, mater patriae. The title was never officially granted to her, however, even after her death (Dio Cassius 58.2.3).30 Her activities on behalf of her clients are illustrative of the kinds of benefactions expected from a powerful patron. Many similar stories can be told about other elite women. Antonia Caenis, freedwoman of Claudius’s mother Antonia, became mistress of Vespasian until her death. Dio Cassius (65.14.1–5) gives a vivid description of her patronal power and wealth: in exchange for money, she granted various public offices and priesthoods, and obtained imperial decisions and secured imperial pardons in favor of her clients. Hers is an example of the power of women derived from their association with male power, but it could also work the other way. Juvenal complains of women who attend mixed dinner parties and even host them, holding sway on politics and literature (Sat. 6.434–456).31 He also hints that the best way to social advancement is through the patronage of some aging wealthy woman (Sat. 1.39). Women’s patronage was not limited to elites: a freedwoman named Manlia 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 documented. For example, Euxenia, priestess of Aphrodite in Megalopolis 29

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31

Josephus writes of other benefactions to the Herodians from imperial women, Antonia and Agrippina the Younger. Poppaea Sabina, wife of Nero, was also said to be mediator for Jewish causes (Ant. 18.143, 164; 20.135–36; 20.189–96; Life 13–16). In a typical patronage maneuver, Josephus records that at Puteoli he met an actor named Aliturus, and through him, was introduced to Poppaea. Domitia, wife of Domitian, was also a personal benefactor and defender of Josephus, toward whom she was euergetousa, benefactor (Life 429). See Shelly Matthews, First Converts: Rich Pagan Women and the Rhetoric of Mission in Early Judaism and Christianity (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001), 30–36. Bauman, Women and Politics, 124–29. Livia’s power was derived from that of Augustus, but, like many queens and empresses, while she had it, she exercised it quite independently. 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 guesthouse 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 her several monuments in her city commemorating her benefactions.33 Tation, daughter of Straton son of Empedon, from Kyme either built or remodeled at her own expense the building and the surrounding precinct of a synagogue, for which the Jews bestowed on her two traditional honors for a patron: a gold crown and a place of honor ( & ). Both the wording of the inscription (“the Jews honor her”) and the family names involved suggest that she was an outside benefactor, not a member of the Jewish community (CIJ 2.738).34 Julia Severa of Acmonia in Phrygia held a number of distinguished priesthoods and city offices and was of a family that was sufficiently prominent that her son entered the Senate, yet she donated property to the local synagogue, perhaps because two of its archons were her freedmen or clients (CIJ 2.766; MAMA 6.264).35 Other civic benefactions in which women were involved included alimentary programs for poor children. Wealthy women found this an appropriate outlet for their money and a suitable way to be immortalized. And immortalized they were. In Herculaneum, where the hardened mud that covered the city made immediate retrieval of precious items much more difficult than at Pompeii, more statuary was thus preserved than at Pompeii. At Herculaneum, 40 percent of the dedicatory statues are of women, mostly large and in bronze and metal. They were set up alongside those of men in the theater and the forum area, without any perceptible gender pattern.36 32

33

34 35

36

Riet van Bremen, “Women and Wealth,” in Images of Women in Antiquity (eds. Averil Cameron and Amélie Kuhrt; rev. ed.; Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1993), 223. Cf. Mary Taliaferro Boatwright, “Plancia Magna of Perge: Women’s Roles and Status in Roman Asia Minor,” in Women’s History and Ancient History (ed. Sarah B. Pomeroy; Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 249–72. Other female gymnasiarchs are known: L. Casarico, “Donne ginnasiarco,” ZPE 48 (1982): 118–22. There is even one in Egypt, and a female tax collector: NewDocs 8.4, p. 49. NewDocs 1.69, p. 111. 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. Giuseppina Cerulli Irelli, “Archaeological Research in the Area of Vesuvius: Portraits from Herculaneum,” in Pompeii and the Vesuvian Landscape (Washing-

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Women participated in and led collegia or  , professional and social 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 Pompeiian benefactor who illustrates precisely the kind of patronage central to this 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 for the fullers’ building, which was centrally located in the forum, dedicating them herself to concordia and pietas augusta. In gratitude, the guild erected a dedicatory statue of her with inscription, a copy of which still stands behind their building at the forum in Pompeii (Fig. 7.3). She also built a tomb for herself and her familia outside the city. Eumachia’s tomb outside the Nucerian Gate is one of the largest funerary monuments in the area, stating simply her name and filiation on one side, EVMACHIA L F, and on the other side, SIBI ET SVIS, for herself and those who belong to her familia (CIL 10.810, 811, 813 and Fig. 7.4).38 Similarly, the Jewish Rufina in second-century Smyrna, a woman who bore the title $   '.'« (synagogue ruler), recorded on a marble plaque on her tomb that she built it for her freedmen/women and the slaves raised in her house (« $   « λ    ) (CIJ 741). It was familial burial complexes like theirs that formed the nuclei of most of the later Christian catacombs, as discussed above. Many more examples could be added. This kind of evidence is important for seeing the wide range of possibilities for women’s personal patronage. Any woman who had accumulated even a modest amount of wealth and connections could be as active in patronage relationships as a man of her social status. For elite women, direct intervention

37

38

ton, D.C.: Archaeological Institute of America and the Smithsonian Institution, 1979), 16–24; Caroline Dexter, “The Epigraphic Evidence of Pompeiian Women” (unpublished paper) n. 18, p. 23. List in J. P. Waltzing, Étude historique sur les corporations professionnelles chez les Romains depuis les origines jusqu’à la chute de l’Empire d’Occident, vol. 4 (4 vols.; Brussels: Hayez, 1895), 254–57. Cf. Roy Bowen Ward, “The Public Priestesses of Pompeii,” in The Early Church in 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 the fullers’ meeting place, but the inscription on the frieze and the statue behind commemorate Eumachia as stated.

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7.3. Copy of statue of Eumachia (original in Naples Museum) behind the fullers’ building on the Forum in Pompeii. (author’s photo)

7.4. Eumachia’s burial complex for her familia outside the Nucerian Gate, Pompeii. (Photo: David Balch)

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in political appointments was lacking, but they exercised no less influence. One of the expected actions of such patrons was to set up a burial place to accommodate not only themselves and immediate family, but also members of the network of their familia, as Eumachia and Rufina did.39 Apparently, this first step in Christian burial practice continued into a second phase: while the land was still in private ownership, the exercise of private patronage by Christians broadened to include provision of burial space on one’s own cemetery plot to members of the church not related by familia and without suitable alternative burial arrangements. Some second- and third-century texts tell us of the developing understanding of patronage among Christians, and their sometime resistance. For example, Hermas criticizes the wealthy of his second-century Roman community for shirking patronal duties: they get so tied up in their business interests that they avoid lesser persons because they do not wish to be asked for favors (Herm. Sim. 9.20.2–4). Such people would incur the disdain not only of Hermas but of the Christian poor as well, to say nothing of their peers. Their repentance will consist in “doing some good,” namely, generosity with their riches and the establishment of patronage relationships. One of those good actions was granting place in their burial properties for the poor. Other later writers under a growing church centralization are not so encouraging. The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus discourages individuals from holding charity meals for the needy without clerical supervision (Apostolic Tradition 29).40 If this text does represent earlythird-century Rome as tradition would have it,41 it stands at just the time when central control is being exerted in the church in many areas. In Carthage a generation later, Cyprian, probably like most bishops of

39

40

41

An interesting documented parallel to this development is the aggregation of ownership of brick factories in the hands of daughters through inheritance over the first two centuries C.E. before passing into imperial control in the third century: 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 Litterarum; Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1977). My gratitude to John Bodel for this reference as for many other insights in this paper. Charles A. Bobertz, “The Role of Patron in the Cena Dominica of Hippolytus’ Apostolic Tradition,” JTS 44 (1993): 170–84. The origins and nature of the text are much disputed: see Bradshaw et al., Apostolic Tradition, 1–6.

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his time, wanted to consolidate patronal power in his own office by weakening the power of wealthy members of the church, encouraging centralized charity, and rejecting the charismatic claims of martyrs to forgive sins. The consolidation of collection and dissemination for charity, already evidenced by Justin and Tertullian, gradually becomes the normal way for Christians to exercise their generosity. By then, the patronage system has been vastly overhauled. Eventually, there is only one major patron left for Christians: the bishop.42 During this phase, assumption of ownership and administration of cemeteries by the churches under the direction of the bishop was a natural extension of their 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 these burial plots were extended, at first by the owners of the plots in order to make room for burials of the poor within their own spaces. This was the prelude to the assumption of ownership and administration by church authorities. But how did this transition happen legally, and what was the legal basis for church ownership? It is well known that Roman law did not recognize corporate ownership by a legal body, though it did allow multiple individual ownership of everything from land to slaves.43 In practice, there seems to have been tacit recognition of corporate ownership. For example, there are documented cases in which familial burial property is ceded as a foundation to a city, colony, or collegium, apparently only when the entire familia no longer had any survivors.44 This implicit recognition of corporate ownership is examined in more detail in J. P. Waltzing’s monumental study of professional cor42

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William L. Countryman, The Rich Christian in the Church of the Early Empire: Contradictions and Accommodations (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1980). De Visscher, Le droit des tombeaux romains, 123–27 discusses this and cites Cicero 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). 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 romains, 261–76), at 44–49, citing the example of Junia Libertas. Some examples given: ILS 7846, 7847.

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porations, or collegia. He cites four different ways in which Roman legal practice implicitly recognized corporate ownership: (1) property bequeathed to the state for accomplishment of a civil responsibility (rare); (2) consecratio et dedicatio, goods belonging to a god; (3) property held by a societas, legally understood as personal property of many individuals; and (4) civil personification in jus privatum, a more limited form of ownership than that of a real person.45 The Lex Julia of 7 C.E. required authorization of every legal collegium by emperor or Senate, therefore presumably with this fourth form of civil personification. By the time of the jurists Paul and Ulpian (early third century), most of the collegia were de facto, even if not legally, recognized as owners of property, the legal basis being the logical extension from cities as corporate persons to recognized organizations, which then were under strict rules of registration and financial accountability.46 Individuals could donate property to collegia (e.g., CIL 6.10231; 10.444, 1579, 2112) and collegia could sell property and could reclaim the inheritance of one of their freedmen (Ulpian Dig. 40.3.1–2), but could not otherwise inherit by testament. Freedmen were obligated to bequeath half their property to their patron. By the third quarter of the second century, this probably applied to former slaves of collegia as well.47 The evidence is not clear on the boundaries and particular characteristics of collegia in the Roman world. Some certainly existed for the purpose of mutual support in a common trade, like the fullers’ corporation of Pompeii with their patron, Eumachia. Most probably had some kind of religious practice associated with their meetings. This kind of professional guild is known to have existed in most of the Roman world, sometimes assembling in their own building, as did the fullers of Pompeii, sometimes in a rented hall, sometimes in a private house. In addition, it has been thought that another kind of association of non-elites, the collegia tenuiorum composed largely of the freeborn poor, existed for the major purpose of “burial societies,” to assure a decent burial of deceased members through monthly meals where a collection was taken up for the common chest. But it is difficult to imagine a social association with so limited a scope. Probably this is simply another face of the same kind of social organization or club 45 46 47

Waltzing, Étude historique, 2.3, pp. 432–44. Ibid., 432–44, 474–75. Ibid., 455–67.

