Talk:Roman funerary practices

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 August 2020 and 5 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ns.thot03. Peer reviewers: Racheldeible.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 08:19, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 September 2020 and 11 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Cerberuslovesme. Peer reviewers: Candty56, Toad Person.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 08:19, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Multiple issues

No citations, no bibliography, poor organization, no introduction. Smith's "Funus" (external link) contradicts at least some of the information here. For instance: the coin for Charon is said here to have been placed on the eyes, and the article implies that Vergil says this. He does not, nor do any other Greek or Roman sources I know of, which consistently place the coin in the mouth. (This false assertion is repeated in other Wikipedia articles, always without a citation.) This subject is very interesting, and I hope someone rewrites the article from scratch. Cynwolfe (talk) 04:40, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Project suggestion

Aha. I plan to re-write the topic on a user-page, then redirect to a finished article titled "Funereal practices in ancient Rome". The rewriting will take me an age (everything does), will cover a broad range of practices and is likely to be an ugly business best done under cover. In the meantime I'll leave this one alone. Any interests, objections or suggestions? Haploidavey (talk) 23:06, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

Rewriting this at user page as overview article, which I suggest should be titled Funerary practices in ancient Rome. Contributions from other editors are welcome in that user-space and on its talk-page. Haploidavey (talk) 12:10, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Or maybe not, as this is now taking shape and I've not even started the other. I just had a skim-through of relevant pages in a long-forgotten gift of yore, namely Salway's History of Roman Britain, OUP, 1993, pp 493 - 497 - but not footnoted, alas. Anything further to be found on pipe-cremation burials? Those with a feeder-tube for regular libations? One was found at Caerleon, "an example of a Mediterranean practice rare in the northern part of the empire...". There's also a very touching mention of pipeclay figurines (two at least; one is a ram, the other a Rhineland mother-goddess) to accompany the coffin-burial of a "hopelessly hydrocephalous" child, less than a year old at death, in Arrington, Cambridgshire, (happily, jstor has the report). Those seem lovely examples of care for the dead. Particularly the last. Haploidavey (talk) 23:20, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, those are amazing examples. I hope nothing of what I'm doing precludes the contributions you wish to make. I didn't realize your "Cultish" page was on funeral stuff; sorry, I didn't even look at the talk page before I jumped in. I just needed to have some kind of outline here, because I need to link to a couple of sections. Cynwolfe (talk) 01:03, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

And sorry too if my current affection for simplemindedness is a downer. I'm just in a mood of thinking that a number of WP articles are being dragged into unreadability by an accumulation of too much interpretation instead of presentation. And it's the interpretation that gets editors in endless quarrels. (I just read Infant baptism, which I think spends about half the article on minute theological arguments for and against the practice, as if WP editors just can't stand to describe something and leave it at that without shoving "this is how you have to think about this" down readers' throats. The connection to this article is tangential, but does touch on ancient beliefs on death and protecting the soul from nasties that might snatch it.) Cynwolfe (talk) 01:09, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Hey, I'm happy to add to this. The reorganisation's strong. That "Cultish" page was simply an interim dump for material from this article (as was) and a couple of others (as in ashes, dust and sundry detritus). I'd completely forgotten about it until a few days back. "Simpleminded" descriptive text is GOOD. Let's say what they did, much less about what they might have done, and even less than that about why they might have done what they might have done if-we-but-knew-what-it-all-meant. Drowning/suffocation/utter bafflement of the reader should not be on the menu. I'll dare present a half-arsed rationale on your talk-page, some time over the next hour or two. It might or might not be titled "Springes to catch woodcocks". Aka when not to argue the toss on obscurities, and possible reasons my editing's been slow and hesitant of late). Haploidavey (talk) 12:36, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

A partial preview here of Jocelyn Toynbee's overview, Death and Burial in the Roman World, originally Cornell UP, 1971 (repub. as paperback, Johns Hopkins, 1996). The Caerleon pipe cremation's very interesting. The "urn" and feeder-pipe are made of lead. Interesting pic here, showing the pipe at a genteel and considerate angle. No unseemly splashing, minimal disturbance I guess. Similar outline examples (not illustrated) from Italy (stone vessel, lead pipe) and Sicily (terracotta vessel and pipe, with removable stone stopper), see pp 51 - 52. Haploidavey (talk) 14:08, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I considered whether your proposed rename would be better, and it probably would be, but having looked over the number of links to this page that would need correcting, I'm too lazy to do it. Cynwolfe (talk) 22:10, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Improvement required

Please edit and improve the article.It also lacks a bit creativity.Bishal Baishya 12:39, 23 June 2014 (UTC)Bishal BaishyaUser:Bishalbaishya2012

Bodel on transition

Currently we have, speaking of the transition from inhumation to cremation, "Bodel (2008) places the main transition as the 1st to 2nd century AD." This is startling, not least because Bodel's 2008 chapter is ""From Columbaria to Catacombs", the opposite shift. Haploidavey, was this maybe a typo or misplaced? NebY (talk) 11:44, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

