Memory and mourning : studies on Roman death

This book explores the themes of memory and mourning from the Roman deathbed to the Roman cemetery, drawing subject matter from the literature, art, and archaeology of ancient Rome. It brings together scholarship on varied aspects of Roman death, investigating connections between ancient poetry, history and oratory and placing these alongside archaeological and textual evidence for Roman funerary and commemorative rituals. A series of case studies centred on individual authors and/or specific aspects of ritual behaviour, traces the story of Roman death: how the inhabitants of the Roman world confronted their mortality, disposed of the dead, remembered the dead and praised the dead, thereby enhancing our understanding of Roman society.

Table of Contents

Introduction (Valerie M. Hope)
1. ‘Goodbye Livia’: Dying in the Roman Home (David Noy)
2. Memory and Materiality: Re-embodying the Roman Funeral (Emma-Jayne Graham)
3. Gender and Roman Funeral Ritual (Darja Šterbenc Erker)
4. Death Ritual and Burial Practice in the Latin Love Elegists (Luke B. T. Houghton)
5. ‘The sole glory of death’: Dying and Commemoration in Dionysius of Halicarnassus (Clemence Schultze)
6. ‘Causa ante mortua est quam tu natus es’: Aspects of the Funeral in Cicero’s Pro Rabirio Perduellionis Reo (Eleanor Brooke)
7. Bad Deaths, Better Memories (Janet Huskinson)
8. ‘The mourning was very good’. Liberation and Liberality in Roman Funerary Commemoration (Maureen Carroll)
9. Poetic Monuments: Grief and Consolation in Statius Silvae 3.3 (Jean-Michel Hulls)
10. Remembering to Mourn: Personal Mementos of the Dead in Ancient Rome (Valerie M. Hope)