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‘Half-burnt on an Emergency Pyre‘: Roman Cremations which Went Wrong

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

David Noy
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Extract

In an ideal Roman cremation, the body was carried in procession from the house of the deceased to a place outside the city, where it was burnt on a pyre until it was reduced to bones and ashes (cineres or favilla). The pyre should be built specifically for the deceased; having to use someone else's pyre was a sign of poverty, or an emergency procedure. The cremated remains might be buried where they had been burnt, usually in a ditch which was filled in and covered or marked; in this case the tomb was called a bustum. More usually, the cremation was carried out somewhere other than the final resting place, at a spot designated ustrina in Latin literature. This might be within the same tomb-precinct or columbarium, as in many tombs at Ostia, or at a separate public site. The bones and ashes therefore had to be collected up and placed in a container, preferably a specially made and ornamented one (cinerarium, oss(u)arium, olla, urna), to be placed in the tomb. The force of the fire, the raking and collapse of the pyre during burning, and eventual quenching with cold liquid would together normally be sufficient to reduce the bones to small fragments which would fit easily into the container. This sort of burial of the remains is assumed in such wishes for the dead as:

I pray that you rest quiet and safe in the urn, bones,

And that the earth is not burdensome to your ashes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , October 2000 , pp. 186 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2000

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References

Notes

1. The phrase ossa et cineres (‘bones and ashes’) is used fairly frequently for what is left after a cremation, but when cineres is used alone in this context it should be understood to include bones as well as ashes (OLD: ‘Ashes as the condition of the body after death’); the usual translation of ‘ashes’ can sometimes be misleading. In epitaphs, ossa hic sita sunt (‘the bones are buried here’) is used frequently, but there is no equivalent for cineres apart from the occasional use of cineribus (dative) at the beginning of the inscription.

2. Lucretius 6.1282–6; Martial 8.75; Lucan 5.281–2, 7.803–4.

3. Servius, , In Aen. 11.201Google Scholar (at 11.185 he applies it to the extinguished pyre); Festus 29L (quoting Aelius Gallus). In practice, the word often seems to signify simply ‘pyre’ or ‘tomb’. This type of tomb is found, for example, at Ostia: Squarciapino, M. Floriani, Scavi di Ostia III. Le necropoli. Pane I. he tombe de età repubblicana e augustea (Rome, 1956), 12, 14, 18, 110, 112, 234Google Scholar. There are also examples at Belo (Bolonia) in Spain, where it represented a continuation of pre-Roman customs: Paris, P. and Bonsor, G., Fouilles de Belo (Bolonia, Province de Cadix) 1917–1921. Tome II. Le nécropole (Paris, 1926), 28, 34, 43, 69Google Scholar.

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29. I owe this point to Christine Aylott.

30. McKinley (n. 8), 65.

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38. Tacitus, , Hist. 1.49Google Scholar.

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41. Postgate (n. 32), 123.

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44. Seneca, (Thy. 79–80)Google Scholar makes the ghost of Thyestes address various groups of sinners who are being punished in the Underworld. The last such group is ‘whoever, half-burnt, drive away the brandished torches [of the Furies]’. Does half-burnt refer to the punishment they are receiving or to their state on entering the Underworld? Tarrant, R. J., Seneca's Thyestes (Atlanta, 1985), 100Google Scholar, suggests that Seneca was influenced by the Ibis passage, although he attributes the half-burning to the Furies' torches.

45. Philo, , Flacc. 69Google Scholar, Leg. 130.

46. Suetonius, , Tib. 75Google Scholar.

47. Lindsay, H. (ed.), Suetonius: Tiberius (London, 1995), 187Google Scholar.

48. Allara, A., ‘Corpus et cadaver, la “gestion” d'un nouveau corps’, in Hinard, F. (ed.), La mort au quotidien dans le monde romain (Paris, 1995), 69–79Google Scholar, at 70.

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52. Lucan 9.3. Elsewhere (7.804–24), Lucan, in his authorial voice, says that it does not make any difference whether or not the dead of Pharsalus are cremated.

53. Tacitus, , Ann. 2.69Google Scholar.

54. Goodyear, F. R. D., The Annals of Tacitus, Books 1–6, Vol. 2: Annals 1.55–81 and Annals 2 (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar, ad loc, says that it is unclear how these remains differed from the other things used: either resulting from cremation if the others did not, or not being recognizably human. However, the point about half-burnt remains is that they were recognizably human, unlike what would be left from a complete cremation.

55. Lucan 6.532–6.

56. Apuleius, , Met. 2.20Google Scholar.