Sepulcrum Scipionum
About
An underground family tomb cut into volcanic rock beside the Via Appia, holding generations of the Cornelii Scipiones, the clan that produced the general who first fought Hannibal in Spain. Four square pillars left in the living rock divided the burial chamber, later enlarged with a brick gallery and its own facade on the road. Burials there had stopped roughly 150 years earlier, but the carved chamber remained intact. By 117 CE the once-famous tomb sat quiet beside the city's busiest road.
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
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →