Sepulcrum Hateriorum

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.

Sources

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_the_Haterii