Tomb of the Rabirii
About
A freedman named Gaius Rabirius Hermodorus raised this temple-fronted tomb beside the Appian Way for himself, his wife Rabiria Demaris, and a priestess of Isis named Usia Prima. Its concrete and flint core rose over twelve metres, faced in travertine carved with three lifelike portrait busts more than nine metres wide. Built in the early Augustan years, it stood among the road's grandest freedman monuments, a former slave's answer to noble ancestry.
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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