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that accomplished many purposes at once: social, professional, religious, and funerary.48 The acquisition of one or more patrons to underwrite expenses and provide social status was always desirable. It has been suggested that one of the advantages of such societies was to pool resources and so attract patronage that individuals or smaller groups would not be able to acquire.49 Since de Rossi at the end of the nineteenth century, there has been discussion of the possibility that early Christian communities may have been associated in some way with this model of the non-elite social club. Tertullian (Apol. 39) speaks of the monthly collection for works of charity, and regular social meals. It is one thing to argue that Christians deliberately used the legal form of the collegium and were recognized as such by imperial authority; it is another to see Christians using the collegium as a familiar form of social organization. The latter is much more likely than the former: the idea of Christian groups as officially recognized collegia has not been widely accepted, while they certainly seem to share some characteristics with collegia, especially regular common meals, a common social fund, and provision of burial to those unable to afford it.50 A parallel to Christian activity has sometimes been drawn with the collegium domesticum that met in the house of Sergia Paulina in earlysecond-century Rome, in which the surviving inscriptional evidence speaks of the collegium quod est in domo Sergiae Paulinae, reminiscent of Paul’s greetings to κ #  % #  (e.g., Rom 16:5).51 Besides meeting regularly in a house for an official meal, they also seem to have had common burial space. There is some evidence that Christians in various places continued to belong to other collegia and were buried in their common burial grounds. Cyprian in mid-third-century Carthage objects to the action of bishop Martialis who allowed his son to be buried in the cemetery of another (non-Christian) collegium (Ep. 67), presumably because he is

48 49 50

51

Rebillard, Religion et Sépulture, 52–53, 57–59. Purcell, “Tomb and Suburb,” 39. For a summary of recent scholarship on this question, see Philip A. Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterranean Society (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2003), 178–82. The proposition of Marta Sordi in 1971 that the group in the house of Sergia Paulina was actually Christian has not been accepted; bibliography in Rebillard, Religion et Sépulture, 56 n14.

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a member. About the same time, Commodian condemns the decisions of those who would be buried in such a way (Instr. 2,29,12–13). Both condemnations witness to the custom practiced by some, including a bishop.52 When finally Constantine in 321 established Christian churches as full juridic persons for the purpose of inheritance, they became necessarily full juridic persons for the purpose of ownership of property, and from then on, there is no ambiguity in their legal status. If the shift from private ownership of Christian burial properties to common church ownership began already in the early third century, as apparently witnessed by Hippolytus, then for nearly a century churches must have shared the ambiguous position of the collegia, operating openly but without proper juridic status as property owners. As is so often the case in Roman law, magistrates seem to have looked the other way except during times of actual persecution. Even then, however, sources seem to indicate that church ownership of real property was not questioned. The evidence is puzzling but rather clear, at least as witnessed by fourth-century Christian sources. For example, in the episcopal dispute with Paul of Samosata in the 270s, the deposed Paul refused to give up the /« 0« # «, which the emperor Aurelian decreed should belong ( ) to those who were in communication with the bishops of Italy and Rome (Eusebius Hist. eccl. 7.30.18–19). Again, Lactantius relates that during the persecution of Diocletian and Galerius, officials came to the ekklesia in Nicomedia, burned the books, and destroyed the interior of the building. From their palace, the two emperors could see the building, which they decided not to burn for fear other nearby buildings would also catch fire. So the Pretorian Guards with axes and iron instruments leveled the building in a few hours. (Mort. 12). In the account, no question about legal ownership of the building is raised. The collegia continued to exist well into the fourth century, even though the church gradually took over the function of burial of the poor. One section of the catacomb of Domitilla apparently belonged to a collegium of mensores, an association responsible for procurement and distribution of the regular dole of grain to the populace of Rome. The corporations sometimes found new patrons in bishops, and thus participated in the movement that was happening with regard to pri-

52

Rebillard, Religion et Sépulture, 64–67.

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vate patronage generally: the assumption of patronal privilege into the hands of church authorities.53 This does not mean, however, that the practice of private patronage in regard to cemeteries ceased entirely and immediately. Lactantius notes that the last great work of piety is burial of strangers and the poor (Inst. 6.12). Again, there is evidence of wealthy women patrons who continue to function in this way. The small underground basilica of Saints Felix and Adauctus in the catacomb of Commodilla contains the grave of the widow Turtura, who was important enough to be immortalized on a late large wall painting of the same basilica in the company of the two martyrs flanking the Virgin and Child.54 Outside of Rome, an early-fourth-century inscription from a Christian cemetery at Velletri in Latium records a commemoration to “Faltonia Hilaritas, dearest lady and daughter, who from the ground up made the cemetery from her own funds and gave it to ‘this religion’” (Faltoniae Hilaritati dominae filiae carissimae quae hoc coemeterium a solo sua pecunia fecit et huhic religioni donavit – ILCV 3681A).55 Seemingly, at the time she died, the church was already in possession of what began as a private patronal enterprise, exactly the same pattern that we have seen began to be operative during the third century in Rome. At that earlier time, private burial complexes that had probably been administered for several Christian generations by patrons for the care of poor Christians without private means of burial were eventually turned over to communal church ownership and administration by at least local leaders of particular congregations. By the fourth century, especially after Constantine’s recognition of the legal status of the church, it became normative for the church to assume ownership and administration of cemeteries, increasingly under centralized administration of bishop and deacons. In the case of Faltonia Hilaritas, the transition happened within one generation: the woman who founded the cemetery as a private endeavor was herself buried in the same cemetery, now owned by the church. 53 54 55

Ibid., 68–70; Waltzing, Étude historique, 461–74. Fiocchi Nicolai et al., Christian Catacombs of Rome, 63. 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 between religio 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 term had acquired connotations of faith practice. For other examples of Christian inscriptions 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.

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Once various church entities had taken over administration of the cemeteries and social services in the fourth century, private patronage did not cease. It did, however, begin to take on a different form. The same social classes that were previously both public and private patrons continued to be involved in benefactions, but now the bishop is presented as principal initiator and patron of social projects. The resources still come from lay patrons, but now they do not flaunt their status on public monuments, as they did in the past. Rather, they assume the position of humble servants of the church, relying on a future reward.56 Relief efforts for the poor and needy continue, but the resources, supplied by lay patrons, are funneled more and more through the hands of the bishop and his deacon assistants. Private benefaction also now frequently takes the form of contributing to the embellishment of churches or monuments, as witnessed, for example, on the inscriptions of an early-fifth-century altar and ciborium in the basilica of St. Alexander bearing the names of Delicatus and the aristocratic Junia Sabina c f (ICUR 8. 22958–22959).57 Examples like this abound. The bishop assumes the position of major patron. Material help now comes from the social aid programs administered by the bishop and deacons. Moral and spiritual help, an actual spiritual patronage, resides in the power of martyrs’ bodies in their memoria in the cemeteries, and in the sacraments. The bishop and deacons are in control of both. These factors help to explain the swift rise of the power of bishops beginning in the middle of the third century and accelerated in the fourth.58 56

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Much as both ancient and modern writers, however, want to contrast the preChristian patron, concerned only with the honor that would flow from his or her generosity, with the Christian donor who selflessly gives without expecting any earthly reward, the difference is not so neat. See, for example, Pliny the Younger, who worries lest making known his generosity to an alimentary program might be 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 for doing them, and there is no less merit if it does not follow (Ep. 1,8.13). Vincenzio Fiocchi Nicolai, “Euergetismo ecclesiastico e laico nelle iscrizioni paleocristiane del Lazio,” Historiam pictura refert: Miscellanea in onore di Padre Alejandro Recio Veganzones O.F.M. (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto de Archeolgia Cristiana, 1994), 237–52, at p. 240. 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: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1997), 371–96. The amalgamation of patronal power in the hands of a bishop is an interesting parallel to the role of the emperor, holder

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Conclusion The Greco-Roman system of patronage and benefaction, the backbone of social relations in the earlier Empire, did not cease among Christians when they were a minority in the non-elite population, nor when they gained social and political ascendance. One of the areas in which they have left some evidence of their activity is the provision of burial for their dependents, and developing from there, for other needy persons in the community. The prominence of women in the GrecoRoman system of patronage and benefaction is clear to those who look at the evidence. Women were prominent, too, in Christian patronage. One of the major ways in which we see this is the development of burial complexes in Rome. The prominence of Christian women in this particular exercise of patronage is indicative of the significant numbers of women who owned land and were in the position of head of household with responsibility to provide burials for the familia, which then extended to others, especially the needy members of the church. Gradually, however, church leadership was expanding its administration and ownership of these properties, initially under questionable legal arrangements, but from the time of Constantine, with full legal power. During this development, church leaders, especially bishops, emerge as the prominent element in the patronage system, while private patrons become the background suppliers of materials. Both women and men are among the private patrons who retreat to the shadows in the new Christian order in which the right hand should not know what the left hand is doing (Matt 6:1– 4), the honor due to the patron goes to the bishop, and for all others, should be reserved for the life to come.

of supreme and universal patronal power, as argued by Fergus Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (31 BC–AD 337) (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977); cf. Richard P. Saller, Personal Patronage, 2–3; Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Patronage in Ancient Society, 79–81.

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Chapter 8 From Endymion in Roman 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. Graydon Snyder lists how often thirty-one different Biblical stories are visually represented this early: Jonah-cast-into-the-sea appears 38 times, Jonah-and-the-ketos 28 times, and Jonah-at-rest 42 times in various media, including mosaics, wall paintings, and sarcophagi. Of the other twenty-eight visual images found, the closest is the Sacrifice of Isaac, which appears 8 times.1 Christian artists emphasized the third Jonah image, Jonah-at-rest, and represented him in the visual tradition of Endymion, a handsome young man loved by the goddess Selene (the moon). Endymion appears 17 times in wall frescoes in Pompeii,2 in Roman houses dating from the first century C.E. This essay concerns how visual representations of Endymion made the journey from mosaics and wall frescoes in Roman houses and tombs of the first and second centuries C.E. to represent Jonah in Christian catacombs of the third to fifth centuries C.E., then again moved above ground to one of the earliest church mosaics that remains – in Aquileia, in the early fourth century C.E. Although many authors assume that Jonah is represented in the style of Endymion, two important writers deny that Jonah images are dependent on him,3 so this essay will also inquire whether they are correct. 1

2 3

Graydon F. Snyder, Ante-Pacem. Archaeological Evidence of Church Life before Constantine. (Rev. ed.; Macon, Ga.: Mercer University, 2003), 87. PPM 10:560 (Index, s.v “Endymion”). Hans Gabelmann, “Endymion,” LIMC 3.1: 726–42, at 742, and Antonio Ferrua, “Paralipomeni di Giona,” in RACrist 38 (1962): 7–69.

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The question of method is unavoidable. One problem is that only about 40 percent of the catacomb paintings have recently been adequately published, a contrast to research on sarcophagi and inscriptions.4 Further, some earlier interpreters proceeded from the paintings directly to Christian dogma,5 emphasizing either their sacramental or their eschatological meaning. The German reaction has been to study the catacomb paintings simply as late Roman folk art and to deny the appropriateness of interpreting the visual in light of the textual, that is, by Patristic authors.6 One advantage of this debate is that “Early Christian art seems to have freed itself from unambiguous interpretations that united the various figurative models using a connecting thread that related them all to a single fundamental reference.”7 This methodological fissure means that scholars must decide whether to be Italian or German.

4

5

6

7

Norbert Zimmermann, Werkstattgruppen römischer Katakombenmalerei (JAC, Ergänzungsband 35; Münster: Aschendorf, 2002), 27, 29. André Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins (Bollingen Series 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 Katakomben Roms. Zimmermann, Katakombenmalerei, 29, citing Peter Dückers, “Agape und Irene: die Frauengestalten der Sigmamahlszenen mit antiken Inschriften in der Katakombe der Heiligen Marcellinus und Petrus in Rom,” JAC 35 (1992): 147–67 and Carlo Carletti, “Origine, committenze e fruizione delle scene bibliche nella produzione romana dell III secolo,” Vetera Christianorum 26 (1989): 207–19. Also Josef Engemann, “Biblische Themen im Bereich der frühchristlichen Kunst,” Stimuli: Exegese und ihre Hermeneutik in Antike und Christentum: Festschrift für Ernst Dassmann (eds. Georg Schöllgen and Clemens Scholten; JAC, Ergänzungsband 23; Münster: Aschendorff, 1996), 543–56. Carletti’s observation (212–15) that the Biblical scenes occur in family burial chambers reserved for the elite renders problematic Snyder’s hypothesis (see n. 1) that these images reflect values of the non-elite. Fabrizio Bisconti, “The Decoration of Roman Catacombs,” in The Christian Catacombs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions (eds. Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, Fabrizio Bisconti, Danilo Mazzoleni; 2nd ed.; Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 2002), 133.

