19th-century plate reproduction, Wikimedia Commons

Tomb of the Haterii

Sepulcrum Hateriorum

TombItalia · Via Labicana, near Porta Maggiore, Rome, ItalyBuilt 110 CE

About

A family of builders raised this tomb along the Via Labicana around 100-120 CE and covered it with marble reliefs advertising their own trade. One panel shows a giant treadwheel crane hoisting stone blocks, the clearest surviving depiction of Roman construction machinery. Another shows the funeral bier of Hateria, a freedwoman and priestess, lying in state inside a miniature temple. The reliefs, unearthed in 1848, now hang in the Vatican Museums.

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.

In ancient writing

Inscription associated with the Tomb of the Haterii, Rome, CIL VI, 607 607
Names Quintus Haterius Tychicus, a freedman public building contractor, and is the textual basis scholars use to link the tomb's ownership to a Haterii family of builders -- consistent with the tomb's marble reliefs depicting monuments they built, including the Colosseum. The inscription is a scholarly attribution rather than a label found in situ on the monument itself; the tomb's own on-site inscription, if any, is lost.