Tomb of the Children of Sextus Pompeius Iustus
About
A grieving father named Sextus Pompeius Iustus built this brick and marble tomb for his two children, Pompeia Eleutheris and Sextus Pompeius, who died before him. Eight elegiac couplets carved across the facade addressed passersby directly, mourning lost potential rather than celebrating rank or office. Archaeologists later reassembled the long inscription from thirty-five broken fragments. Raised in the first century CE, it stood a century later as one of the Appian Way's rare purely personal, non-aristocratic epitaphs.
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
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