PHYSICIANS AND FUNERALS
=138. Scanty Qualifications and Training of Doctors.=--People fall
sick in Rome quite as much as in every other great center of humanity,
but the healing art has not really progressed a great deal beyond
that in Athens in the days of Hippocrates nearly five hundred years
earlier.[78] A great proportion of even the most fashionable doctors
are freedmen, and nearly all of these have Greek (or sometimes
Egyptian) names. There is no medical examination. Anybody who has made
a failure in other callings is welcome to pose as a physician and try
to extract money from the unfortunate. There are many “surgeons” and
“therapists” around the city who, a little while ago, were shoemakers,
carpenters, or smiths, and who, perhaps, keep up their old handicraft
on the side. Six months is time enough to learn a little medical jargon
while serving as “disciple” to some experienced doctor; after that, let
the invalids beware.
Under such circumstances the glory of the medical profession suffers.
Rightly did Pliny the Elder complain of doctors: “Any voluble person
has powers of life and death over us, just as though thousands of
persons did not live on without doctoring, as Rome existed for six
hundred years [before the first physicians came].” Such gentry
inevitably, if they fail at quackery, can then drift off to something
else, and very familiar is Martial’s epigram: “Diaulus has been a
surgeon and is now an undertaker. At last he’s begun to be useful to
the sick in the only way that he’s able.”
=139. Superior Class of Physicians.=--Nevertheless, the physicians
of Rome are by no means all of them charlatans. If their theories are
grossly imperfect, many of them are men of wide experience and keen
insight. A sick man able to command the best, need not give up in
despair unless his case is really complicated and difficult. Great
cures are recorded, as that of Augustus, whose life was saved in a
most critical illness by the “cold-water treatment” ordered by his
doctor, the wise freedman Antonius Musa--a cure which by saving an
all-important life affected the world’s history.
Whatever their qualifications, physicians, if not highly educated,
assuredly abound in large numbers. Every chartered city maintains
a corps of them for the free treatment of the citizens, and keeps
up public _hiatreia_--well-lighted, spacious halls for offices
and dispensaries.[79] Every cohort of the army has four physicians
attached, with superior medical officers over the larger divisions, and
camp sanitation has been worked out excellently by the Roman military
experts.
In the Imperial Court, the _archiater_ (“head physician”) is a
well-paid and very important dignitary. Between him and the miserable
slave doctors who bleed and physic their fellows in the private familia
there are any number of gradations. Most of the doctors, of course,
practice for fees, although in Rome, too, a system of free clinics and
dispensaries is coming in, with a special public physician for each of
the fourteen regions of the city.
=140. A Fashionable Doctor.=--A doctor of the superior kind is
Symmachus whom Calvus summons whenever any of his own family are
seriously ill. He has one of the most fashionable practices in Rome,
and his annual income is not much under that of Quintus Stertinus
whose fees in Claudius’s day brought him 600,000 sesterces ($24,000)
per year. A high-grade physician does not render a monthly bill. He
expects to be paid once annually--on the first of January. Besides he
counts on receiving a substantial legacy whenever a regular patient at
length escapes him and dies. Lower grade doctors, however, are less
delicate. They are charged with being greedy for unreasonable fees and
with prolonging illnesses easily curable, demanding outrageous sums for
common medicines, and taking every sordid advantage of the needs of the
sick.
[Illustration: INVALID WITH ATTENDANTS.]
Symmachus is apparently above all such _gaucheries_. He has been
trained to bear himself as a polished gentleman. His visits are long
or short according to the desires of his patients. He never blurts
out unpleasant truths and he always repeats the Hippocratic maxim,
“A cure depends on three things, the sick man, his sickness, and the
physician”; and that the physician’s business is to help the sick man
to cure himself. The result is that while his anatomical theories would
distress a later age, and some of his medicines are very crude, he
often effects excellent results especially in those cases where mental
therapeutics can avail a little.
