Igel Column, funerary monument of the Secundinii · Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA)

Monumentum Secundinorum

Igel Column

TombGallia Belgica · Trier, GermanyBuilt 250 CE

Not standing in 117 CE

About

The Secundinii, a family grown rich on cloth, raised this 23 meter sandstone pillar over their tomb around 250 CE, well after the 117 CE snapshot. Reliefs on all four faces show them settling accounts with tax officials, hauling bales of fabric and dining in state, with Jupiter carrying off Ganymede at the summit. It remains the tallest Roman funerary monument standing north of the Alps. Villagers called it a wedding stone, and that legend spared it.

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.