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Selected Second-Century-C.E. Roman Sepulchral and Domestic Mosaics of Endymion and Third-Century Sarcophagi of Jonah First, the Hellenistic and Roman “biography” of Endymion: he is said to have led the Aetolians from Thessaly in northern Greece to Elis, a plain in the Peloponnese.8 Early sources do not narrate Selene’s (the moon goddess’) love of him, an addition to the saga made in Asia Minor. When describing the Ionians and Carians near Miletus, Strabo (XIV 1.8; C636) mentions mount Latmus and a river nearby, where one may see the sepulchre of Endymion in a cave, which Selene (=Trivia) left her cosmic course to visit (Catullus 66.5–6, alluding to Callimachus;9 also Lucian10). Hellenistic authors expand the bucolic imagery: Endymion is a shepherd whom Selene comes down from Olympus to kiss, which leads to the wish, “O would I were Endymion That sleeps the 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 the Stoics, 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 sleep with memories of their lives as dreams as did the soul of Endymion. Pliny the Elder rationalizes: “the first human being to observe all these facts about her [transformations of the moon during eclipses] was Endymion – which accounts for the traditional story of his love for her” (Nat. II.43, [Rackham, LCL]). And Lucian satirizes, telling of Endymion, king of those living on the moon, warring with the people of the sun and their king, Phaethon (Ver. Hist. I.11–12). The eschatological overtones must be one aspect of the saga that led to Roman Christians’ fascination, but we should also include the early Roman Christians’ appreciation of aesthetic beauty. 8

9 10 11 12

Gabelmann, “Endymion,” LIMC 3.1: 727–28 gives references to the classical authors cited in the following two paragraphs. Callimachus, “Aetia” (ed. Trypanis, LCL), 80–85. Lucian, Dial. d. (ed. Macleod, LCL), 328–31. Also Cicero, Tusc. 1.38.92; Amic. 1.13.43–44; but see Cicero, Fin. V.20.55. A fragment of Varro, Saturarum Menippearum (ed. Raymond Astbury; Leipzig: Teubner, 1985), 18–20. Lines 100–108 have the title Endymiones, referring to this Stoic conception. Werner A. Krenkel, ed., Marcus Terentius Varro Saturae Menippeae (Subsidia Classica 6; St. Katharinen: Scripta Mercaturae, 2002), 1.172–84.

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Second, selected visual representations: the Roman tombs at Isola Sacra (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 The tomb is richly decorated by frescoes, stucco, and mosaic. The epigraph reports 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 prohibits the 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, perhaps Trajan.15 Below the niche one sees Thisbe who has discovered her lover, Pyramus, killed by a lion.16 Left of the niche is Aiace and Cassandra;17 one version of this Trojan story is that he drags her away from the statue of Athena to rape her.18 Above the niche Diana, spied by the hunter Actaeon while she was bathing, turns him into a deer, and he is then attacked and killed by his own dogs.19 Diverse artists, whom Baldassarre judges had little skill, painted these frescoes. The vault was also decorated, and finally, there is a black-and-white mosaic pavement of Selene and Endymion who are placed in the center of a geometric de13

14

15 16

17 18

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Ida Baldassarre, Irene Bragantini, Chiara Morselli, and Franca Taglietti, Nicropoli di Porto. Isola Sacra (Itinerari dei musei, gallerie, scavi e monumenti d’Italia, 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. Baldassarre, Nicropoli di Porto, 71, fig. 26. During the second century C.E. Roman values changed from cremation toward inhumation, a change not generated by Christians. Ostia Museum inventory #10037. 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 principat (Collection de ÉFR 55; Rome: L’École Fran¸caise de Rome, 1981), 337–51 with 11 figs., including figs. 5–6 of Tomb 87 at Isola Sacra. Ostia Museum inventory #10114. A version of this painting also occurs in the House of Menander (I 10,4) at Pompeii. See David L. Balch, “Paul’s Portrait of Christ Crucified (Gal.3:1) in Light of Paintings and Sculptures of Suffering and Death in Pompeian and Roman Houses,” 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. Eleanor Winsor Leach, “Metamorphoses of the Acteon Myth in Campanian Painting,” 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 representations of male-female couples, images placed here by a society undergoing ideological change, one aspect of which was the internalization 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 represented in small panels (see Figs. 8.1–2). The museum label reads as follows: 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 of river, attacking the nymph Arethusa. End of 2nd c. A.D. Maison A du terrain Jilani Guirot.

The Museo Pio Cristiano in the Vatican exhibits a Christian sarcophagus with the three scenes of Jonah dated perhaps from the final third of the third century. The third scene exhibits the prophet in a pose like that 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 with those of the catacomb; to some extent frescoes and sarcophagi belong to different traditions, so I will notice the latter primarily in footnotes.24 20 21 22

23

24

Baldassarre et al., Nicropoli di Porto, 74, fig. 28. Ibid., also 33–34. E. Jastrz˛ebowska, “Sol und Luna auf frühchristlichen Sarkophagen: ein traditionelles Motif der offiziellen kaiserzeitlichen römischen Kunst in christlicher Verwendung,” in Sarcofagi tardoantichi, paleocristiani e altomedievali: atti della giornata tematica dei seminari di archeologia Cristiana (ÉFR – 8 maggio 2002) (eds. Fabrizio Bisconti and Hugo Brandenburg; Monumenti di Antichità Cristiana II Serie, 18; Vatican City: PIAC, 2004), 155–63, at 159, Fig. 1. Robin Margaret Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (New York: Routledge, 2000), 48 with figs. 13a–c dates it to the late third century. F. Bisconti, “I sarcophagi del paradiso,” in Sarcofagi, 57, 72, fig. 32. Marion Lawrence, “Three Pagan Themes in Christian Art,” in Essays in Honor of Erwin Panofsky (vol. 1; ed. Millard Meiss; De Artibus Opuscula 40; New York: New York University, 1961), 323–34, at 325 dates it c. 280, later than some other scholars. See Guntram Koch and Helmut Sichtermann, Römische Sarkophage (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1982), 144–46 and Helmut Sichtermann, Späte Endymion-Sarkophage: Methodisches zur Interpretation (Deutsche Beiträge zur Altertumswissenschaft 19; Baden-Baden: Bruno Grimm, 1966), reviewed by Josef Engemann, JAC 10 (1967): 247–50. Josef Engemann, Untersuchungen zur Sepulkralsymbolik der späteren römischen Kaiserzeit (JAC, Ergänzungsband 2; Munster: Aschendorf, 1973), 28–30, 70–85. Helmut Sichtermann and Guntram Koch, Griechische

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These are examples of Endymion in a Roman tomb, an AfricanRoman house, and on two Christian sarcophagi from the mid- to late second and/or third century C.E. Seeking a more complete aesthetic and cultural context, I turn to Endymion represented in houses of the living in Pompeii, all prior to Vesuvius’s eruption in 79 C.E. I will examine selected frescoes in Pompeii before locating Jonah in some Christian catacomb visual representations, having the question in mind whether and how this figure made the transition from the former to the latter.

Endymion Visually Represented in Wall Frescoes and in a Stucco Chapel in Pompeian Domus Fabrizio Bisconti argues that “the decoration of domestic, funerary and civil buildings above ground was imitated in these underground settings [Christian catacombs].”25 His supporting observations include

25

Mythen auf römischen Sarkophagen (Bilderhefte des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 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 an Endymion sarcophagus from Ostia: see Joan R. Mertens, The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Greece and Rome (New York: Dai Nippon, 1987), fig. 114, a sarcophagus dated 210–225, the date of the earliest catacomb paintings. Fabrizio Bisconti, “I sarcophagi: officine e produzioni,” in Christiana loca: lo spazio cristiano nella Roma del primo millennio (ed. Letizia Pani Ermini; 2 vols.; Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali; Compleso di S. Michele, 5 settembre–15 novembre 2000; 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. Bisconti, “Roman Catacombs,” 85. See his pp. 89, 94 on the transition in the late Antonine and the mature Severan periods from the fourth, architectural Pompeian style to the red and green linear, illusionistic style that involved dematerialisation and simplification. This is based on Fritz Wirth, Römische Wandmalerei vom Untergang Pompeijs bis ans Ende des dritten Jahrhunderts (Berlin: 1934; reprint: Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968). See Wladimiro Dorigo, Late Roman Painting (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1966 (in Italian); New York: Praeger, 1971), chap. 5, and Johannes Kollwitz, “Die Malerei der konstantinischen Zeit (Taf. I–LXVII),” in Akten des VII. internazionalen Kongresses für christliche Archäologie, Trier, 5–11 September 1965 (SAC 28; Vatican City/Berlin: PIAC, 1969), at 93–98, who dates catacomb visual representations fifty years later than the Italian De Bruyne (see n. 86 below).

From Endymion in Roman Domus to Jonah in Christian Catacombs

8.1. Mosaic of four couples, El Jem, Tunisia. (author’s photo)

8.2. Selene and Endymion, close-up of mosaic in 8.1. (author’s photo)

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the triumph of marble in all its forms and the tripartite division of spaces, i.e., three principle registers on walls, which crescendos as images move up the wall. He concludes that this “betrays, very generically a dependence (of catacomb visual representations) on “Pompeian” wall painting, with extreme simplification of the architectural imitation.”26 Agreeing with his argument, I will compare wall frescoes in Pompeii of Endymion with later paintings of Jonah in Christian catacombs in the larger aesthetic and mythical contexts of domus and catacomb decoration.

The Casa del Sacello Iliaco (I 6,4) Two houses in Pompeii, the Casa del Criptoportico (I 6,2)27 and the Casa del Sacello Iliaco (I 6,4) were united, and the decoration is of unusual quality.28 In the late Republican period (40–30 B.C.E) the criptoporticus (19) in house I 6,2 was painted in the late second style, frescoes whose quality is comparable with those of the House of Augustus on the Palatine in Rome.29 Five windows high in the arch of the vault provide significant light for the dark cryptoporticus. In the other part of the combined house (I 6,4), a complete renovation in the fourth style of 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 27

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29

Bisconti, “Roman Catacombs,” 88–89. 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 by streets, and third, to the entrance door number. 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 degli scavi nuovi di Via dell’Abbondanza (anni 1910–1923) (Rome: La libreria dello stato, 1953), vol. 2, 869–901 on the “Sacrario,” and 903–970 on the criptoporticus. On the innovative quality of the stucco-work in the criptoporticus (19), see Roger 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): contribution à l’étude des cultes domestiques,” in I temi figurativi nella pittura parietale antica (IV sec. a.C.–IV sec. d.C.). (Atti del VI convegno internazionale sulla pittura parietale antica; ed. Daniela Scagliarini Corlàita; Bologna: University Press, 1997), 37–41. Bragantini, “Casa del Criptoportico,”194.