Such a doctor possesses a set of surgical instruments quite as good
as any available in a later age until at least the time of the French
Revolution, and assuredly he knows how to use them very skillfully. He
can dull pain for operations or induce sleep by juice of mandragora or
atropin, and he can operate for cataract by distending the eye-pupil
by anagallis. Delicate surgical operations, however, he will probably
turn over to specialists. There are such surgeons who operate, no
doubt with reasonable success, for hernia and fistula, who take out
gall-stones, and deal with very dangerous fractures. There are also
lesser specialists who can remove or fill aching teeth and can banish
superfluous hair, and there is one shrewd old fellow who commands a
princely income--he can really erase the degrading marks of branding
upon slaves, after they become lordly freedmen.
=141. Medical Books and Famous Remedies.=--Symmachus affects to
be a man of professional learning. He possesses and claims to have
studied carefully the great medical treatises of Hermogenes of Smyrna
in 72 books, and that of Tiberius Claudius Menecrates in 156 books. To
impress his patients he will talk learnedly of the jangling theories
of the “Dogmatics,” and “Methodics,” “Pneumaticists,” etc., although
professing himself to be an “Eclectic.” However, his own shrewd common
sense is usually of greater avail than all his books.
A large part of a popular physician’s gains come not from regular
fees, but from supplying his patients with medicine. There are
many shops selling crude drugs in Rome but no regular prescription
pharmacists.[80] Public opinion avers that the more costly remedies are
always the best, and Symmachus does not discourage that idea too much,
although telling his select patients that cheap medicaments often are
as effective. It is often hard, however, to get pure drugs, and genuine
ingredients.[81] Even the best doctors will be deceived by oriental
drug dealers palming off false balsams, and similar commodities.
Many physicians consider it professional to keep their remedies secret,
and boast of private formulas, which they will not share with their
rivals. In Tiberius’s day there was a Paccius Antiochus who prepared
a marvellous powder, a kind of panacea for many ills. He compounded
it behind locked doors and mystified even his assistants as to its
nature; but on his death he had the decency to bequeath his formula
to the Emperor who had it deposited for inspection in all the public
libraries; and Hadrian has just done the same with some formulas left
by the great Marcellus of Side.
=142. Absurd Medicines. Theriac.=--Some of these remedies are of an
extraordinary nature and so intelligent a man as Symmachus can have no
confidence in them. Still plenty of good doctors will tell you that a
piece of hyena-skin is an excellent remedy for mad-dog bites, and that
certain very filthy substances make good poultices for swellings. The
imperial government actually employs several slaves to catch adders,
whence are derived several important medicaments; and it is claimed
that medicines to cure gall-stones must be pounded with a pestle that
contains no iron. There is no need to dwell on the absurd articles
foisted on the gullible by the quacks; pills made from dried bugs and
centipedes are among the very least obnoxious.
There is supposed to be a specific medicine for every disease, and
Symmachus’s office is crammed with little chests bearing such labels
as “_Drug from Berytus for watery eyes. Instantaneous_”; “_Ointment
for gout. Made for Proculus, imperial freedman. Safe Cure_”; “_Remedy
for scab. Tested successfully by Pamphilius during the great scab
epidemic_,” or “_Eye-salve tried by Florus on Antonia, wife of Prince
Drusus, after other doctors had nearly blinded her_.”[82] There is
also a large box of a famous compound to be used whenever diagnosis
is uncertain. _Theriac_ is a mixture of sixty-one different elements
including dried adders. Whoever takes it is sure to find at least
_one_ substance that will assist his disease; and it is prescribed by
almost every physician at the opening stages of a malady, before he can
attempt diagnosis.
=143. Fear of Poisoning. Popularity of Antidotes.=--A large part of
the doctor’s drug collection is, however, made up of _antidotes_ for
poisons. Everybody dreads being poisoned. Many peculiar deaths which
ought to be diagnosed as caused by natural illness are charged up to
venomous drugs[83] and indeed a deadly dose rather than a deadly dagger
seems a favorite means for murder. People still whisper stories of that
awful poison-vender, the woman Locusta, who probably supplied Nero’s
mother Agrippina with the fatal powder she sprinkled on her husband
Claudius’s dish of mushrooms, and then another dose to Nero himself to
kill his stepbrother, Britannicus, with a highly spiced goblet.
