Another tribute of honour for which we find testators making provision is the lighting a lamp in the monument, or feeding it with oil. All who have explored the remains of Roman antiquities are aware how frequently lamps are found in connection with sepulcral monuments. The following inscription invites passers-by to perform this service:[33]—
Quisquis huic tumulo posuit ardente lucernam
Illius cineres aurea terra tegat.
In order that these rites might be duly performed, the monument carefully secures the right “puteum adeundi, hauriendi, coronandi, sacrificandi, ligna sumendi, mortuos mortuasve inferendi;” as well as of “itus, actus, aditus, introitus, ambitus.” Law delighted then, as now, in exhaustive enumerations. To secure the perpetual celebration of these funeral honours was one object for which the alienation of the ground was so strictly forbidden. Titus Ælius, a freedman of Augustus, leaves the monument which he and his wife had erected, to his freedmen, freedwomen, and their descendants, ITA UT NE DE NOMINE SUO AUT FAMILIA EXEAT; UT POSSIT MEMORIÆ SUÆ QUAM DIUTISSIME SACRIFICARI.[34] To these annual commemorative offerings allusion is made in a poetical inscription by a husband to his wife, snatched away in youth.[35]
Lac tibi sit Cybeles, sint et rosa grata Diones,
Et flores grati Nymphis et lilia serta.
Sintque precor, meritæ qui nostra parent tibi dona
Annua, et hic manes placida tibi nocte quiescant,
Et super in nido Marathonia cantet aëdon.
It is not common to find in Roman sepulcral inscriptions specific mention of the cause of death. A father thus records his son’s early death by the falling in of a well:[36]—
Parva sub hoc titulo Festi sunt ossa Papiri
Quæ mœrens fato condidit ipse pater.
Qui si vixisset domini jam nomina ferret.
Hunc casus putei detulit ad cineres.[37]
The following inscription records the death of a male and female slave, crushed by a crowd in the Capitol, who had, perhaps, come together to see British captives led in chains, in a triumphal procession:[38]—
Ummidiæ Manes tumulus tegit iste simulque
Primigeni vernæ, quos tulit una dies.
Nam Capitolinæ compressi examine turbæ
Supremum fati competiere diem.
Ælius Proculinus, on the tomb of his wife, bestows an imprecation on those who had shortened her life by magic incantations. CARMINIBUS DEFIXA JACUIT PER TEMPORA MUTA, UT EJUS SPIRITUS, VI EXTORQUERETUR QUAM NATURÆ REDDERETUR. CUJUS ADMISSI VEL MANES VEL DI CŒLESTES ERUNT SCELERIS VINDICES.[39]
The wounded affections had their victims. P. L. Modestus raises a monument to Telesinia Crispinilla, CONJUGI SANCTISSIMÆ, QUÆ OB DESIDERIUM FILI SUI PIISSIMI VIVERE ABOMINAVIT ET POST DIES XV FATI EJUS ANIMO DESPONDIT.[40] Of a similar excess of maternal grief, causing the death of his wife, Cerialius Calistio gently complains; DUM NIMIS PIA FUIT FACTA EST IMPIA.[41] Communis and Casia inscribe a monument to the memory of a daughter who died at the age of fifteen, and of a son, QUI POST DESIDERIUM SORORIS SUÆ UNA DIE SUPERVIXIT.[42] The following distich records the death of Antonia Maura from her attendance on her sick husband:—