Reading Death in Ancient Rome Reading Death in Ancient Rome Mario Erasmo The Ohio State University Press • Columbus Copyright © 2008 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Erasmo, Mario. Reading death in ancient Rome / Mario Erasmo. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-1092-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8142-1092-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Death in literature. 2. Funeral rites and ceremonies—Rome. 3. Mourning cus- toms—Rome. 4. Latin literature—History and criticism. I. Title. PA6029.D43E73 2008 870.9'3548—dc22 2008002873 This book is available in the following editions: Cloth (ISBN 978-0-8142-1092-5) CD-ROM (978-0-8142-9172-6) Cover design by DesignSmith Type set in Adobe Garamond Pro by Juliet Williams Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI 39.48-1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents List of Figures vii Preface and Acknowledgments ix INTRODUCTION Reading Death CHAPTER 1 Playing Dead CHAPTER 2 Staging Death CHAPTER 3 Disposing the Dead 5 CHAPTER 4 Disposing the Dead? CHAPTER 5 Animating the Dead 5 CONCLUSION 205 Notes 29 Works Cited 24 Index 25 List of Figures 1. Funerary altar of Cornelia Glyce. Vatican Museums. Rome. 2. Sarcophagus of Scipio Barbatus. Vatican Museums. Rome. 7 3. Sarcophagus of Scipio Barbatus (background). Vatican Museums. Rome. 68 4. Epitaph of Rufus. Capitoline Museums #4520. Rome. 8 5. Capitoline Venus. Capitoline Museums. Rome. 9 6. Portrait of Flavian Woman as Venus. Capitoline Museums. Rome. 0 Preface and Acknowledgments WHILE ordering a new tombstone for my father, the cemetery director nonchalantly mentioned that the old tombstone would be moved and placed “out of view” on a field in the country once the new one arrived. His words had a jarring effect: the old tombstone is now out of context, no longer marking where my father is buried, but is now an out-of-place inscribed piece of stone intruding on the landscape in a way that recalls Poussin’s painting Et in Arcadia Ego. The old tombstone is still on my mind while viewing the new one now in place in the cemetery and the meaning of the Greek word for a grave—sema, the basis of semiotics—took on personal meaning as I wondered: who, if anyone, is reading the inscription of the old one? Is someone reading the inscription of the old one as someone reads the inscription of the new one? Which of the two will last longer? The question of how long anyone will remember the existence of the original points to the time limits inherent in cultural memory and memo- rialization. There are literally two markers dedicated to the same person in two different locations, the new one now in the cemetery and the old one in a field now only in the memory of those who saw it. When I am not in the cemetery, however, both are figurative memorials that are even prioritized as emotional markers: the first tombstone, the former localizer/grave marker of my initial grief, has been replaced by another that represents a later stage of grief. Therefore, I as viewer and reader reify a meaning to a slab of stone which itself gives meaning to a person and site as it identifies the deceased and defines space. From another’s perspective unaware of the existence of the first tombstone, the second one simply marks the place where my father is buried. x Preface and Acknowledgments This semiotic exercise involving the associations between two grave markers commemorating my father in two distinct physical settings led me to reread descriptions of funerary rituals in Latin literature that had often seemed to operate on many narrative levels to engage the reader in a similar interplay between physical and figurative allusions. As with my work on Roman drama, the theory of performance semiotics that examines the physi- cal and figurative relation between the stage, actors, and the audience/reader informs my approach to funerals as staged events with participants and audience members. “Reading death” offers a reading strategy for analyzing literary descriptions and allusions to death ritual, rather than a reconstruction of the evidence for funeral and burial ritual in ancient Rome. In fact, authorial agendas should make us cautious about treating these descriptions and allusions as evidence for Roman burial practices. I focus, in particular, on the associative reading process—the extent to which literary texts allude to funeral and burial ritual, the narrative role played by the allusion to recreate a fictive version of the ritual (to turn reading, in some cases, into a performative and ritualistic act), and how the allusion engages a reader’s knowledge of the ritual or previous literary intertexts. Since I analyze a series of case studies, the conclusions of each specific case vary. Examples, therefore, are illustrative: no ancient source offers complete information regarding funerary and burial rituals and no attempt has been made to include every literary reference to funerary ritual or