If a man has many deadly foes, he is likely to take a potion of the
precious theriac daily--because antidotes for so many poisons are
carried in the compound; and all histories tell how Mithridates of
Pontus, that famous adversary of Sulla and Pompeius, used to take
antidotes so constantly that he became entirely immune to the venoms
prepared by all his enemies. Symmachus, as part of his stock in trade,
therefore, keeps the proper antidotes for all such familiar poisons as
hemlock, opium, henbane, gypsum, white lead, etc., as well as for many
obscurer foods of evil. Rumor says that not long since he had to use
several of them on the old ex-consul, Annæus, whose spendthrift sons
seemed very anxious to get their inheritance.
=144. Medical Students, “Disciples,” Beauty Specialists.=--Symmachus
like all responsible physicians keeps an office on a good street,
but although patients can visit him there, the place is mainly for
the compounding of medicines by various slaves under the direction
of several “disciples.” There are no medical schools in Rome,[84]
and these young disciples follow their master about, study a little,
and learn by watching him. They are kept away from his most select
patients; but are allowed to troop into the sick room of the poorer,
feel of the pulse, examine the wounds, etc., in a manner most
distressing. People, in fact, dread to call in a doctor--it often means
being felt over not by one but by a half dozen clammy hands, usually
when one is very ill.[85]
In addition to the men of medicine are the “beauty
specialists”--persons who claim to have reduced the supplementing of
nature to a science. A court physician Crito once wrote four books of
standard authority on the compounding of cosmetics. Every physician is
called upon to prescribe skin washes, depilatories for rendering the
bodies of young dandies perfectly hairless, and formulæ for fragrances
for clothes or chambers; but it takes a specialist to know the
intricacies of rouge and enamel, and otherwise to assist the ladies.
The dividing line also between the physician and the hair-dresser is
not always easy to mark. Petronius tells about the dames who not merely
have abundant false hair, but “take their eyebrows out of a little box”
and “put their teeth away at night just as they do their silks.”
=145. Cheap Doctors: No Hospitals.=--The inferior grades of doctors do
a great deal of office work. In mere booths or small shops opening upon
the street they receive patients, sometimes even standing by the door
and bidding the hesitant “Step in!” Their surgeries are decked out with
a display of ivory boxes, silver cupping glasses, and golden-handled
lancets,--the more incompetent the leech the greater often being the
display.
To advertise their skill practitioners of this class will often set
bones and perform minor operations before a gaping crowd just outside
in the streets--actions denounced by men of Symmachus’s caliber; and
all their patients are examined with great publicity. Lower still are
the itinerant quacks who will diagnose diseases on a street corner
and vend alleged theriac and other “medicines” from a pedlar’s pack.
There are other unlovely members of the profession who grow rich
by performing criminal operations, and to whom unfaithful wives or
legacy-seekers can appeal, begging them to “put the patient out of
his misery!”--with results deliberately murderous. More legitimate of
course are the numerous women who attend to the maladies of their own
sex. Some of these women are said to be physicians of high capacity and
able to command generous compensation.
A serious handicap to medicine exists because there are no public
hospitals in Rome, although sick strangers are probably allowed to lie
around the Temples of Asculapius or of other healing deities.[86] The
control of epidemics is very imperfect. Rome has been visited severely
by the plague, and in the reign of Marcus Aurelius it will be ravaged
yet again. The age is a brutal one. Much is done to keep the populace
amused and to delight the eye; relatively little to preserve precious
human lives. In the great slave familia, however, self-interest if no
better motive impels the owners to try to keep their chattels healthy.
As already explained nearly every slave household has its special
slave physicians, men of tolerable competence; and there is also the
_valetudinarium_, the infirmary--a detached building or a large
room in which sick slaves can be properly tended, and also isolated to
prevent infection.
