Housing the Dead: the tomb as house in Roman Italy - Divinity School

Housing the Dead: the tomb as house in Roman Italy
Andrew Wallace-Hadrill
That the tomb was a house for the dead was a topos, a commonplace of imperial Latin literature. So
Statius, poet of Domitian’s court, composed a suitable lament for the death of Priscilla, wife of the
mighty imperial freedmen Abascantus (Silvae V.1). By leaving the composition for a suitable
interval, he was able to comment on her tomb. Its massive marble construction would defy the
erosion of time. The statues of goddesses that graced it, Ceres, Diana, Maia and Venus, would not
shame the divinities themselves. The household servants (famuli) and the usual crowd of attendants
are present for the obsequies, and for the regular rituals of celebratory meals.
…domus ista, domus! quis triste sepulcrum/dixerit?
...It is a house, a true house. Who could call it a sad sepulchre? (237f)
Statius does not comment on the form, in fact a classic circular mausoleum. It is not the shape of the
tomb, so much as its activity which provokes his outburst: the crowd of attendants, servants and
others, not to speak of the dignified company of the goddesses, mean Priscilla is not left sadly on
her own, but continues in death as in life to be in good company.
Another, fictional freedman, Trimalchio, is famous for his reflections on how to house the
dead in proper style.
Are you going to build my tomb as I instructed? I do want you to be sure to put my puppy at
the feet of my statue, and wreaths, and unguents – and all Petraites’ best fights. Your kind
act will give me life after death. The dimensions now: a hundred feet of street front, two
hundred of depth – for I want every kind of fruit around my ashes, and a generous vineyard.
Because it really is nonsense for a person to have a nice house when he’s alive and not to
worry about the one in which he’s got to live for rather longer. So the most important thing
is a notice ‘this monument does not descend to the heir’… (Petronius 71,6-8, trans. Purcell
1987)
Petronius’ masterly parody scores off so many familiar features of early imperial burials, and above
all those of the freedman. Again, we cannot be quite sure of the form of the tomb. The standard
formula for the dimensions (so many feet in fronte, so many in agro) refers of course to the entire
plot, with its ample provision for vines and flowers as in many cepotaphia. But it sounds less like
the form archaeologists call a ‘house-tomb’, and more like the freemen burials of the period outside
the Herculaneum gate of Pompeii, with a larger enclosure around a monumental altar. Specifically,

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the tomb of Naevoleia Tyche and Munatius Faustus, Augustalis and paganus, honoured by the
Council with a bisellium (Fig.1), seems to fit Trimalchio’s prescription,
be sure to have ships in full sail on the … of my monument, and me sitting on a platform in
full official dress with five gold rings dishing out cash to the people from a bag…
(for the parallel, see Kockel 1983, 105f.). Again, what makes the tomb a house is not so much shape
as the extension of the activities of lifetime, the commercial success, the popular benefactions, and
the garden which ensured that the family could have regular festivals to celebrate around the tomb,
the Parentalia, the Rosalia and Violaria that are specified in so many inscriptions. People, not walls,
make a house as well as a city.
The tomb-as-house metaphor continued to flourish throughout the empire, as the numerous
passages cited by the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae show (TLL IV, 1979 sv domus 1B2c), and into
late antiquity. The Codex Theodosianus shows the deep concerns about the destruction of tombs of
the successors of Constantine (who of course destroyed tombs to build his basilica for St Peter), and
the language of houses strangely interweaves their protests. So Constantius II, from Milan in 356 or
357:
Those who violate the habitations of the shades, the homes, so to speak, of the dead, appear
to perpetrate a two-fold crime. For they both despoil the buried dead by the destruction of
their tombs, and they contaminate the living by the use of this material in living. (CT 9.17.4)
So not only are tombs like homes; they specifically risk contamination by confusion with the homes
of the living.
We learn that some men too eager for gain destroy tombs, and transfer the building material
to their own homes (CT 9.17.3, Constantius, 356).
The trouble of course is that tombs are so close to houses that the elements are in part
interchangeable, a point reinforced by Julian:
Some men even take away from the tombs ornaments for their dining rooms and porticoes
(CT 9.17.5).
The very fact that tombs were places for dining rendered them the more suitable for despoliation for
the benefit of the houses of the living.
Funerary epigraphy itself bears out the persistence in Latin epitaphs of the house/tomb analogy.
Richmond Lattimore (1962, 165ff) gathered a selection of the passages, noting the frequency of the
expression aeterna domus. The expression is ambiguous since sometimes it refers to the Greek
concept of Hades as the eternal house of the dead, but often too the reference to the tomb is explicit:

haec domus aeterna est, hic sum situs, hic ero semper
Here is my eternal home, here I lie, here shall I be for ever. (CE 434,15 Pisaurum).
And again, the conscious interplay of the houses of the living and the dead is to the fore:
aedes aedificat dives, sapiens monumentum;
hospitium est illud corporis, hic domus est.
The rich man builds a house, the wise man a monument;
the first is a lodging for the body, the second a home. (CE 1488,1-2, Rome)
By the familiar paradox, the domus is degraded to the status of a temporary lodging house, while
the funerary monument becomes the true home, the domus.
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As Lattimore interestingly comments, the tomb/house figure seems to be a great deal more common
in Latin epitaphs than Greek; and indeed, the Greek passages are ‘late’, meaning from Greek areas
under Roman rule, and ‘often look very much like translations’ (1962, 165). Several scholars have
recently pursued the house/tomb analogy, including Hopkins (1983), Purcell (1987), Saller (1994)
and Hope (1997). In particular, John Patterson’s interesting chapter on ‘Living and dying in the city
of Rome’ looks in parallel at the houses and the tombs of rich and poor, and ends by concluding
with the observation that the link goes back to the Villanovan hut-urns of the beginning of the first
millennium (Patterson 2000, 280). A visit to a modern Italian cemetery like the Campo Verano in
Rome, with their characteristic house-like family tombs, in stark contrast to the separate
gravestones of the Acattolico cemetery reserved for non-catholic foreigners, but above all northern
European and American Protestants, might lead one to think that here is one of those great cultural
continuities. Is it somehow specifically Italian to link burial to house and family?
But to leap from a Villanovan hut-urn to the Campo Verano seems to me altogether too risky a
project. If there is some degree of persistence of the tomb/house analogy even through the ancient
Roman period, the apparent continuity masks some fairly fundamental shifts. Where does the
analogy actually get us, or where did it get them? Metaphors are slippery, shifting things, which
refuse to be pinned down at the moment you most need to push them. The Romans evidently
enjoyed playing with the analogy, and so do modern scholars talking about the Romans, but it is
one thing to use the comparison as a rhetorical trope or figure, another as an argument or
hypothesis. Significantly, the majority of scholars mentioned above draw attention to the housetomb
link almost as an aside. Only Richard Saller, who has some investment in the potential of
extracting information about the structure of the Roman family from tombs and their inscriptions,
comes close to incorporating it is his argument (and even he is admirably cautious); as Valerie Hope

suggested, tombs seem to tell us more about the role of the freemen and servile household in the
family than about the nuclear family (Hope 1997).
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To begin to assess the significance of the tomb/house link, we need also to understand its limits.
Scholars can be curiously uncritical about this. In particular, the brick-built ‘house-tombs’ that
characterise the Vatican necropolis (Fig.2) and the Isola Sacra, have led to enthusiastic
appropriation of the analogy. Saller (1994, 97) well quotes Toynbee and Ward-Perkins’ evocative
commentary on the Vatican St Peter’s necropolis (1956, 113f.):
‘the Vatican house-tombs, and their counterparts elsewhere, so simple without, so richly
decked and colourful within, were surely regarded as places in which the dead, in some
sense or at some times, resided. Hidden away behind stout doors and seen only by members
of the owners’ families on anniversaries and feast-days, when sacrifices, ceremonial meals,
and ritual washings took place, all this luxuriant internal ornament and art must have been
designed as much to delight the dead as to gratify and instruct the survivors.’
Here the ancient trope of the grave as the eternal house of the dead is put to work to explain an
apparent paradox, the disproportionate investment in the artistic decoration of the invisible inside of
the tomb (‘behind stout doors’), rather than the visible outside. And yet the explanation contains its
own visible contradiction. The authors are well aware that the family of the dead regularly penetrate
behind those stout doors for festival celebrations, and yet it is assumed that the decoration is for the
benefit of the dead not the living. Or at least the survivors are building ‘as much to delight the dead
as to gratify’ themselves. But the most spectacularly decorated of these house-tombs, that of
Valerius Herma, as the inscriptions tell us, was built by Valerius in his lifetime. Are the survivors
building for the dead Herma, or is the living Herma building for the living, and to ensure a
continued presence of the survivors at his own tomb?
The tomb/house analogy is partial. As Regina Gee, who is working on this tomb, points out to me,
even the house-like appearance of the façade is misleading. We are so used to suburban houses with
pitched roofs, that we instantly recognise a house in the formula of a rectangular front with door and
windows and a pitched roof. But did not Roman domus roofs pitch inwards to the impluvium?
Then, what sort of a house opens inwards to a single chamber? Sometimes there is provision for the
sloping couches of a triclinium, either inside the tomb as in the very interesting examples of the
tombs outside the gates of Ostia studied by Boschung (1987) (Fig.3), or immediately outside as in
the tomb, as in the case of the tomb of Verria Zosime at the Isola Sacra. But while the triclinium is
an evident derivative of, and allusion to, domestic arrangements, there is no attempt to evoke the

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internal architectural arrangements of a Roman house. All of which is simply to say that the analogy
is a partial one, and raises the question of its limits and effectiveness.
Another set of questions about limits is raised by the very frequency of house-tombs in these
locations. If the house form was effective, why is it only one among many? Look down the streets
of tombs of Pompeii, with their carefree mixture of styles, circular mausolea, altars, miniature
temples, exhedrae, columns, enclosures with the semi-carved heads of columellae, all such splendid
diversity, alongside a few examples that can reasonably be classified as house-tombs, and one is
bound to ask what symbolic or other function was better performed by the house-tomb that was not
also performed by the others? We have already seen that Trimalchio’s tomb, for all his anxiety to
make it a ‘house for ever’, seems not to have been imagined as a house tomb.
Finally, we may ask whether we are not simply carried away by the pleasure of the rhetorical trope
into pushing the analogy further than it can bear. Take the columbarium, the remarkable pigeon-loft
form of the late republic and early empire, which in its most dramatic examples provided capacity
for several hundred urns. Keith Hopkins (1983, 201-256), whose interest is in a crowded city and its
forgotten masses, sees in the columbarium the analogue to the metropolitan insula, with its many
floors and packed tenements. Nicholas Purcell by contrast, who observes that the most important
examples were built for the servile households and dependants of the high aristocracy, says the
analogy is rather with the domus ‘with its endless attics and tabernae and ramifications for the long
and short-term stay of the dependents, not the insula’ (Purcell 1987, 39). But close though Purcell’s
image of the domus to my own, I cannot adjudicate here between Hopkins and Purcell, for the real
architecture of domestic space (internal divisions and floors) is simply absent, and each scholar’s
metaphor makes its point, just so far as it can be pushed.
Such questions lead me to suppose that there is room for a more thorough and critical survey of the
linkage of house and tomb. Part of what I have to say is that a higher degree of critical distance is in
place. But above all I wish to argue that the analogy cannot get us very far until it can be
incorporated into a hypothesis, and this is what I would like, in however provisional a form, to
offer. In doing so I shall lean heavily on what I have already written about the Roman house
(Wallace-Hadrill 1988 and 1994). I then suggested that one way in which to understand the
underlying dynamic of the Roman house was to see it as a tension between two different
dimensions or ‘axes’. The house is Janus-like, looking in two directions, outwards and inwards. It
looks outwards to the world beyond its doors, foris, and to those visitors from outside who

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penetrate its doors. In looking to the outsiders (strangers, clients, guests, friends, outsiders in
varying degrees) it seeks to impress, and makes statements about the status and identity of the
insiders. Simultaneously it looks inwards, domi, for it is a space also articulated for the insiders,
who have their own crucial social distinctions, slave and free, men and women, adults and children.
The complexity of reading Roman domestic space, I argued, derives the imperative for the same set
of spaces to communicate in both directions at once, inside and outside.
Similar considerations, I now suggest, are equally valid for the Roman tomb. It looks outward, to
the passing visitor, the hospes often invoked by the epitaph, the unknown stranger who stands for
everybody, since the tomb is deliberately placed (or at least in many cases is placed) close to the
major thoroughfares leading into the city. Many tombs, not least that of Trimalchio, had their eye
primarily to the passer-by. Tombs are consequently major public declarations of identity and status,
the assumption implicit in the subtitle of Römische Gräberstrassen – Selbstdarstellung-Status-
Standard. But they also look inward, to a closed circle of the family, those who gather with their
wine and roses and violets on the festal days, and gradually, one by one, take their resting places
within. One of the fundamental functions of funerary rites is the reintegration of the family group,
shattered by the brutality of loss (Chapman et al1981, Morris 1992). The family is not ruptured, but
continues: funeral masks, portrait statues, inscriptions work to maintain the continuity. If Toynbee
and Ward-Perkins are surprised that the art is inside behind closed doors, their surprise is that this
function has taken precedence over the function of declarations of identity and status to the world
outside.
This might suggest a simple dichotomy: the exterior aspects of the tomb serve an outwards-looking
function, the interior aspects serve an inward-looking function. But just as with the house, it is vital
to appreciate that the outwards/inwards divide is more complex than that. In the case of the house,
simplistic distinctions of ‘public’ versus ‘private’ areas are not helpful: the public penetrates the
most private recesses of the house (the master’s bedroom, or the latrine by the kitchen), and the
private penetrates the public (women and children are not kept away from the public area of the
atrium but share it, and slaves are present at every point). In the case of the tomb, the gaze of the
passer-by may rest on the family united in its festivities, and to some extent (varying greatly from
case to case) the tomb serves precisely as a public representation of the intimate unit of the family.
Who is displayed is a critical decision. Trimalchio in a tantrum threatens Fortunata to exclude her
statue from his tomb; he is confident he wants to display his own superabundant importance, and
will commit himself on a puppy to be carved at his feet, but is less certain whether he wants to let