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just before the earthquake in 62 C.E.30 Triclinium (c) was virtually finished, but cubiculo (d) lacked the socle (the lowest of the three horizontal bands of decoration on its walls), the sacello (e) received only the stucco decoration in the vault and in the frieze just below the vault, cubiculo (h) received only the upper of its three zones of horizontal decoration, triclinium (i) lacked central wall pictures in its middle zone, and cubiculo (l) lacked the central picture on its south wall. An Endymion stucco is in the sacellum (e; see Fig. 8.3). From the fauces (entrance hall) one sees the sacellum on the far, right side of the atrium (typically the first room one enters from the street, the roof of 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 platform 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 are thus 60 cm remaining between the platform and the door to the atrium. The base of the Homeric frieze is 1.9 m above the top of the platform; the frieze itself, varying from 15 to 17 cm high, wraps horizontally around all three walls and extends on both side walls past the platform to the door. The semicircular lunette on the back wall is just above the frieze and contains the Endymion stucco measuring 55 cm high and 130 cm wide; it is under a barrel vault that extends from the back wall only as far as the end of the platform below. Both the Endymion lunette and the Homeric frieze are outlined with stucco borders. Above the floor between the platform and the door there is an open space (also 60 cm deep), the flat ceiling of which is 1.6 m above the frieze. The word sacellum designates “a room set apart for the service of the domestic cult and especially equipped for that purpose”31 with the statue of the god(s) in a niche. Cicero (Against Verres IV 2–4) describes such a domestic chapel in which one could see a marble statue of cupid by Praxiteles and a bronze Hercules by Myron, before which there were altars, as well as bronzes of Canephoroe by Polycletus and a wooden statue of Bona Fortuna. Boyce notes that they are rare in

30

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Volker Michael Strocka, “Ein missverstandener Terminus des vierten Stils: die Casa del Sacello Iliaco in Pompeji (I 6,4) (Taf. 50–61),” MDAI 91 (1984):125–40. 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 Evidence of the Household Shrines,” ANRW 2.2 (1978):1559–91 with 10 plates, at 1578.

8.3. Endymion, stucco sacellum, Casa del Sacello Iliaco (I 6,4), Pompeii. (author’s photo)

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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), each with benches for worshipers, a niche with or without paintings, and a permanent altar for sacrifice; our room is not among Boyce’s six. The sacellum in VII 2,20 is a small, walled space comparable in size and shape to the sacellum in the Casa del Sacello Iliaco (I 6,4). It has two niches and an altar, but pace Boyce, no benches. The lunette exhibits a peacock fresco instead of an Endymion stucco.38 The sacellum in the Villa of the Mosaic Columns also has an altar, but no benches. Nor are there benches in Boyce’s plate of IX 8,3.6. To Boyce’s six examples I add sacellum (d) honoring Egyptian deities in peristyle (F) of house VI 16,7.38, one with a visual representation of a circular altar in the lower register of the fresco as well as of Anubis, Harpocrates, Isis, and Serapis in the upper register.39 Boyce describing the room in I 6,4, doubts that the room was the “lararium” (the household shrine of the family’s tutelary divinities).40 There is a lararium near the north door on the west wall of the peristyle in the 32

33

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35 36

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38 39

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Boyce, “Lararia of Pompeii,” plate 40, 3–4. Hans Eschebach, “Probleme der Wasserversorgung Pompejis,” Cronache Pompeiane 5 (1979): 24–60, at 59, but without any description. A. Mau, “Ausgrabungen von Pompeji,” MDAI 16 (1901): 283–365, at 284, fig. 1 (sacellum h), and 287–88: “eine kleine Larenkapelle.” Boyce, “Lararia of Pompeii,” plate 41, 2. Valeria Sampaolo, “Casa di N. Popidius Priscus (VII 2,20.40),” sacello (v), in PPM 6 (1996): 615–58, at 652–58, figs. 74–93. Boyce, “Lararia of Pompeii,”plate 40, 2, but I do not locate it in PPM 9: 903–1104. 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). 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 delle Colonne a Mosaico in Pompeji,” MDAI 90 (1983): 51–89, sacellulm d, at 82–83 with figs. 13–14 and pl. 35,2, another small, walled-off, decorated space. Sampaolo, “Casa di N. Popidius Priscus,” 655, fig. 83. 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 House of Octavius Quartio (II 2,4); see Shelley Hales, The Roman House and Social Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2003), 155 with fig. 42. Mariette 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 east wall that may have exhibited the statue of a divinity, but she refers to the room as “ambiente f,” not “sacellum f.” Boyce, “Lararia of Pompeii,” 25, fig. 37.

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other part of the house (I 6,2 [12])41; but nowhere in I 6,4. Boyce gives a footnote observing that “a bronze statuette of Hercules, standing, bearded, nude except of the lion skin over his left shoulder,”42 was found in the large room east of the fauces (c), indicating, perhaps, that it might have been intended for the platform in the sacellum after it was finished. Spinazzola records that in the sacellum itself, five episodes from the Iliad are represented in stucco in the frieze: (1) Hector exiting from the gate of Troy, (2) the combat of Hector and Achilles, (3) Achilles dragging Hector’s body (all in the Iliad, book 22), (4) the ransoming of Hector, and (5) Priam, guided by Hermes, returning to Troy with Hector’s body (both in Iliad 24).43 Spinazzola thinks there is no doubt that these episodes in the sacellum of I 6,4 refer to the decoration of nearly a century earlier in the cryptoporticus of I 6,2, reminding viewers of the most prominent episodes.44 Discussing this frieze, Simon notes that the earlier third style had more figures, but that fourth-style visual representations like this one in the time of Nero and Vespasian concentrate on the protagonists, great mythical personalities like Hector and Achilles.45 The stucco of Selene and Endymion is in the semicircular lunette just under the barrel vault on the south wall of the sacellum (e), restored today from the many fragments left by Pompeian earthquakes.46 The base is blue, the stucco figures ivory. Selene / Diana descends in her carriage accompanied by perhaps two Eros figures toward a sleeping Endymion. Selene’s carriage itself never occurs in contemporary wall paintings, but is common later on sarcophagi; the carriage is somehow compatible with the media of stucco and marble, but fresco painting has a different tradition.47 As Zimmerman investigates different workshops in a single catacomb, so it is also legitimate to investigate the artistic program in an entire house (see n. 43–44, 62, and 66) in order to give the complete aes41 42 43 44 45

46 47

Bragantini, “Casa del Criptoportico,” 197, fig. 3. Boyce, “Lararia of Pompeii,” 18. Spinazzola, Pompeii alla luce, 2:871–901. Ibid., 1: 544. Erica Simon, “Rappresentazioni mitologiche nella pittura parietale pompeiana,” 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. Bragantini, “Casa del Criptoportico,” 303, fig. 39; 304, figs. 41– 42. 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 his lead, down hallway (g) and through the second atrium (m) to room (p), which he names the “salon of philosophers and elephants.”48 Its decoration belongs to the second phase of style two, so is contemporary with the criptoporticus in I 6,2, nearly a century earlier than the sacellum in I 6,4, but in the same house. The north wall has a representation of a gigantic philosopher (megalographia) meditating before the globe of the universe, and to his left is the Muse of astronomy, Urania.49 Clio, Muse of history, is portrayed on the west wall.50 On the east wall is another megalografia of two elephants facing each other,51 each of them guided by reins of myrtle in the hands of small cupids who also hold glass goblets. Elsewhere in Pompei, Venus stands on the raised head and trunk of one of the elephants; Spinazzola suggests her presence above the elephants here too, although that portion of the fresco has deteriorated.52 Spinazzola compares the statue of a meditating philosopher in Palazzo Spada, a fresco of Tragedy meditating,53 as well as a fresco of a poet giving friends an audience.54 The aesthetic program in this house, including a sacellum featuring Endymion, constitutes a portion of the mythical and political tradition in houses of the living on which artists drew who were selecting images to paint for burial chambers in Christian catacombs. The sacellum, “a room set apart for the service of the domestic cult,” should be added to the architectural sources discussed for Christian house churches.55 48

49 50 51 52

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H. G. Beyen, Die Pompejanische Wanddekoration vom Zweiten bis zum Vierten Stil, Zweiter Band, Erster Teil: Tafeln (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960), 24–25, plates 50–55. Bragantini, “Casa del Criptoportico,” 324, figs. 76–77. Ibid., 325, figs. 78–79. Ibid., 324, fig. 77. Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce, 1: 564–65, figs. 624–25. Compare Valeria Sampaolo, “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. Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce, 1: 568–69 and 573, figs. 628–29, 632. Compare de Vos, “Casa del Citarista,” 117–77, at 143, fig. 44a. Valaria Sampaolo, “VI 16,36.37,” in PPM 5 (1994): 981–95, at 988–91, figs. 12–16. See L. Michael White, The Social Origins of Christian Architecture (vol. 1 of Building God’s House in the Roman World: Architectural Adaptation among Pagans, Jews and Christians; Harvard Theological Studies 42; Valley Forge, Pa. Trinity Press International, 1990). Compare Dirk Steuernagle, “Kult und Community: Sacella in den Insulae von Ostia,” MDAI 108 (2001): 41–56, who gives examples of second-century C.E. sacella originally in open spaces that were later closed off for cult communities.

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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 earthquake of 62 C.E. On the grounds of the temple is a building for the use of the priests, which includes a cubiculum (7), triclinium (8), and a kitchen (9). The decoration is related to Egyptian motifs visually represented by the Roman fourth style. The triclinium (8) includes pictures of a candelabrum on which an eagle is perched, the wise centaur (combined horse and man) Chiron, and a fresco that has been interpreted as either Endymion or Narcissus.56 Stemmer notes that the two (or three) basic traditions of representing Endymion can both reduce the image to Endymion alone.57 Both Endymion and Narcissus are hunters (and both are sometimes shepherds). The beautiful body of both young men is emphasized by contemporary authors (for Endymion see Propertius 1.15.15–16 and Cicero, Tus., 1.38.9258; for Narcissus, Ovid, Met. 3.339–51059). Narcissus is sometimes, but not always, distinguished by wearing a wreath of narcissi, the flower that sprang up beside the spring where he died. Actually in another house where a priest of Isis is visually 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,

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58 59

60 61

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’s Portrait of Christ Crucified (Gal. 3:1): Frescoes in Pompeian and Roman Houses and in the Temple of Isis in Pompeii,” Journal of Religion 83, no. 1 (2003): 24–55. 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 Endymion. Gabelmann, “Endymion,” 3.1, 727, 737, with plates in 3.2, 551–61. Birgitte Rafn, “Narkissos,” LIMC 6.1 (1992): 703–11, at 703, 709. Another visual representation of Endymion occurs with a fresco of Io=Isis, Argos and Hermes in triclinium (37) of the “Casa del Citarista (I 4,5.25),” described by Marietta de Vos, PPM 1 (1990): 117–77, at 129–30, figs. 19, 21. De Vos, “Casa di D. Octavius Quartio,” 42–108, at 74–77, figs. 50–53. 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 another 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 (see Fig. 8.6) is painted on the left wall leading to the biclinium (not reproduced by De Vos), and from this place one can see the amphitheater that is virtually outside the back door. Further, on the garden side of the door from room (f) into the garden/portico/biclinium (i) there are visual representations of Diana spied while she is bathing nude by the hunter Actaeon; in anger Diana metamorphosizes Actaeon into a deer, who is then lethally attacked by his own dogs (Ovid, Metam. 3.138–252;).64 Finally, there is a marble statuette of the infant Hercules strangling two snakes, also a popular subject in Pompeian wall paintings.65

Preliminary Conclusions I draw some conclusions from these observations. First, we already see the movement from aesthetic programs in houses of the living to the decoration of tombs for the dead: the artistic program in the House of 62

63 64

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Ibid., 84–98, figs. 68–86. Spinazzola compares the Trojan cycles in the cryptoporticus 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 the wall is a megalograph of Heracles’/Hercules’ deeds at Troy. The central zone has only 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 doppio fregio nella Casa di D. Octavius Quartio (II 2,2),” in Iconografia 2001: Studi sull’Immagine (eds. Isabella Colpo, Irene Favaretto, and Francesca Ghedini; Università degli Studi di Padova; Rome: Quasar, 2002), 331–43. De Vos, “Casa di D. Octavius Quartio,”103, 105, figs. 91–92, 94. Ibid., 100–01, figs. 87–88. See n. 19 above. A second Narcissus is represented in ambient (b; De Vos 55, fig. 21). 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 Protector of the Political and Domestic Order: Frescoes in Dining Rooms N and P of the House of the Vettii in Pompeii, Mark 13:12–13, and 1 Clement 6.2,” in Picturing the New Testament (eds. Annette Weisssenrieder, Frederike Wendt, and Petra von Gemünden; WUNT 2, series 193; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 67–95, plate 6.

