Pyramid Tomb of the Appian Way
About
A concrete pyramid core rose over this tomb only a generation or two after the Appian Way itself was laid down in 312 BCE, making it one of the oldest funerary monuments standing on the road. Its burial chamber later became a wheel of cheese-aging storage for a medieval farmhouse and a fortress outpost for the counts of Tusculum. By 117 CE it had already stood for roughly four centuries, its original marble facing long since gone. Only the masonry skeleton survives today.
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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