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his wife in on the display (Sat. 74.17). Herein, of course, his gross vulgarity. It is because so many
Roman tombs at least to some extent put the family unit on public display that Saller and Shaw
(1984) could make such potent use of their inscriptions.
My hypothesis, then, proposes that both functions, external and internal, are simultaneously present
in all Roman burials, but that the balance and relationship between them can vary substantially, and
that we can detect changing patterns over time. To illustrate the concept, I offer one Pompeian
example of what might be termed the Trimalchio syndrome, where the balance seems to be tipped
strongly in favour of the external function, and yet the internal function is indeed present, despite a
certain level of uncertainty. This is the tomb of Vesonius Phileros (Figs. 4-5) in the necropolis
outside the Porta Nocera (D’Ambrosio and De Caro 1983, 23 OS). The form of the tomb is of an
aedicula, a miniature temple with a simple opening and pediment on a high podium, looking down
on the street. Within the portico are three statues, two males flanking one female. The titulus
identifies the characters: P(ublius) Vesonius Phileros, G(aiae) l(ibertus), Augustalis, his patrona,
Vesonia P(ubli) f(ilia), and M(arcus) Ofellius Faustus M(arci) L(ibertus) amicus. Here is indeed a
strange family grouping, the freedman and his female patron, and an unrelated man tied only by
friendship. The monument belongs to the familiar type of one erected in the life of the
commemorator/ commemorated, vivos monument(um) fecit sibi et suis. Here is conspicuous selfdisplay;
the element of status display is only enhanced by the fact that AVGVSTALIS is added at a
subsequent point in a second hand. Vesonius may seem anything but a family man: no wife, no
children, not even freedmen generalised as libertis libertabusque posterisque suis. And yet his
monument constitutes a pseudo-family, displays it, and then goes on in a second and longer
inscription to display the despair at the breakdown of the group so constituted and displayed.
Hospes paullisper morare si non est molestum, Stranger, stay a while if it is not a nuisance, and
hear my sad tale. It is a cautionary tale (quid evitas cognosce). The syntax is faltering, the sentence
breathless, the cri-de-coeur rings loud and clear. ‘This man whom I had hoped to be my friend I got
accused by of documentary fraud [or I got accused fraudulently] and proceedings were started I
thank the gods and my own innocence I was absolved of all nuisance. He who falsely denies he is
ours, him may neither the gods of the house nor the gods below receive.’ 1 The curse upon the false
friend, the Judas who denies, is eloquent of the expectations of the tomb. For the very act of
including his friend in the memorial display declares that he was ‘one of us’, nostrum, so
1 Hospes paullisper morare si non est molestum et quid evites cognosce. Amicum hunc quem speraveram mi esse abeo
mihi accusato res subiecti et iudicia instaurata deis gratias ago et meae innocentiae omni molestia liberatus sum. Qui
nostrum mentitur, eum nec di penates nec inferi recipiant.

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constituting him as a family member. The curse excludes him simultaneously from the gods of the
house, di penates, and the gods below, di inferi. The function of the tomb then is to facilitate that
link. The display of those united around the di penates, the family gods of the living house, projects
their unity into the underworld, the house of the dead. In the end, Vesonius stands stripped to
eternity of his pseudo-family, uncertain what to display to the outside world, to the passing hospes.
But we should not shed a tear for him too hastily. One of the most important features of Pompeian
tombs is the survival within them of individual headstones, called columellae, which often bear the
name of the buried. There were no less than 18 such headstones within Vesonius’ tomb. Apart from
himself and his patrona, Vesonia, we find a Vesonius Proculus, who died at 13, a Vesonia Urbana,
who lived to 20, and a (H)eliodorus, who lived to 18. At this point we can only guess the story. The
patrona sounds to have been his partner as well as former owner. Presumably they are the parents
of Vesonius Proculus and Vesonia Urbana. Heliodorus should be one of their slaves, as in all
likelihood are the 13 other unnamed columellae, unless any of them were freedmen. At least we can
be confident Marcus Ofellius was not among them. The interior of the tomb thus reconstitutes the
family so partially glimpsed on the exterior.
To explore in detail this two-faced internal/external aspect of the tomb throughout Roman Italy
would strain the limits of space and time of this paper. Instead, I wish to illustrate what seem to be
the substantial changes over time of Roman practice by exemplifying three moments: the first, a
mid-Republican moment when Roman material culture still has palpable links to Etruscan practice,
through the tomb of the Scipios; the second, a moment of late Republican/early Imperial transition
seen through the necropolis of the Porta Nocera at Pompeii; the third, the high imperial tradition of
the ‘house-tombs’ of the metropolis seen through the tomb of Valerius Herma beneath St Peter’s. In
each case, I shall risk overgeneralization through exemplification; but my interest is underlining the
substantial contrasts across time as much as the continuities.
The mid-Republic and the tomb of the Scipios
The dearth of evidence from Rome of either houses or tombs predating the late Republic, coupled
with the sharp imbalance in evidence from Etruria in the same period between abundant tombs and
scarce houses, has long meant that Etruscan tombs have had to work very heavily to supply the gaps
in our knowledge of housing in both areas, and of tombs in Rome. Carandini’s excavations at the
foot of the Palatine, coupled with the chance discovery of a suburban villa site beneath Renzo

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Piano’s new Auditorium, now mean we are on better ground in talking about Roman houses of the
period between the sixth and second centuries. Even so, it is striking to observe how in Carandini’s
publication of the Palatine houses, Etruscan tombs are still put under heavy contribution to establish
the development of the atrium houses (Carandini and Carafa 1995, esp 237ff, 266ff- see Fig. 6).
Just how plausible are Carandini’s reconstructions of house plans of sixth-century Roman atriate
houses with central impluvia is not a theme I wish to pursue here, though it must be said it takes
courage to reconstruct an entire atrium-house when your only evidence is the odd disjointed
fragment of walling.
That Etruscan tombs have long seemed to offer a reflection of housing is scarcely surprising.
Consider the striking transformation that takes places in the Banditaccia necropolis of Cerveteri in
the late archaic period (Fig.7). In the seventh century the cemetery is characterised by circular
tumuli, some very large, some quite modest. The burial chambers beneath them appear in plan
rather like bacilli: long corridors with short side elements towards the end, and a culminating
chamber. Then in the early sixth century the form of the burial chambers beneath the tumuli
changes significantly. They become square in plan, with a characteristic three-fold division: short
entrance flanked by two chambers lead to a wide central chamber, and at its back, a group of three
equal cells. The formal links with the atrium house seem irresistible: fauces flanked by two rooms
lead into atrium, leading to tablinum flanked by two rooms. Then in the late sixth century, the
tumulus shell is dropped, to be replaced by neatly aligned streets of ‘cube tombs’ (‘tombe a dado’).
We seem to be witnessing an urban revolution, a move from villages of huts to colonial cities laid
out on a grid pattern. At the same period we find these neat streets of tombs at a number of other
sites, including the necropoli del Crocifisso del Tufo at Orvieto, and the Monterozzi cemetery at
Tarquinia.
It seems quite reasonable to interpret these tombs as deliberately evoking a domestic parallel. This
seems to be underlined by the evocation of domestic features like windows, doors and pilasters, and
particularly by the ceilings which often evoke a pitched roof, with central beam and downwards
sloping rafters. Yet these pitched roofs are as ambivalent as those of the Vatican ‘house tombs’.
Colonna, followed by Carandini, argues strongly for the introduction of the compluviate roof and
central impluvium from as early as the sixth century (Colonna 1986). That is the rereading of the
fifth-century houses of Marzabotto, long supposed to have been covered by displuviate, outwardsloping,
pitched roofs, but now argued on the basis of their internal drainage arrangements to have
been compluviate. If it is the case that as early as the sixth and fifth centuries, the characteristic

image of the atrium was the inwards sloping roof and impluvium, were the tombs with their
outwards-sloping roofs really evoking atria?
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To be honest, short of substantial new evidence about early housing in both Rome and Etruria, this
debate is liable to loop in circles. But for present purposes, it is enough to observe that Etruscan
tombs persistently had features that evoke a domestic context, like chairs, couches and pillows,
taken to a height in the fourth-century Tomba dei Rilievi at Cerveteri, in which the plastered walls
are decorated by a splendid range of furnishings which are at least partly domestic (though also
partly ritual, pointing to sacrifice). But where the domestic imagery gains its relevance is in the
function of such tombs in reconstituting and representing the family. The architecture in itself, by
creating a series of beds, arranged with a strong sense of hierarchy, the preferred position being the
central niche of the ‘tablinum’, and possibilities of subgroupings in the lateral chambers, points to
the desire to represent the occupants as a structured group. The abundant epigraphic material
confirms that the typical group was the multigenerational family.
A classic example, from a period of close interaction with the middle Republican Roman
aristocracy, is the tomb of the Volumnii at Perugia (e.g. Haynes 2000, 379ff). Dating from the late
third century, the tomb is located outside the town at the bottom of the hill. Externally it is
unremarkable: steps lead down to an underground chamber hewn from the soft sandstone. At the
bottom is a large rectangular hall (‘atrium’) with a pitched roof and rafters, with a main chamber
(‘tablinum’) on the central axis, and two lateral chambers (Fig. 8). The main chamber contains the
remains of seven named members of the Volumnius/Velimna family. Arnth Velimnas, the founder
of the tomb, dominates from his high couch with pillows and drapes, held aloft by two winged
daemons(Fig. 9). To the left, his daughter Veilia Velimnei is the one female of the group, the
unmarried daughter of Arnth. Male descendants (Thefri, Avle, Larth and Vel) stretch down to the
last, early imperial, member of the group, Publius Volumnius Violens, Roman enough to Latinise
his script and name, but still Etruscan enough to give his matronym. His elegantly carved ash urn is
in the form of a rectangular building with a pitched and tiled roof, double doors and Corinthian
pilasters; a house, it is normally said, though the form is a great deal closer to a temple than a house
(Fig.10).
I linger over this Etruscan background in order to bring out a point relevant to the issue of the
internal/external functions of the tomb. Despite the appearance of ‘streets of tombs’ from the sixth
century, the tombs of the classical Etruscan tradition have a relatively minor engagement with the

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external display of status. Indeed, the great tumuli of the seventh century make notable statements
in the landscape, as indeed do some of the rock-cut tombs as at Sovana. But the streets of Cerveteri-
Banditaccia, or Tarquinia-Monterozzi, or Orvieto-Crocefisso are not streets in the sense of Roman
Gräberstrassen, major thoroughfares where the public pass, but internal paths within a cemetery.
Again, the Volumnii tomb at Perugia may be on a main road; but externally nothing survives to
mark it as conspicuous; only once you have descended the stairs does it make its impression, as is
true of the famous frescoed tombs of Tarquinia.
The internal function of all these tombs, on the other hand, is very strong. These structures go to
considerable lengths to construct the family group as a living continuity. Architectural evocations of
domestic structures, hierarchical disposition of multiple burial couches, decorative details,
frequently evoking the theme of banqueting, figured representations of the dead, and extensive
inscriptions underlining their relationships, all work together to ensure that the living visitor to the
chamber will be impressed, and presumably identify strongly with the family group to which they
by definition belong. These tombs, unlike those of the via Appia, were not designed for tourists.
The tomb of the Scipios off the via Appia finds itself in an ambivalent role (Figs 11-14). As the
only surviving example of a burial place of a noble family from the middle republic, it has to serve
as the illustration of everything Polybius has to say about the vital importance of display of family
continuity in the ritual of a noble Roman funeral. Yet we know, and Cicero remarks on it, that the
Scipios were in some sense exceptions in their funerary practice: they continued to inhume when
cremation had become the standard Roman practice, the mos Romanus as Tacitus calls it. Their
sepulcrum must have been in some ways a deliberate display of a consciously maintained
difference.
As analysed by Coarelli (1972), the tomb goes back in its earliest form to the early third century
(fairly close in time to that of the Volumnii). Cn. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, consul of 298, is taken
to be the founder, and like Arnth Velimnas, he dominates his family from the axial position at the
centre at the back of the tomb (Fig. 11). Unlike the tomb of the Volumnii, this is rather crudely
hewn from the tufo. The main chamber is broadly square in plan, with four tufo pillars left more of
less symmetrically disposed (Fig.12). The eventual capacity of the tomb was of 30 couches, which
Coarelli points out corresponds with the likely total of members of the family between the early
third and mid second. Which is to say that the interior of the tomb had already reached capacity in
the mid-second century when its façade was rebuilt, as Coarelli hypothesises, by Scipio Aemilianus

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himself (Fig.13). Alternatively, one might argue that the interior was remodelled at this period to fit
the existing burials.
Only nine of the sarcophagi survive, each with an inscription, six in verse (Fig.14). All the verses
are in Saturnians, except the last in the series, that for the praetor of 139 BC, which is in elegiac
couplets. Since Saturnians were standard in early Latin poetry (such as Livius Andronicus and
Naevius), and the shift to Greek verse forms (elegiacs and hexameters) is linked with Ennius, it is
particularly intriguing to know what the role of Ennius was in the reshaping of this tomb. For
Cicero (pro Archia 22) and Livy (38.56.4) both report that its façade carried statues of three men,
Scipio Africanus, Scipio Asiaticus and Ennius. The use by the Scipios of verse epitaphs evidently
correlates with their persistent patronage of poets.
We cannot draw comparisons or make contrasts between the Scipionic tomb and its Roman midrepublican
rivals, for lack of evidence, but at least we can make some comparisons with the tomb of
the Volumnii. Both are multi-generational family tombs, making much of the agnatic male descent
line. As with the Volumnii, the Scipiones have only one surviving female sarcophagus, that of
Paulla Cornelia, wife of Hispallus, which is slipped behind that of the founder Barbatus. They
stretch over at least 5 generations, though the total duration of usage of the tomb was extended by
the fact that the Cornelii Lentuli used it in the early empire for the incineration burials. In so far as it
underlines the importance of the agnatic descent group, it reflects perfectly Polybius’ account of the
aristocratic funeral and its parade of impersonated ancestors. Unlike the Volumnii tomb, there are
no portraits surviving, though these may have been originally present. Like the Volumnii tomb, care
is taken by the inscriptions to identify the name and relationships of the commemorated; but the
verse inscriptions also allow the res gestae to be celebrated.
It is not easy to imagine that the envisaged audience of the interior of the Scipio tomb was anyone
other than the Scipiones themselves. There were certainly parts of the noble funerary ritual that
were designed to impress the public and consolidate the reputation and political clout of the family,
particularly the parade and public speeches described by Polybius. But the sarcophagi and their
verse inscriptions did not serve, even if they reflected, this external function. Rather we are in the
world described by Sallust in the preface to the Jugurthine War:
I have often heard that Q (Fabius) Maximus and P Scipio, among other leading figures in
our city, used to say that when they looked at the images of their ancestors, they felt strongly
inspired to virtue (BJ 4.5).

The visit to the tomb, like the viewing of ancestral portraits serves to admonish and inspire new
generations, consolidating the family, constructing it as a continuity over time (Flower 1996).
13
There was of course an external aspect to the tomb, in the façade which partly survives, but has to
be reconstructed as it is by Coarelli as a more magnificent example of mid second-century
‘hellenistic’ architecture in order to accommodate the statues described by Cicero and Livy. Two
points may be made here. The first is that the location of the tomb is singularly inept to catch the
attention of passers on the via Appia. Assuming it is right that Scipio Barbatus established its
location, the implication is that in the early third century this external function of the tomb was not
regarded as primary. Only in a second moment does it acquire an imposing façade, and by then it is
too late to remedy the location. The second point is to observe the misfit between the figures
celebrated, as least as recounted to us by literary sources, and the inhabitants of the tomb itself.
Scipio Africanus was buried at Liternum, and there is some doubt whether the poet Ennius was
buried here or at his native Rudiae. The façade paraded a rather different view of the Scipios from
the multi-generational lesson contained within.
It is, as we have already remarked, dangerous to generalise from a single instance. But it might be
reasonable to hypothesise that the Roman tombs of the early to middle Republic were closer to
those of contemporary Etruria than of the late Republic. The prominent display of eye-catching
funerary monuments along the Appian and other ways presents itself to us as a feature of the late
Republic, from the mid-second century on. These monuments may appear very traditional, and in
line with the Polybian account of eye-catching noble funerals, but there is a good chance they are
innovative, a new appropriation of old traditions, a monumentalization of the popular impact of the
funerary ritual (cf von Hesberg and Zanker 1987, 9). As the emphasis shifts from projecting the
continuity of the household beyond death to display of magnificence, the architectural language of
the domestic becomes less important.
Pompeii, Porta Nocera necropolis: a late republican and early imperial transition?
What characterises the classic streets of tombs of the last century BC and the first AD, as we meet
them in Rome, Pompeii, Sarsina, Aquileia and the locations assembled in Römische
Gräberstrassen, is a formal diversity. Beyond doubt that diversity reflects a strong impulse to
competitive display. But does it say more than that? The authors note the failure of their conference

14
to establish a semantics of the diverse topologies (von Hesberg and Zanker 1987, 11). But did the
variety have a semantic significance at all? If you chose an altar or a mini-temple, were you
showing yourself more pious? If a tumulus-shaped mausoleum, were you more heroic? If a
triumphal arch, more military? If a palace-façade, more regal? If a house-façade, more domestic?
What is surely most striking about this formal diversity is its indifference. The inscriptions follow
the same formulae on all types of structure. There is no meaningful distinction of the burials of
magistrates versus freedmen, or of Augustales versus ordinary freedmen, of men against women, of
people of different ethnic origin, or even of period. As we move down the extraordinary clutter of
the via Nocera necropolis, we can see the instinct to keep ringing the changes. We can see too the
vast differences between rich and poor, from Eumachia’s gigantic semicircular exhedra construction
at one extreme (11 OS, Fig.15), to the fragile little niche tomb of Castricia Prisca with its perished
plaster decoration of garlands, cupids and birds (25 OS, Fig.16). But can we say that they are
making different statements about their identity, status or family affiliations?
For all the paraded difference, these tombs have in fact certain fundamental factors in common. The
variety of the external aspects conceals a consistent relationship between the external and internal
functions of the tomb. Architectural variety in the outward appearance of the monumentum reflects
the common desire to catch the eye of the passers-by and inform them about the identity of those
who lie buried. Hospes, paullisper morare, si non tibi molestum est…There are so many others
buried along the road, and the traveller may be in a hurry, but, please, stranger, tarry a while and
here my tale. Vesonius spells it out more explicitly than others, but they all have a tale to tell. In
contrast to the homogeneous ‘cube tombs’ of Ceveteri or Orvieto, which neither stand on the main
road, nor seek to stand out architecturally, nor contain more than minimal inscriptional evidence
about the occupants (maybe a family name incised above the lintel), inscriptions and portraits
reward the stranger who tarries outside the Porta Nocera.
We may be struck by how strong was the instinct to portray on the exterior of the tomb. Portraits are
common in Etruscan cemeteries too, but they belong, together with the inscriptions, on the inside,
within the family chamber. The typical Etruscan portrait is a full figure reclining, either at full
length on the lid of the sarcophagus, or in abbreviated form above an ash-urn. Roman funerary
portraiture shows as much variety as the architecture of the tombs: full-length standing figures, like
Vesonius’s group, or Marcus Octavius and Vertia Philumina a few tombs down at 13OS, or seated
figures, like the couple on the far side of Eumachia’s tomb (9OS), reduced to anonymity by the
removal of their inscription, or simple portrait busts, most strikingly in the tomb of the Flavii