• HiNebY. From Bodel 2008, but p.181, footnote 9 (not, as I thought, pp.183-185, so apologies for that) with later reference to Christian burial "The popular transition from cremation to inhumation around Rome began around the middle of the first century and is evident (continued in notes overleaf) already then among the lower classes (slaves and freedmen)." Haploidavey (talk) 12:45, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

I have to admit that I find the whole transition business confusing, as Toynbee places it about 3 centuries before that. Haploidavey (talk) 12:50, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Oh, duh. Can't believe I made such a fundamental cock-up. Total brain-fart and I'm not surprised at your startlement. Haploidavey (talk) 13:08, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

No worries - it's amazing how much you've improved the article this year. I've taken the liberty of moving your revised sentence and sacrificing the mention of Hadrian (from Nock 1935?) as superseded by Bodel's greater detail. I hope that makes the sequence easier reading. NebY (talk) 13:37, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Well, you may not believe this (I wouldn't if I were me) but we just had an edit conflict and I found that your re-shuffle was not exactly the same as mine, but rather better for losing Hadrian. It reads well. Bodel is an extraordinarily insightful, opinionated, productive and insistent scholar, amazingly useful. Thanks so much for the support and appreciation, NebY, it does get a little lonely out here sometimes! Haploidavey (talk) 13:48, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

I've never come across Bodel before, but then there's so much scholarship I know nothing of. I only dropped in to check my impression of transition dates and their consequences for analysis of remains, but now I'll look forward reading the whole article – though I doubt I'll be lucky enough to find anything else I can contribute. :) NebY (talk) 16:29, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Afterlife

Haploidavey, I'm glad you see the Afterlife section as needing work. I worry about the current opening

Standard accounts of Roman mythology describe the soul as immortal and judged at death before a tribunal in the underworld, with those who had done good being sent to the Elysian Fields and those who had done ill sent to Tartarus.

It does then go on to describe a more nuanced and informed view, but that might be too late. By then, the "standard view" has been reinforced in the reader's mind and is likely to be best remembered (in training, showing people the wrong way first is a risky tactic unless it's blatantly wrong, catastrophic and preferably funny).
The second reference is to a self-published Christian theology site and the "standard view" expressed here does seem to be refracted through a Christian viewpoint with a highly developed concept of the soul as the essence of a human and immortal, in sharp contrast to Roman references to shades as fading shadows, which in fairness the first reference does bring out.
Mind you, I'm writing with little knowledge of current scholarship, but if you want some proof-reading.... NebY (talk) 18:40, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Oh yes, indeed, and I'm sure I should have placed a good half of the "Grave goods" section under "afterlife": see the current version. Makes quite a difference already, and more to come, though to be honest, this must be far and away my least favourite sub-topic. Even a bit irksome... Haploidavey (talk) 22:28, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Actually, the first (see below) is pretty standard stuff, of very little relevance to most Romans; more a literary and artistic field that grew with the telling - rather "old hat", at the very least. Therefore I've squeezed it down the page. The second source (below) is quite good for that section; Foutz' summary does justice to Ferguson (a respected Emeritus scholar, whose work is standard, frequently cited by others both within and beyond the purely (?) theological). Currently both seem to be in Internet limbo, and our own text could use a broader or more secure historical and critical base. I've made a start. What I really hope does come across clearly is the importance of place in all thsi: that the tomb fixes the dead in their proper places; that the epitaph or marker, the image and portrait contain the dead within the memory of the living. That the vagrancy of the "unfixed" dead is an altogether bad thing. Ye gods, what a culture. I do like your "blatantly wrong, catastrophic and preferably funny". Reminds me of being misdirected on my first car journey from London to Gillingham and having to follow the same misdirected route every time thereafter. I had to do it wrong to get it right. Or wrong, as the case may be. Haploidavey (talk) 06:19, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

What an interesting point about fixing - as you say, what a culture. I admit I do like the brief description, 20+ years old though it is, in Beard, Price and North's Religions of Rome (p189f), partly for its sweep from the various views offered by traditional pagan culture, to the lack of emphasis on the afterlife in official state cult, to the solutions presented by new cults. I do wonder if too much weight was once placed on the presence of archaeologiical evidence in considering Roman beliefs. Grave goods are sought out, a pleasure to find, and if not stolen then recorded, reported, collected and displayed. Cornell in contrast looks at the lack of sixth and fifth century cemeteries in Latium and an overall decrease in the number and value of grave goods, and explores a shift from practices for the benefit of the dead to those for the benefit of the living, but I don't remember him talking about that in terms of the afterlife (and The Begiinings of Rome is an overview published 26 years ago).

I freely admit I may not have much more to add and I'm going to have to focus on RL for a few days anyway. Meanwhile I do like your London to Gillingham example. If you like "blatantly wrong, catastrophic and funny" training, have you ever seen the training videos of John Cleese et al (Gervais, French, Corbet, Laurie etc etc)? A lot of the ones listed at Video Arts, and probably others, are now on YouTube. NebY (talk) 18:20, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

References