Summarizing

I created this blog as part of an assignment for my Perspectives in Death and Dying class at Southeast Missouri State University. My goal was to research the funeral and burial practices of Ancient Rome. When I started this blog I thought this assignment would be easy and something fun and interesting. It did turn out to be fun and interesting but it was definitely not easy.

What I did not take into consideration when I started this project was how large the Ancient Roman Empire actually was. It covered lots of different countries with different traditions and religions that had various effects on the funeral and burial practices. In reality it would take a lot more than a semester to properly examine the various traditions under the empire.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed reading on my topic and found that the first book I read "Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome" by Donald G. Kyle to be the most informative and a lot of the articles I read after that became somewhat repetitive. To find new information I probably would have needed to refine my search to look at different areas conquered by the Romans and look at their funeral and burial traditions.

The most important aspects that I want to revisit and cover in my power point are how they disposed on the arena victims, the funeral procession with the masks, burial practices outside the city walls/burial sacrifice, and other smaller traditions that may not have been widely practiced but were still interesting.

I hope you all have enjoyed reading this blog and I might continue my investigations and updates just for my own personal entertainment.

One More Thing...

There was one other article that I read concerning burials during the transition of Rome from a republic to an empire. The work was entitled "Seasons of Death" by Brent Shaw and concerned the burials and epitaphs of Christians.

"The Christian deceased were buried in the so-called catacombs-a disparate network of well over sixty different burial grounds constituted by underground tunnels and chambers radiating outwards from the periphery of the city. It has been estimated that these subterranean corridors extend for a combined length of about a thousand kilometers beneath the surface of the suburban regions of Rome." (101)

(That is around 621 miles)(It should also be noted that they did not bury within the city walls at this time either)

The epitaphs included a date of birth which was actually the death date or date of rebirth. This was the most important piece of information to be included on the Christian epitaphs unlike the Ancient Roman tradition of including their accomplishments etc.

The reason that I wanted to bring up this article is because I personally wonder what happened to the catacombs during the Ancient Roman times. During my reading I have often come across their harsh treatment of Christians and how Christian burials were not accepted as real graveyards-so I wonder that the catacombs were never touched during the Ancient Roman Empire.

Death in Ancient Rome

Over the past couple days I have done a lot of reading on Ancient Rome for historiography, most of which ended up being irrelevant to this blog unfortunately. One book that I read though entitled "Death in Ancient Rome" by Catherine Edwards had a few (very few) parts that could be considered of interest.

One of which is a description of a dinner party held by a member of the elite:

"Towards the close of the dinner, Trimalchio reads his will out to those who are to inherit from him. Then, after the arrival of Habinnas, who is by trade a monumental mason, Trimalchio orders in great detail an extremely elaborate funeral monument. Having described the funeral monument, Trimalchio starts to weep....The dinner party's culmination is a fully -fledged rehearsal of Trimalchio's funeral." (168)

I had hoped that a book dealing with death would have more information dealing with funerals and burials woven in but Edwards sticks to her theme and does not ever really stray into what happens after death. However, the reading was still interesting and can be used to help understand why funerals and burials were so elaborate in many cases.

Death was an obsession for many Romans, as demonstrated by the funeral dinner party, and to die bravely was highly important. Historians of the time often wrote about the proper ways to die and instructed people on how to prepare for death and why it should not be feared. The arena also served to teach people how to die bravely in the form of the gladiators whom many admired. In fact, and I think I may have mentioned this before, the funeral practice of sacrificing a poor slave is though to be the origins of the Roman Arena.

Hello Readers!

So, I don't have any actual new information for you right now but there should be a great deal of last minute information coming soon! I am currently working on my historiographical essay that is dealing with the Roman Arena and a lot of the reading also includes some information relevant to this blog! So while I am doing that paper I will also be making side notes of information to post here.

I have also found an entire article of relevant information thanks to Mrs. Hosselkus' recommendations so I will hopefully be reading that around... Thursday of this week!

Hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving (those who celebrate Thanksgiving) and have a great week!

Also, I may post my historiographical essay since it has some relevance to this blog-we'll see!