Sepulcrum Horatiorum et Curiatiorum
About
Four truncated stone cones once rose from the corners of this massive tumulus outside ancient Alba Longa, built from huge blocks of local peperino stone in the early first century BCE. Roman legend tied it to the semi-mythical Horatii and Curiatii champions, though that duel was supposed to have happened six centuries earlier. Modern archaeology instead points to an Etruscan noble of the Arruntia family. Two of the four original corner cones still stand.
What happened here
The tomb is built where the traffic is: on the road out of town, facing the carriageway, close enough to read at walking pace. That is the design brief. Inside there may be a single chamber for one family or niches for dozens, with cremation urns or, increasingly, bodies laid out. Outside there is a portrait, an inscription giving the dead their offices and their years, and often a bench, because visitors come back. The family returns on the anniversary and at the February festival of the dead, brings wine and food, and eats a meal at the graveside. Endowments are left to keep it up and lawsuits follow when they are not honoured. A grand tomb is the last public building a family gets to commission.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →