Campana discovered columbaria between the Porta Latina and the Porta San Sebastiana, which are memorials of the time of Augustus. They contain not less than 400 inscriptions on marble, commemorative of the dead, and many urns of marble and terra cotta.
In the city of the Caesars the ashes were placed in upright urns, while in Greece the urns lay horizontally on the ground, and were covered with rugs. In Greece the ashes were preserved in beautiful mortuary chambers in the houses, a custom that also obtained at Rome to a certain extent.
The great contrast between the cremation of the opulent and the poor finally led to the re-introduction of earth-burial, which, however, strangely enough, was coincident with the decline and fall of the once mighty empire.
The last Roman funeral piles expired in the fourth century, while the Indo-Germanic nations practiced cremation till late in mediæval times.
The Germanic tribes and the Celts (according to Tacitus and Diodorus of Sicily) burned their dead without exception. The testimony of these historians is confirmed by Ovid (Met., Lib. III, v. 619–620), who adds that cremation was highly esteemed by these peoples.
Tacitus (vide Germania, Lib. 37), writing one hundred years before Christ, relates that the ancient Germans preferred a plain funeral to funereal pomp. Only the bodies of celebrated men were cinerated with some ostentation on pyres built of certain costly kinds of wood. They neither ornamented their funeral piles, nor did they use spices at cremations. The arms of every warrior, however, and sometimes the battle-horse, were burnt with him. An unadorned mound was raised over the ashes, and nothing was left to mark the spot where one of their kin had been laid to rest. Criminals were not cremated, but put to death, in various ways; traitors and deserters were hanged to convenient trees, and cowards drowned in swamps.
The Thuringians burned their dead as late as the seventh century; the Anglo-Saxons down to the end of the eighth century. The Swabians, Franks, Lombards, Ostrogoths, Alemanni, and Burgundians disposed of their deceased by fire till 740 A.D. Winfrid, or Boniface, the so-called apostle of the Germans, in a letter refers to the custom of fire-burial among the Saxons. Charlemange, who brought about the conversion of the Saxons by fire and sword, made a special enactment against incineration. The custom of cremation was so deep-rooted among the Saxons, that the death-penalty had to be set upon its consummation in order to cause its abolishment.
The ancient Lithuanians and the forefathers of the present Prussians were wont to consign their dead to the flames. When the ancient Prussians were defeated by the knights of the Teutonic order in the year of our Lord 1249, their vanquishers caused them to promise in writing that they would henceforth, after cremating their deceased with horse, armor, and weapons, collect the remains and bury them within the churchyard, according to Christian usage. There is evidence to show that cineration of the dead was extant in Western Prussia until after 1300 A.D.
Cinerary urns, containing ashes, were discovered near Dantzig, Prussia, and in Silesia.
In the course of forming a vineyard in the neighborhood of Wasserbillig, near Trier, numerous graves were laid bare, in some of which urns were found with the remains of cremated bodies; in others, skeletons. In the former case the cinerary urns (vide Sanitary Record) were surrounded by chalkstone slabs; one of the skeletons was contained in a sarcophagus composed of fourteen roof-tiles. Nine of them had the stamps of the manufacturer, the same names being given as those of the manufacturers who furnished material for the erection of the Roman church which forms the basis of the cathedral of Trier, and for the Roman thermal baths at St. Barbara. Judging from these circumstances, it is assumed that the tombs date from the middle of the third century. In one of the graves a small urn with the representation of a face was found.