15
(Fig.17), with its symmetrically arranged niches in two row, six below and eight above, that await
the arrival of the Flavii to come (their death cycle cut off by Vesuvius), but in notably asymmetrical
positions to the right display the chunky busts of Flavius Philoxenus and Flavia Agathe (Fig.18).
The tomb within has two separate chambers; the western one contained the ollae, identified by
labels in carbon, as Flavius Philoxenus and Flavia Agathe (Fig.19). The external portraits therefore
correspond to the chamber within, in relation to which they are in fact symmetrically placed, rather
than to the monument as a whole.
The Flavii help to underline the vital point: that the external portraiture is a mirror of the internal
function of the tomb, which consists in burial chamber, pots containing ashes, and further
identifying labels. Thanks to the superb publication of the old excavations at Porta Nocera by
Stefano De Caro and Antonio D’Ambrosio (1983), and above all to their extension of the line of
graves in a new excavation (1987), we can restore the fragile traces of the internal aspects of these
tombs which are concealed to the modern visitor as to the ancient passer-by. The use of carbon to
record the names of the Flavii within reminds us of how the numerous apparently anonymous
burials in columbaria and chamber tombs must in fact have had labels in evanescent materials,
carbon or red pigment on terracotta, plaster, and surely frequently wood. We accept far too easily
the idea that naming was a privilege for the master of the house and his close family; it is the use of
incised marble that is the privilege.
What makes this point most forcefully at Pompeii is the use of columellae within the chamber to
mark the burial place of the individual. These headstones, as we have seen with Vesonius’ tomb,
evoke the shape of a head without attempting a portrait. The rear part is rounded, and in the case of
females often sketches out a head of hair. Their front surface is always flat, and serves as a support
for an inscription. It is these columellae, rather than the external inscriptions or portraits, which
provide the evidence for the location of the buried.
The most remarkable example is that of Munatius Faustus and Naevoleia Tyche (Fig.20). We have
already met this couple on the splendidly carved marble altar outside the Herculaneum gate, with
their ship, like Trimalchio’s, in full sail. But that altar, it would appear, was a cenotaph, for outside
the Porta Nocera, they have another tomb (9ES). This is less ostentatious, taking the form of a
rectangular enclosure with a gabled roof. The fact that it is one of a pair adds to the vague
impression of a row of houses. Externally, a marble inscription on the gable identifies C. Munatius
Faustus Augustal(is) et pagan(us) d(ecreto) d(ecurionum) sibi et Naevoleiae Tyche coniugi.

16
Internally, there are eight columellae, recording Munatius Faustus himself (notable misspelt as
Fausus), one L Naevoleius Eutrape(lus), taken to be the freedmen of Naevoleia, but perhaps more
plausibly her father or patron, the freedwoman Munatia Euche, and five slaves, Helpis, Primigenia,
Arsinoe, and Psyche, all of whom died at the age of 3 or less, and Atimetus who died at 26. The
interesting absentee in Naevoleia Tyche; and though it has been assumed that the new tomb at the
Herculaneum gate was a cenotaph, there is surely a good chance that she is buried there, having
outlived her husband; if indeed she was not still alive at the moment of the eruption, and still
planning to transfer her husband’s remains to their fancy new tomb (see Kockel 1983, 107).
I take one further illustration of the inward/outward rhythm of the Porta Nocera burials from the
new excavations, where because of their freshness, the significance of the columellae is particularly
visible. Tomb F north is formally similar to the tomb of Munatius Faustus: a rectangular enclosure
with a gabled roof. In the gable, the inscription announces C Veranius Rufus Q.f. IIvir (Figs 23-25).
It is worth taking note that this city magistrate, a duumvir, has exactly the same tomb type as an
Augustalis, and that in neither case is the tomb particular eye-catching. The dedication is made by
his father’s freedwoman and one may assume his partner: Verania Q.l. Clara optimo patrono sibi et
suis. Inside the low, arched doorway is visible a line of half a dozen columellae. The central couple,
neatly framed by the doorway, are Verania Q.l. Clara and Q Veranius Q.f. Rufus, though this time
his office is given not as duumvir but aedile, a usage which is paralleled in Pompeii (that is to say,
the aediles described themselves, being a pair, as duumvirs, so creating a constructive confusion of
their precise rank). The other four columellae are without inscriptions, or as I prefer to put it,
without surviving legible labels.
We have seen in the cases of Veranius and Verania, Munatius and Naevoleia, Flavius Philoxeus and
Flavia Agathe, and Vesonius Phileros, that there is a close relationship between the external and
internal aspects of the tomb. The essential feature of the tomb is in fact the enclosure or chamber: it
is here that the family members are assembled, and here too presumably that the ritual activities of
the surviving family focused on the Parentalia and the days of roses and violets. But in comparison
to the Etruscan tombs, they have been turned inside out. The columellae represent minimalist
markers of the presence of the deceased; the portraits and detailed inscriptions are displayed for
public consumption on the outside. The phenomenon is so marked that we run the risk of noticing
only the external aspects and therefore the external function: we think of the Roman tomb as a
monumentum to boast the status of the dead to the outside world. In truth, this is only the outwards
face of a structure that still has a critical internal function in reconstituting the family.

17
By my argument, then, these tombs are indeed parallel to the houses of the living. One notable
feature of the Pompeian domus is that the external function (the desire to impress the visitor from
outside) is so strong that it almost overwhelms the internal functions of a family structure. Women
and children prove relatively elusive within the house. But of course the internal function is still
there. The link between tombs and houses lies not in their typology (if the tomb of Munatius
Faustus at the Porta Nocera is more house-like, his altar-tomb at the Porta Ercolano is less so), but
in their management of the relationship of the external and internal function. Where the tombs of
this late republican/early imperial period seem to be historically distinctive is in the extraordinary
degree of importance attributed to the external function; and that, by no coincidence, is also true of
the treatment of domestic space.
Valerius Herma and the high imperial necropolis
My third and last moment is the mid-second century AD floruit of the street of the tombs beneath
the Vatican. That they were in some sense ‘representative’ is suggested by the close typological
parallels with the Isola Sacra necropolis with its tight chronological range from Trajanic to Severan
(Baldassare 1987). That the vision is partial is brought out by the equally important necropolis of
the Vatican autoparco. Thanks to Steinby’s careful publication (2003), we can recover the full
clutter of an ancient graveyard, where the neat rectangular structures of chamber tombs are
surrounded by a dense spread of simpler burials, in urns, or capuchin tents of tiles, or simple
wooden boxes that have rotted away (Fig. 25). That is a vital reminder that brick-built chamber
tombs were no universal norm, but a specific effort to group the dead together.
The brick facades of the St Peter’s necropolis, or the Isola Sacra, have often put visitors in mind of
rows of houses (Toynbee 1971, 132ff, von Hesberg 1987). The analogy, as we have seen, has its
limits; but coming to this material from the Pompeian Porta Nocera, what must surely strike us is a
sense of uniformity. It is because modern houses often come in rows of uniform brick structures
that the image seems irrepressible. Though, as Eck has shown, there is a considerable range in size
of recorded plots that follow the formula, so many feet in fronte, so many in agro, there is a notable
cluster around a uniform size of around 10-12 feet wide and as many deep (Eck 1987). To call these
frontages homogeneous is not to say they are without individuality: the occasional scenes at the
Isola Sacra representing the trade activities of the deceased are especially effective in this sense.

