Cenotaph of Drusus
About
Roman soldiers stationed at Mogontiacum built this nearly twenty-metre masonry tower in 9 BCE to honor their general Drusus, who died of injuries from a fall while campaigning beyond the Rhine. His body was carried to Rome for burial, but the legions raised this empty monument on the spot where they had first mourned him. Originally cased in marble, it anchored an annual memorial ceremony and the imperial cult at the fortress. Alongside the Igel Column, it remains one of only two Roman funerary monuments still standing above ground north of the Alps.
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
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