=146. Suicide as Escape from Hopeless Disease.=--Symmachus,
despite his reputation for “wonderful cures,” has just lost a wealthy
patient. The circumstances were somewhat unusual but by no means
unprecedented. Quintus Gordianus, an elderly senator, had been
suffering from a very painful internal disease. Symmachus assured him
the case was incurable, but that he might, nevertheless, live for
years. Thereupon Gordianus announced that he would commit suicide.
The right of a sane man voluntarily to surrender his life is undoubted.
Philosophers have written fine essays on the desirability of suicide;
only it must be entered upon discreetly and not as a cowardly means
of escaping the duties of life. Many of Nero’s and Domitian’s noble
victims obviously obeyed the mandate “Open your veins” more because
they were tired of existence than because a desperate attempt to
overthrow the tyrant would have been hopeless. Many a Roman aristocrat
has sucked all the sensual pleasure so completely out of life that the
latter has become one great boredom, and no religion commands “Live
on!” when it is evident that the remainder of existence must merely be
months or years of helplessness and pain.
As soon, therefore, as Gordianus was satisfied that his case was
hopeless he declared to his relatives that, “He would starve himself to
death.” They pleaded with him faithfully and caused most tempting food
to be always within his reach, but later they took pride in telling of
his iron will which rejected all their efforts. At last the end came,
and all his circle remarked that Gordianus died as became a Roman
senator and a true philosopher. Suicides for more trivial reasons than
the above are, of course, reported every day.[87]
=147. Execution of Wills. Numerous Legacies Customary.=--Before
Gordianus became too weak, he called in a group of friends to witness
the revision of his will. The right to execute a will is a precious
privilege for Roman citizens,[88] and the law allows wide options in
disposing of one’s property. A Roman gentleman makes his will many
times and is constantly revising or adding codicils to the same. Slaves
are not supposed to make testaments--their small _peculia_ must
legally revert to their masters; but the more decent owners allow even
slaves to bequeath their belongings to fellow-slaves.
A will implies much more than merely distributing one’s property among
near kin. Gordianus’s widow and son were in fact well content when
they found not more than two-fifths of the large estate was to pass
outside the family. It is a deadly insult--all the more deadly because
the departed are beyond retaliation--to fail to remember a familiar
acquaintance with a sizable legacy.[89]
“When the tablets are opened” all Rome knows how a man has paid his
social debts, usually to people who have no blood connection.
Was the ex-ædile Numerius angry because he only received 10,000
sesterces ($400)? And why was that ill-mannered old eques Albinus
left 20,000? And why was the banker Velocius, once such a confidant,
left nothing at all? Did Gordianus wish to brand the last-named as
a scoundrel? The list of slaves enfranchised, and also of those
specifically refused enfranchisement is carefully scanned; as well as
various legacies to certain great advocates who have evidently rendered
Gordianus service in tight lawsuits, and above all a sum of 100,000
sesterces ($4000) to “Our Lord Hadrianus Augustus Cæsar.” Gordianus
had been by no means a great intimate at the palace, but it would
have been most untactful to fail to remember the Emperor. Under bad
rulers such a slight would probably involve the actual setting aside
of the will, posthumous charges of treason, and the ruin of the heirs
by the confiscation of the entire property. Under a good Emperor such
an insertion puts the donor’s son in good odor with the government,
and insures that the imperial procurators (who guard their master’s
property) will assist in defending the will if disgruntled kinsmen
should try to break it.
=148. Regular Incomes from Legacies. Professional Legacy
Hunters.=--The granting of legacies is in fact so ordinary a part
of Roman life that distinguished men like Cicero and Pliny the Younger
can almost count on a steady flow of bequests (often from people whom
they know but slightly) as part of their income. Gordianus is leaving
a mature and proper son to take over his great name, clients, and a
good share of his property. His bequests therefore are relatively
small, and that fact robs his will of most of its interest. If,
however, he had been childless, all Rome would have been agog as soon
as people knew that he was dying. Great, if evil, are “the advantages
of childlessness.” The rich bachelor is sure of obsequious service from
innumerable quarters. The more he coughs and the paler he grows, the
more the presents he receives and the more do loudly condoling friends
press to his bedside. They reach the very depth of servility, and
sometimes they are rewarded.