Nevertheless, compared to the competitive diversity of the Pompeian streets, there seems little
attempt to catch the eye of the passer-by. The one pyramid at the Isola Sacra is not, like that of
Sestius in Rome, a conspicuous monumentum aere perennius, but a modest miniature.
18
In a word, there seems to have been another flip-round in the relative importance of the external and
internal function. Valerius Herma’s tomb is a powerful illustration because of the sheer richness of
its internal decoration (on it see Toynbee and Ward-Perkins 1956, 82-87; Eck 1987, 71-73; Mielsch
and von Hesberg 1995, 143-208; Gee forthcoming, Figs 26-27) The magnificent stucco work
enriches an internal architecture elegantly articulated with niches, and ranges statues of the gods
and philosophers, and of Valerius Herma, his wife, daughter, son and perhaps patron. As in
Pompeii, there is a close relationship between the presentation outside, in the form of an inscription,
and that inside. From outside, we meet the family:
C Valerius Herma fecit et
Flaviae T.f. Olympiadi coiugi et
Valeriae Maximae filiae et C Valerio
Olympiano filio et suis libertis
libertabusque posterisque eorum.
The classic nuclear family grouping is extended, just as at Pompeii and across Italy, by the generic
grouping of freedmen and freedwomen and their descendants.
But it is only inside that we can get a grip on the family. Flavius Herma presents himself repeatedly,
almost obsessively (Eck 1987). The marble panel of his sarcophagus reintroduces himself and his
wife:
C Valerius Herma dum
vivo mihi feci et
Flaviae T.f. coiugi.
The lettering is elegant, the grammar a touch uncertain (‘dum vivo’ combines the dative of ‘vivo
mihi feci’ with the fragmentary clause ‘dum vivus eram’). He introduces himself again on his son’s
sarcophagus:
C Valerio Olympiano qui vixit
annis IIII menses V dies XIII
C Valerius Herma pater.

19
The early loss of his four year old son could well be the occasion of his building of a tomb ‘dum
vivo’. But it could equally have been on the loss of his 12 year old daughter, Valeria Maxima, who
titulus can be reconstructed on the model of her brother’s
[Valeriae] C.f. M[aximae
quae vixit an]nis XII [mens.?
dieb. ? C Valerius Herma pater.]
Since both dead children figure on the titulus at the entrance, we can assume both children died
before the tomb’s construction.
Valerius also marked the loss of a foster-child of 3 years old, Valerius Asiaticus:
C Valerio Asiatico
alumno C Valerius Herma
qui vixit an. III m. XI d. III.
Asiaticus must have become alumnus of Herma on the death of his mother, Asia, who is
commemorated by her husband, Valerius Princeps, presumably a freedman or fellow freedman of
Herma:
C Valerius Princeps [Va]
leriae Asiae libertae i[ncom]
parabili quae vix[it ann…]
mecum [ann…]
Valerius’ nuclear family thus extends through the links of manumission and fostership. But it also
extends to another alumnus, an 8 year old from a different family:
C Appaieni Cati
qui vix. ann. VIII
m. X d. XXVIII alumno
dulc.cui locum optulit
C Val. Herma in
frontf ped. V sarcofaggo
terra deposito.
Finally, the family is extended to the wife of a freedman, Valerius Eutychas, though she was
apparently a slave:
Dynateni C Valerius Eutychas
coiugi benemerenti fecit
permissu C Valeri

Hermaes patroni optimi.
20
The presence of Herma himself is felt massively in this epigraphic ensemble. So it is in the stucco
decoration of the tomb. The figure of the god which occupies the central niche opposite the entrance
is too damaged for certain identification, but Mielsch feels confident in seeing in him Hermes
(rather than Guarducci’s Apollo/Harpocrates). Even more striking, columns are replaced in the
decoration by the squared pilasters of Herms; of the original 23 Herms, 10 Herm heads survive.
Since these are a non-standard decorative form for a tomb, one infers that Herma is playing a
deliberate game with his name.
His self-representation goes far beyond punning. In the bearded figure in sacrificial pose on the
west wall, Mielsch identifies the portrait of Valerius Herma (Fig. 28a, Guarducci had seen this
implausibly as the emperor Marcus), in the female figures that flank him, his daughter Valeria
Maxima, his wife Flavia Olympias (Fig. 28b). An older male figure is identified as his patron, C.
Valerius (Fig. 28c). But these stucco representations (assuming that they do indeed consist in the
family group) are backed up by two well-carved marble portraits, of a bearded man and an idealised
woman wearing the turban-like hairnet that is typical of the second century. They are identified as
Valerius Herma and Flavia Olympias (Figs 29, 30).
Herma might be thought to have done well in terms of self-reproduction. But he is not finished. His
wife seems to be subject of a further portrait, this time in stucco, looking older and more tightlipped,
but wearing the same turban-like hairnet (Fig 29). It is strange that these remarkable
portraits have not attracted more attention from those concerned with ‘realism’ and ‘idealism’ in
Roman portraiture. The stucco portrait series continues. A young woman with wavy hair, and a
young boy with short-cut hair with a quiff at the back, are taken to be portraits of the prematurely
dead Valeria Maxima and Valerius Olympianus. In the latter case, the portrait is gilded, indicating
an especial importance.
Even so, the portrait gallery is not complete. Three startling death masks complete the collection.
One (surviving as a mould) shows a bearded figure so close to the bearded portrait as to make the
choice of Valerius Herma seem inescapable (Fig. 30). The final two, even more powerful, show a
young boy with long eyelashes, hard not to take as the 4 year old Valerius Olympianus (Fig. 31),
and an even younger child, not identified by Mielsch, though the fosterchild Valerius Asiaticus
might be a candidate (Fig. 32).

21
After this extraordinary catalogue of self-representation, let us take stock. Without pushing any of
the individual identifications too hard, it is fairly evident that Valerius Herma projects himself in his
tomb with an insistence that puts even a Trimalchio to shame. From outside we see him in the
titulus; inside we see him in his own sarcophagus inscription, and in those of his many dependents.
His face looks down on us from the stucco decoration, from a marble bust, and even from a death
mask. He ensures that his wife is also represented multiply within, along with his children and
possibly alumni. His theophoric name seems to play even into the decorative scheme of herms.
But while we cannot mistake the urgency of his projection of himself and his family and
dependents, it is only from within the tomb that we can pick up the message. Unlike Trimalchio, he
is not interested in making an ostentatious statement about himself to the world. It is for the benefit
of himself and his close circle. We have seen Toynbee and Ward-Perkins comment with surprise on
the richness of the internal decoration – indeed, the quality is quite remarkable. But I continue to
find difficulty with their concept that this was done for the benefit of the dead, to make them feel ‘at
home’ in their ‘eternal abode’. It is surely done with an eye to the living, that is to say Valerius
himself, who as he lost members of his family spent perhaps even more of his life than he would
have welcomed in the tomb, amid the cycle of regular annual rituals; for the benefit of the survivors
in his circle, who wished to remember their loved ones; and for the benefit of the future generations
which Herma surely hoped would continue to remember and revere him. That is to say, the
functions of the tomb are predominantly internal; the external function is present but subsidiary.
This is perhaps the place to add a comment about portraiture in Roman funerary art. There is an
uncomfortable misfit between archaeological reality on the one hand, and on the other the wellknown
accounts by Polybius of masks and impersonation in the Roman funerary ritual, and by
Pliny of the atrium as a location for ancestral images with tituli linked by red thread. No
archaeological evidence instantiates these descriptions: there is no known example of any sort of
mask that might be used for impersonation at a funeral, nor of an atrium with a collection of
portraits such as might be linked by red thread. These passages are so much cited because they are
assumed to provide the key to what we actually do find, numerous portraits in connection with
tombs. If the Scipio tomb originally included portraits, as we have suggested, it might make the
tomb an evocation of the Plinian atrium. The best example of a collection of ancestral portraits are
those from the tomb of the Licinii in Rome of the early first century AD, which have made their
way, including the famous portrait of Pompey, to the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek – always supposing

