Roman Inscriptions on Tomb
It is an often posed idea that the messages we leave behind with our discarded and or memorialized everyday objects will be interpreted thousands of years from now, by historians and archeologists to let those that live long after us have some idea of who we were. Roman history is a compilation of fragmented written works, but is much more dependant on archeological evidence for existing information. The evidence of the Roman Empire stretches across practically all of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and much of it is in the form of archeological ruins. Some of these ruins are significant to Roman culture in that they still sport the writing of real everyday Romans. One artifact that has recently come to the forefront as a grouping of very telling artifacts is tombstone inscriptions. From the "dead Roman guys" we get a lofty interpretation of idealized society, as well as many messages of rhetorical musing, all of which is valuable, but from tombstone inscriptions we get a sense of the everyday man and woman, and what was important for their ancestors to memorialize them with. Seneca in De Providentia writes, "Fate leads us on and the first hour of our birth has ordained the rest of each person's life. Cause depends on
As a closing thought one must look at evidence regarding the importance of the epitaphs themselves in Roman culture, a message about their importance can be found in a law, printed by Shelton in her sourcebook. The popularity of the sport as well as the juxtaposition of the various inscriptions here show the variety of the practice of memorial erecting and how it changed, with the status of the person memorialized. One can only conjecture why such an event occurred. The words on her tombstone also note that she was a freedman (a former slave), so a likely member of the lower to upper middle class, testified to by the fact that her husband could afford the extravagant memorial. Mithrodates, the baker of Flaccus Thorius, put up this tombstone. My husband, whom, alas, I now have left, was a fellow freedman. 9980 (ILS 7428)To Italia, dressmaker of Cocceia Phyllis. Another example offered by Shelton is pointed out as a message to those who live on. In the last example, discussed in this work Shelton points out the memorial of a more famous man, who was memorialized in a lengthy inscription that detailed nearly his entire career as a chariot racer. Only their tombstones provide evidence that they once existed, and their epitaphs-a few from Rome are given here-tell us only the nature of their employment, not their feelings about it. Now I am forty and in the power of death. While in contrast the tombstones of everyday people express how people really lived and what was important to them, almost regardless of their beliefs in the lofty ideas of those like Seneca and other philosophers.
Common topics in this essay:
Aurelia Philematium,
Flaccus Thorius,
De Providentia,
North Africa,
,
Social History,
Cocceia Phyllis,
Dressmaker300 CIL,
Roman Empire,
person memorialized,
roman culture,
lofty ideas,
tombstone inscriptions,
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