Years ago Horace gave directions to the successful legacy hunter. “If
a man hands you his will to read, be sure to refuse and push the wax
tablets from you---yet take a side-glance to catch the second line of
the first table [below the preamble]. Run your eye quickly along to see
whether you are the _sole_ heir or one of many.” If the prospective
victim has a “crafty woman, or a freedman looking after the dotard,
strike a partnership with them and praise them to him, that they may
praise _you_ behind your back.” Then when the testator at last dies
lament him loudly, as a “worthy and true friend,” shed as many tears as
you can, and don’t grudge a splendid funeral.
Thus fortunes can be and often are won, but not invariably. In Trajan’s
reign there died a rich Domitius Tullus. He allowed the legacy hunters
to fasten upon him; to shower him with all kinds of favors--then he
actually left everything to a niece and to grandchildren. All Rome
was divided: “Perfidious hypocrite!” some gossips buzzed in the great
baths; but others praised him for “cheating the hopes of the rascals.”
=149. Public Bequests.=--Gordianus, besides these legacies to friends,
also makes some public bequests. This is an age when the rich are
expected to justify their good fortune by showering favors upon the
community. If the rich testator had lived in a municipal town, he would
have been expected in his life time to have provided feasts, public
games, new civic buildings, and probably to have repaired the city
walls. As it is, he leaves the cost of a good gladiator fight to an
Italian town that once elected him patron; increases the endowment for
a public library which he had earlier founded at another such town near
one of his villas; and institutes a trust fund to provide an annual
feast in honor of his “Manes” to be shared in by all the freedmen of
his family and by their own descendants.
=150. Great Funerals Very Fashionable. Desire to Be Remembered after
Death.=--Before he died, Gordianus also gave particular orders about
his funeral. Every Roman seems to look forward to his obsequies with
a melancholy, but an enormous interest. If he is poor, he hoards his
money and joins a coöperative burial society to provide for final rites
that will be long remembered. If he is rich, he will leave nothing
undone to succeed in impressing the entire city that it has lost an
important citizen. Under the Republic the funerals of great personages
were really public pageants, deliberately calculated to teach young
nobles the glory of a long career spent in the service of the state.
Under the Empire these customs are still maintained, although often
they are nothing more than vulgar displays showing forth the wealth of
the deceased.
The age does not believe earnestly in immortality. Epicureans deny
it outright, and Stoics more than doubt. Sometimes a very gross view
of death is taken, that it is merely the careless end of a round of
sensual pleasures. You can occasionally read on tombstones inscriptions
like this: “_Bathing, wine, and love-affairs--these hurt our bodies,
but they make life worth living. I’ve lived my days. I revelled, and
I drank all that I desired. Once I was not; then I was; now I am not
again--but I don’t care!_”[90] But most persons, especially grave
Stoics like Gordianus, view death otherwise. Death means a going out
into the dark; a process of being forgotten by those who once loved or
admired you. If, by a splendid funeral, you can make your memory last
a little longer, who would fail having one? Hence the excuse for very
costly obsequies, often for unimportant individuals.
=151. Preliminaries to a Funeral.=--The moment Gordianus seemed
to be breathing his last his son bent over his face as if to catch
his final sigh. Then immediately the young man called his father
three times “Quintus! Quintus! Quintus!” partly to make sure he was
dead; partly as a signal to start off all the expectant slaves and
freedmen in loud and frenzied lamentation through all the wide domus. A
messenger promptly summoned a fashionable _libitinarius_ (funeral
director) who undertook to conduct everything in the best possible
style. While the house rang with outcries, professional experts washed
the body in warm water and took immediately a waxen impression of the
features.
The dead was thereupon dressed in an embroidered toga, such as he might
have worn when a magistrate, and was placed on a gilded couch in the
atrium with the feet towards the door, beside which was set a bunch
of cypress or pine, in token of the sorrow in the house. Skillful
embalmers were available and the actual funeral could have been
delayed as much as a week. This was not necessary, however, and the
ceremony took place in two days--time enough to arrange the great pyre
and other necessary matters.
