Sepulcrum Priscillae
About
A freedman named Titus Flavius Abascantus built this cylindrical tomb on the Appian Way for his wife Priscilla, who died around 90 CE. The poet Statius devoted the closing poem of his Silvae to the burial, describing thirteen niches meant for statues above a travertine base. Abascantus rejected cremation and had Priscilla's body embalmed and wrapped in Tyrian purple instead. Medieval nobles later fortified the ruin into a small stronghold.
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
- Statius, Silvae 5.1
This epicedion (funeral poem), addressed to the freedman Abascantus, mourns his wife Priscilla and describes the tomb built for her on the Via Appia, including its construction and adornment.
Sources
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