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1 - Permissu decurionum

Freed Persons and Burial Management in the Collective Tomb of the Volusii*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 May 2024

By
Dorian Borbonus
Edited by
Sinclair W. Bell ,
Dorian Borbonus  and
Rose MacLean
Sinclair W. Bell
Affiliation:
Northern Illinois University
Dorian Borbonus
Affiliation:
University of Dayton, Ohio
Rose MacLean
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara
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Summary

This chapter discusses a group of inscriptions that include formulas granting permission for burial in a collective tomb on the Via Appia. These epigraphic formulas speak to the careful management of a resource that was of importance in a community in which enslaved and freed persons constituted the majority: the successful acquisition of a respectable burial. Curiously, these permissions are sometimes given out by the decurions of an association and in other cases by the aristocratic patriarchs. This suggests that the agency to grant these permissions did not rest exclusively with either enslavers or dependents, but more importantly the epigraphic commemoration of these arrangements may pay deference to the authority of the association and the aristocratic patrons. Taken as a group, the inscriptions thus appear to reflect a carefully choreographed interaction between enslaved, manumitted, freeborn, and aristocratic members of the gens Volusia. This reading complements interpretations of freed persons’ funerary culture as self-representations by positing that these funerary monuments are also concerned with securing burial privileges in the collective tomb.

Keywords

funerary artepitaphscolumbarium tombsgens Volusiaburial securitypermissusdatio lociimaginary funeral
Type
Chapter
Information
Freed Persons in the Roman World
Status, Diversity, and Representation
 , pp. 30 - 55
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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