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Tomb of Hilarus Fuscus
About
Carved portraits of a freedman's family once looked out from this tomb's facade toward every traveler entering Rome from the south. Hairstyles on the female figures date the monument to the last years of the Republic, right as Augustus was consolidating power. An inscription once named the family, though it vanished from the ruin sometime in the late twentieth century. The surviving reliefs are plaster copies; the originals now sit in the Baths of Diocletian museum.
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
Nearby
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