Tomb of Annia Regilla
About
The Greek senator and sophist Herodes Atticus built this brick cenotaph for his wife Annia Regilla after her death in 160 CE, on land the couple owned beside the Appian Way. For centuries visitors mistook the building for a pagan temple to a minor god called Rediculus, until scholars reidentified its true purpose. Its coffered brick vaulting still ranks among the best-preserved of its kind in Rome. It did not yet exist in 117 CE, rising more than four decades after Trajan's death.
What happened here
Roman burial is a family matter conducted in public. The dead are carried out of town, cremated or laid in the ground, and mourned with formal noise; the funeral of anyone important is a procession with masks of the ancestors carried by hired men. The tomb that follows is designed to be read by strangers on the road: name, age, offices, sometimes a trade shown in relief, often a line addressed directly to the passer-by. Ordinary people appear here as they nowhere else — a baker with his ovens carved on the front, a freedman naming the woman he could finally marry, a child's age given in days. Anniversaries bring the family back with food and wine.
Sources
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