to place literary passages within a wider cultural shift in ritual practice. This book is aimed at an interdisciplinary audience, so I have translated all Greek and Latin passages in the main text. My approach complements those of recent literary and archeological studies that focus on the figurative interpretation of Roman death ritual, such as Basil Dufallo’s The Ghosts of the Past: Latin Literature, the Dead, and Rome’s Transition to a Principate (2007); Maureen Carroll’s Spirits of the Dead: Roman Funerary Commemoration in Western Europe (2006); Geoffrey Sumi’s Ceremony and Power. Performing Politics in Rome between Republic and Empire (2005); Penelope J. E. Davies’s Death and the Emperor. Roman Impe- rial Funeral Monuments from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius (2000); Donald G. Kyle’s Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (1998); and John Bodel’s influen- tial publications which have increased our knowledge of the importance of figurative interpretations of the archeological record of burials. Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood’s Reading Greek Death (1995) is wider in scope of Greek cultural material, but her analysis of literary texts is relevant to my study. Catharine Edwards’s Death in Ancient Rome (2007) is more concerned with the act of dying than death ritual, but our different approaches to, at times, Preface and Acknowledgments xi the same literary evidence highlight the range of cultural and interpretive agendas at work in narratives on dying, the dead, and their disposal. Parts of my book Roman Tragedy: Theatre to Theatricality (2004a) considered the metatheatricality of funerals and the political significance of the attempted restaging of Accius’ Brutus following the funeral of Julius Caesar as did my article on Pompey’s cremation in Lucan’s Bellum Civile that appeared in Studies in Latin Literature and Roman History: Collection Latomus 12: vol. 287. I build upon these earlier analyses of the theatricality of funerary pre- sentation and representation of the dead. Modern funerary practices are contributing to opportunities for the (self-) representation of the deceased as is the Internet which is emerging as a forum for the communication of grief and bereavement with virtual wakes, and the reciprocal communication between the dead and the living. Increas- ingly, websites make grieving universal and perpetual in a way that visiting a grave in a cemetery or erecting a tombstone is not. These modern cultural developments provide interesting intertexts to my analysis of Latin descrip- tions and allusions to Roman death ritual and point to the enduring need for communication with the dead. * I have benefited greatly from the interdisciplinary focus of the International Conference on the Social Context of Death, Dying, and Disposal sponsored by the Centre for Death and Society (CDAS) at the University of Bath and its affiliated journal, Mortality, and the support of Glennys Howarth and Peter C. Jupp. I owe much to the audiences and fellow panelists (especially Penelope Davies, Eric Varner, Naomi Norman, and James C. Anderson Jr.), of my lectures delivered at the conferences in Glasgow (1998): “Among the Dead: The Symbolic Participation of the Dead in Ancient Rome”; London (2000): “Playing Dead: Death Ritual and the Dead in the Roman Theatre”; York (2002): “The Poetics of Latin Epitaphs”; Bath (2005): “Cremating Pal- las: The Poetics of Cremation in Vergil’s Aeneid”; and again in Bath (2007): “Ausonius’ Parentalia: Walking among the Dead.” I would also like to thank the audiences of my lectures for their helpful questions and comments at the 126th APA Annual Meeting (1994): “The Dead and Divine as Actor and Audience at Rome”; the 129th APA Annual Meeting (1997): “Death and the Roman Imperial Court”; the fourth annual Boston University Roman Stud- ies Conference (1998): “Reading Death in Roman Poetry”; Classical Asso- ciation of the Midwest and South (2000): “Picking Up the Pieces: Seneca Phaedra 1262–68”; and the University of Georgia (2005): “Playing Dead in xii Preface and Acknowledgments Seneca’s Troades.” I would also like to thank Eugene O’Connor, the anony- mous readers, and the editorial staff at The Ohio State University Press for making this a better book in every way. I am grateful to the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts at the University of Georgia for a grant that allowed me release time from teaching in spring 2006 to work on this book. Introduction Reading Death A S Poussin’s shepherds contemplate the meaning of the epitaph inscription Et in Arcadia ego, in the painting of the same name, the viewer/ reader considers the impact that death and the shepherds’ contemplation of death has on their picturesque pastoral landscape and the self.1 The inscrip- tion is both syntax and iconography imposed on nature which the viewer (the shepherds and the viewers of the painting) must interpret against the backdrop of and within the context of nature.