The old practice was for every funeral to be held at night, and
“funeral torches” were once about as common along the streets as the
more festive marriage torches. But under the Empire the greater display
can, of course, be made by daytime, although by a peculiar survival a
few torch bearers will solemnly march along in the procession as if to
outvie the sunlight.
The mustering of a large funeral procession calls for no mean executive
skill. If the deceased is from an old family, persons must be hired to
wear all the death masks found in his atrium, and costumes improvised
or rented so that the wearers can appear as consuls, prætors, etc.,
and all the various articles and exhibits needful for the procession
must be assembled. Above all there must appear at the house of mourning
a clever Greek actor, selected partly because of some physical
resemblance to the dead. This is the _archimimus_, who carefully
confers with Gordianus’s freedmen and even with his son to learn the
speech, mannerisms, and the personal foibles of the departed.
=152. The Funeral Procession. The Display of Masked “Ancestors.”=--At
last at a time sure to command the best attention, the criers begin
going about all the streets where Gordianus is likely to have had
friends. They shout a formula in quaint, archaic Latin. “This citizen,
Quintus Gordianus, is being surrendered to death. For those who
find it convenient, now is the time for his funeral. He is being
borne from his house!” and the procession sets forth commanded by a
master-undertaker--the pompous _designator_.
At the head marches a band of players, their flutes, lyres, and
dulcimers keeping up a most melancholy music. Then unavoidably follows
a whole platoon of professional clowns and buffoons singing ribald
songs and shouting very coarse jokes to the thronging spectators.
Next, apparently, there walks Gordianus himself--it is the archimimus
dressed like the ex-consul, imitating his gait, gestures, and voice,
and even making broad personal jests at the expense of the deceased.
Then follows the really imposing part of the display, and the bereaved
widow and her son thrill with aristocratic pride at the thought of
it. Theirs is a very old house, and a hundred actors are needed to
wear all the wax _imagines_ (often battered and blackened) from
the great cupboards in the atrium. All his “curule ancestors” going
back to the Gallic invasion seem to be accompanying Gordianus to the
grave. The spectators are checking off the “consuls” and “ædiles” on
their fingers, and at last some cry “a censor,” and presently even
more admiringly a “dictator.”[91] One can almost feel that it is no
misfortune to die, if only one can look forward properly to this moment
of posthumous glory.
=153. The Exhibits in the Procession. The Retinue around the
Bier.=--Behind the procession of death-masks come slaves bearing on
poles large crudely sketched pictures upon boards, showing incidents
in the Dacian wars where their master commanded as one of Trajan’s
legates. Gordianus also had dabbled in literature, and copies of
his essays and poems are now tied on tall rods and carried along
conspicuously by the marchers. Next comes the corpse itself--exposed to
view, upon a couch decked with purple, fretted with gold, and carried
aloft upon the shoulders of eight picked bearers. All can see that
Gordianus wears the “triumphal ornaments,” the laurel wreath as well
as the toga prætexta awarded the favorite generals in the army.[92]
After that follows the family procession. Young Gordianus is robed
in black, and leads by the hand his mother, a venerable matron, who
wears the mourning color for women, white, and who lets her gray locks
stream in disorder over her shoulders. If he had possessed sisters,
they would now tear their hair, dig their nails in their cheeks, and
utter piercing cries of grief. This clamor is produced sufficiently by
a group of slave women led by two or three professional female wailers
who, at intervals, set up a shrill chant of lamentation for the dead.
Next follow a great company of Gordianus’s more distinguished friends,
all walking with down-cast looks and clad in black or sad-colored
togas. After them is the large retinue from the familia, first the
older freedmen, then groups of ex-slaves wearing tall caps--token of
manumission by will, and trying not to appear _too_ exultant in their
new freedom, then bringing up the rear the whole group of actual
slaves, supposed to be torn with grief at the loss of “so good a
master.”
=154. The Funeral Oration in the Forum.=--The procession heads at
first not toward the place of the final pyre but toward the Old Forum.
