← Back to the map Rock-cut facade of the Tomb of Sextius Florentinus at Petra with its Latin inscription

The Tomb of Sextius Florentinus at Petra, Wikimedia Commons

Tomb of Sextius Florentinus

Sepulcrum Sexti Florentini

TombArabia Petraea · Petra, near the Royal Tombs, JordanBuilt 128 CE

Not standing in 117 CE

About

Sextius Florentinus governed the Roman province of Arabia under Hadrian, and when he died around 129 CE his son honored his final request to be buried at Petra rather than carried home to Rome. A Latin inscription above the doorway names the son as builder, an unusual Roman insertion into a facade otherwise carved in purely Nabataean style. The tomb rose near the city's Royal Tombs, built between roughly 126 and 130 CE. It postdates the 117 CE snapshot by about a decade, since Florentinus only became governor in 127.

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.