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8.4. Narcissus, outdoor biclinium, House of Octavius Quartio (II, 2,2), Pompeii. (author’s photo)

8.5. Thisbe and Pyramus, outdoor biclinium, House of Octavius Quartio (II 2,2), Pompeii. (author’s photo)

8.6. Fresco of lions chasing deer, wall facing outdoor biclinium, House of Octavius Quartio (II 2,2), Pompeii. (author’s photo)

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Octavius Quartio is related to the decoration of Tomb 87 at Isola Sacra. The former is not the direct source of the latter, but the aesthetic programs are strikingly similar.66 Two of the couples visually represented in the House of Octavius Quartio, that is, Pyramus and Thisbe, and Diana and Actaeon, reappear in Tomb 87, as well as the figure that is Narcissus/Endymion. The artists painting Tomb 87 added Aiace and Cassandra, another violent Homeric episode that was also painted in Roman domus.67 Death was visually present on the walls of Roman houses. We rather watch bloody deaths resulting from American and British imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq on TV, a medium that gives some distance, but the residents of Pompeii trooped to the amphitheater to thrill while animals and/or people were killed in their presence.68 Investigating another image, Kathryn Dunbabin collects a significant amount of evidence for Romans displaying and playing with skeletons in Roman triclinia, evidence that I will not repeat here, but she shows that the famous Trimalchio playing with a silver skeleton at dinner is not unusual (Petronius, Satyricon 26–79, at 34).69 Death was not a subject initially introduced into the aesthetic programs of Roman tombs or Christian catacombs, but was already visually prominent in Roman houses, even in dining rooms. 66

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Contrast Roger Ling, “The Decoration of Roman Triclinia,” in In Vino Veritas (eds. Oswyn Murray and Manuela Tecu¸san; Oxford: Alden, 1995), 248: “Only on three occasions (all, curiously, involving pictures of Diana and Actaeon) do two of them [the most popular visual subjects] recur together. In no case do three subjects recur in combination.” Ling has extraordinary insights into Roman domestic decoration, but Simon, “Rappresentazioni mitologische,” sees more significance in these mythological frescoes. Ling compares single rooms, triclinia, but Spinazzola had already productively compared the decorative programs of three entire houses. Also important: Eleanor Leach, “Satyrs and Spectators: Reflections of Theatrical 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 parietale antica; Bologna: University Press, 1997), 81–84 and 335, esp. 83–84. See Balch, “Paul’s Portrait,” color plate 11, for the domestic fresco, and compare the above discussion of four couples represented in the small mosaic panels from Maison A du terrain Jilani Guirot in the museum in El Jem, Tunisia, including Alpheus, god of a river, attacking the nymph Arethusa (see Figs. 8.1–2). See Luciana Jacobelli, Gladiators at Pompeii (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003). Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, “‘Sic erimus cuncti …’ The Skeleton in Greco-Roman Art,” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 101 (1986): 185–255.

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Third, Endymion/Narcissus is often represented in a larger mythological context. Romans were fascinated by Greek myths,70 which we have seen above in the Casa del Sacello Iliaco, in the Casa di D. Octavius Quartio, and in a different way in the Temple of Isis. Homer’s narratives provide crucial aspects of the ideological context for the artistic programs in both houses, interpreted by the philosopher meditating on the cosmos and history in the House of the Sacello Iliaco, by a priest of Isis in the House of Octavius Quartio, and by visual representations of the tragic suffering of Io (see Aeschylus, Promytheus Bound 561–886) in the Temple of Isis. Not only the visual representation of death, but larger mythical narratives as well as philosophers and priests visually accompany Endymion, so that it is perhaps not surprising that early Christians reinterpreted and visually represented a selection of such themes in the catacombs. I add an observation on the domestic iconography of Endymion: contrary to Gabelmann,71 he is not always represented with one arm above his head. He is portrayed four times in Pompeian domus72 in a pose with his arms down at his side, e.g., both frescoes in the House of the Dioscuri73 in one of the two frescoes in the House of the Ara Mas-

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Bettina Bergmann, “The Roman House as Memory Theater: The House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii,” Art Bulletin 76, no. 2 (1994): 225–56, at 249: “In the Roman World, [Greek] tragic myth pervaded the very heart of family life, the domus.” T.B.L. Webster, Hellenistic Poetry and Art (London: Methuen, 1964), chap. XI: Italian Epilogue. Gabelmann, “Endymion,” 3.1, 742: “Jonah is not an exact copy of Endymion’s body type. He does, like Endymion (and other reclining figures), stretch one hand over his head; the other arm, however, is stretched out to his side. The figure of Jonah, therefore, is original, related somewhat to older sources (including the reclining Dionysus)” (my translation). Gabelmann’s conclusion assumes that both figures have canonical forms, e.g., that both of them have an arm over their head. At Isola Sacra, on the contrary, Endymion is visually represented with both arms down; and in the El Jem mosaic panel (see Figs. 8.1–2), his left arm hangs down at his side, the pose Gabelmann ascribes to Jonah. Artists’ portrayals both of Endymion and of Jonah show parallel variations, so that some representations of Endymion are quite similar to some of Jonah. Herculaneum also has a plump Endymion in the pose with both arms down at 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. PPM 4: 894, fig. 65, and 904, fig. 83.

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sima,74 as well as in House IX 2,10.75 In the House of the Citarista, his left arm hangs straight down.76 The artists of Tomb 87 at Isola Sacra around 140 C.E. constructed Endymion’s pose with both arms down. These variations in the position of Endymion’s/Jonah’s arms also occur in the catacombs of slightly later date. Finally, on method I pose questions to Zimmerman. When art historians interpret the Casa del Criptoportico and the Casa del Sacello Iliaco, they quote Homer and Vergil. Neither artistic program is a simple interpretation of Homer: the former concludes with the flight of Aeneas from Troy, which was not the climax of the Homeric epic. The artistic program is a visual, Roman reinterpretation of the tradition. When art historians interpret the House of Octavius Quartio with its representation of the Nile River in the garden, they quote Plutarch and would have difficulties without his text, although Plutarch gives a Middle Platonic reinterpretation that was not accepted by orthodox priests of Isis in Egypt. When art historians interpret frescoes of Pyramus and Thisbe, whether in Tomb 87 at Isola Sacra or above the biclinium in the House of Octavius Quartio, they quote Ovid.77 Ovid is not sufficient: the visual tradition interprets an Oriental fable,78 so that this visual representation too is a reinterpretation. It is just as legitimate to quote Biblical texts when viewing Christian paintings in the catacombs as it is to cite Homer, Vergil, Ovid, and Plutarch when interpreting frescoes in Pompeii. The point has been made repeatedly and well that catacomb paintings do not simply interpret the Biblical text; visual representations in the catacombs are reinterpretations that may be in significant tension with the Biblical text. The relation between our eyes as sources for the rational analysis of a text and our eyes as sources for the appreciation of beauty is not simple, certainly not univocal, but also not totally unrelated. 74 75 76 77

78

PPM 5: 876, fig. 37. PPM 8: 1096, fig. 6. PPM 1: 128, fig. 19; the upper part of the fresco has disappeared. Ludwig Curtius, Die Wandmalerei Pompejis: Eine Einführung in ihr Verständnis (Leipzig, 1929; repr., New York: Georg Olms, 1960, 1972), 44, 46, observed that Ovid is the most beloved poet in Pompeian art. He completed his Metamorphoses before his exile in 8 C.E. See Simon, “Rappresentazioni mitologische,” on Homer, Vergil, and Ovid in Pompeian art. Also important: Christopher M. Dawson, Romano-Campanian Mythological Landscape Painting (Yale Classical Studies 9; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944; repr., Rome: “L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1965), chap. VI on Euripides and Ovid. De Vos, “Casa di D. Octavius Quartio,” 105, fig. 94.

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Jonah as Endymion in Christian Catacombs and among African Fish in the Earliest Remaining Mosaic in a Christian Church (Aquileia) Christians followed Etruscans, Sabines, and Romans in burying their dead in hypogea (underground burial chambers).79 The first burials in the first decades of the third century lacked minimal furnishings or any form of epitaph, and when the latter appear, they often consist only of the name of the deceased, an “archaic laconism.”80 They began to add the date of deposition in the grave, which often corresponded with the date of death, important since it represented the date of passage to new life, although it had been omitted earlier because it was considered an inauspicious, bad omen.81 This extreme simplicity continued for half a century, but Fiocchi Nicolai82 and Reekmans83 observe that there are some texts and decorations from the first half of that century in the Crypt of Lucina84 (near Callisto), in “Area I” of Callisto,85 of Pricilla,86 of Calepodia where Callistus was buried in 222, of the Cu79

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Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, Strutture funerarie ed edifici di culto paleocristiani di Roma dal IV al VI secolo (Studi e Ricerche 3, Pontificia Commissione di Archeologia Sacra; Vatican City: Istituto Grafico Editoriale Romano, 2001), 18–19. Bisconti, “Roman Catacombs,” 76. Danilo Mazzoleni, “Inscriptions in Roman Catacombs,” in Christian Catacombs of Rome, 148: “a majority of the tombs still intact do not have any inscription, whereas a certain number of the tombs have only small objects of every type fixed into the closing mortar.” On these small objects see 76, 79, 152–53, e.g., fig. 153 of a child’s small ivory doll. Mazzoleni, “Inscriptions” 149. 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). Louis Reekmans, “La chronologie de la peinture paléochrétienne: notes et réflexions” in Miscellanea in onore di Luciano de Bruyne e Antonio Ferrua, S.J. (vol. 2; Vatican City: PIAC, 1972), 278. Wilpert, pls. 24s; 26.1; 27.1; 28; 29.1; Callisto 1 & 2 with Jonah. See Louis Reekmans, “La Chronologie,” 271–91. He lists (276) six styles that developed after Pompeii, based on Wirth, Römische Wandmalerei; also Dorigo, Late Roman Painting 119–20. The standard form of locating and citing these paintings was developed by Aldo Nestori, Repertorio topografico delle pitture delle catacombe romane (rev. ed.; Roma sotterranea cristiana 5; Vatican City: PIAC, 1993). Wilpert, pls. 88s; 90.1. Ipogeo degli Acili: Wilpert, pls. 8.2, 13s, 15.1, 16; also the Capella greca: Wilpert, 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

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bicle of Urania in Pretestato,87 of Domitilla in the region named after the Flavii Aurelii “A,”88 and in the catacomb of Novatianus, seemingly named after the martyr himself who was killed in 257–258.89 I will give one example of an early visual representation of Jonah and then some examples from later catacombs. Among the earliest visual representations in Christian catacombs named by Fiocchi Nicolai is one of Jonah in the Crypt of Lucina, to be dated early in the third or perhaps to the mid-third century,90 an impressionistic, reddish-brown Jonah. A burial chamber in the catacomb of Callisto, 21, is named for the Good Shepherd in the center of the domed vault.91 Two concentric circles around the Good Shepherd, the inner one a green line, the outer one red, outline the vault. Painted at the edge of the second, red circle is another impressionistic, reddish-brown Jonah resting. I mention two or three more Jonahs because they are different or amusing. Marcellinus and Peter 39 and 69 represent the sea monster expelling 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

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90 91 92

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dating (cited in n. 25) 50 years later. Klaus-Dieter Dorsch and Hans Reinhard Seeliger, Römische Katakombenmalereien im Spiegel des Photoarchivs Parker. Dokumentation von Zusstand und Erhaltung 1864–1994 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2000), 161 with figs. 31–32. Wilpert, pl. 34 exhibits only the top of the Jonah picture, perhaps two sailors and a sail. Wilpert, pl. 1–5; 6.1; 7.1, 3, 4; 8.1. Letizia Pani Ermini, “L’ipogeo detto dei Flavi in Domitilla,” Miscellanea in onore di Enrico Josi (vol. 4; RACrist 45; Vatican City: PIAC, 1969), 119–73 and Miscellanea in onore di Luciano de Bruyne e Antonio Ferrua, S.J (vol. I; RACrist 48; Vatican City: Ponticio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1972), 235–69. Also Ivana Della Portella, Subterranean Rome (Cologne: Könemann, 2000), 212–15. Mazzoleni, “Inscriptions,” 152; Fiocchi Nicolai, Strutture 21. Novaziano is not in Wilpert or Nestori. See U. M. Fasola and P. Testini, “I cimiteri cristiani,” in Atti del IX congresso internazionale di archeologia cristiana (Roma, 21–27 settembre 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 representations. See n. 84 citing Wilpert, pl. 26.1. Wilpert, pl. 38; Fiocchi Nicolai, Strutture, pl. Vb. 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. Wilpert, pl. 109.1.

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robe, and he is thrown overboard facing the viewer, so that he looks out 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 exceptionally long sea monster and a small Jonah. In Giordani 6,96 the ketos has a thin tail, but a huge mouth/head with large, sharp teeth! The catacomb of Marcellinus and Peter has a long series of Jonah representations,97 but the catacomb of Commodilla has none.98 I do not see Endymion in the earliest example of Jonah in Christian catacombs, the one in the Crypt of Lucina, but not for the reason given by Gabelmann. Bisconti’s description of the transition in the late Antonine and the mature Severan periods, the time of the earliest visual representations in Christian catacombs, from the fourth, architectural Pompeian style to the red and green linear, illusionistic style that involved dematerialisation and simplification fits the style of this early Jonah without need for further explanation. There seems to have been a later assimilation in catacomb painting of Jonah to Endymion, a Hellenization / Romanization of the figure, towards portraying Jonah, nude with a beautiful body and one hand above his head, by artists who were accustomed to representing Endymion in Roman domestic as well as sepulchral contexts in several media. The catacomb artists had Christian patrons, Romans who valued (also the beauty of) this image whether in contexts of the living or of the dead.

94 95 96 97

98

Ibid., pl. 109. Ibid., pl. 122. Ibid., pl. 189.1. 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 Nicolai, Strutture, color pl. IXa. See Antonio Ferrua, The Unknown Catacomb: A Unique Discovery of Early Christian Art (New Lanark, Scotland: Geddes & Grosset, 1991), figs. 33, 35, 37, 71–73 and H. Gregory Snyder, “Pictures in Dialogue: A Viewer-Centered Approach to the Hypogeum on Via Dino Compagni,” JECS 13, no. 3 (2005): 349–86, 362–63 on Jonah. Johannnes Georg Deckers, Gabriele Mietke, and Albrecht Weiland, Die Katakombe “Commodilla”: Repertorium der Malereien mit einem Beitrag zu Geschichte und Topographie von Carlo Carletti (3 vols.; Roma sotterranea cristiana 10; Vatican City: PIAC, 1994).

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The Mosaic Pavement of Jonah among African Fish in the Early Christian Basilica in Aquileia Finally, Jonah moved out of the catacombs for the dead into one of the earliest churches that remains to us, perhaps not so far from the function of the sacellum (“a room set apart for the service of the domestic cult and especially equipped for that purpose”) in the House of the Sacello Iliaco. Soon after 311 when Galarius declared being Christian legal, that is, between 313 and 319–320, bishop Theodore constructed a new house of prayer in Aquileia (northeastern Italy), just as bishop Paulinus constructed a basilica at Tyre in Syria, the latter eulogized by Eusebius.99 Other than the house church at Dura-Europos, these two basilicas contain some of the earliest ecclesial visual representations we know outside sepulchral contexts. Nothing remains of the marble mosaic pavement in Tyre, but visitors may still see the mosaic pavement in Aquileia, which divides the nave into four horizontal sections.100 The fourth section across the entire width of the nave and closest to the apse is a marine scene, which has fishermen, some of whom are represented as cupids, dozens of fish, an inscription, and our three episodes of Jonah: (1) thrown overboard,101 (2) ejected by the sea monster, and (3) reclining/resting under the gourd plant, all three times nude right under the altar.102 99

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Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 10.4.2–72, the description at 10.4.37–45, the mosaic pavement 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 e V secolo, omaggio a Mario Mirabella Roberti (ed. Gino Bandelli; AAAd 47; Trieste: Editreg SRL, 2000), 247–71, with 23 figs, here figs. 1–3. Luisa Bertacchi, Basilica, museo e scavi – Aquileia (Itinerari dei musei, gallerie, scavi e monumenti d’Italia n.s. 25; Rome: Istituto poligrafico e zecca dello stato, 1994), fig. 71 for the four sections. See G. Foerster, “The Story of Jonah on the Mosaic Pavement of a Church at Beth Govrin (Israel),” Atti del IX Congresso internazionale di archeologia cristiana, Roma 21–27 Settembre 1975 (SAC 32; Vatican City: PIAC 1978), 2.289–94 with 3 figs., from the fifth or sixth century C.E. The first of these, Jonah thrown overboard, visually presents three fishermen in a boat. The one on the viewers’ left, a robed orante (figure praying with both arms lifted), is a late restoration. See Luisa Bertacchi, “I ritratti nei mosaici di Aquileia,”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. Graziano Marini and Enzo Andrian, I mosaici della basilica di Aquileia (Fondazione società per la conservazione della basilica di Aquileia; Villanova

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Thelamon argues that, influenced by African art, this ecclesiastical mosaic reproduces bucolic scenes from Roman houses of the living (de la maison des vivants) that are combined with images of Jonah from early Christian sepulchral art.103 Thelamon publishes a marine mosaic from a domus in Sousse, Tunisia,104 which represents four boats of fishermen using lines and a net, two men in each boat, among scores of various kinds of smaller and larger marine life. The mosaic from La Chebba in the Bardo Museum in Tunis105 is comparable, as is the Triumph of Neptune from Utique, Tunisia.106 I add two more magnificent examples from Thuburbo Majus: the Maison du Char de Vénus, three men fishing in a boat, plus more than seventy kinds of marine life;107 and the Maison de Bacchus et Ariane, three fishermen in a boat, another fishing from a rock on the shore, with representations of nearly forty fish.108 Centuries earlier, there is an extraordinary marine mosaic in the House of the Faun, Pompeii,109 also influenced by Afri-

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del Ghebbo (RO): Ciscra, 2003), 106–108, fold-out plate. See Yves-Marie Duval, “Jonas à Aquilée: de la mosïque de la Theodoriana sud aux textes du Jérome, Rufin, Chromache?” in Aquileia romana e cristiana fra II e V secolo, omaggio a Mario Mirabella Roberti (ed. Gino Bandelli, AAAd 47; Trieste: Editreg SRL, 2000), 273–96. 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 Federico Guidobaldi, “La produzione di mosaici e sectilia pavimentali e parietali,” vol. 1, 275–81 in Christiana Loca (cited in n. 24). Thelamon, “Jonas,” fig. 17; from Gilles Mermet, Michèle Blanchard-Lemée, Mongi Enneifer, Hédi Slim, and L. Slim, Sols de l’Afrique romaine: mosaiques de 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). Mermet, Sols de l’Afrique romaine, 122, fig. 82. Cécile Duliere, Utique, mosaiques in situ en dehors des insulae I-II-III (eds. Margaret A. Alexander et Mongi Ennaifer; vol. 1, fascicule. 2, CMT; Tunis 1974), plates XXXIII–XXXV, the Maison de Caton: beside Neptune there are cupids riding fish, as well as Venus in one boat and fishermen in others. Margaret A. Alexander, Aïcha Ben Abed Ben Khader, David Soren, Marie Spiro, Région de Zaghouan. Thuburbo Majus, région est, (vol. 2, fascicule 4; CMT; Tunis, 1994), plate XXXIV. Ibid., plate XXV. 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 references. See David S. Reese, “Fish: Evidence from Specimens, Mosaics, Wall-

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can (Alexandrian) styles. Ovid, “On Sea Fishing,”110 and Oppian, “On Fishing”111 wrote of such scenes.

Patristic (Literary) Interpretations of Jonah Josef Engemann112 imagines simple Christians (einfache Christen), who were not theologians (keine Theologen), creating a people’s art (Volkskunst) in the catacombs. Over against these simple folk he sets the patristic “theologians” who wrote “literature.” But this polarity is problematic; for example, did these “simple folk” leave the inscriptions? Were the Christians buried in marble sarcophagi decorated by Jonah scenes “simple”? In the catacombs Biblical scenes occur in arcosolia for the elite (see n. 6); were all these simple folk? Such a dismissal of contemporary literature would make interpreting Endymion in Pompeii impossible, and as argued above, art historians cite Homer and Ovid when commenting on many frescoes in Pompeii. Plutarch is necessary for understanding imagery of the Isis cult. Therefore, I will cite New Testament and patristic texts as sources that suggest at least some of the range of meanings early Christians would have seen in the Jonah 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

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paintings, and Roman Authors,” 274–92 in Natural History of Pompeii (cited in n. 65). Ovid, The Art of Love and Other Poems (J. H. Mozley, LCL), 309–21, probably written during the poet’s exile on the Black Sea (8–17 C.E.). Oppian of Cilicia, “Fishing,” (A. W. Mair, LCL); Mair dates the work to 171 or 173 C.E. See Athenaeus, Deipnosophists I.13, dated c. 200 C.E. Engemann, “Bibliche Themen.” Also Theodor Klausner, “Erwägungen zur Entstehung der altchristlichen Kunst,” Zeitschrift für kirchen Geschichte 76 (1965): 8, n. 35. For critique of this dualist or bipolar, plebeian vs. patrician method of interpretation, see Tonio Hölscher, The Language of Images in Roman Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2004, translation of the German 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.” Related literature: Eduard Strommel, “Zum Problem der frühchristlichen Jonasdarstellungen,” JAC 1 (1958): 112–15. Jean Allenbach, “La figure de Jonas dans les textes préconstantiniens ou l’histoire de l’exégèse au secours de l’iconographie,” in La Bible et les Pères. Colloque de Strasbourg (1er-3 octobre 1969) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971), 97–112. Yves-Marie Duval, 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 days and nights in the heart of the earth. Matthew (12:41), not Luke, adds that the Ninevites repented, but that those of “this generation” have not, even though something greater than Jonah is here. Verses 38–40 parallel Jonah in the whale with Christ in the earth, which might relate later to the second visual representation in the Jonah series. Verse 41 emphasizes repentance. Matthew’s second reference (16:1–4; compare Mark 8:11–12 without Jonah) follows a series of Jesus’ miracles, but portrays the Pharisees and Sadducees still asking for a “sign.” Matthew has Jesus respond that no sign will be given except the sign of Jonah. Some patristic authors emphasize both the call for repentance and Christ’s passion and resurrection, as Matthew had done (Justin, Dial. 107–108;114 Tertullian, Pud. 10). Addressed to Trypho, Justin’s call for repentance urges conversion (compare Kerygmata Petrou 32.3), but Tertillian’s focus on repentance involves a dispute internal to the church. Origen (Comm. Matt. 12.3) can focus his interpretation exclusively on Christ’s resurrection; the Acts of Paul argues against skeptics that Jonah, swallowed three days and three nights by a whale, means that he “will raise up you who have believed in Christ Jesus, as he himself rose up.”115 Several patristic authors, however, focus on the proclamation 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 describes Jonah as praying, “not having despaired of being heard from out of the belly of the whale that had swallowed him.”116 The other assumes the love of monsters in Roman visual representations: after