The honor of a public funeral oration is granted to practically every
distinguished citizen, including many noblewomen. Indeed, this use
of the Forum is an extremely common occurrence. The space around the
orator’s stand (the _rostra_) has been cleared of idlers, and an array
of suitable “curule chairs” has been set out for all the wearers of the
death masks, as if they were again sitting like the magistrates of old.
After a suitable delay a kinsman of the deceased, a senator somewhat
vain of his reputation as an orator, mounts the rostra and delivers
a fulsome eulogy. It is notorious that such “laudations” never stick
closely to the truth. The audience is made to understand that Gordianus
was a very Cato the Elder in personal virtue and a Scipio Africanus in
his success as a general. When that ceremony is completed the whole
company sets forth again--this time toward one of the gates beyond
which is the funeral pyre.[93]
=155. Family Tombs. The _Columbarium_ and the Garden.=--Burials are not
unknown in Rome, but most bodies are disposed of by cremation. Even
persons of very modest means will try to provide money for a good pyre.
This is partly because the very poor, the worthless slaves, and the
lowest of the plebeians, are not burned, but their bodies simply are
dumped in hideous open pits not far from the Esquiline itself. Nothing
is done to the bodies thus exposed except to leave them to the dogs and
ravens, and only the favor of Jupiter averts from the city an incessant
pestilence in consequence. Long since, however, Gordianus’s family has
erected along the Appian Way (though another frequented highroad could
have been selected) a stately tomb, calculated to attract attention
from all passers.
Handsome tombs can take many forms; there is even a good-sized stone
pyramid, 116 feet high, erected to guard the ashes of Gaius Cestius,
a great man under Augustus. That of the Gordiani is of a more modest
character; a circular masonry tower, about fifty feet in diameter and
rather higher, surmounted by a castellated battlement adorned with
life-sized marble statues of famous members of the family. Inside there
is no huge chamber for a sarcophagus, but simply a series of arched
vaults the walls of which are honey-combed with little niches, each
intended to receive a funeral urn. This kind of interior, therefore,
is not unhappily called a _columbarium_--a “pigeon-cote”; and here
will be placed not merely the urns of all the regular scions of the
family, but (in inferior niches of course) those of all the freedmen
and even of all the better loved slaves. The ashes of the Gordiani,
mighty or humble therefore rest all together.
[Illustration: SCENE ALONG THE APPIAN WAY: showing
the tombs and the gay crowds passing.]
Outside this massive tower there is a considerable open compound, laid
out as a pleasant garden, with shrubbery, flower-beds, and a little
lodge for the slave in residence who acts as caretaker. There is even a
small but handsome building, where members of the family can meet for
the periodic feasts in honor of the dear departed. Handsome statues
and fine bas-reliefs on the inclosing walls abound, and the place in
short seems much more like a small pleasure park than a cemetery. This
mortuary compound, however, is one of the better types of inclosures.
The taste displayed in some adjacent is execrable. Already across
the Appian Way opposite, a rich freedman has purchased a large lot
and is erecting in his own lifetime a tall central statue of himself,
flinging money from a bag to the populace, with the base surrounded by
bas-reliefs showing his favorite small dog, some gladiator fights, and
deep-laden craft under full sail--to explain how he made his money.[94]
[Illustration: PYRAMID--TOMB OF GAIUS CESTIUS:
Ostia Gate of the Wall of Aurelian (built _circ._ 275
A.D.) in background.]
For many miles out into the Campagna around Rome extend these strange
cemeteries--not in seclusion, but passed by incessant traffic. Some
of the monuments are magnificent, some simple; they illustrate almost
every type of sculpture--but the object of nearly all is the same,
to remind the living of the one-time existence of the dead, and so
to provide a kind of spurious immortality often for very commonplace
persons, in an age when the immortality of the soul seems no favored
doctrine.
[Illustration: VIEW ALONG THE APPIAN WAY SHOWING FUNERAL
MONUMENTS.
