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

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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
Page 1 and 2: Housing the Dead: the tomb as house
Page 3 and 4: haec domus aeterna est, hic sum sit
Page 5 and 6: 5 internal architectural arrangemen
Page 7 and 8: 7 his wife in on the display (Sat.
Page 9 and 10: 9 Piano’s new Auditorium, now mea
Page 11 and 12: 11 external display of status. Inde
Page 13 and 14: The visit to the tomb, like the vie
Page 15 and 16: 15 (Fig.17), with its symmetrically
Page 17 and 18: 17 By my argument, then, these tomb
Page 19: 19 The early loss of his four year
Page 23 and 24: 23 though I have tried to underline
Page 25 and 26: Housing the Dead: the tomb as house
Page 27 and 28: Fig. 3 Tombs at gate of Ostia with
Page 29 and 30: Fig. 8 Tomb of Volumnii, Perugia, v
Page 31 and 32: Fig. 14 Tomb of the Scipios, Rome,
Page 33 and 34: Fig. 19. Tomb of Flavius Philoxenus
Page 35 and 36: Fig. 24 Tomb of C Veranius Rufus Q.
Page 37 and 38: Fig. 28 Tomb of Valerius Herma, nec

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

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