22
the finds are genuine, not a nineteenth century fake assembled to order for the market by those who
well knew their Pliny (Kragelund and Moltesen 2003).
The overwhelming assumption, apparently supported by Polybius and Pliny, is that Roman
portraiture was all about status, that is to say about its external function, or advertising the image of
the portrayed to the outside world. That is certainly borne out by the portraits on the tombs of
Pompeii, not to speak of those on the via Appia and other streets of Rome, including the serried
ranks of freemen solemnly framed in the windows from which they look out on the world (Kleiner
1977). But portraits, like houses and tombs, have an internal as well as an external function. They
are a mechanism whereby a family represents itself to itself and constructs its identity. That is also
what Polybius and Pliny are saying. A tomb like that of Valerius Herma shows this function at
work.
Conclusion
In sum, my argument is that the analogy between tomb and house in Roman Italy is perhaps
stronger than we suspected. I remain sceptical about the importance of the formal architectural
evocations. These are present, but always partial. It seems to me incredibly risky to reconstruct the
image of the Etruscan house on the basis of the Etruscan tomb, however plausible the links. But it is
a game of allusion where one needs to know both sides of the equation to see how it works. On the
other hand, I have argued that the tomb is a conscious extension of the two-fold function of the
house, internally to articulate the household, externally to present the household to the world.
But the most interesting conclusion, I feel, is one about which we must be tentative without a more
extensive examination of the evidence. It is that over time, there are significant shifts in the balance
between this internal and external function. In the mid Republic and the high Empire, I have argued,
the internal function is dominant. Tombs are about representing the family or household to itself.
The main difference is that the mid-Republican family, like the Etruscan, is one with significant
duration over time, across several generations, while that of the Empire is short-lived, and recruits
the servile household to bolster its numbers. The high imperial model is by no means a return to the
mid-republican one, but a new one suitable to the changed society of the empire. Hence I have
deliberately characterised the late Republic/early Empire as a transitional period, to counter the
impression it always creates as the classic and timeless expression of the true Roman way. The
novelty lies in the vigorous and competitive interest in self-representation to the world outside;

23
though I have tried to underline that the internal function persists and should never be overlooked.
The tomb, like the house, enables this constant dialogue.
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Housing the Dead: the tomb as house in Roman Italy
Andrew Wallace -Hadrill
Fig. 1. Tomb of Munatius Faustus and Naevoleia Tyche at Herculaneum gate of Pompeii (Kockel
pl.28)

Fig. 2. Vatican (St Peter’s necropolis), plan and section (von Hesberg).

Fig. 3 Tombs at gate of Ostia with triclinia (Boschung 1987)
Fig. 4 Tomb of Vesonius Phileros at Porta Nocera necropolis, Pompeii
Fig. 5 Columellae within tomb of Vesonius Phileros at Porta Nocera, Pompeii

Fig. 6 Etruscan tomb as domus (Carandini and Carafa)
Fig. 7 Banditaccia necropolis, Cerveteri

Fig. 8 Tomb of Volumnii, Perugia, view of ‘atrium’ and ‘tablinum’
Fig. 9 Tomb of Volumnii, Perugia, sarcophagi of Arnth Velimnas and Veilia Velimnei
Fig. 10 Ash-chest of P. Volumnius Violens

Fig. 11 Tomb of the Scipios, Rome, tomb of Scipio Barbatus
Fig. 12 Tomb of the Scipios, Rome, plan (Coarelli)
Fig. 13 Tomb of the Scipios, Rome, reconstruction of facade (Coarelli)

Fig. 14 Tomb of the Scipios, Rome, inscriptions
Fig. 15 Tomb of Eumachia, Porta Nocera necropolis, Pompeii

Fig. 16. Tomb of Castricia Prisca, Porta Nocera necropolis, Pompeii
Fig. 17. Tomb of Flavius Philoxenus and Flavia Agathe, Porta Nocera necropolis, Pompeii, facade
Fig. 18. Portraits of Flavius Philoxenus and Flavia Agathe, Porta Nocera necropolis, Pompeii

Fig. 19. Tomb of Flavius Philoxenus and Flavia Agathe, Porta Nocera necropolis, Pompeii, plan
Fig. 20. Tomb of Munatius Faustus and Naevoleia Tyche, Porta Nocera, Pompeii
Fig. 21. Inscription of Munatius Faustus and Naevoleia Tyche, Porta Nocera, Pompeii

Fig. 22. Columellae of Naevoleius Eutrapel(us) and C. Munatius Faus(t)us, Porta Nocera, Pompeii
Fig. 23 Plan of new excavations at Porta Nocera, Pompeii

Fig. 24 Tomb of C Veranius Rufus Q.f. IIvir at Porta Nocera (new excavations)
Fig. 25 Necropolis of Vatican Autoparco (Steinby)

Fig. 26 Tomb of Valerius Herma, necropolis of the Vatican, St Peter’s, plan
Fig. 27 Tomb of Valerius Herma, necropolis of the Vatican, St Peter’s, section (Hermes central)

Fig. 28 Tomb of Valerius Herma, necropolis of the Vatican, St Peter’s, stucco decoration with
figures of Valerius Herma (a), Flavia Olympias (b), and ?patron (c)
Fig. 29 Tomb of Valerius Herma, necropolis of the Vatican, St Peter’s, portrait of Flavia Olympias
in marble (left) and stucco (right)

Fig. 30 Tomb of Valerius Herma, necropolis of the Vatican, St Peter’s, marble portrait of Herma
(left), death mask (right)
Fig. 31 Tomb of Valerius Herma, necropolis of the Vatican, St Peter’s, gilded stucco portrait of son
Valerius Olympianus (right) and death mask (left and centre)
Fig. 32 Tomb of Valerius Herma, necropolis of the Vatican, St Peter’s, death mask of infant