Tomb of Turpio
About
Wealthy families of Roman Lugdunum buried their dead along the Aquitaine road at Trion, where this limestone mausoleum survives as the best-preserved of the group. Railway workers uncovered it and nine neighboring tombs in 1885 during construction through the old necropolis. Authorities dismantled and reassembled five of them, this one included, at Place Eugene-Wernert to save them from destruction. Built in the first century CE, it commemorated a Gallo-Roman notable of Lugdunum named Turpio.
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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