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THE EXPRESS ROUTE to HADES Beryl Rawson the Orderly

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THE EXPRESS ROUTE to HADES Beryl Rawson the Orderly THE EXPRESS ROUTE TO HADES Beryl Rawson The orderly and proper disposal of the dead is a concern for any public administration, and this was particularly so in Roman Italy. In a generally warm climate, and in a culture where superstition and religious scruple were deeply embedded, there were reasons of hygiene, efficiency and religion behind the regulation of undertak­ ers and associated matters. Legislation against arbitrary dumping of corpses, dung and other rubbish is known from several parts of Italy. At Puteoli a large marble inscription, I perhaps of the first half of the first century BeE, about the duties of a public undertaker, includes an injunction to bury corpses in the order in which they are reported to him, with two exceptions. The undertaker or his designated asso­ ciate must provide the funerary services set down in the law in accor­ dance with the order in which deaths are reported to him: ... for the person who first reported a death, then for the others in accordance with the order in which they reported, unless the death reported is of a decurion or is a funus aceruom, for these must be given priority, but the order of the rest of the funerals should be maintained.2 Two categories of corpse which are to receive priority of burial, out­ side the order of reporting, are decurions (the town's councillors) and funus aceruom. Why were these groups awarded an express route, and why were they closely linked together (fonus decurion(is) funusue aceruom)? I take aceruom to be equivalent to acerbum, an equivalence attested I Annie Epigraphique (AE) 1971 no. 88. First published by Bove (1966); more recently discussed by Hinard (1995) and as part of a more extended discussion of grave­ yards and disposal of the dead in Bodel (1986 [1994]). The dating given here is that of Bode!. I am grateful to John Bode! for discussing aspects of this inscription with me. I also thank colleagues in the Ancient History Research Group at the Australian National University for discussion of an early version of this paper. , 11.19-23: " ... ei qui primum denuntiauer(it) et deinceps re!iquis ut quisq(ue) denuntiauer(it)-nisi si funusl decurion(is) funusue aceruom denuntiat(um) erit cui [sic] prima curand(a) erint, reliquor(um) autem fu/nerum ordo seruand(us)­ omnes{q(ue)} res quae ex h(ac) I(ege) praestand(ae) erunt mitter(e) praeber(e)q(ue) quae praeb(endae erunt) d(ebeto)" (text as in Bode! (1986 [1994]). 272 BERYL RAWSON elsewhere,3 e.g. in the ablative in an epitaph (GIL 6.10097) for a boy who, from the grave, hopes that the passer-by will never experience grief, as his parents are now suffering, for such a death: sic numquam doleas pro funere aceruo. Funus aceruoml acerbum is an 'untimely death', literally a 'bitter' death. It occasionally refers to the person who is grieving for such a death (e.g. GIL 6.20462, where the parents as well as the dead child are acerui). In GIL 6.7574, a father's dedica­ tion for his daughter, the analogy with unripe fruit is made explicit; just as fruit picked too young, before its season, is unripe and bit­ ter, so are early deaths bitter and especially lamentable: Our bodies are like apples hanging on a tree: they either fall when they are mature (malura) or come tumbling down too soon when they are unripe (acerua). This phrase is often used of the premature deaths of the very young, although it sometimes refers to others who die before what might be judged their normal or natural time, e.g. young adults who pre­ decease one or both of their parents.4 Vergil uses it in the Aeneid, first of dead infants in the underworld (6.429) and then of the death of Pallas, a young man who has fallen in his first military battle (11.28). (The same line is used in each place: "abstulit atra dies et funere mersit acerbo".) Pallas' father, king Evander, refers to his son's death as immatura mars (11.166-7). In the underworld, those spirits competing to get to the Styx and aboard Charon's boat to make the crossing include mothers, husbands, heroes (implicitly those who fell in battle), children before puberty (pueri innuptaeque puellae), and young men cremated in the sight of their parents (6.305-40). Not all of these will be accepted by Charon. Only those who have had a proper burial will be allowed to cross, and even some of those will suffer on the other side and not reach Elysium. These include infants, 3 It is an archaic and colloquial usage; but there are other linguistic irregulari­ ties in this inscription. 4 Pliny (Letters 5.5.4) used the expression acerba . .. et immatura mors in the context of unfinished work, of a writer who has not fulfilled his potential, when a friend died-a mature man who had already achieved much but who was in the middle of an important writing project. The death of such men cannot help seeming sud­ den: "his nulla mors non repentina est, ut quae semper incohatum aliquid abrumpat". (I thank Michael White, of the University of Texas (Austin), for this reference.) .
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