Tomb of Munatius Plancus
About
A cylindrical mausoleum crowning Monte Orlando above the Gulf of Gaeta, built for Lucius Munatius Plancus, the consul and general who founded the colony of Lyon. Its drum spans nearly 30 meters and originally carried a stepped conical roof visible far out at sea. Its entrance inscription lists his offices as consul, censor, and triumphator over the Raetians. Ships rounding the cape had used it as a landmark for well over a century by 117 CE.
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.
In ancient writing
- Funerary inscription of L. Munatius Plancus, CIL X 6087 (= ILS 886) 6087
The inscription on Plancus's mausoleum at Gaeta lists his career: consul, censor, imperator acclaimed twice, septemvir of the epulones, triumphator over the Raetians, builder of the Temple of Saturn from war spoils, and founder of the colonies of Lugdunum and Colonia Raurica.
Sources
Nearby
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