114

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et influence du Commentaire sur Jonas de saint Jérome (2 vols; Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1973). Ernst Dassmann, Sündenvergebung durch Taufe, Busse und 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. Fabrizio Bisconti; Vatican City: PIAC, 2000), 191–93. Justin’s text reflects the difference between the Septuagint (three days for Nineveh to repent) and the Hebrew/Masoretic text (forty days to repent) of Jonah 3:4. It takes three days to walk across Nineveh (3:3)! E. Hennecke and W. Schneemelcher, eds., New Testament Apocrypha, (2 vols.; Philadelphia Pa.: Westminster, 1963–1989) 2.377. 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 scorpions, he mentions the beast “symbolized by the whale that swallowed Jonas.”117 Irenaeus emphasizes the parallel to the Jonah event of death and believers’ (not Christ’s) hope of resurrection. The Word accomplished the plan of salvation “that man, receiving an unhoped-for salvation from God, might rise from the dead, and glorify God, and repeat that word which was uttered in prophecy by Jonah: ‘I cried by reason of mine affliction to the Lord my God, and He heard me out of the belly of hell.’”118 Tertullian, like Origen, De oratione, refers to the fish, which “symbolizes especially the men who are wildly opposed to the Christian name.” In the same work he argues for a literal resurrection: “from this perfection of our restored bodies will flow the consciousness of undisturbed joy and peace.” “For to borrow the apostle’s phrase [1 Cor 10:6]: these were ‘figures for ourselves.’”119 This focus on believers’ resurrection is close to Irenaeus (Adv. haer. III.20). The focus on “undisturbed joy and peace” corresponds to bucolic themes in the art. Tertullian can appeal to Jonah in order to urge his Christian readers not to flee from the Lord. Like the prophet, they will be unable either to find death or to escape from God (Fug. 10). Most intriguing for this paper, however, is Tertullian’s discussion of the location of the soul after death: Christ spent three days in the heart of the earth, he journeyed to Hades, Christ sits at the Father’s right hand, some are in the “bosom of Abraham,” and Paul describes believers 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-loving worthies of Plato? … or around the moon with the Endymions of the Stoics? No, but in Paradise …”120 All the interpretations detailed above might occur to Roman Christian viewers of Endymion/Jonah in the catacombs, but this final reference indicates the connection in Tertullian’s Roman mind between Endymion (in the catacombs = Jonah) and eschatology.

Ibid., 13.4. 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. 117 118

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Conclusions Death was visible in Roman domestic culture. The gap between houses and graves was not great: the art of the living was employed in tombs for the dead. Scenes of death and violence that Roman patrons asked artists to paint on their domestic walls and had artisans figure in mosaics on their floors and sculpt in marble, we see in movies and on the evening news from a greater distance. Roman and contemporary Western 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 Christians. This figure could be attached to other myths, e.g., not only to Narcissus, Pyramus and Thisbe, but also to Homeric myths of death and violence, to a decorative scheme in the Temple of Isis where Osiris’s death was symbolized, as well as to early Christian experiences of death and martyrdom. Visually accompanying Endymion, we observe the transition from Homeric myths to myths of Isis and Osiris, then to the myths of early Judaism and Christianity, from Achilles, Priam, Aeneas, Hercules and Hera visually represented in the House of the Sacello Iliaco and the House of Octavius Quartio, as well as from the myths of Isis/Io/Osiris in the Temple in Pompeii and again in the House of Octavius Quartio, to Noah, Job, Daniel, Jonah, Mary, and Jesus in the catacombs. As Northern Europeans move in the opposite direction, rejecting Christian myths and rituals, it is an important moment to reflect on the meaning of such historic transitions.122

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However, see Keith Hopkins, Death and Renewal: Sociological Studies in Roman History (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1983), chaps. 1 and 4. I express enthusiastic appreciation to Laurie Brink for her project, and to Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Director of the British School in Rome, both for use of that great library and for his critique of this paper, which, of course, does not constitute agreement with the revised version. Also indispensable for this research were two other libraries in Rome, those of the German Archaeological Institute and of the Pontifical Institute for Christian Archaeology.

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Looking for Abercius

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Chapter 9 Looking for Abercius: Reimagining Contexts of Interpretation of 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 kingdom 8 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]Nisibis 11 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 fountain 14 utterly huge and pure, which a holy virgin grasped

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My provisional translation (the textual, lexical, and interpretive decisions involved are legion, and I cannot enter into or defend them all in this context), from the text of R. Merkelbach, “Grabepigramm und Vita des Bischofs Aberkios von Hierapolis,” Epigraphica Anatolia 28 (1997): 125–39, 126, in consultation with the critical text of G. Lüdtke and Th. Nissen, eds., Abercii Titulus Sepulcralis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1910), 36–43, and W. Wischmeyer, “Die Aberkiosinschrift als Grabepigramm,” JAC 23 (1980): 22–47. The one exception is in line 2, as noted. Here I follow Wischmeyer, “Aberkiosinschrift,” 24–25: φ [0 ], “visible,” or “illustrious,” as on the Alexander stele, for Merkelbach’s reading of  ) %, following the literary lives (the latter would be translated: “so that when the time comes I might have a place of deposition for my body here”). “  [ der Stein,  ' « die Handschriften,  [& Preger (im kritischen Apparat),  [&« Paton,  [« Lightfoot und die russische Übersetzung,  [«] Grégoire” (Merkelbach, “Grabepigramm,” 127). Another apparent lacuna. The literary traditions read   , “within.”

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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 treasury 22 and 1000 gold pieces in my good home-city, Hieropolis.

Abercius’s story, like mine in search of him, begins and ends and begins anew with travel, centrally to and from Rome. I pursued him once in Asia Minor (Turkey), but my itinerary unfortunately included the wrong Hierapolis (not Hieropolis),7 missed his epigone in Istanbul (the Istanbul Archaeological Museum was closed),8 and found him in Rome at the Museo Pio Cristiano (treading gingerly over a freshly varnished floor in order to meet my objective). The moment of actual encounter was furtive, photographically preoccupied, and much too brief. Yet never to be forgotten. But it was at the same time (and in memory since then) visually confusing, especially from the effect produced by the reconstructed bare block standing to the left of the original fragments, far more arresting, in terms of sheer real-estate, than the two nubs remaining from Abercius’s actual – in its day rather impressive – effort to defy the finality of 5

6 7

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Word play between   1« as “useful” and “Christ” in Christian sources goes back at least to Paul’s letter to Philemon 11 (see W. Tabbernee, “Christian Inscriptions from Phrygia,” NewDocs 3 [1983]:128–39, 129). The itacism is clear in many of the famous “Christians for Christians” burial inscriptions in Asia Minor, in which the spelling X   1« is more common than X   1« (see G. J. Johnson, Early-Christian Epitaphs from Anatolia [Texts and Translations 35; Early Christian Literature Series 8; Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1995], 46 n.5 and many examples [including the plate on p. xiii]). Or “here” (2& ). 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 placed here, because he purportedly performed a famous miracle involving spontaneous eruption of hot fountains. After his famous finds, Ramsay in the late nineteenth century argued, convincingly to most, that this reflected common confusion between the names Hierapolis and Hieropolis. The former, famous as the home of Papias, is today Pammukale; the latter Koçhisar, in the Phrygian Pentapolis (which includes Kelendres). Hieropolis also had hot springs, as Ramsay 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. See below on the funerary stele of Alexander.

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death by depositing his body well (see Figs. 9.1 and 9.2). Having made my way to Abercius through row upon row of early Christian sarcophagi, in which third- and fourth-century Christians chose to go to death’s sleep wrapped in intricately detailed carvings of their sacred scriptures, Abercius’s tomb monument as reconstructed was an austere, lettered front virtually devoid of ornament, figure, or image. And where was Abercius? How could this stark monolith stand sentry over a body? It was such a contrast with the morning I had spent in the Vatican car park necropolis, which, even in modern restoration, smelled of mold and death, decay and dirt, and brought me face to face with the uncompromisable reality of what we were doing on our scholarly tour of Roman, Jewish, and Christian burials when I almost stepped on two tiles propped up like playing cards, with the ulna of a departed human person sticking vulnerably out beyond the shelter of its humble tent. Not so with Abercius; here death was boneless, clean, marked with sharp lines, a neat stone, and stunningly important verbal content. EI3 45MHN, “to Rome,” the first two words of the first fragment of the original inscription still proudly proclaimed into the space in the renovated gallery in the Pio Cristiano under a natural skylight. A double entendre, indeed. The historical Abercius had made the decision to put the capstone on his life by composing an epitaph that devoted attention, in stunning 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 resplendent seal.” He says he had set up his monument while still alive, thus inaugurating a series of concentric rings of interpretation and recontextualizations of his epitaph that continued with his entombment and extend to the present day. The pivotal events that dragged Abercius into the modern world and eventually back to Rome constitute an almost unbelievable saga.9 In May of 1881 in Kelendres (=Karadirek) in the Pentapolis region of central Turkey, the Scottish archaeologist 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 Archaeology of Early Christianity: A History (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 1996), 95–98.

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9.1. Abercius monument: original fragments; Museo Pio Cristiano. (author’s photo)

9.2. Abercius monument: “reconstruction”; Museo Pio Cristiano. (author’s photo)

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year.10 Almost immediately Giovanni Battista de Rossi and Louis Duchesne recognized that this inscription seemed to incorporate part of the funerary inscription of Abercius, as found in the late antique vita Abercii.11 A scant two years later on a June morning after breakfast Ramsay and his companion, the American J. R. S. Sterrett, found two fragments of Abercius’s own epitaph in the ruins of a bath house on 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 the Catholic scholars centered in Rome (de Rossi, Duchesne, Wilpert),12 joined by Ramsay, of course, and some other Protestants in the United

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Alexander, the son of Antonius, apparently reused part of Abercius’s famous inscription (lines 1–3 and 20–22) for himself. This funerary altar, found by Ramsay in 1881, dates to 216 C.E. and is now housed in Istanbul (see G. Mendel, Musées impériaux ottomans, Catalogues des sculptures grecques, romains et byzantines, vol. 2 [Constantinople: Musée impérial, 1914] #778, p. 569–70). Thanks to the Arkeoloji Müzesi and the agency of Ms. Betul Avci, doctoral student at the University of Chicago, photographs of this stele are published here for the first time (see Figs. 9.9–10). W. M. Ramsay, “Les trois villes Phrygiennes: Brouzos, Hieropolis et Otrous,” BCH 6 (1882): 503–30; G. B. de Rossi, “Un’iscrizione greca novellamente scoperta nella Frigia paragonata col celebre epitafio metrico d’Abercio,” BACrist ser. 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 of the Alexander stele and later Abercius fragments did not just ignite controversy, but they entered into one already under way about the historical reliability of the vita Abercii’s transcribed epitaph, which Cardinal Pitra had defended against doubters (see A. Abel, “Etude sur l’inscription d’Abercius,” Byzantion 3 [1926]: 321– 411, with full bibliography). G. B. de Rossi, Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae, vol. 2, pt. 1 (Rome: Libraria pontificia, 1888), xii–xxi; idem, “Il cippo sepolcrale di Abercio collocato nel museo Lateranense,” BACrist ser 5.4 (1894): 65–69; L. Duchesne, “L’épitaphe d’Abercius,” Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire 15 (1895): 155–82; J. Wilpert, Fractio Panis: die älteste Darstellung des eucharistischen Opfers in der “cappella Greca” (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1895), 105–106. On the controversy, see Frend, Archaeology, 96: “a first-class row between the Catholic supporters of a Christian-universalist interpretation of the inscription … and a scepticism represented largely by the German Protestant scholars in Berlin”; for full references see Wischmeyer, “Aberkiosinschrift,” 22, n. 4. The scholarship produced on the “Abercius inscription” is enormous, and of great interest in itself for the history of the emergence of Christian archaeology, regional and confessional alliances, and forms of scholarly rhetoric. For literature to 1926, see Abel, “Etude sur l’inscription d’Abercius,” 406–11.

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Kingdom and Germany,13 who championed its Christian nature, seeing it further as a witness to the centrality of Rome-based Christian orthodoxy and orthopraxy influencing the east already by the late second century. On the other side were several prominent German Protestant scholars who forthrightly questioned the Christian identity of the bearer of the inscription: Ficker argued that he was a priest of Attis and Cybele, the great Harnack that he was a pagan-Christian syncretist, and Dieterich that Abercius was a Phrygian delegate to the imperially sponsored festival of Elagabalus in Rome between 218–222.14 Now in our day (some 1,800 years after Abercius, and 124 after Ramsay), Abercius is again, so to speak, at rest: the heated debate has died down, virtually no scholars of any stripe dispute that the inscription is “Christian,”15 and it is even honorifically presented as the earliest or one of the earliest extant Christian inscriptions (pre 216).16 As 13

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Other influential Protestant scholars (in addition to Ramsay), who regarded the Abercius inscription as Christian include such greats as Th. Zahn, Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons und der altkirchlichen Literatur, pt. 5 (Erlangen/Leipzig: Deichert, 1893), 57–99; F. J. Dölger, Der heilige Fisch in 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. G. Ficker, “Der heidnische Charakter der Abercius-Inschrift,” Sitzungsberichte der königlich preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (1894): 87–112, an address 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). The tide among Protestant scholars can be seen to have definitively turned in such 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, “Aberkiosinschrift,” 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 dispute over the Christianity of the Abercius inscription … is over” (p. 125). More recently, in addition to the Merkelbach listing (note 1) see R. A. Kearsley, “The Epitaph of Aberkios: The Earliest Christian Inscription?” NewDocs 6 (1992): 177–81; G. Koch, “Aberkiosinschrift,” RGG4 l:62–63: “Die A. muß zwar christlich sein …” 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 zum Tauros [vol. 3 of Steinepigramme aus dem griechischen Osten; Munich and Leipzig: Saur, 2001] 182–185 (a listing which largely follows Merkelbach, “Grabepigramme”); in reference works see, e.g., E. Ferguson, “Abercius,” in idem,

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for the fate of the original stone, Ramsay initially gave one fragment to the Sultan Abdul-Hamid and kept custody of the other, but eventually, through the intercessions of de Rossi, in 1892 arranged for both fragments ironically to make their way, like their honoree had earlier, to Rome, as gifts to Pope Leo XIII (“provvidamente riuniti,” as Margherita Guarducci puts it).17 They have been housed since then in the Vatican’s Lateran Museum (now the Pio Cristiano), where I saw them for a fleeting few minutes on the afternoon of June 17, 2004. My reflections on my encounters with Abercius and his burial stone, especially within the context of viewing remains of Roman and Christian burials in Rome and Tunisia (and on earlier trips in Greece, Asia Minor, and the Middle East) are conditioned by four insights: (1) the crucial importance of context (literary, historical, physical, artistic, etc.) to interpretation; (2) the composite semiotics of funerary monuments which cannot be reduced to the words of their inscriptions;18 (3) the slow emergence of Christian material culture in the first few centuries, and the variability in structures of meaning throughout material culture generally, which conditions our ability to delimit definitively the cultural resonances of any particular artifact; and (4) the realization that necropoleis, no less than the cities of the living they co-inhabit (whether intramural or extramural), are not static, but continually shifting sites. In the case of Abercius’s funerary monument, these gen-

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ed., Encyclopedia of Early Christianity (2nd ed.; New York: Garland, 1999), 5 (“earliest extant datable Christian inscription”); Kearsley, “Epitaph of Aberkios,” 181: “widely recognized as the earliest datable epitaph which attempts to register Christian belief”; L. H. Kant, “Earliest Christian Inscription: Bishop Avercius’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 accrued a royal epithet (“epitaphium christianarum inscriptionum dicitur regina” [A. Ferrua and D. Balboni, “Epitaphium Abercii,” Latinitas 47 (1999): 153–157, 157], as inaugurated by de Rossi, “Il cippo sepolcrale di Abercio,” 65). M. Guarducci, Epigrafi sacre pagane e cristiane (vol. 4 of Epigrafia greca; Rome: Libreria dello stato, 1978), 377–88, 380. J. Bodel, “Epigraphy and the Ancient Historian,” in idem, ed., Epigraphic Evidence: 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 integral elements of the monuments they accompanied, inscribed texts from an early date contributed to a complex semiological message of which their contents constituted only a part.”

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eral insights have led me to recognize that we should not expect that in antiquity, any less than in the last century or so, it had a single, unaltered or clear meaning (“pagan,” “syncretistic,” or Christian, and if so, “crypto-Christian” or “phanero-Christian”19), but that from the time of its construction Abercius’s monument was open to a plurality of interpretations and reinterpretations, with various voices seeking to steer audiences to single authoritative and definitive interpretations. The first such voice was Abercius himself, who in stages had composed an epigram sufficiently, and presumably intentionally ambiguous even to warrant the verbal elbow to the ribs he offers to some of his viewers (“Let the one who understands these things pray for Abercius, everyone in tune” ["# ² % Κ ξ 7 #A  »« ²  ) %&1«], line 19). This expressed intent to fashion a message that could be understood by two different viewing publics (those in the know and those not) was echoed by what the late antique author of the vita Abercii had reported as a fact of reception: “the epigram was understandable and useful for those worthy of Christ, but was not able to be recognized by the unbelievers” (« ξ

$,« " X  "   λ 9φ , « &ξ $ « κ '  1   [76 (53)]).20 While this bifurcation of the viewing publics was true for a time, eventually and incrementally the two audiences merged, or one was submerged, with the Christianization of material culture between the time of the historical Abercius and the composition of the vita. Hence, the Abercius monument is a perfect example of the shift so well captured by Ja´s Elsner: “The transformation of Roman art in the third century can thus be seen as a process of the growing ritualisation of a culture increasingly towards 19

20

P. McKechnie, “Christian Grave-Inscriptions from the Familia Caesaris,” JEH 50 (1999): 427–41, 439, who applies the latter description; cf. also Wischmeyer, “The Sociology of Pre-Constantine Christianity,” 126, who takes the inscription as “perhaps the earliest natural point of access to our question of the increasing visibility and the appearance of Christianity in the late imperial period.” These terms 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 position before the public eye, to be an imperishable record of his testimony and of the message which he had to deliver to mankind in favour of the one and indivisible Church catholic, and against Montanism” (but compare the next page: “it was not possible to put forth in such a public way a statement that was overtly Chr[istian]”!). For the text-critical issue of the reading φ 0 (or φ %«, in ibid., 720) in line 2, see n. 2 above. Of course, the narrator may be reifying this line of the inscription here.

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ritual or initiate viewing and away from ‘ordinary’ viewing that predominated throughout most of the Graeco-Roman period.”21 Ironically (or just plain predictably?) the modern history of the inscription has replicated that very process of a divided viewing public eventually becoming amalgamated. The present short and quite preliminary essay seeks to enter this complex and charged history of viewing to examine the role of ambiguity in perception, by attempting to re-envision some of the earliest contextual circles in which this monument was seen, and ways in which its meaning steered. The main contention of this essay is that the task of interpretation of what is usually called “the Abercius inscription” must be reconfigured in a way that takes this dynamic of interpretation and reinterpretation better into account. We would not know about Abercius’s conspicuous funerary monument unless he had been memorialized in a literary life in the fourth or fifth century,22 from which it found its way into the Menologia (from the anonymous compiler, and also Simeon Metaphrastes) and Acta Sanctorum traditions. The tradition-historical relationship between the literary life and the documentary inscription has been the subject of lively debate, largely because the reconstruction of the epigram depends upon a critical assessment and cautious alignment of these traditions and recensions, together with the Alexander inscription.23 But the literary vita Abercii is not a neutral report about Abercius or his burial monument; the work deliberately seeks to direct the way its audiences viewed the object before them. As a dominant ring of the interpretive circle,24 we start there before turning back to the remnants of the marble stone themselves.

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Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 153. Th. Nissen, ed., S. Abercii Vita (Leipzig: Teubner, 1912); hereafter cited by chapter number, with Nissen’s page number in brackets (the translations are mine). 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. There has also been extensive debate about whether this Abercius is the same as the Avircius Marcellus mentioned by Eusebius in Hist. eccl. 5.16.3 as the person to whom an anonymous writer dedicated a treatise against the Montanists. While the text of the inscription has been pored over letter by letter, more recent scholarship has in my view paid too little attention to the literary context of the tomb monument within the vita Abercii, as I hope to illustrate below.

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The hagiographic vita of Abercius, bishop of Hieropolis in Phrygia Salutaris, commences with the announcement of mandates to sacrifice to the gods imposed by Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus (ca. 161–164).25 This requirement is resisted by our hero, who stages a nighttime counter-assault on the temple of Apollo, attacking his statue, and those of Heracles, Artemis, and Aphrodite (4 [7]). Having established the saint’s prowess as an idol-slayer, the author recounts some of his exploits as an evangelist and miracle worker. These activities aroused the attention of the devil, who approached in the form of a young woman asking for the saint’s blessing. He was promptly detected and evicted by Abercius (41 [31]). The devil then resumed his own shape and taunted Abercius, crowing that he was :1  « % &  (“the centurion of demons”),26 and hence not to be fooled with like one of those other petty demons who cause everyday illnesses. Leaping next into a   « in the crowd, he made the boy thrash about. Abercius performed the exorcism and prevailed over this demonic “centurion,” but at the moment of his exit the devil spoke a curse on Abercius that he would soon cause him to make an unwilling journey: “Soon, oh Abercius, I shall cause you to tread your way – unwillingly and involuntarily – to the city of the Romans” (42 [32]). After hurling this threat, the devil disappeared. In this case the devil’s words were indeed prophetic; however, lest it appear that the devil really were in control of history, the Lord appeared to Abercius in a dream that very night to confirm it as being his own willed plan ( ).27 Abercius was soon summoned via imperial post to Rome by the emperor and empress themselves, Marcus Aurelius and Faustina. They wished him to drive out that very same demon, which had journeyed to Rome and taken up residence in their sixteen-year-old daughter, Lucilla (44 [33]), stubbornly declaring over and over again that he would not leave that comfortable abode unless Abercius were to come from Phrygia (63 [45]). Letters from the emperor to the provincial administrators conveyed this request, to which Abercius acceded. After a forty-day journey over land and sea he ar-

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The tale says the marriage of Verus to Lucilla, which took place in Ephesus in 164, had not yet occurred. 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. This accords, of course, with the text of the inscription, line 7: « 74. χ«  < # .

Looking for Abercius

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rived, as he had forecast, in Portus, despite the wintry conditions that slowed other ships (54 [39]). Once in Rome the queen immediately led Abercius to her daughter. The demon inside her triumphantly declared: “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 hippodrome28 was selected for the contest between Abercius and the demon. The saint adjured the devil by the name of Jesus to come out of the girl without harming her; the demon asked that he not be sent out to some “wild mountain” or place unknown to him (hence enacting the typology with Mark 5 and parallels). Abercius consented to this request by substituting another: he commanded the demon to return to the 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 a keep-safe [" $ % ] to my city, Hierapolis,’ he said, ‘and to set it up near the south gate’” (63 [45]). The demon left the girl for the altar, and, after taking a consolation lap around the hippodrome (groaning under the weight of the stone), he brought the altar to Abercius’s hometown and “set it up at the previously commanded place” [  # 2 )   ' 1) ] (63 [45]). The altar was there when Abercius finally returned home after all his travels, shortly after which the Lord appeared to him in a dream and announced his imminent death and well-earned rest from all his labors. At this point we are told that “he constructed a square tomb for himself [   :) %     '  ], and the altar which at his command the demon had brought from Rome he placed above the tomb [λ μ 1 , χ   1 , " # >'' ² & $μ 0« 74.«,   #  " ], after engraving on it a divinely inspired epigram [#' ,« « μ  1  

#' ]” (76 [53]). Here in the text the narrator provides a transcription of the words of the inscription (« ,  ?«) and relates 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 Palatine” hippodrome, which would refer to that built by Domitian. Without that comment one might also easily envision the nearby circus maximus.

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it in the tomb which, as previously recounted, he had constructed for himself (