Honouring the dead

[Taff Simon]

I was in Regensburg today. They have a really good museum which I would recommend to anyone visiting the area (If you ever go to Oktoberfest in Munich, take a day off the booze and pay a visit). Just like practically every Roman museum you will visit, they have a selection of gravestones.It got me thinking about the museum at Caerleon/Isca which also has a nice collection of gravestones. In the Caerleon museum there is a fairly well known example of a lead burial container with a lead pipe for libations to be administered. My question is (and I appreciate that ritual would probably have changed over time) - on what date would your family, friends or army buddies come and visit you and give you your wine etc? Were birthdays particular days of celebration or were they just nodded at? Or would they come to the grave on the anniversary of the death day or on some other special date?

Cheers,

Taff

[jvrjenivs]

actually it has even more to do with religion, than most people think of. Let's start with normal daily life in your home. Every (rich) roman home has a lararium in the building, which is the shrine of the Lar, the snake. The snake represents the generations of your family (as in the 'renewal' of his hide'). You have to offer daily to the lar, as to commemorate your late family. Often we thus see also the pater and mater familias represented on the lararium.
(of course the lararium would often also include the penates (which are often mistakenly called Lar), which are to offer for the cornucopia (drinkinghorn that's dont get empty) and the patera (eating) to make sure you have enough to eat and drink daily)

But back to subject. We also see this today, lets compare it to the pictures we have of our late relatives on a desk and burn candles next to it (at least here in Europe that's quite common to do). Now, why is it important to do so. It seems that Roman belief was that to have a 'good day' in heaven you need someone on earth remembering you. This is thus done daily at the lararium, and everytime someone walks into the hallway, sees the lararium, etc.

So, now we can improve the amount of people 'remembering' the death even more. That is by building a nice 'rememberance object'. Of course people may bot be burried inside the city, so they go outside, but to get remembered, as much people must be able to see that object as they walk by, so you make beautifull big objects along the highways around a city (of course this all only is possible if you've the money for it). So, this means that you're remembered everytime someone looks at your statue, which is almost the case every time someone walks along your gravestone/monument.

Okay, probably not a direct answer to your question, but hope it gives you some more insight into the meaning of remembering the death.