_Restored after Von Falke._]
=156. The Funeral Pyre and Its Ceremonies.=--At last the funeral
procession has reached the great mausoleum of the Gordiani. The pyre
of choice wood, sprinkled with perfumes, unguents, and costly spices
is ready at a safe distance. The sides of the pile have been covered
with dark leaves, while cypress boughs have been set upon the top.
Amid these the bier and the corpse, just as they have been borne, are
now planted and various articles of clothing, jewelry, trinkets, etc.,
used by the deceased are next placed upon the pyre. If the ex-consul
had been a younger man fond of hunting, deer nets and boar spears might
have been added; or favored horses and dogs slaughtered and their
carcasses added to the pile.
[Illustration: STREET OF THE TOMBS AT POMPEII, SHOWING
TYPICAL MONUMENTS OF THE SMALLER CLASS.]
At length all is ready. Young Gordianus is handed a torch, and with
averted face he touches it to the wood impregnated with perfumed oils.
Instantly a great blaze shoots up, the smoke from the aromatic wood
smelling most sweetly. The company waits in mournful silence until the
tall pyre collapses and the bier has been utterly consumed. Then as
the fire glows away, several loyal freedmen dash forward and quench
it with great jars of chilled wine. Certain calcined bones and ashes
are collected, wrapped in fine linen cloths and placed in a superb
funeral urn, blue and white glass cut into exquisite designs, showing
boys piping and treading the grapes in a festival of Bacchus. The last
mortal remains of the departed senator are, therefore, at rest amid
scenes eminently cheerful.
=157. Funeral Monuments. Memorial Feasts to the Dead.=--The ceremony
is over. “_Vale!_”--and again “_Vale!_” cries all the company ere
departing. The urn will now be placed in one of the niches in the
columbarium; but in Gordianus’s honor they will erect a special statue,
at its base chiseled a peaceful ship gliding steadily toward a distant
shore; the son and widow evidently recalling the peaceful thoughts of
Cicero in his essay “On Old Age”--“I find the nearer I come to the time
of death the more I feel like one who begins to see land, and knows
that sometime he will enter the harbor after the long voyage.”
On Gordianus’s birthday, on the anniversary of his death, and also
for eight days in February sacred to the honored dead, his heirs and
loyal freedmen will visit the spot, deck his statue with wreaths of
roses, violets, and other flowers, sacrifice a black sheep or pig to
the “Manes,” and indulge in a feast in his honor. This will be kept up,
perhaps, until his own son is placed on the pyre and the fame of the
“great Gordianus” has sunk to the barest memory.
=158. Funerals of the Poor. “Funeral Societies.”=--We have witnessed
obsequies of a rich senator. Less favored persons, of course, are
buried with ever-increasing degrees of simplicity. There is almost no
religious element in Roman funerals. The bodies of unfortunates can be
disposed of with brutal abruptness and lack of decorum, but the great
host of plebeians and of those freedmen who cannot hope for an urn in
the columbarium of a noble family have a recourse. They often club
together in a “Funeral Society.” Everybody pays a fixed assessment into
a common chest; out of these funds space is hired in one of the great
public columbaria which are often erected as legitimate speculations.
When a member dies he is assured of a respectable procession of
buffoons and weepers (imagines being out of the question), a private
harangue in his honor, and a thoroughly adequate funeral pyre. Funds
not needed for this purpose are spent on feasts once or more a year in
which the names of dead members are solemnly commemorated.
Some of these funeral “colleges” are really elaborate affairs, with
considerable ritual, a permanent hall, and a corps of elective
officers, “prætors,” “curators,” etc., whose tinsel pomp makes the
wearers forget that most of the time they are humble plebeians or even
slaves. The collegia, in other words, appeal to those who in another
age may find a certain inferior type of “lodge” very congenial. They
are grandiloquently named for some patron god, calling themselves “The
Worshippers (_cultores_) of Apollo,” or perhaps for an Oriental deity,
“The Servants of Serapis”; but their fundamental purpose is the same;
to insure against the horrid thought of having one’s body flung into
the open pits of the potter’s field and then perhaps having one’s ghost
wander in misery over sea and land instead of finding a calm oblivion
in Hades.